Drawing on his practice as an intuitive, Asher Hartman will lead a non-acting theatrical exercise to strip the body to its imaginary skeletal form. Rossen and Asher will then be in conversation using Rossen’s article for the winter issue as a point of departure. Other topics of discussion will include: the hegemony of narrative (in the theater and beyond), the gravitational pull of reductive identity (persons, personas etc.), the contemporary cultural defanging of criticism and criticality, and maybe even the vagaries of gender.

Asher Hartman is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, director and intuitive practitioner whose work at the junction of visual art and theater centers on the exploration of the self in relation to Western histories and ideologies. He is currently director of Gawdafful National Theater in Los Angeles.

Rossen Ventzislavov is a philosopher and cultural critic specializing in aesthetics, architectural theory, literature, popular music and performance art. He has been a member of the Encounter performance art collective since 2014 and is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University.

X-TRA is a quarterly contemporary art journal. Founded in 1997, X-TRA is the longest running art journal in Los Angeles. Edited by a collective of artists and writers, X-TRA presents expansive features, historical essays, commissioned artist’s projects, interviews, columns, and substantive reviews. X-TRA is published in print and digital-reader format, and the complete archive is available online. X-TRA’s mission is to provoke critical dialogue about contemporary art.