A Timeless Tool for Actors that’s Quietly Failing Them PostPandemic

Headshots. We all know them (well—those of us who were living that prepandemic audition life). But in the postpandemic ecosystem, I’m seeing headshots either used incorrectly or treated like a side dish—while selftapes and reels have become the main course.

So, what’s a “proper” headshot? I’ll get there (promise). But first—context matters. I’m a multi-hyphenate creative with decades of professional performing experience: a BFA in Musical Theatre, a member of Actors’ Equity Association, and an Associate Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. After 15+ years onstage, I pivoted into visual arts—building a Brooklyn studio that supports artists through headshot and editorial photography (and yes, I’m a Professional Photographers of America member). In parallel, I’ve developed an indie driven award-winning cinematography career across narrative shorts, feature length docs, branded content, and festival recognized projects—some streaming via global distributors like HBO Max and Netflix. And because I’m apparently incapable of choosing one lane, I still hop back into theatre to collaborate and direct when the timing, project, and $ (unfortunately) make sense.

When I started shooting headshots, my goal was to fuse the parts of this industry I loved most: performance psychology, visual storytelling, and practical career strategy. I learned early (the hard way, like most entrepreneurs do) that usable marketing and clear positioning aren’t “extra”—they’re infrastructure. So yes, I bring a cinematic sensibility into the studio: intentional lighting, clean framing, and an aesthetic that feels like it belongs in the same universe as the work you want to book. But aesthetics are just the packaging. The real question is: is the image doing its job?

That job starts with the basics—does it look like you, on a normal day, without visual noise stealing focus from your eyes? Absolutely. But the higher-order function of a headshot is messaging. For me, the winning triad is: Confident, Grounded, and Engaging. Those aren’t just nice adjectives—they’re positioning signals.

Each “look” (the combo of wardrobe, environment, and lighting) should be engineered for a specific casting lane. One look might whisper HBO thriller; another might practically wink at a Netflix comedy. A headshot is the tool that works when you’re not in the room—it creates the micro-engagement that suggests, “I have a point of view,” or “I’m mid-thought,” which is exactly the kind of subtle, cerebral connection that helps decision makers imagine you inside the rehearsal process. And when there are five finalists sitting on a table and the team can only pick one? That subconscious nudge is very real, and the headshot is working for you when you are not even in the room!

These practices are standard among serious NYC headshot photographers. Where things get messy is how the pandemic—and the shift away from in-person auditions—recalibrated priorities. Here are three core dynamics I keep seeing:

  • 1) Lack of in-person auditions + the selftape takeover: This created a weird cross-pollination of issues. Actors weren’t around each other enough to clock whether their shots were dated (or drifting off-trend), and they weren’t walking into rooms where someone behind the table might gently (or not-so-gently) ask, “Wait… when did you take this?” Meanwhile, self tapes became the first impression—often instead of the headshot—which pushed performers to invest in a whole at home capture workflow: lights, backdrops, mics, tripods, and more. Add the extra cost dancers face when renting studio space to tape musical theatre dance calls, and the price of “just auditioning” climbs fast. The tough part is that many self tapes likely aren’t viewed in full, so the ROI can feel brutal. And because the industry knows the burden is real, I’ve watched standards around headshots quietly soften into a “do what you can” mindset—letting details slide that would never have flown 10–15 years ago. And that fails them.

  • 2) Lack of education (aka: the headshot knowledge gap): I’ve witnessed a genuinely alarming drop in how training programs teach the function of a headshot. Over my shooting career I’ve visited 30+ colleges, universities, and conservatory programs to photograph students. Pre-pandemic, many came in with a plan: goals, strategies, and an understanding that a targeted headshot is a positioning tool—not just a nice picture. Post-pandemic, I’ve had students who didn’t know you put your name on a headshot… or that it gets printed… or why borders, orientation (vertical vs. horizontal), and crop discipline matter. When submissions live inside platforms like Actors Access, it’s easy for the headshot to devolve into “upload something and call it a day.”

