the body is the brain

About the body is the brain

the body is the brain is a podcast about art and social justice hosted by artist and attorney Hope Mohr. Through conversations with artists and cultural workers, we explore the practice, production, and politics of contemporary artmaking.

Publisher

Hope Mohr

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Dec 2024

Latest episode

9 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

21 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   9 Oct 2026

   UNDOXX miniseries: Solidarity Across Time

   This episode of Undoxx: Artists Untangle Censorship with guest host zavé martohardjono is a conversation among Karen Finley, George Emilio Sanchez, and Shirine Saad on arts censorship since the 1990s. This episode was recorded on April 29, 2026 as part of an UNDOXX Artist hub event at Brooklyn Arts Exchange Annex. Special thanks to BAX, Community Engagement, Dancers for Palestine, and Theater Workers for a Ceasefire for that event. And thanks to JACK, Movement Research, and Bridge Live Arts for hosting UNDOXX programs since 2024. @_undoxx_ @zavozavito @the_yam_mam @shirinesaad @georgeemiliosanchez @baxarts ABOUT THE GUEST ARTISTS Karen Finley has presented groundbreaking installation, video, performance, public art, visual art, television and film, music, and literature across the globe. In 1998, she and other artists challenged the National Endowments for the Arts in a landmark Supreme Court case about censorship in the arts. George Emilio Sanchez is a writer, performance artist, activist, and educator who began making original pieces in 1992. He launched the group ‘First Amendment Sanctuary Spaces’ in the weeks following Trump’s 2017 inauguration and co-leads the First Amendment Culture Team (F.A.C.T.) producing a weekly First Amendment Bulletin with Tal Yarden. Shirine Saad is a Beirut-born, Brooklyn-based writer, programmer, and DJ focusing on culture and social change. Shirine’s recent publications, like “I CARE IF YOU LISTEN”, address how artists are on the front lines of resistance movements, reshaping culture and pushing thought amidst the polycrises of censorship, war, and  late stage capitalism. GUEST HOST BIO zavé martohardjono (https://zavemartohardjono.com/) is a trans and queer Indonesian-American-Canadian choreographer, performer, filmmaker, writer, and organizer who thinks about ecological activism and decolonization as technologies for liberation. CO-PRODUCER BIOS Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist and organizer working at the intersection of communal practice, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects activated and performed by the public as rehearsals for radical democracy. She is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. acanarytorsi.org. maura nguyễn donohue is a Vietnamese American artist, performer, writer and organizer based in NYC for over 30 years, building systems for collaborative action through performance. Hope Mohr is an artist and advocate who works at the intersection of the arts and social justice. Her law practice, Movement Law, builds power with artists and arts organizations. Ziggy Simone is a Black performer, choreographer and producer that develops works centering queerness, Black kinships, ancestral/emotional memory, and the absurd to imagine new worlds. zavé martohardjono (see bio above). UNDOXX is an artist-run collective that organizes conversations, festivals, and interventions against censorship in the arts. They build power among those most often targeted by censorship: BIPOC artists, queer and trans and women artists, and global artists. RESOURCES Join artists working to protect our freedom of speech and expression:Check out First Amendment Sanctuary Spaces (https://www.facebook.com/FirstAmendmentSanctuarySpaces/) on Facebook and watch a BRIC TV interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaLsMrFW9YA) with its founders. Join F.A.C.T.’s weekly First Amendment Bulletin (https://factnyc.substack.com) on Substack.Read about Finley V. NEA (https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/finley-v-nea). Learn more about UNDOXX (https://zavemartohardjono.com/myportfolio/undoxx/) and follow UNDOXX on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/_undoxx_/) for upcoming events. Are you experiencing censorship? Reach out to National Coalition Against Censorship (https://ncac.org/) Learn more about artists organizing to end genocide: Writers Against the War in Gaza (https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com) Decolonize This Place (https://www.instagram.com/popular/decolonize-this-place/) Dancers for Palestine (https://www.instagram.com/dancers_for_palestine/?hl=en) Theater Workers for a Ceasefire (https://theaterworkersforaceasefire.com)

2. 

