Kristin Killacky
MA Arts Politics Class of 2014
BA World Arts & Cultures/Dance and History, UCLA
Kristin is an artist, performer and producer from Southern California, currently based in New York City. She is an administrator focused on alumni relations, special events and media within the Department of Art & Public Policy.
Kristin continually finds herself weaving through liminal spaces and moving through the intersections of areas seemingly disparate. Prior to arriving to “Arts Politics”, she worked as the producer at the UCLA Art & Global Health Center, an organization that seeks to utilize the power of the arts to begin and transform conversations about HIV/AIDS and public health issues.
In 2010, she was a founding member of the all-female collective, Soul Lab Dance Project. More recently, her work has become more intimate and focused on personal investigations of race, history and identity.
What drew you you the MA Arts Politics program?
I wanted to explore how my own performance practice might grow with my interest in social justice and activism. I was particularly inspired by my time working at the Art & Global Health Center, managing arts based public health projects and producing shows about sexual/reproductive health in high schools because it was an example of art creating an opening where conversations were mostly ineffective or missing. I was looking to transmogrify that revolutionary experience into my own creative work. The MA Arts Politics program called to me because it seemed like a place to both be guided in this exploration and have autonomy to create an experience unique to my interests.
How did your experience in the program shape your work?
The program has re-shaped my life and thus my work. I feel more willing and called to ask questions and to challenge and be challenged. The program called for me to confront systems of power, while also dissecting an ever expanding notion of what “arts politics” is and can be. I felt particularly challenged by the theoretical grounding of the program, however it has continued to be a useful new language in which to examine and query within my work.