    On top of that, fewer programs (often due to budget constraints) are bringing in vetted, working headshot photographers—or even providing students with a shortlist of reputable options to research. I once had a department head at a prominent NYC training program tell me I needed to drop my rates dramatically because “these kids nowadays will just go to the friend with a camera.” Sure, I know that’s happening (we’ll get there), but why isn’t the institution pushing back and teaching the value proposition? The industry seems to lean satisfied and avoid conflict as long as the box is checked. “You have a headshot.” But a box-checked headshot is not the same as a marketable one. And that fails them.

  • 3) Inexperienced photographers + trend-chasing aesthetics + social media gravity: During the pandemic, we saw a totally predictable influx of “kids with a camera”—artists who lost theatre/film work and needed revenue, fast. The setup is accessible now: an entry level mirrorless body, a couple of colored backdrops, and a soft box kit from Amazon—and suddenly you’ve got a living-room studio (sometimes technically outside what NYC zoning allows for commercial activity). Many of these folks priced aggressively, undercutting established rates, and a single overall “look” spread quickly because it was easy to replicate. And to be clear: I’m not mad at it. That’s how a lot of us started (me included—shoutout to my old DSLR era). The industry needs emerging photographers.

  • The issue is the downstream effect: a narrow set of angles/lighting/framing choices became dominant, which can flatten individuality and reduce headshots to a monotonous template. More importantly, many newer shooters (and sometimes clients) prioritize “beautification” over communication—the kind of engaged eye-line and intentional body language that actually evokes something for you. Add social media into the mix and you get a drift toward wider, more editorial portraits—hands, furniture, dramatic negative space—great for websites and feeds, but not always optimal for submission thumbnails, print, or famed Playbills once the image is cropped to the face. If the session investment is real (and it is), the ROI should be engineered around the actor’s message—not the elements creating “the shot.” And that fails them.

To wrap this up: I root hard for every one of my clients, and I genuinely root for my fellow headshot photographers and educators too. But if we want actors to thrive, we have to stop treating the headshot like a “good enough” or “cool photo” accessory. Background, wardrobe, and lighting style are important—but they’re secondary. The primary deliverable is a strategically positioned image that’s distraction free, casting legible, and unmistakably engaging—confident, grounded, cinematic, and like you’ve got something to say. Because you do.

ABOUT MATT

Like many, my love of photography began years ago as a creative outlet while performing. In-between shows, gigs, auditions and classes, I would experiment with different lenses, lighting and subjects. It wasn’t long before I discovered the power of a photo that truly captures people at their best while helping them in their own careers. My passion became a driving force and turned quickly into a successful business.   

As a NYC based headshot photographer, I have the great joy of getting to meet and collaborate with so many talented artists, and it’s one of my favorite aspects of my job. Coming from a professional performing background, I know how important marketing yourself wisely is, and how much of a difference it can make in your success. A good headshot not only makes you look great, but it captures who you really are and is ENGAGING! This is the moment that I strive to get out of my clients on every shoot.  My #1 goal is to discover the aspect of each person that makes Casting, Directors & Producers scream, “I want to get to know them!”

Beyond photography, I’m an award-winning Director of Photography, as well as an original co-founder of www.ontherocksfilms.com, where I currently serving as the Creative Director and resident Director of Photography.  Recently, I was honored with three Best Cinematography Awards for my work the feature length documentary, UPROOTED: The Journey of Jazz Dance (HBO Max), FREE (AMAZON PRIME) & the On The Rocks Films original short, DIVIDENDS.

I still remain active in the professional theatrical community as member of AEA and currently direct and choreograph for productions around the country. I look forward to meeting you and guiding you towards a personally unique and captivating image...while having a lot of fun in the process!

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

Bruegel’s Icarus: We Really Don’t Care. Do We?

La chute d’lcare Pieter I BRUEGEL (BRUEGHEL)

Ca. 1527/30 - Bruxelles 1569

Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelles / photo : J. Geleyns - Art Photography

After all these years. Finally, here I am. Face to face with you. In the flesh. You, fine example of Flemish Renaissance. You, precursor to the Baroque. You, you perplexing driver of thoughts. You’ve been an inspirational thorn in the side of many.

