Mortal Work, Not Labor: An Interview with Leigh Davis written by Claire Donato
I met Leigh Davis in Spring 2020 when she was assigned to be my teaching collaborator at Parsons (The New School for Design). Leigh taught Integrative Studio, a visual arts class for first-year art and design students, and I taught Integrative Seminar, a writing-intensive course in which the same group of students conducted research and generated text for their Seminar projects.
During our first conversation, Leigh and I discovered we both grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and reminisced about the city’s flora and museums. A seriously playful pedagogical collaboration ensued. We were consistently on the same page about artists whose work we wanted to bring into the classroom, and both delighted in introducing students to archive-based research and site-specific interventions.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic reoriented our teaching collaboration. Leigh and I revised our curriculum to help support students during this unprecedented moment, and also supported one another by phone and text. We continued teaching and growing together for two more years; in Spring 2022, we finally had the opportunity to convene over coffee before a final in-person Integrative Studio critique. In April 2024, I had the pleasure of seeing Leigh in-person for the second time, again over coffee, this time on a rainy afternoon in Washington D.C., where she lives, dreams, and creates. We talked about death and karaoke, YouTube’s nooks and crannies, our studio practices, and Leigh’s current solo exhibition, HUMAN RESOURCES, at Grizzly Grizzly in Philadelphia, PA, which is on view through June 23rd. In May 2024, we conducted this interview for Speak Speak, Grizzly Grizzly’s blog, via email and Google Docs.
— Claire Donato, June 3, 2024
For those just meeting you via this interview, can you share a little bit about yourself? What’s a typical day like in the life of Leigh Davis?
Life has shifted a lot, so I get up at 6:00 am now to get one kid awake for middle school and the other (a bit later) to first grade. Different times and locations. I’d like to say I have a calm “morning routine” but I basically down two coffees immediately, eat food, and get humans out the door. If we commute by bike, I am content, as driving in DC sucks. Afterwards, I try to sit somewhere and write or move in some way, and then I get to work on whatever is happening in my studio, or if I am teaching. And then there are emails/admin/meetings, etc. I work in chunks and usually intense periods as I’m very project focused and sometimes spend two to three years inside of one. I am a person who needs social outlets to function and connect, so I try to break for lunch with artists in my studio building, or have coffee with someone if I can during the week. By 4:00pm, I’ve picked up a kid (or both) and I’m taking them to their things until dinner. Somedays this can feel frustrating because I want to work. Other days it’s the sweetest gift of time as my mind is on them (not work, anxiety around work, what I’m supposed to be doing, or the state of the world on any given day). My kids offer me immediate presence. I love those chunks too.
Can you talk a bit about the genesis of your solo exhibition, HUMAN RESOURCES? How did you get involved with Grizzly Grizzly?
The idea to create an office environment has been in my mind since the pandemic. These places for productivity, but that are becoming dormant (dead). The Grizzly show is a pared-down version of that concept and a place to consider our relationship to time and the places where people may repress or express all the incoming data (death, grief, loss, anxiety, fear of what’s next). These are places to express thoughts, not feelings. The videos are what I want to center, and unlike some of the other collections I’ve made around mortality, this batch has more humor. I think I’ve made 40 or so videos now, and I see them as a language, different parts of a long grief cycle. The videos at Grizzly mark the end of one cycle, and making them was transformative, somewhat cathartic.
Back to the office. I was also finding research, articles, and academic papers online. In 2021 I came across “Amateur Mortality” by PhD student Maxwell Hyett, where he references Franco "Bifo" Berardi’s texts and theories around work. Specifically “mortal work, not labor,” which I interpreted as the subconscious work we do as we prepare to die. So that resonated. What is super interesting to me, is when our relationship to the subconscious unravels and we are able to glimpse things we don’t usually pay attention to. We get this access. This is stuff I’m digging into while I am making the videos. The process is long, but then images and connections are revealed.
