Event details
Saturday, November 11, 2023
2–3 pm

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Free with museum admission, registration is recommended.

Blind Dates Recursive 01

Question: How do you give your work a life?
Facilitated by artist Timmy Simonds

Timmy Simonds is an artist who moves between object-making, writing, routines of caretaking, and participatory exercises. Through the fictional character of a teacher he calls MISS OTHMAR, Simonds examines the cultural expectations and vulnerabilities inherent in the practice of teaching. His work has been shown at Cathouse Proper, Cleopatra’s, Greene Naftali, Kai Matsumiya, and Knockdown Center, all in New York; as well as at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City and Rond-Point Projects in Marseille, among other project spaces, galleries, and institutions. Simonds teaches at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and the New York University Steinhardt Studio Art program. Since 2018, he has broadcasted regularly with Montez Press Radio and Wave Farm’s radio station, WGXC.

About the program series

Blind Dates Recursive is a series of participatory public conversations held at Dia Beacon in conjunction with Rita McBride: Arena Momentum (on view through January 2025). These engagements take place on McBride’s Arena (1997), a modularly structured tribune that is activated by the presence of audiences and performers alike.

Inspired by the artist’s decision to make the digital design files of Arena freely available through a copyleft license, which allows for the public to access and reinterpret the work, Blind Dates Recursive provides an ongoing, open forum to consider and enact the shifting nature of authorship.

Each month, an invited facilitator poses a question and draws on their unique field of expertise to act as an instigator, listener, and moderator of the responses and conversation. Participants are encouraged to think out loud and in dialogue with each other during the hour-long session, at the end of which the facilitator will guide the group to collectively form a new question. The new question will be posed at the next session by a new facilitator. In this way, like a game of Telephone, Blind Dates Recursive generates iterative gatherings and an evolving public dialogue over the course of the exhibition.

The public is encouraged to participate on a recurring basis.

Blind Dates Recursive 02
Saturday, December 9, 2023, 2–3 pm

Blind Dates Recursive 03
Saturday, February 3, 2024, 2–3 pm

Blind Dates Recursive 04
Saturday, March 9, 2024, 2–3 pm

Blind Dates Recursive 05
Saturday, April 13, 2024, 2–3 pm

More information on the full program series is available here.