The Interdisciplinary arts and Media M.F.A. program attracts a wonderfully talented and creatively diverse group of students. The program itself encourages its students to approach interdisciplinarity as a fluid term, which as our department website suggests, “may mean grounding artwork in research, tools or techniques from disciplines outside the field of art, collaborating with other artists or non-artists, or creating artwork that is itself interdisciplinary.” Third-yera MFA candidate Kellen Walker is a wonderful example of this fluid understanding of what an interdisciplinary practice can be.

Kellen Walker is an accomplished Chicago based artist and has been working in experimental theater since 2010. In 2013 she joined The Sin Eaters, a performance group that competitively eats confessed sins of audience participants, and at last year’s Rhinoceros Theatre Festival Kellen Directed Game Night, “an interactive multi-sensory performance that illustrates how a post-stroke point of view would look, sound, smell and taste.”   Kellen wears a number of hats: director, writer, performer, and most recently perfumer and scent designer. In her studio she has been concocting custom fragrances to be made into conceptual perfumes, which she uses in live performance and in collaborations with other artists.

“I direct movement based on thick, subtle, narrative audio collages in tandem with sequences of fragrances. The dancers I collaborate with are what I call the vehicles of scent: their perfumed bodies are choreographed to the audio in order to leave behind trails of perfume to interact with the audience. Since 2014, my deep love of collecting and creating perfumes has widened my practice to be a Scent Designer in performances.”

It’s this kind of bold exploration of what an interdisciplinary art practice can be that makes me love being part of this program and community. She is currently working as a Scent Designer for two 2014 MFA Candidates at Columbia College. In one of these projects she is exploring the potential of sequenced smells to help create an emotional arc.  If you’re interested in learning more about Kellen Walker’s fascinating experimental work check out cargocollective.com/kellenwalker.