Tickets

Cecilia Vicuña’s What Is Poetry to You?

with readings by Nikki Ochoa, Ivanna Baranova, and Venya Gushchin

Cecilia Vicuña, What Is Poetry to You? 1980, 23 min.

Vicuña asks passersby on the streets of Bogotá—including fellow artists and poets, sex workers, children, a police officer, and a scientist—the question: “What is poetry to you?” The surprising answers she elicits reveal the richness of oral culture in Colombia. 

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Nikki Ochoa is an Ancient Baby from Kudzu covered forests. She is a writer and experimental artist. She directs Punitive Worm, an ever changing performance art group interested in liberation from capitalist colonial narratives. She was educated at UCLA and CAL ARTS. She often works with Atlanta based performance art group Tooth Lifeless. From sculpture to sound, her work is rooted in creating poetry that exists in the physical realm by bending time, and touching God. She was the Linda J. Albertano Fellow for Poetry and Performance in 2025.
She has performed across North America and will be performing at some parking lot in Detroit soon. 

Ivanna Baranova is a poet living in Los Angeles working across language, sound, image, and movement. She is co-director of the Poetic Research Bureau and her recent books include Continuum (Metatron Press) and Threshold (Inpatient Press). Her next book—Dispatch Momentary Green—is forthcoming from Spiral Editions in 2026.

Venya Gushchin is a poet, literary translator, and assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California. His translation of the Kalmyk poet Dordzhi Dzhaldzhireev is forthcoming from World Poetry Books in 2027. His writing has appeared in The Rumpus; Exchanges; Brooklyn Rail; Broken Lens; and elsewhere.

Courtesy of the artist Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.