This conversation is with owner/curator Simonetta Mignano of Bivy, Anchorage artspace and bookstore as she speaks with Hollis Mickey, Susan Share and Ben Huff about their art and the mission of this bookstore and home of The School of Nonfunctional Studies.

Bivy is a contemporary art space founded in 2017 in Anchorage, Alaska, on the traditional land of the Dena’ina. Bivy presents exhibitions featuring the work of local and international artists, that intentionally foster dialogue between contemporary art and craft. Bivy permanently hosts a small bookstore dedicated to artists’ books, zines, ephemera and other self-published publications by local and international artists and makers. Bivy also publishes its own small series of publications and ephemera, often in conjunction with the exhibitions. In 2020 Bivy launched the School of Nonfunctional Studies (SNS), an open, informal and experimental school project, based upon the belief that meaning is not founded in output or productivity or ‘function’ as it is situated in capitalist culture, but that meaning and purpose is actually founded in what is nonfunctional in a capitalist society: interaction, presence, process, and awareness.

Zoom Dialog Here