Christian Bell (MA/PhD)

Chris Bell is a fourth year PhD student in Theatre Historiography at the University of Minnesota, where his research focuses on experimental performance practices in an era of climate change, past and present representations of Indigenous knowledge, and the tactics and strategies mobilized by Indigenous artists and allies to heal place. Chris moves between archival and ethnographic, oral and textual, material and immaterial to hone a mode of thinking that engages with the articulation of distinct ecological formations. Over the past year, Chris has worked closely with the White Earth Land Recovery Project to devise a site-specific performance piece addressing the inter-connectivity of life, the revitalization of culture and language, and the healing of place. Along with his studies, Chris is a co-founder of PerFarmance Project, a mobile performing arts residency that is an exchange between artist and farmer, urban and rural. The residency has now been conducted three times; Cloneen, Ireland (2013), Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota (2015), and the West Midlands, England (2016).