bio
Mary Walling Blackburn was almost born on the crest of Mt. Shasta in northern California. She now lives beside Newtown Creek and the human waste holding tank in Brooklyn, New York.
Her writing has been published in Aperture, Brooklyn Rail, Cabinet Magazine, CTHEORY, lastperformance.org, loudpaper (architectural discourse) and Women and Performance. Her new critique of John Beech’s prints can be found at 30×30cmproject.
In New York, she has exhibited at Smack Mellon Gallery, TGN, and HEREarts and was awarded a Bessie for performing arts. In Chicago, she has shown work at Links Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Roots and Culture, and Gallery 400. Southern Exposure (San Francisco) will install “This Dream; This Frequency” in May; pirate radios will stud the neighborhood, broadcasting the dreams of US soldiers stationed in Iraq, mixed with Mesopotamian nightmares. She is currently finishing an experimental documentary on the Patriot Act and how it impacts traditional American activism.
This summer she will teach “The Taxonomy of Resurrection” at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago, where she has also taught “Dropping Out: The Aesthetics of Disappearance”, and “Visualizing Aggression: Documenting America at War.”