In the Royal Old Masters Museum in Brussels, like W. H. Auden and many others before me, I stand in front of the work, Pieter I. Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the painting I have taught throughout my career as an English professor in mythology and literature classes but have only seen in slides. I’m with my sister on vacation in Belgium. Because she has nerve damage in her feet, it’s hard for her to tour museums, so I push her through the building in a wheelchair, which ensures I have a captive audience at this moment. I set her up in front of the painting, explaining the significance of this meeting for me.

What follows is some of what I told my sister—augmented with much of what I have taught and thought for many years. You might wonder if seeing the actual painting changed my appreciation for it in any way, and I would have to say, probably not. But I don’t mean to suggest an anticlimactic experience. It was more akin to the ideal culmination of a pen pal relationship: the other of your correspondence turning out to be exactly what you imagined and hoped for. No finding out you were catfished. No crushing disappointment. No feeling of, “meh,” as so many people report with the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Then again, I wasn’t fighting a bus-load of tourists with cameras flashing, standing 50 yards away. I was up close and personal, capitalizing on an intimate relationship that took a good portion of my life to cultivate.

I tell my sister what I’ve told my students. The best way to begin is to play treasure hunt. Where’s Icarus? The painting features a well-dressed burgher in the foreground, plowing a field in tandem with an equine, head bowed as he tills the soil. He’s the main event in the composition, enlarged and bedecked in complementing red and green to showcase his resplendent costume. In the background, a landscape of sea and sky, sun and ships opens to a wideness that dwarfs the human players. If you are persistent, though, you will find, towards the right corner off the shoreline, a pair of small kicking legs indicating an inverted figure breaking the water surface. This is the fallen Icarus—faceless, drowning—insignificant, it seems, in an event in which you imagine him center stage.

Your first reaction to your discovery might be to laugh. Expecting the tragedy we associate with Ovid’s story of the boy who flew too high and fell too far, the viewer instead is treated to the comic absurd, that is, Bruegel’s absurd, which, like Hieronymus Bosch’s, is a bit sinister. A good illustration of what I mean is found in another Bruegel painting, The Bird Trap, a delightful snow scene of skaters that includes, off to the side, the device of its title. The idyllic narrative of the everyday is disrupted by the implied impending capture: the crushing of the songbirds that have gathered to feed at the baited trap. The necessary violence that underwrites the quotidian joys of existence is unremarked, but it is there, subtly infused through every strand of the commonplace. The enabling constraint of static depiction inherent in the genres of painting allows Bruegel to achieve the effect. We are stuck in the narrative frame before the trap is sprung, thus rendering the violence implied rather than accomplished, evoking sensations in us of the uncanny rather than simple horror.

The same can be said of the Icarus painting, only in this case, my attention diverts to the action preceding the static moment of Icarus’s fall. What were the other denizens of the scene doing prior to the great failure? In Ovid’s poem from the Metamorphoses, the most widely known source for the story, he focuses on that action, describing the shock and amazement at seeing a young boy in flight. But Bruegel’s ironic referencing and warping of Ovid takes us to a darker place. His characters respond in exactly the opposite way from the poet’s. Rather than watching aghast the tragic flight unfold, Bruegel’s ploughman, shepherds, and sea-faring vessels either never even see the young boy or, having seen, turn away to carry on with their lives, uninterested, unimpressed, or seemingly unable to intervene. We cannot know which, but the differences are arguably crucial in how we view our own agentive capacities as well as our fellow humans with whom we share this earth.

In his ekphrasis “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1938), Auden presumes to answer the question for us, or we think he does. The poem’s speaker, taking in the plenitude of the museum’s collection, announces “About suffering they were never wrong,/ The Old Masters: how well they understood/ Its human position,” and then directs our attention to the specific example in “Breughel’s Icarus” that the speaker is pondering:

. . . everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

While Auden hedges on the ploughman, he is convinced that the sailors must have seen Icarus yet continued on their way, commerce’s exigency taking precedence over a singular human life. Given the year of publication, readers sometimes conclude that Auden is commenting on a populace’s apathy in the face of rising fascism, concerned with their own lives and not the in-progress atrocities and loss of our collective humanity. This interpretation, while plausible, is heavy-handed and moves us away from the subtle frissons of Bruegel’s narrative. To be fair, such a view of “Musée des Beaux Arts” disallows an ambiguity that Auden’s words themselves preserve. Rather than deliberately turn away, the ploughman may not have seen Icarus at all. In other words, he may have missed the entire air-borne spectacle.

