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63 FIFTH AVENUE,
NY NY 10003

Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought at the New School incubates advanced transdisciplinary research and practice at the intersection of social theory and design and fosters dialogue on related themes across the university.

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J. Mae Barizo

J. Mae Barizo is a poet, essayist, and transdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of poetics, media, and performance. An Assistant Professor of Writing at the New School for Social Research, she chairs the undergraduate creative writing program.

 

Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo is an award-winning poet, essayist, and transdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of poetics, media, and performance. She is the author of three books of poetry and Becoming Hybrid, her book on transdisciplinary theory and creative practice, is forthcoming from the Poets on Poetry Series at University of Michigan Press. An advocate of transdisciplinary work, she has collaborated with artists such as Salman Rushdie, Mark Morris, and the American String Quartet. As a librettist, she is the inaugural recipient of Opera America's IDEA residency, given to artists who have the potential to shape the future of opera. Her work has been anthologized by W.W. Norton, Simon & Schuster, Atelier Editions, and Harvard University Press, and recent writing appears in The Atlantic, Esquire, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Boston Review, BookForum, among others. Her work has been presented by Princeton University, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Long Beach Opera, and more. She was an artist resident at Baryshnikov Arts and her monodrama "Cloud Variations" had its world premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2025. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing at the New School for Social Research and chairs the undergraduate creative writing program.

DRIFT is a multilingual opera in three acts which explores migration and memory through the symbolic lens of motherland, focusing on the visceral, maternal bond and its cultural implications. Set amidst pressing global crises of our time, DRIFT aims to deepen its conceptual and formal foundations through transdisciplinary research in memory, language, and performance. DRIFT illuminates how poets and artists expand artistic experimentation beyond the studio, uncovering alternative modes of experiencing the text, and inviting the audience to look and listen for the poetic across a variety of contexts. DRIFT challenges Western notions of opera while using a multilingual text to resist the erasure of ancestral heritage. The circular narrative of the text invites the audience into an immersive exploration of memory and geography, weaving their relationship into a broader cosmological and cultural context.