Monteith McCollum & Christopher Robbins INTERVIEW / The School of the Arts, Binghamton University
Christopher Robbins:
1. Your work with Ghana ThinkTank challenges traditional problem-solving approaches by inverting expertise. How does this method reflect in your role as Founding Director of the School of the Arts?
I know that an education in the Arts prepares people to innovate in fields outside the arts, as well as within. We teach people to expand what is possible by asking them to approach their work from unexpected angles. The School of the Arts at Binghamton University accomplishes this by pairing rigorous training in the arts with practices that encourage students to push their boundaries. We give students permission to fail as part of the learning process, to try things they are not “good” at, to improvise, and to apply methods from one field to another, even (or especially) when it seems like they don’t fit right. This ensures that people learn to develop new ideas, perspectives, and knowledge — rather than simply become efficient at rehashing what has already been done.
The similarities with the Ghana ThinkTank process are about learning to look for answers in unexpected places, both within yourself as well as from others.
2. Your international background is impressive. You’ve lived and worked in London, Tokyo, West Africa, the Fiji Islands, and former Yugoslavia, and even served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin. How has this shaped your approach to art and education?
We tend to grow up thinking that the preconceptions we were taught are default or true. Living overseas and learning from other cultures taught me that much of what I held as correct was really just assumptions and preconceptions. So, my art and my approach to education are about helping us “get out of our own way” and learn to look at something anew. When I first returned to live in the USA after a dozen years abroad, I realized that assuming I do not already understand something is a way to learn from — and change — what is around me. So, I would deliberately misunderstand the world around me as a way to turn it into something new.
Often “wrong” really just means “not accepted” or “different from the norm.” So, creating specific methods to teach ourselves to look at things anew became the foundation for my approach to both art and education.
3. Skateboarding has this beautiful history of transforming dead urban spaces into creative playgrounds. When you look at Binghamton, what other “dead” spaces do you see that only skaters would know how to resurrect?
The Binghamton area – full of old factories from its industrial and technological manufacturing days – is so alive with spaces that have been transformed and redefined multiple times, and ripe for skateboard intervention.
Derek Nelson at HCS Center for Arts and CounterCulture has created a Sculpture Park/ Skate Park/ BMX Park in the Binghamton area out of an old cement plant, quarry, and lamplighters’ warehouse. He has built a cinema with couches floating over a halfpipe miniramp, and integrated a woodshop, metal shop, book binder, and much more with a BMX and Skate park. This past weekend, we wired all of the ramps with contact microphones, transducers, and speakers so that skaters, bikers, musicians, and audio engineers could collaborate on the sound waves they were all producing.
Another beautiful thing about Binghamton is that we do not suffer from the division between skaters and bikers that impacts many places, so we often all ride together and get inspired by each other. One example is an abandoned ski slope that bikers have been turning into a glorious playground for two wheels – a bit rough for my skateboard, but every time I play there, I get inspired!
Need more from Ben!!!!
4. Your projects often explore the intersection of social development and artistic intervention. What role do you believe artists should play in challenging and reshaping institutional narratives?
Many societies give artists a license that other people do not have, and I see this freedom as a responsibility. Artists can redefine how people think because we are permitted to re-imagine. Even when this is derogatorily phrased as “make-believe,” the arts still give people a way to try new things out.
And we are so well-suited to reshape narratives: We learn to work with ambiguity, to represent ideas through different forms, to pilot concepts in different levels of impact, and to become comfortable with backlash and misunderstanding.
5. Skateboarding is more than just a recreational activity, it became a metaphor for creative navigation. How does the skateboarding intersect with your artistic and educational philosophies?
It comes down to rethinking what we believe is the “use-value” of things around us — what is their purpose? At the School of the Arts at Binghamton University, students learn to redefine how they approach things they thought they already understood. And my own artwork is absolutely about changing people’s perspectives on how they can interact with the world around them.
6. If you could redesign arts education from scratch, and design it like a skate park, what “obstacles” would you implement?
Obstacles that are open-ended require risk-taking and collaboration.
7. Ghana ThinkTank flips the script on problem-solving by taking marginalized voices and giving them power to resolve problems of established systems. What insights does this approach offer about our traditional understanding of problem-solving and expertise?
We tend to listen to people who talk like us. As a result, we don’t learn much once we are comfortable. Being forced to look for help outside the usual places can turn your everyday life into an adventure, as you get to live through the understanding of another.
Monteith McCollum:
8. Your filmmaking blends nonfiction and fiction while exploring urban mobility, sound, performance, and sculpture. How do you guide the students to blend different methods in their creative work?