I went off there, so back to the question of Grizzly. Friends of mine had shows at Grizzly Grizzly over the years. Last summer, I had a collection of different videos up at Past Present Projects (formerly in the Bok building in Philadelphia), and Amy Hicks from Grizzly Grizzly came through. We got in touch, and I kept sending her more videos as I kept making them. And so it came through. Although artist-run spaces often lack funds or slickness, they are run by working artists and offer opportunities to share your work. I am all for creating support and generosity for other artists, which I feel is always a big need.
At the center of this installation is an untitled, 21-minute video that weaves together found and original footage—ranging from a birthday cake on fire to a columbarium to balloons floating in the air—overlaid with moments of sound that seem to be gleaned from your life. Can you talk about the process of making this video? How did you find and/or create the footage you collaged together to create it?
The process is intuitive, with each video building on the previous one. The footage comes from everywhere. I source footage/images from my own archive of photos, or shoot new things, or glean from YouTube (a lot), phone pics, recording texts, dreams, nightmares, and memories. All of it is based on hunches, tethers of an idea, and then I play with these images to see what emerges from the process. Sometimes I make connections between associations or work on a theme for a while, like the birthday poem, which excerpts a text by Stephen Levine (from “Guided Meditations, Explorations, and Healings”). That is narrated by my kid at age 8 (now 10). Months after recording the voice, I found family footage of a birthday cake on a DV tape. Later, I needed to feel a balloon release. Even later, a balloon machine came in. This process spans years, resurfacing and connecting to themes of release and death. After making this video for Grizzly Grizzly, I realized that I celebrate and mourn every year on my birthday (6/13) which is next to my dad’s death day (6/14). I didn’t think about it so specifically when I was making the work. Through making, I can unveil what’s under the surface.
I also want to mention the wrapping casts and wrapping paper. Those came through a while back, so those videos aren’t up at Grizzly. They came from a dream where I was searching for something and found a gift covered in 1980s font wrapping paper with”Nancy Nancy Nancy”. That dream was a visitation, a comfort when I needed it. My friend and mentor Nancy died in 2008.
The whole is the sum of its parts. All the videos transform grief over time, just as we do in our bodies. We remember the connections or not, express or repress it. My hope is to invite people to explore this.
I found the inclusion of Ke$ha’s song “Die Young” toward the end of your video to be particularly cathartic. The sing-a-long video atop which the song is overlaid reminded me of something you shared with me over coffee in Washington D.C. During that conversation, you mentioned you’ve been working a lot with karaoke within your broader, socially activated art practice. Can you talk more about karaoke’s inclusion in HUMAN RESOURCES, and how you’ve been engaging with the form otherwise?
That song has a special place in my heart, so I’m glad it landed in this video. I sing it loudly in the car. Yes, I’ve been thinking about karaoke as a process of collective release. When I’m in a group of people dancing or singing, it resonates. I want to feel things physically—singing, yelling, mourning, celebrating, releasing together. Karaoke does that if you’re into it.
Singing is something I miss doing. Another side of my previous work is my membership in the Threshold Choir–an incredible resource and a quiet service. This resonating as a group feels important now, singing as a form of resistance and release. The project is called DANCING TILL THE WORLD ENDS.
The physical space of HUMAN RESOURCES “...constructs a pseudo-office environment, where the efficiency of corporate settings converges with existential contemplation.” What inspired this aspect of the project? Did you look to particular representations of offices in culture and media—or critiques of bureaucracy and office culture in cultural/critical theory (I think of the work of David Graeber)—to inform your simulacrum?
I did look at work by Barbara Bloom and Mika Tajima, both artists who have worked with office structures. I love seeing the form of those projects as environments on a level, but I keep coming back to time, and maybe what’s missing. How to create aftercare. My installation at Grizzly Grizzly could seem like a one-liner, which I’m not into. I wanted to imagine how we’d reuse this space and how we might repurpose it to process ongoing grief. Creating this environment to flush out that idea is something I needed to explore.
We first met while co-teaching a course together at Parsons (The New School for Design). How does your teaching practice inform your art practice? What is a dream course you’d love to teach?
