MacDowell Downtown

Tatiana Arocha, a visual artist who makes installations tying together natural materials with digitally altered components that examine political and cultural dynamics, will present the final MacDowell Downtown of the season on Friday, November 3rd, at the Monadnock Center for History and Culture. Beginning at 7:30 p.m., Arocha, who is in town for her first MacDowell residency, will present slides and video of her work as she explains how and why her unique practice of creating physical manifestations of the forests of her native Colombia inform her growing body of work.

At MacDowell, Arocha is experimenting with “visual vocabularies” she’s developed from research into how colonization and the so-called scientific discovery of cocaine in the 1800s overshadowed and replaced Indigenous knowledge and sacred uses of the plant with its own vocabulary. She’s developing a video animation based on modern society’s marketing of cocaine as a toothache cure for children, then as a fortified wine by the Catholic Church, and, of course, putting the pep in Coca-Cola. She’ll “reverse engineer” the brand management she sees as going in to those campaigns, as well as the War on Drugs. The doors of Bass Hall open at 7 p.m. of Friday with light refreshments served; the presentation starts at 7:30 p.m.

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MacDowell Downtown is a free series of presentations open to the public by MacDowell Fellows. It typically takes place on the first Friday of the month from March to November in downtown Peterborough. Each season of MacDowell Downtown features a wide array of programming, including film screenings and workshops, readings, and writing seminars, art exhibitions, performances, talks, and more. MacDowell Downtown begins at 7:30 p.m. typically at the Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough.

(Below, see a slideshow of the 2019 season. Keep an eye out for our “At MacDowell” monthly column appearing the first Thursday of every month in The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, and visit our Facebook Events page for the latest information on upcoming MacDowell Downtown events.)

Fellow Hope Gangloff works on a large painting at her desk in her studio

The 2019 season opened with two visual artists-in-residence: Portia Munson and Hope Gangloff. Each artist presented a mini-exhibit and showed slides of their work while talking about their creative processes.

Portia Munson stand in front of a large sculptural piece titled Reflecting Pool

Fellow Michael Moore presents at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

The April 2019 installment of MacDowell Downtown featured two first-time Fellows, including writer Michael Scott Moore, who related his experience being abducted by Somali pirates and held in captivity for 32 months beginning in 2012.

Fellow Clay Jordan presents at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

Photographer Clay Maxwell Jordan spent more than six years assembling the color photographs populating his first book, Nothing’s Coming Soon. He talked about his creative process in April 2019.

Fellow Jerome Ellis plays the saxophone during a MacDowell Downtown event

In May 2019, Jerome Ellis described the musical form known as a sound bath before performing one live.

Fellow Joseph Keckler presents during a MacDowell Downtown event

Composer/performer Joseph Keckler exercised his operatic voice and unleashed his humor singing original and popular arias and songs in May 2019.

Fellows Jerome Ellis and Joseph Keckler during a MacDowell Downtown event

After Ellis and Keckler performed, they answered questions from the audience. (May 2019)

Fellow Elizabeth de Souza presents at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

Essayist Elizabeth de Souza arrived from Pittsburgh to delve into her project examining “the intersection of artistic genius and mental illness, specifically among African American artists” during our June 2019 program.

Fellow Ben Mauk presents at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

Magazine journalist Ben Mauk joined de Souza at MacDowell Downtown and spoke about his research into the ungoverned and fugitive spaces in Asia for a book project. (June 2019)

A Fellow presents at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

Neil Mendoza explores the intersection of the digital and physical worlds in his installations, sculpture, and videos. He presented at our August 2019 edition.

Janalyn Guo, who explores strange environments of the “unreal” within fictional worlds of her creation, also presented in August 2019.

A small, seated audience listens to presentations during MacDowell Downtown

Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan are filmmakers collaborating on a multi-media project about Afro-diasporic dance and flight as spiritual tools of liberation, and the two first-time MacDowell Fellows talked about their project in September 2019.

Fellows present at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

The two filmmakers talked about their unconventional approaches to making film, using found footage, photography, the written word, and video to “reinforce the importance of telling your own stories.” (September 2019)

A diptych photo of author Jeff Sharlett with the cover art for his book titled "The Family"

Author Jeff Sharlet spoke at MacDowell Downtown in October 2019, talking about how Netflix turned two of his books into what is now the hit documentary series “The Family.” He also discussed the story’s continuing political relevance.

Fellow Rodrigo Martinez Torres present during a MacDowell Downtown event

Tropical psychedelic rock impresario Rodrigo Martínez Torres brought a drum kit and his inventive spirit to Bass Hall in November to lead the audience in a collaborative performance for the last installment of MacDowell Downtown in November 2019.

Fellow Rodrigo Martinez Torres presents at a podium during a MacDowell Downtown event

Martínez Torres was joined by Fellows Em Goldman and Huck Hodge for improvised four-handed piano accompaniment to Martínez Torres’ drumming. (November 2019)