Why?

The poet Michael Hamburger offers a reason in his more recent “Lines on Brueghel’s Icarus” (1984): “The ploughman,” he tells us, simply “ploughs.” The speaker describes a routine existence that does not permit viewing what in Auden’s poem is “something amazing.” Hamburger goes on to describe sailors and shepherds, even sheep, whose lives are so narrow and exclusionary as to disallow the ability to see or comprehend feats of the ancient champion defying “the ordering planet.” This, then, is less about apathy and more about stunted growth and limited possibilities. The ploughman has been so spiritually and emotionally impoverished by his chronic furrow-making that he is incapable of looking up and appreciating the wondrous—or someone engaging in the impractical, which indeed is what occurs when Icarus turns his flight into an epic achievement rather than a means of desperate escape. The ploughman’s sensibilities are literally in a rut, and his plough is for him what our phones are for us today: the device that keeps us from noticing what is happening around us.

Unlike Auden who focuses on human suffering, Hamburger is interested in portraying the heroic difference between Icarus and others. But in doing so, he also curtails the possibilities presented by Bruegel. There is more than a touch of condescension in Hamburger’s treatment of the scene’s laborers, which is arguably not part of Bruegel’s vision. Instead of a hopeless world bereft of compassion or empathy, Bruegel’s focus on the ploughman could just as easily suggest a reverence for life and survival. Was Icarus’s act of defiance heroic or merely self-indulgent, and if the latter, can we then view the ploughman as a sustainer of life whose homely work brings forth food from the earth to nourish the human race? Unlike the obtuse refuseniks in the contemporary movie Don’t Look Up, who belligerently disregard the evidence of their own senses, our ploughman and his earth-bound gaze may embody a kind of authentic persistence in a world filled with sensational distractions. After all, we might ask about the nature of Icarus’s so-called achievement; whether he is a mover of boundaries or merely a thrill- seeker. Not that the two must be mutually exclusive.

When Melania Trump visited a migrant children’s detention center in Texas wearing a jacket with the now infamous phrase “I don’t really care. Do U?”, many of us were appalled by the tone-deaf choice. It was difficult not to experience this symbolism as insensitivity to suffering children separated from their desperate parents, despite assurances from the First Lady to the contrary. But I have wondered whether, in another context and projected from a different ethos than FLOTUS inhabits, the phrase on the jacket might have hit different. Instead of callousness, the refusal to care about the judgments of others can be a productive defiance, as much as it might be a childish rationalization to evade standards of decency. On the other hand, refusing the rapture of the sensational is another kind of rebellion. The ploughman’s conformity is not mindless but good judgment, something the dare-devil Icarus failed to display. The ploughman has stuck to his task and won the day. He endures with his feet on the ground. There’s no need to buy into the dualistic conceit that lofty aspirations are any more worthwhile than what terra firma has to offer.

But Bruegel’s ploughman as a contemporary well-to-do citizen, placed anachronistically in a mythic structure, may not align with such a wholesome view. His fancy dress, distancing him from the peasantry, makes him less the salt of the earth and more a prosperous farmer taking advantage of the profits to be made from agriculture under capitalism. The economy is thriving, and so is he. In the modern world, there is no longer need or room for the ancient hero and his tales. We truly don’t care about Icarus. Icarus never had the chance to grow up, but we have. Nostalgia, who needs it?

