nicole killian
viz: legibility and a question of body
What does it mean to be seen? What does it mean to be read? How can slowing down and getting lost get you found? Who do you really want to LOOK? This lecture will discuss questions of visibility and legibility and its overlaps with a queer politic in relation to not only typography but body (text) in space.
Riffing off the LeTigre song, Viz, this lecture is inspired by the bodily language we use to describe letterforms and composition in graphic design. It will explore language and its connection to how we find each other and gather as communities, the frameworks at play and at stake, and how we communicate with those communities that are important to us. This lecture is not necessarily about pinning down aesthetics, but rather how one may resist in hope that we can justify why the form of language in space really matters.
About nicole killian
nicole killian is an artist and design educator based in richmond virginia and sometimes florence italy. nicole runs a publishing initiative called nico fontana that focuses on the form of writing by primarily queer and trans artists. nicole is an associate professor and graduate director of the MFA program at the Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Graphic Design. Work has been exhibited at ICA VCU, Sediment in Richmond, CAVE in Detroit, Arcadia Missa in London, Present Works in Milwaukee, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, Embassy in Los Angeles, Sadie Halie Projects in Brooklyn, Nomade Gallery in Hangzhou, and Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art for Lorna Mills’s Ways of Something. nicole’s expanded approach to publishing considers objects as containers for language—language that gets activated when read, passed, held, and handled.
