Artist Talk with Charles Fairbanks

Denison’s Studio Art program welcomes Charles Fairbanks. His recent work focuses on Lucha Libre in Mexico, where the artist fights as the One-Eyed Cat (El Gato Tuerto) with a camera built into his mask. Fairbanks grew up in rural Nebraska and wrestled at Stanford, where he studied Art and the History of Science. While in graduate school at the University of Michigan, he worked as the wrestling coach / choreographer for the University Productions staging of Claire Luckham’s Trafford Tanzi – a feminist play written for the pub, directed by Malcolm Tulip. In 2010 Fairbanks was chosen by Werner Herzog for the first Rogue Film School, and in 2011 Anthology Film Archives hosted the retrospective screening Tender Muscles: Five Films by Charles Fairbanks. He has worked as translator (Festival Filmer à Tout Prix), as programmer and producer (Courtisane Festival), and as visiting professor of VideoArte (at Tuxtla’s UNICACH). Presently a Guggenheim Fellow and Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Antioch College, his new work is emerging through collaboration with an indigenous Zoque community in rural Chiapas.