Well, maybe poets like Hamburger. Hamburger lauds Icarus as an “angel” in contrast with the “churlish” folk who people the world, a dime a dozen. James Joyce, along with the poet Anne Sexton, saw Icarus as the artist who flies higher and sees more than the rest of us left below on the ground, purblind and numb. The romantic view, if elitist, even narcissistic, is hard to resist—unless, like Bruegel, you find a bit of pleasure in the perverse. Of course, we might see the glorification of a doomed venture as its own worthwhile perversity. So it is with Sexton’s “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph,” a sonnet inspired by the Icarus legend (as well as Yeats’ “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing”) but not, as far as I know, by the Bruegel work. For Sexton, failure is not an option for Icarus because there is no failure, only a steep price to be paid for the great privilege of achievement. Delightfully, Sexton takes us full circle when her poem asks of Icarus: “Who cares that he fell back to sea?” This is not the same question of care that an absorbed ploughman poses for us or a clueless First Lady.

Instead, it is a defiant declaration of “triumph.” We might imagine George Clooney’s character, Jay Kelly, someone who sacrificed personal ties for fame, taking solace in Sexton’s couplet: “See [Icarus] acclaiming the sun and come plunging down/ while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.”

Sexton invites us into full-on tragic mode, complete with fall, the pleasure of which Bruegel potentially seeks to rob from us. Milan Kundera says that tragedy saves us because it provides us with the illusion that we matter; we are important enough for our failures to count. From The Art of the Novel (1986): “By providing us with the lovely illusion of human greatness, the tragic brings us consolation. The comic is crueler: it brutally reveals the meaninglessness of everything.” As a Czech writer who lived in exile during the Cold War, Kundera was preoccupied with the hair’s breadth that often separates tragedy and the comic absurd and how one easily transforms into the other. In the second quarter of the 21 st century, we know about this all too well; we hover in the nowhere of disbelief, between laughter and tears. We watch comedians mine the unrelenting news cycle by parodying events that are already parodies of themselves. We witness those who dictate our destinies, wearing large hats and clown suits while they crash the clown car which, it turns out, contains our lives.

Bruegel also knew this territory of bitter irony that, if we were inclined to bottom-line it, might be summed up in the expression, “funny/not funny.” After we laugh at those silly flailing legs of our fallen Icarus, we realize the joke is on us. We are left with the messy work of sorting out what is lost and what remains and what, after all, we are to do about it.

Wendy Ryden

is a retired Professor of English, Long Island University, Post campus.

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

The Psychedelic Poet

I’ll start with caution by saying that it’s still a surprise to me that I have been doing poetry for the last several years and that I have been recognized as a poet. It’s a surprise because I have been a comedian since 16 and five years ago, I went onto a spiritual path that has led me to explore my own healing through ceremonial plant medicine/psychedelics and mindfulness. So now at 33 I have surrendered into my own gifts with regards to the work of holding space.

I can’t tell you about the different genres of poetry or give you a list of the most influential poets in history. I can’t write a poem based on a theme that you give me, or better yet I refuse. My grammar is seemingly nonexistent, my spelling still haunts me, and I never liked English class. Now here’s a few things that I do know…I know timing from doing comedy. I know how things should sound from my love of music. I know what I have seen in my own experiences with psychedelics, love and my relationship with the spirit realm. I know there is some invisible thread from the shamans, mystics, medicine men and women to the song writers, story tellers and poets.

I feel this lineage in a cosmic sense deep beneath my skin. And lastly, I always know where my heart is coming from. This is what gives me the confidence to step on stage along accomplished published poets and academics. I am not going up there to read a poem. I’m going up there to pray.

About two or three years ago when I was at a plant retreat while going through heart break I remember being around the fire with some of the guys and someone asked, “Does anyone know any poems?” My eyes went from staring into an abyss to him as if he just threw me a line to get back. I recited two poems of mine and then the third was Charles Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart.” I’ll never forget one of my brothers in this community said, “Mike, when you spoke it was like the moon went out.”

