Bard College Artist in Residence Julia Weist Featured in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times

Julia Weist, visiting artist in residence in studio arts at Bard College, was featured in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times in articles about her performance work Questioning, for which she was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship. Questioning re-enacts an exchange between Weist and New York's Department of State, which investigated her artistic use of a private investigator license. After leveraging her research-based artistic practice to earn PI credentials in 2022, Weist had gained access to restricted tools that aggregate sensitive, non-public data about American citizens, which she used to create photographs that arranged and obscured information she purchased about herself, her spouse, and neighbors. New York's Department of State opened an inquiry into her licensure, but dropped its case when it determined that none of Weist's work violated the rules of the credential. When Weist, who had taken an audio recording of the process for notes, asked for the state’s video recording, she was told that the footage could not be located. Her own recording became the basis of Questioning, faithfully restaging her interrogation with NY's deputy chief investigator as a theatrical production. 

“In the absence of the official video, there’s something special that happens, which is that I can demonstrate the case again,” Weist told the LA Times. “What I was doing was using my abilities as an artist to circumnavigate their attempt at exercising their power and preventing me from using this exchange as material in my practice.”
 

Post Date: 07-15-2026