This grassroots project draws on past acts of resistance while engaging in an ongoing conversation about CalArts’ history of financial exploitation. It highlights well-known movements like @calartswithout, as well as lesser-known moments, preserving them as part of a broader tradition of institutional critique. The project captures shared frustrations and calls for greater transparency, equity, and accountability.

It takes the form of nine fill-in-the-blank risographed posters, overprinted with anonymous responses collected through a survey conducted in late 2024. More than 400 posters were created. The entire project is documented in a book that serves as both an archive and a call to action.

Includes the CalArts Student Union poster and a poster designed for the School of Dance.

A study of freedom metaphors within the Russian diaspora. 

Fortochka explores the tension between symbol and action. Named after a small ventilation window—and inspired by Masha Gessen’s words, “Once you find fortochka, you have to put your whole body through it”—the project moves through history, play, and resistance. Drawing from research on playgrounds that embody risk and uncertainty, the symbolism of flying, and themes of escape in Eastern Futurism, the project reflects on freedom as both metaphor and experience.

Core actions include photographing mid-air jumps on a trampoline and staging a participatory installation where people burst through oversized typography. As the pages narrow and chapters nest like Russian dolls, the reader is gradually pushed into negative space, until finding a way out becomes part of the reading itself.