As time went on and I kept going to the retreats, I started to then get asked if I could do a poem or two…this would always be spontaneous as the night went on and we were all very much feeling the plant medicine. In the beginning I remember how surprised and curious I was when I’d get asked. I was hyper-aware that I didn’t want to make it seem like I was taking over the space or getting too performative. This is a space I respect dearly; it is holy ground to me. But whether the community knew it or not they helped me get over this. Because every time people asked me, it was as if they gave me an invitation to step more into myself, my power, my own visibility and my own voice. I’ve read that in history, depending on the culture, shamans didn’t bestow that title upon themselves. Instead, they received that title only if their community saw them as such. I feel like my community at those retreats had given me the title of poet (and wizard being another one). Also, I think what surprised me the most was how it made total sense for me to be doing this; it’s a combination of two of my favorite things. Its sharing my words and holding space for people during their experiences. This was a beautiful handshake between the two.

In those moments it felt like the planets aligned.

I think one of the main reasons I was asked if I could write about this is to talk about what it’s like for me when I’m doing poetry for people in such spaces while I too am experiencing the medicine. And since I have been doing this a lot, I’ll try my best to share what it’s like only on my end.

I’ll be somewhere in the space, be it laying down or walking around checking in on people, and someone might bring up that I’m a poet. If it’s a moment where they don’t bring it up, but I feel something energetically calling me to share then I would ask if they would like me to do one for them that feels right based on how they tell me they are doing. I make sure to say it’s just an invitation, so that they can always say no or if they’re not feeling it’s the right time.

But if they do ask then this is what seems to happen. I usually find myself kneeling. I allow a bit of silence (that silence is where my words swim). I gather my mind trusting I will remember the words, and then I take a breath. It’s as if that breath is taking us into this poem, this small pocket of time, this realm, together. There’s no reading and I don’t feel like I’m reciting it…I’m simply allowing it. This may even look like I’m just having a conversation until you notice the words are rhyming. I’ll try to compliment whatever music is playing in the space. I do my best to lock into a pace that feels right for whoever I’m doing this with (not doing this “for” but doing this “with”). I know that like myself, their senses are very much heightened, so I become very aware of the rhythm, when to pause, and how my inflection is while letting my hands feel this energy. I don’t pretend to have any knowledge of what those hearing this are feeling. I can only control my intention. Letting each word out with love and a positive vibration behind it. I can even find myself getting a bit emotional because I am always reliving whatever inspired the poem in the first place.

Depending on the piece I often feel like each line is shedding more of me away…from my skin and my muscles to my bones to my soul and then releasing my spirit into the air. I always see those who I’m doing this with (be it at retreats, poetry mics, senior centers or a one-on-one) close their eyes and have this pleasant restful smile, slowly nodding it’s as if they “know.” It is a knowing that is magical and mysterious. Simply recalling these memories from my point of view, as I’m typing this, is making me tear up. It is an absolute honor for me to do this for people in those moments, and I am so grateful to have been called time and time again to share my words, my offerings. This is my service for my time here in the universe.

So, who am I now? What am I becoming? Comedian? Poet? Healer? Wizard? What the heck is all this?

I think a lot about George Carlin’s 1996 conversation with Charlie Rose. “Arthur Koestler said in The Act of Creation said that sometimes the jester can traverse the triptych. And if the jester says something funny, well, he’s a jester. If he says it in marvelous language that we say ‘oh isn’t that a nice way to put that’ then he’s a bit of a poet. And if there’s an underlying idea underneath the well-put funny line, if there’s a bit of a philosophy there, he comes something else again: a philosopher. Now one doesn’t sit and attempt do that with everything he writes but to know that that’s part of the package, to know that you can do these three things in varying degrees.”

With all that said, I look forward to continuing to honor this path that has found me. And to do my best to allow myself to grow further into this.

Michael Pagano

is a poet, mystic, and comedian who has been studying the magic of retreats for healing. His goal is to share his words on stage for larger audiences as well as leading his own retreats.

You can find him on TikTok and YouTube

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

Policing, Performance, and the Mask of Federal Authority

Sociologist Erving Goffman argued that every social action is organized around performance: roles, scripts, stages, costumes, and masks. In Minnesota, the recent deployment of federal immigration agents has revealed how dangerous that insight becomes when enforcement slips from public service into theater.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was created to enforce immigration law, not to operate as a public-safety agency in densely populated neighborhoods. Yet under the current enforcement surge in Minneapolis, ICE agents have assumed precisely that role. They are armed, uniformed, and empowered to make split-second life-and-death decisions on city streets. The result has been a series of fatal encounters, including the killings of U.S. citizens, that expose the deadly consequences of turning civic authority into performance.

