living works
Jesse's portfolio of collaborative projects creating relationships between strangers, sparking exchange and influencing public space
Photo by Marchaé Grair
The Way We Live Now (2018)
An intimate, immersive, interactive experience in a hospital waiting room, where you wait.
project website: here
The Way We Live Now Project is a performance-based public art and public health project focused on the ripple effects of the opioid epidemic. This civic engagement project uses a Susan Sontag short story to facilitate public conversations about opioids, chronic pain, trauma and hope.
The epidemic does not end in death. It is the way we live now, and we go on living. Our culture continues to struggle to find ways to process pain and trauma amongst the living while attempting to take action to end the epidemic. Inspired by Sontag, who herself was a theater maker and activist, we recognize that any such attempt must be rooted in a willingness to openly engage with our own lives and those of others affected by the current crisis.
The Way We Live Now (2018) aims to invite and facilitate the public processing of what often remain private and painful experiences. Through a series of workshops and performances we will ask: what does it mean to live within an epidemic? How do we live in an environment so deeply saturated by a substance, opioids, that are both invaluable and dangerous? How do we live with pain, or with the pain of another? How do we go on living?
The Way We Live Now (2018) was made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ Creative City Program, with funding from The Barr Foundation and with additional support from The Boston Foundation. Further funding is being provided by the Live Arts Boston grant of The Boston Foundation. Additional support is being provided by Fenway Health.