Project Third 2025-Present

Projects

Speech Acts

A white silhouette of two people sitting at a table with two microphones between them, directed toward their heads. The text at the top left corner reads in all-caps "SPEECH ACTS" in white and bold. The bottom text in black superimposed over the silhouette of the figures reads left to right the Pratt Institute Fine Arts Department logo and "Project Third," both in black. The background is a perspective radial gradient featuring Pratt Institute's main brand colors of yellow, grey, and black.

Speech Acts is the podcast of Pratt Fine Arts’ Project Third (P3). Each semester, a faculty member sits down with artists, curators, and cultural producers whose work engages deeply with social, political, and community-based issues. These conversations explore practices that defy traditional categories, experiment across disciplines, and respond to the urgent conditions of our time.

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Episode 2: Macon Reed

A close-up of a person's face, eyes closed, surrounded by several small hands made from a doll or figurine, which appear to be gently touching their face. The scene is illuminated with pink lighting, creating a surreal atmosphere. The person has a towel wrapped around their head, and a white towel is visible in the background.
Macon Reed, The Death Spa Experience (still), 2022, video (color, sound), 7 min. 37 sec. Photo courtesy of the artist.
A person with long, dark hair is wearing a black turtleneck and is standing indoors. They are smiling and looking directly at the camera. They are wearing a brightly colored floral shirt, bright earrings, and standing in front of greenery and foliage
Portrait of Langdon Graves long, dark hair and bangs with minimal natural light. She is wearing a black turtleneck and have a serene expression. Small gold necklaces are visible around their neck. The background features blurred elements.

Visiting Assistant Professor Langdon Graves speaks with Macon Reed, a New Orleans-based artist.

Macon Reed works in sculpture, video, painting, and social practice. Their projects bridge participatory approaches with intensive object-making and research. Reed’s work has shown at venues such as Transmediale Vorspiel (Berlin), La Patinoire Royale (Brussels), University of New South Wales Gallery (Sydney), Wattis Center for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco), Museum of Art and Design (NYC), Chicago Underground Film Festival, and Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans). Reed holds an MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. They studied Physical Theater at Dah International Theatre School (Belgrade), Radio Documentary at Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (Maine), and Socially-Engaged Arts at The Kitchen (NYC). Residencies and fellowships include Royal Academy of Arts (London), Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology at Ameherst College, Center for Craft (North Carolina), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Langdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York City-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting & Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design.  She is adjunct faculty at Parsons School of Design and the Graduate Fine Arts program at Pratt Institute.  Langdon has shown her work throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia with solo and group exhibitions that include Dinner Gallery, TEI’s Art in Buildings, Mrs., Tilton Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Grimm, Taymour Grahne Projects, STONELEAF and the Delaware Contemporary Museum.  Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona and STONELEAF Retreat in upstate New York.  She is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay’s Wet Paint Grant and has been featured in Artnet, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Vice Creators Project, Juxtapoz, The Wall Street Journal, the Sound & Vision podcast and Madeline Schwartzman’s See Yourself X. 

Photos (left to right): Macon Reed, photo by Meg Turner; Langdon Graves, photo by Joe Leonard.

Episode 1: Taja Cheek: Sonic Rapture

Portrait of Taja Cheek in front of a waterfall.
Black and grey headshot of Carlos Motta, center of frame and looking straight ahead at the camera.

Associate Professor and artist Carlos Motta speaks with Taja Cheek, a Brooklyn-born curator and musician based in New York City.

Taja Cheek is Artistic Director of Performance Space New York, a radical interdisciplinary performance institution in the East Village, founded in 1980 as PS122, and is also a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who frequently records and performs under the name L’Rain. Taja was guest curator for the 2024 Whitney Biennial performance program and led performance programs at MoMA PS1, including Warm Up, a summer outdoor music series that the museum has hosted in its courtyard since 1998, and Sunday Sessions, an interdisciplinary performance series. As a curator, Taja has championed the creation of new performance works and has worked closely with artists for many years. Experimental and emotive, her music explores composition and structure and addresses themes of grief, identity, emotion and experience.

Carlos Motta is an artist and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice, Fine Arts, Pratt Institute. His multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge normative discourses through acts of self-representation. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia. His career-survey exhibition Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance is on view at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) through October 2025 and will travel to OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria in 2026 and Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France in 2027. Motta received a Ruth Arts Award in 2025.  

Photo, left: L’Rain, Fatigue. Album cover, 2021. Courtesy of L’Rain

Photo, right: Cory Rice