Cultural scripts amplify this danger. Generations of Americans have grown up immersed in simulated combat—video games where hesitation is punished, morality collapses into a kill or be killed environment, and avatars reward aggression. Players rely on speed and decisiveness, not reflection and restraint. When ICE agents shaped by these virtual scripts enter real-world enforcement, the lessons of the game can collide tragically with the moral and tactical demands of policing civilians.

The ICE uniform compounds the problem. Tactical gear, weapons, and badges do more than equip officers; they function as a mask. Behind it, individual responsibility blurs, empathy dulls, and civilians are more easily reduced to threats. The agent becomes a character in a high-stakes performance, where escalation is scripted, and hesitation is failure.

These patterns have real consequences. ICE agents are trained for detention and compliance, not for civilian policing in volatile public spaces. Paired with militarized costumes and cultural scripts that valorize aggression, the role leaves little room for patience or reflection. Waiting becomes a weakness; escalation becomes inevitable.

Alternatives exist.

Agents can create distance instead of closing it. They can disable vehicles instead of firing into them. They can wait for backup, clarity, or for tension to dissipate instead of grabbing their guns. The scripts these men are permitted to follow have no repercussions, therein lies the tragedy. The avatar hides everything.

Minnesota demands more than accountability after the fact. It demands a reconsideration of the role itself. When federal enforcement is staged as a performance of power, when cultural scripts normalize decisive violence, and when the uniform becomes a mask that obscures moral responsibility, tragic outcomes are inevitable.

Public safety is not theater.

It is a civic responsibility that requires humility, restraint, and the courage to step offstage. If we cling to the mask of authority, violence will not be the exception—it will be the expected ending.

Andrea Stulman Dennett

earned a B.A. from Tufts University and a Ph.D. from New York University’s Department of Performance Studies. She studied under Brooks McNamara, Richard Schechner, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. She spent nearly two decades teaching graduate-level Performance Theory, dedicated to reshaping how performance is understood and experienced.

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

Art & Design

Like twins fighting for their mother’s attention, art & design have always had, at best, a symbiotic relationship. And like many twins, people have trouble telling them apart.

To address this as effectively as possible, I incorporated this exercise into my design history course. The first assignment is “Book of Kells” - art or design? To further that discussion, we first established a simple definition for both art & design. We decided that art is “anything that provokes an emotional response.” As Mark Twain supposedly said, “I saw a man spit over 20 boxcars, now that’s art.” Or the ever-popular belief that “art is in the eye of the beholder.” That doesn’t mean everyone is qualified to declare what art is. It just means that without the viewer, it may not be art. Art occurs when the viewer responds to the piece, like the tree falling logic. A painting, a sculpture, a print, a photograph, good music, a good meal, a fine night out, it is all art. If it evokes a feeling, it is art.

The design definition we agreed on was “anything that serves a purpose.” So whether it is an industrial design, architectural design, automotive design, or visual design, if it successfully serves a purpose, it is design. And here comes the argument, and even worse heresy, while “design” is often seen as a subset of “art,” just a part of the process, it is actually the opposite. This occurs because many people confuse design with composition. A painting, a drawing, a sculpture, or a photograph can have a good or bad composition. That composition is the byproduct of design; it is not design itself. Design is about creating a solution to a problem - the purpose behind the work.

And here is where the rubber meets the road - if art is “anything that provokes an emotional response,” and design is “anything that serves a purpose,” wouldn’t art be a subset of design? Isn’t the purpose of art to evoke an emotional response? And since design is a structure under which all things that serve a purpose fall, isn’t it logical to conclude that art is a subset of this category? Yikes! Blasphemy? Not really- because as Dr. John Maeda is quoted as saying, “The sciences are what we do to enjoy art.” Yes, enjoying art is the reward, but so can be doing the sciences.

