Susannah Magers

What does it take to radically transform and disrupt our workplaces? How can we bring about the changes we need and wish to see in the physical and virtual spaces we spend over a third of our waking lives in?

Empowered: Envisioning Workplaces That Work explores what thriving, diverse, and innovative workplaces look and feel like, and what makes them tick. Spoiler alert: it’s the people.

In conversation with the folks doing this vital work, join me, Susannah Magers, a content… Show more

What does it take to radically transform and disrupt our workplaces? How can we bring about the changes we need and wish to see in the physical and virtual spaces we spend over a third of our waking lives in?

Empowered: Envisioning Workplaces That Work explores what thriving, diverse, and innovative workplaces look and feel like, and what makes them tick. Spoiler alert: it’s the people.

In conversation with the folks doing this vital work, join me, Susannah Magers, a content creator at Envoy, as we engage in timely discussions about the workplace experience and celebrate those who challenge the status quo in all aspects of the contemporary workplace through the lens of the all-important human elements.

Hear workplace experience leaders, creative problem solvers, and other cultural producers reveal how they create the workplaces they want to see in the world: their wins, pain points, and all the moments in between.

We all have a story to tell. Find more information on each episode of Empowered in the show notes. You can also read episode recaps on the Envoy blog, as well as discover more resources on how to challenge the status quo in your workplace. Stay tuned for season two! Show less

Co-curated by Susannah Magers and Tanya Zimbardo, Barbara Hammer: Cinema of Intimacy was a one-night tribute screening of film legend Barbara Hammer (1939–2019) that highlighted a selection of the artist’s early films rooted in the Bay Area.

Shot at the Roxie Theater, the beginning of Audience (1982) features Hammer’s fun, flirtatious, and thoughtful interviews with the audience line before her tribute screening as part of that year’s San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film… Show more

Co-curated by Susannah Magers and Tanya Zimbardo, Barbara Hammer: Cinema of Intimacy was a one-night tribute screening of film legend Barbara Hammer (1939–2019) that highlighted a selection of the artist’s early films rooted in the Bay Area.

Shot at the Roxie Theater, the beginning of Audience (1982) features Hammer’s fun, flirtatious, and thoughtful interviews with the audience line before her tribute screening as part of that year’s San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Recognized as one of the first lesbian experimental filmmakers, Hammer explicitly championed the perspective of women and the visibility of the lesbian and queer communities. As she observed, her work in the 1970s was ‘proselytizing my newfound place, my lesbian homeland.’ In the witty Superdyke (1975), Hammer and an army of women take to the streets of San Francisco. The sensual and playful Dyketactics (1974) and Psychosynthesis (1975) feature Hammer as both director and subject. Hammer invites the audience into her films through exploring the connection of sight and touch, saying ‘it is a camera that goes to bed with me and another: a cinema of intimacy.’ This program celebrates a body of Hammer’s work that epitomizes her joyful, unabashed experimental approach to self-representation.

Canyon Cinema’s public programs are generously supported by the George Lucas Family Foundation, the Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Foundation, and Zellerbach Family Foundation’s Community Arts Program. Show less

As Deputy Director and Curator at Rochester Art Center (RAC), I collaborated on The Exquisite Mile in partnership with Rochester Downtown Alliance (RDA), artist Sarah Beadle, and RAC's teen art group, Tastes Like Paint (TLP). The project was guided by the goal to connect the Rochester, MN community with a participatory activity and semi-permanent public art work in downtown Rochester. Rochester’s main industry revolves around the Mayo Clinic, marked by millions of people constantly coming and… Show more

As Deputy Director and Curator at Rochester Art Center (RAC), I collaborated on The Exquisite Mile in partnership with Rochester Downtown Alliance (RDA), artist Sarah Beadle, and RAC's teen art group, Tastes Like Paint (TLP). The project was guided by the goal to connect the Rochester, MN community with a participatory activity and semi-permanent public art work in downtown Rochester. Rochester’s main industry revolves around the Mayo Clinic, marked by millions of people constantly coming and going, whether employed there or receiving care. This relationship can be read symbolically as one of pollen and pollinators, and led us to consider a central question: how do the migrating pollinators of a place experience it?

The Exquisite Mile evokes the art historical concept of The Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative game associated with the Surrealist art movement in the 1920s. Incorporating these ideas of chance, and the combination of disparate visual elements, the members of TLP acted as artist researchers, collecting data to inform the content and colors of eight color postcards. Conducted within a one-mile radius of downtown Rochester, this research focused on observations of pathways, systems, and sites, monumental and banal alike, unique to their experience of the city. Translated onto postcards, with representative color and location coordinates on one side and information about what the color represents on the other, the information engages the idea of downtown Rochester as a still-wild civic space, shaped by those who move through it.

The collaboration culminated with a public participatory painting event on a wall facing Mayo Park, chosen as a crucial point of connection along the Zumbro River. Choosing a postcard that they responded to, participants could then contribute using the corresponding paint colors such as Cemetery Geranium Red, and Food Court Table Cyan. The postcards also act as pollinators to all who take, send, and receive them.
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