Claire Fleming Staples

Fleming (they/them) is a queer, multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of somatics, sound, politics, and new media. Throughout their multi-faceted practice they are exploring embodiment as a tool for collective liberation. In their immersive installations of expanded cinema, haptic components direct physical attention by means of vibrations, allowing the participant to move seamlessly through an expanding portal of digital reality while maintaining body awareness. In their live desktop performances a guiding topic propels the viewer on a journey through a deep and eclectic media archive, illustrating political, emotional, and spiritual realities in the familiar intimacy of the personal screen, projected into the shared space. Collaboration and pedagogy are two important vectors of their practice, as a long-term member of underground creative communities in which they are engaged in care work and organizing. They currently work and reside in Chicago, Illinois, where they are a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I organize my teaching practice in terms of three important pillars: Joy, Critical thinking, and Gate-opening. I begin with joy because it is what brings me to the classroom and I think it is what lays the groundwork for everything else to happen. The love of learning and the love of being in community is a constant energy source for me. I want to offer this to my students, to invite them into a lifetime’s supply of curiosity and satiation that a rich learning environment can offer. I have a lot to bring to the table in terms of diverse examples, ideas, facts, artists and artworks, but the glue that brings all these things into meaning and relevance is critical thinking. I want to teach my students, as my teachers taught me, how to ask questions, how to recognize ideologies, how to see things in context, how to consider what lies beneath,  and how to make space for a multiplicity of conflicting truths. The third pillar is about removing barriers, gate-opening: the opposite of gate-keeping. For me this is about sharing freely and openly all that I have to offer, encouraging an environment of collaboration instead of competition, and working to make opportunities and resources available in a spirit of abundance. It is also about constantly making myself aware of the barriers that students face in higher learning institutions, and working to remove them, both in my classroom, and in the larger institution.