Back to the “Book of Kells” argument. Which is it - art or design? If you are not familiar with the Book of Kells, here is a quick definition from Trinity College.

The Book of Kells pages are decorated with bright colours, elaborate knotwork, and detailed illustrations of animals and mythical creatures. The manuscript is a wonderful example of the artistic style known as Insular art. This style is characterised by intricate detail, patterns, zoomorphic and curvilinear motifs, a vibrant colour palette. The manuscript measures 13 inches by 10 inches. Originally bound in a single volume, the Book of Kells was later divided into four volumes. As a complete gospels manuscript, it contains the four Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

When we raise the question, “Did the Book of Kells have a purpose?” the answer is always, “Yes. To advance Christianity in a pagan world.” Since most people could not read, they used images over the written word and even animalistic images to portray the disciples. This is supposed to allow for the transition from paganism to Christianity. So again, purpose. In the case of the Book of Kells, the purpose was derived from using art to convey the message of importance and simply to create awe. Here again is the symbiotic relationship, but we must agree that purpose drove the creation of the artifact.

Now we step towards fine art, where composition replaces design as the governing feature. In many cases, with representational art and especially in the art of the Renaissance, you see a triadic harmony occurring. By this, we mean a constant movement from the main object to subdominant objects that leads the viewer in a triangle of motion in order to keep the viewer from “leaving” the page. This is done so that the viewer maintains the subject as the message. Even in something as meaningful as Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” the blessed mother is holding the Christ figure across her lap with her head, his head, and his feet completing the triangle. The viewer is contained within the triangle to keep the message in the forefront of the work.

As we get to modern art, this format slowly dissipates, especially in Abstract Expressionism. The most well-known of these artists may be Jackson Pollock. His rhythmic work doesn’t so much rely on composition as it does on the harmony of all elements through a personal motion. Here, design is seen through intent and not composition. In his Life Magazine interview, when asked about the subject of his paintings, Pollock responded,

“Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. They work from within.”

Therefore, the work is fulfilling the design choice, regardless of the composition.

In visual design, the purpose and message are always the intent. Whatever the requested message or the intended message, the design must fulfill that purpose if it is to be successful. There cannot be opinion; there must be consensus. If we are looking to portray a brand, as in advertising design, the design must successfully portray the benefits of that brand. Typically, this is done most simply and concisely. The embodiment of simplicity in advertising is the “Got Milk” campaign. Two words, one image, and it has been successful for over 30 years. In all other forms of visual design, simplicity reigns. “Just Do It” - the FedEx logo - MasterCard’s “priceless” campaign. All simple concepts are met with simple images. All meant to convey a specific message. All is counting on a group understanding and agreement. This agreement makes the world go round.

Today, the most common form of design that we interact with is user experience design - or UX. UX is employed to build and develop apps and websites, or any form of digital environment. All phone apps or even streaming interfaces are examples of UX design. Here science meets design.

Usually requiring the deployment of technology, success is achieved through iterations. User interface elements are also developed - usually based on the metaphor - such as “$” for banking, notes for music, etc. Together with coding, these screens and icons aid the user on their journey or goal. Unlike gaming environments, app or web environments depend on a “frictionless” environment to be successful. Planning and iteration are extremely important to the process. Like an architect planning each stage, the UX designer needs to be inspirational and functional. Here is where the connection between art and design deepens.

Personally, the highpoint of art meeting design is the Guggenheim Museum. Designed by the holy father himself, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, this building’s purpose is to give the most space possible to showcase artwork in a very crowded area of New York City. Wright does it with the perfect solution - the corkscrew spiral. At no point does the continuity break. The viewer is brought on a journey of never-ending steps until voilá, you are back where you started, ready to start again. A beautiful clean design allows the viewer no obstructions or containment in order to enjoy the art - the purpose of the design. This is to me the epitome of art and design. As Maeda said, “We do the sciences to enjoy the art.”

Patrick Aievoli

is the Chair of the Art, Design, and Game Development Department at Long Island University Post campus. Click here to get his most recent book - “rock•paper•pixels” published by Taylor and Francis, 2025.

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.