Part of the Practice
What is social practice, and how does it affect the ways we navigate our lives and make change in the world? Join artists, scholars, and collaborators from Social Practice CUNY on Part of the Practice, hosted by Catherine LaSota, as we discuss our individual art practices, our communities, and the role of socially-engaged art in our work for social justice.
Part of the Practice
28: Manipulation and Conversation with Monica Rocha
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Monica Rocha, a 2025-26 SPCUNY Student Fellow and MFA candidate in the Integrated Media Arts program at Hunter College, joins host Catherine LaSota to discuss her interest in conversation as a method of engagement, and how manipulation in its most radical sense shows up in our conversations, and what we can learn from that. Monica discusses her love of combining text, image, and sound in her work, and the importance of keeping her art financially independent (i.e., having a job for income that is not the same thing as one's art). She also talks about her current radio project with the Brazilian immigrant community, and asks the question, “How can we engage people in a way where we are letting them set the terms of what their art is, what it looks and sounds like?”
About our guest:
Monica Rocha is an audiovisual and performance artist. Through video performances involving cast and crew, she interrogates the assumed relationships between the body, truth, consent, and the technology which backgrounds them. She has performed at Harvestworks, The Irish Center, Roulette, and Artist’s Space and is pursuing her MFA at Hunter College.
Photo of Monica Rocha is by Dominick Noboa.
More about Monica Rocha
Website: mineral-creative.com
Instagram: @sapphostraphouse
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Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music.
Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed.
Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.