In teaching, I try to unsettle the idea that technologies exist only to be used in the “right” way. A tool, when turned sideways or made to fail, can reveal more about its potential than when it behaves as expected. I encourage students to think of technology not as a set of fixed solutions but as a field of possibilities, where barriers, misuses, and contradictions are as valuable as fluency. Film itself resists easy definition. It moves most freely when it fluctuates — between modes, between the expected and the uncertain. I ask students to resist premature labels and instead attend to their own curiosity: What moves them? What holds their attention? What forms might their own questions take if given space to unfold?
9. Concerning the fast changes in technological development, how do you prepare students to be adaptable creators rather than just technical operators?
Good question. For me, it’s less about giving students answers than showing them how to find their own. The software we use today will be outdated tomorrow; the tools are always shifting. What endures is the ability to translate concepts across systems, to approach unfamiliar technologies with curiosity. I tell students they don’t need to know everything. I don’t. Each new project in my own practice pushes me to learn something different, often technologies I hadn’t planned on. The work itself demands it. In this way, the creative process is what drives technical learning — not the other way around.
10. Your fascinating approach to filmmaking by experimenting with electron microscopes reveals art in scientific processes. How do you teach students to find art in unexpected scientific tools and similar processes?
Sometimes understanding comes from staying with a tool long enough that its hidden possibilities begin to surface. When I first started working with an electron microscope, it took me months before I felt I understood it. By the time I did, I was using it in ways I could never have anticipated at the outset. This kind of deep engagement matters. It reminds us that technologies are not fixed. By spending time with them — sometimes even by working against their intended purpose — we can discover unexpected results. Then the question becomes: Is there another way to approach this? Can this tool reveal something beyond what it was designed to do?
11. You emphasize the question “why am I doing this?” instead of just “how am I doing this?” How do you foster this deeper reflection and critical perspective with your students?
Disappointment is inevitable in any artistic practice. What matters is whether the process offers insight, sustenance, or a deeper understanding — that’s why the why matters. Each attempt, whether it “succeeds” in the conventional sense or not, builds the foundation you carry as an artist, shaping future work and growth. I encourage students to discover a thread or approach they can return to again and again, something enduring that extends beyond any single project or outcome.
12. You say we are used to see too much documentaries that are solely about topic with little regard to style or form. Your live audio-visual performances blend field recordings with musical assemblages. How you encourage students to break the traditional boundaries between sound, image, and experience in cinema ?
With the performance group coming to Vladimir, I’m pleased to say that all of our MFA grads — Brian, Ben, and Andrew — are ready to push boundaries and explore the full potential of each medium. In my undergraduate classes, I often encounter students hesitant to step outside familiar forms or approaches, reluctant to experiment across media. Sometimes we begin by introducing something entirely foreign to everyone, creating a shared sense of discomfort. In that space hopefully curiosity, risk-taking, and discovery take center stage. It’s in these moments that students begin to understand contrast, tension, and the possibilities that emerge when one engages fully with the unknown.
13. Binghamton’s Cinema Department is known for its avant-garde and experimental approach. What makes its philosophy unique, especially in preparing students for the fast changing landscape of film and media?
By exposing students to a wide range of approaches, the goal is to show that creativity is never fixed — there are always new ways to see, make, and think. Technical skill and familiarity with tools are important, but without a conceptual and creative foundation, work can feel superficial. True engagement comes from learning how to connect ideas, materials, and methods, to take risks, and to create work that resonates both intellectually and emotionally.
Collaborative Questions (for both):
14. You both operate within institutional frameworks, but do much of your transformative work on the margins — in communities and unconventional spaces. How do you balance working inside academic institutions while preserving the raw, DIY spirit so typical in skateboarding culture and marginalised communities? Are you infiltrating the institution to change it, or is the institution slowly changing you?
Academic institutions are, in the end, dedicated to learning. And while they can become stilted, we are lucky in that the School of the Arts is meant to be the outlier at this academic institution. So, people look to us to do things differently and make new connections. This means we actually have buy-in to work unconventionally. The institution would be disappointed if the arts acted like the rest of the institution. We give that license!
Plus, I have learned how to expand possibilities with off-campus collaborations. I run significant chunks of my classes at HCS – a local Art Center/ Skatepark – that enables students to do things that would be harder to achieve on campus – enormous fires, edgy art topics…
That said, the raw/ DIY spirit I feel it is so important to bring to arts education can come off as “unprofessional,” so there can be a dance between craft and experimentation.
15. How do you see the role of art and cinema in addressing global challenges of today?
Art and cinema allow people to enter another world or perspective. This can help people think anew, but it can also help them escape realities, for better or for worse.
16. Your work often challenges systemic narratives. Do you have any advice you would give to young artists looking to create meaningful, transformative work today?
I have found it much easier to identify blind spots or gaps in dominant systems, and then take advantage of those in-between or overlooked spaces, rather than to try to take on systems directly.