   2 Oct 2026

   UNDOXX miniseries: Public Nuisance

   In this episode of Undoxx: Artists Untangle Censorship, we explore how censorship functions in a country outside of the US, specifically for artists from Vietnam. Host maura nguyễn donohue is joined by a fellow curator for the project We Exist in the Ambivalence of Those Motherfuckers Anh Vo, and Vietnamese performance artists Thanh Toàn Doan & Nhi Lê Phương. How do artists raised under strict censorship, scarce resources, and unstable infrastructures persist? Navigating both direct censorship—state oversight, permits, and surveillance—and indirect pressures such as funding loss and institutional control draws increasing parallels between Vietnam and the U.S. Building temporary, collective, and sometimes unsanctioned environments for performance —DIY structures like pop-ups, workshops, and street-based actions—becomes an essential strategy for survival and experimentation. Collective practice, improvisation, and mutual support are critical tools, but what is the mental cost of resilience? This episode was recorded on Jan 30, 2026. ABOUT THE GUEST HOST maura nguyễn donohue is a Vietnamese American artist and Chair of Dance at Hunter College. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Đoàn Thanh Toàn is a movement artist based in Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam. Toan was trained in Contemporary Indian dance technique Yorchha with Ananya Dance Theater and African-based movement with Brown Spirit Ensemble. They also facilitate workshops that foster connections through movement and dance. As a performing artist, Toàn finds dance at the convergence of community, justice, and feminist queer world-making. Nhi Lê works in installation, performance art, and visual art. Based in Saigon, Vietnam, her work explores themes of human instinct, space and time via mixed mediums and familiar objects with potentially metaphorical meanings. Her practice focuses on evoking critical thinking towards one’s true self and redefining values that shape behaviours within the social system, exploring the role of human connection. Based in Brooklyn and Hanoi, Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working in the expanded field of performance. Their practice mobilizes the naked body in its variations to make explicit the entanglement of power and apparitional forces that cut across flesh. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental performance, Hanoi performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. CO-PRODUCER BIOS Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist and organizer working at the intersection of communal practice, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects activated and performed by the public as rehearsals for radical democracy. She is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. acanarytorsi.org. maura nguyễn donohue (see bio above). Hope Mohr works at the intersection of the arts and social justice. www.movementlaw.net  (www.movementlaw.net) Ziggy Simone is a Black performer, choreographer and producer that develops works centering queerness, Black kinships, ancestral/emotional memory, and the absurd to imagine new worlds. zavé martohardjono is a trans and queer Indonesian-American-Canadian choreographer, performer, filmmaker, writer, and organizer who thinks about ecological activism and decolonization as technologies for liberation. UNDOXX is an artist-run collective that organizes conversations, festivals, and interventions against censorship in the arts. They build power among those most often targeted by censorship: BIPOC artists, queer and trans and women artists, and global artists. RESOURCES For more information about performance in Vietnam please read the MRPJ issue #62 co-edited by maura, Anh and We Exist co-curator Lumi Tan at https://movementresearch.org/publications/performance-journal/issue-62/ (https://movementresearch.org/publications/performance-journal/issue-62/) Learn more about UNDOXX (https://zavemartohardjono.com/myportfolio/undoxx/) and follow UNDOXX on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/_undoxx_/) for upcoming events.

3. 

   31 Jul 2026

   UNDOXX miniseries: Weaving Solidarity

   This episode of Undoxx: Artists Untangle Censorship with guest host Yanira Castro investigates the censorship of the exhibit Diasporic Collage: Puerto Rico & the Survival of a People at the Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. The episode tells the story of how one work in the exhibit by Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid, Piquete en el capitolio, became a flashpoint and how the curators and art workers’ powerful demands and strategies kept the exhibit open. Yanira talks with Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Co-Curator of the exhibit and Director of CENTRO, about turning a moment of institutional cowardice into an example of solidarity. This episode was recorded on May 6, 2026. ABOUT YOMAIRA C. FIGUEROA-VÁSQUEZ Dr. Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez (https://www.yomairafigueroa.com/) is an Afro-Puerto Rican scholar, writer, and creative from Hoboken, NJ. She is Professor of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies and is the Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at CUNY Hunter. GUEST HOST BIO Yanira Castro (http://acanarytorsi.org) is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist and organizer working at the intersection of communal practice, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects activated and performed by the public as rehearsals for radical democracy. Her projects have been recognized with national awards, commissions and residency support. She is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. CO-PRODUCER BIOS Yanira Castro (see bio above). maura nguyễn donohue is a Vietnamese American artist, performer, writer and organizer based in NYC for over 30 years, building systems for collaborative action through performance. Hope Mohr is an artist and advocate who works at the intersection of the arts and social justice. Her law practice, Movement Law, builds power with artists and arts organizations. She co-leads the Artist Legal Case, a collaboration with the Sustainable Economies Law Center and Vital Arts. Maya Simone is a Black performer, choreographer and producer that develops works centering queerness, Black kinships, ancestral/emotional memory, and the absurd to imagine new worlds. zavé martohardjono is a trans and queer Indonesian-American-Canadian choreographer, performer, filmmaker, writer, and organizer who thinks about ecological activism and decolonization as technologies for liberation. UNDOXX is an artist-run collective that organizes conversations, festivals, and interventions against censorship in the arts. They build power among those most often targeted by censorship: BIPOC artists, queer and trans and women artists, and global artists. ABOUT DIASPORIC COLLAGE (https://broadmuseum.msu.edu/exhibition/diasporic-collage/) Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vázquez’s Statement (https://www.yomairafigueroa.com/blog-1/2026/6/23/statement-on-the-cancellation-of-the-broad-museum-opening-event-and-the-censorship-of-the-exhibtion-diasporic-collage-puerto-rico-and-the-survival-of-a-people) on the cancellation of the exhibit. Monica Huerta’s review in ArtForum (https://www.artforum.com/events/diasporic-collage-puerto-rico-centro-review-1234742495/). Articles about the cancellation: The State News (https://statenews.com/article/2024/11/msu-broad-museum-exhibit-finds-success-despite-controversial-canceled-opening), Hyperallergic (https://hyperallergic.com/michigan-state-university-accused-of-censoring-pro-palestine-artwork/), WKAR News (https://www.wkar.org/wkar-news/2024-09-20/msu-broad-places-warning-on-exhibit-featuring-puerto-rican-artists-and-pro-palestinian-sentiments), Puerto Rico Art News (https://www.puertoricoartnews.com/2024/12/diasporic-collage-puerto-rico-and.html#google_vignette), Middle East Studies Association (https://mesana.org/advocacy/committee-on-academic-freedom/2024/10/08/letter-to-michigan-state-university-expressing-concern-about-the-universitys-censorship-of-an-exhibition-at-the-broad-art-museum). RESOURCES Learn more about UNDOXX (https://zavemartohardjono.com/myportfolio/undoxx/) and follow UNDOXX on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/_undoxx_/) for upcoming events. Are you experiencing censorship? Reach out to National Coalition Against Censorship (https://ncac.org/). Need a lawyer? Movement Law (http://movementlaw.net) Artist Legal Cafe (https://www.movementlaw.net/bay-area-artist-legal-cafe) Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (https://vlany.org/)

Who has been a guest on the body is the brain

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Chloë Bass
• Lu Zhang
• Chris Evans
• Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen
• Anna Thompson

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 32 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

63

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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