I miss teaching with you a lot. Teaching informs my work, especially as my students are changing all the time. I am constantly trying new ways to engage with them, which can be a challenge. But if I can be open this way, I become a better teacher. What happens in and outside of class affects all of us. How can we respond? It’s a full-on social experience, and I love engaging with them. I also feel the need to stretch them and myself. What is necessary? What is enough? It’s open and project-specific. Lately, I think my dream would be to create a course that is about walking—together in groups or with partners, having conversations. This would be useful for first-year students, allowing them to get lost, wander, and look around while conversing and navigating together. A class like this feels weirdly urgent after my last semester.
We both hail from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. How does Pittsburgh—as a geographical location, a hometown, a place where particular forms of artwork burgeon, or as anything else the city might represent in your mind—influence your work?
My family is all in Pittsburgh, so when I go, I am full of family. I wish I could spend more time there, and I’d love to do a project that makes that possible. The art situation is so great: Carnegie Mellon has incredible faculty, and artists like Vanessa German and Lenka Clayton, along with recent site-based projects and all the museums. The Mattress Factory is still my favorite of all time. I grew up with it, and it was mind-opening to see site-specific work and installations by artists I would not have had access to know about. I was a gallery guide there when I was 15-16. Last time we visited, I took my kids and friends there, and when we all walked into Turrell’s “Danaë.” It was a beautiful moment. The moment when you see them seeing it. My younger kid said to the next group, “walk slowly in… take your time walking in.“ That was such a filling thing for me. I was so happy. I learned about what is possible in those rooms, and I got to share that with them.
The second course we taught together at Parsons (The New School for Design), Integrative Studio, wound up taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic. How did lockdown change your relationship to art-making?
I didn’t do much studio work, though I made a lot of art with my kids. I marinated. I read a lot. I talked to people on the phone. I tried to teach OK on zoom. And I talked to my neighbors, which led to a new understanding of where I live now. I began an oral history project with my neighbor across the street, and that grew. Otherwise, I had a hard time figuring out what else mattered beyond connecting to people. My focus was on health and time with my family and neighbors. So, that did change my relationship to making work.
What artists across forms and media have been inspiring you of late?
I’ve been most interested in writers this past year. Reading books and articles. The work people are doing then leads me into other holes of thinking or conversations. One piece that really started me on this tangent was Michael Clune’s “Night Shifts” in Harper’s a year ago. He wrote about using MIT’s Dormio device to facilitate “dream incubation.” It’s a great meditation on creativity, consciousness, ritual, and how our subconscious remains incredibly mysterious (and impossible to study). Again, I read or misread it, but it was productive for my work—about liminal states of consciousness, our relationship to mortality, dreams, technology, and anxiety.
As an artist, you think a lot about grief and the meaning of death. As we come to the end of this interview, and as HUMAN RESOURCES prepares to close on June 23rd, I’m wondering: what comes next?
The main thing I want to do is share all of the interviews I have done over the past 10 or so years discussing these topics. I began in 2013, as a way to make meaning of my own losses. Interviews have continued to be an important part of my process of making things, and as a form of educating myself, listening, and connecting to other people’s experiences. I have had intimate and beautiful conversations with people from all different backgrounds and perspectives around mortality, grief, fears, dreams, research and writing. More recently, I spoke with a past-life regression therapist, a pastor, an intuitive, and a woman in Germany (we had a translator) who had a near-death experience while in labor. Talking with people about spiritually transformative experiences continues to inform my work, and it always comes back to consciousness and making meaning. There aren’t definitive answers, or we grapple with the answers. These interviews are such a part of my making and sharing the composty parts inside us. Just talking openly about death or grief offers connection, which is really why I make things in the first place. So, I am working to compile, transcribe and figure the form to share these conversations—a portal for them to live openly.
BIO
Claire Donato is the author of three books, most recently Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts (Archway Editions, 2023). Recent writing has appeared in Parapraxis, Forever, The End, The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, The Chicago Review, and BOMB. She also contributed an introduction to The One on Earth: Selected Works of Mark Baumer (Fence Books). In addition to writing books, Claire makes music, illustrates, and has a 35mm photography practice. Currently, she works as Assistant Chairperson of Writing at Pratt Institute, where she received the 2020-2021 Distinguished Teacher Award. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat Woebegone.
