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Ayana Evans

METAMORPHOSIS: final festival and closing performances

Friday, November 16th 2018 to Sunday, November 18th 2018

METAMORPHOSIS

November 16, 17, 18, 2018

Panoply Performance Laboratory/IV Soldiers
104 Meserole Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206

ARTISTS: Lorene Bouboushian, IV Castellanos, Dominique Duroseau, Shawn Escarciga, Ayana Evans, Kanene Ayo Holder, Amanda Hunt, Maria Hupfield, Anja Ibsch, Honey Jernquist, Miao Jiaxin, Anya Liftig, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Geraldo Mercado, PPL, Rafael Sanchez, Julia Santoli, Edward G. Sharp
 

104 MESEROLE STREET has been Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL)” organized by the collective of the same name since 2012. As of January 1, 2019, the site will be renamed “IV Soldiers,” organized by IV Castellanos and Amanda Hunt.

Under the name PPL, the site has operated as a laboratory for the performance art communities of Brooklyn and beyond, home to hundreds of events, gatherings, meetings, exhibitions, thinktanking sessions, projects, and performances. METAMORPHOSIS celebrates the movement mentalities and states of constant adaptation and (intra)relationality that (in)form our practices and projects, culminating 7+ years of work by artists with practices centralizing liveness, presence, and social situation/interaction and activation.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16

7pm:
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Kanene Ayo Holder
Shawn Escarciga
Anya Liftig
Miao Jiaxin

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17

4pm: COMMUNITY MEETING

6pm: performances begin:
Honey Jernquist
Anja Ibsch 
Dominique Duroseau
Geraldo Mercado
Ayana Evans
IV Castellanos and Amanda Hunt

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18

4pm:
Rafael Sanchez
Lorene Bouboushian
Maria Hupfield
3dwardsharp
Julia Santoli
PPL

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

JODIE LYN-KEE-CHOW AND KANENE AYO HOLDER

According to Brooklyn Historical Society there are currently 83 Brooklyn streets named after slavemasters (of which Meserole Street is one.)
Jodie and Kanene’s project, Joncanooaacome at the Crossroads deals with gentrification and lost traditions of Africans in the Americas. During this public performance, the artists will perform ritualistic dances while inviting participants to tell their Brooklyn street addresses and shred clothing that they’ve brought while incorporating our materials to complete their own Junkanoo costumes. http://www.culturepush.org/2018-spring-fellow-kanene-holder-jodie-lynkeechow/

Kanene Ayo Holder (b. Brooklyn) is an award winning educator, activist, satirist and performance artist based in Harlem. Holder works with interactive street theater and performances to encourage discussion about social issues. Her satire Searching for American Justice: The Pursuit of Happiness which highlights the ineffective systems that benefit the 1% and continue to put #profitoverpeople was covered by the New York Times and Village Voice. Holder has performed at various venues including Brooklyn Museum (2011), The New York International Fringe Festival (2005), La Mama ETC (2008), Aaron Davis Hall (2009), Symphony Space (2003), University of Granada in Spain (2009), QMAD Festival (2012), and NYU Low Lives Festival (2012). She recently received a fellowship from Yale’s Thread program for non-fiction storytelling . Holder is also a recipient of grants including from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2006), Franklin Furnace (2007) and NYFA/UAI (2005) and was a finalist for Creative Capital in 2012 to support her artistic practice. Holder blogs for the Huffington Post and has contributed political commentary on CNN and BBC, among others. Holder also lectures on race, media, literacy, art history and African Diasporic history at various institutions including Studio Museum of Harlem, Museum of Art and Design, Columbia University and NYU. Holder received her B.S. in Speech Pathology from Howard University and research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2009 and 2016), The Colin Powell Center for Policy Study (2008) and Bard College (2010). She received her M.S.Ed in Childhood Education from City College. Holder is a recent recipient of a Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship from the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute while becoming the Art Department Chair at Broome Street Academy High School. At BSA she supervises art teachers and oversees internships, a talent show and trips for over 300 underprivileged and LGBTQA youth, emphasizing creativity and critical thinking. https://sitchaassdown.com/

Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow (b. Manchester, Jamaica) holds a BFA with honors in Painting from New World School of the Arts, University of Florida, (1996) and an MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, CUNY (2006). Lyn-Kee-Chow often explores performance and installation art drawing from the nostalgia of her homeland, the commodified imagery of Caribbean primitivism, folklore, fantasy, consumerism, spirituality and nature’s ephemerality. Exhibitions of note include “Queens International 4”, Queens Museum of Art, NY (2009), “10th Open Performance Art Festival”, Beijing, China (2009), “Guangzhou Live 5”, Guangzhou, China (2014), “Jamaican Pulse: Art and Politics from Jamaica and the Diaspora”, Royal West Academy of England, Bristol, U.K. (2016), a special project commission at “Jamaica Biennial”, The National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, J.A. (2017), and Live Action 12 Performance Art Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden (2017). Solo exhibitions include Rush Arts Gallery (2008), New York, N.Y. and Boston Children’s Museum (2015), Boston, M.A. Her work has also been exhibited at Exit Art, New York, N.Y, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at S.U.N.Y. Old Westbury, N.Y.,  MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts), Brooklyn, N.Y., Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, N.Y., Lehmann Maupin, New York, N.Y., and Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C. Lyn-Kee-Chow’s work has garnered the following; NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship Award in Interdisciplinary Art (2012), Rema Hort Mann ACE (Artist in Community Engagement) Award (2017), Franklin Furnace Fund (2017-18), and Culture Push’s Fellowship for Utopian Practice (2018). Her work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Washington Diplomat, Daily Serving, Hyperallergic, Artinfo, The New York Art World, Super Selected, and Newsday.  She also lives and works in Queens, N.Y. https://www.jodielynkeechow.com/

SHAWN ESCARCIGA

Shawn Escarciga (Brooklyn, NY) is an “experimental” “performance” “artist” whose work is steeped in Butoh and the creation of new movement paradigms, particularly around their deep capacity to feel things and the queer body. Their work has been shown throughout New York City (Panoply Performance Lab, Glasshouse ArtLifeLab [Performeando], Queens Museum [LiveArt.us], MIX NYC, Triskelion, Grace Exhibition Space, Chinatown Soup [Performance Anxiety], The Clemente, Real Estate Fine Art), domestically (Boston, Chicago, Lexington, New Orleans, Miami, Fayetteville), and abroad (Berlin and London). They think a lot about classism, queer visibility, how to light patriarchal structures on fire effectively, intimacy amongst faggots, and what it would be like to live in a country that supports non-commercial artists which might look something like eating a 2000 calorie diet regularly and owning a Shiba. www.shawnescarciga.com/

ANYA LIFTIG

Anya Liftig’s work has been featured at TATE Modern, MOMA, CPR, Highways Performance Space, Lapsody4 Finland, Fado Toronto, Performance Art Institute-San Francisco, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, The Kitchen at the Independent Art Fair, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, OVADA, Joyce Soho and many other venues. In “The Anxiety of Influence” she dressed exactly like Marina Abramovic and sat across from her all day during “The Artist is Present” exhibition. Her work has been published and written about in The New York Times Magazine, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, Next Magazine, Now and Then, Stay Thirsty, New York Magazine, Gothamist, Jezebel, Hyperallergic, Bad at Sports, The Other Journal, and many others. She is a graduate of Yale University and Georgia State University and has received grant and residency support from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, The New Museum, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Flux Projects, University of Antioquia and Casa Tres Patios-Medellin, Colombia.  www.anyaliftig.com/

MIAO JIAXIN

Beginning in Shanghai, where his photography works expressed the universal theme of urban angst, Miao Jiaxin then immigrated to New York, expanding his view of urban streets towards a more conceptual public stage. Among his performative practices across different media, Miao has blended his naked body into the bleak streets of a midnight New York City, traveled inside a suitcase hauled by his mother through urban crowds, made live-feed erotic performances on an interactive pornographic broadcasting website, and dressed as a Chinese businessman for an entire year when working towards his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More lately, he converted his New York studio into a jail and charged $1 per night as accommodation on Airbnb and Facebook. Miao's works often express the ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic tension that always exists between the individual and governing or cultural authorities, questioning assumptions about power in relation to identity politics. He posits the artist's nature as one who transgresses boundaries, challenges consensus, and stays distance from authorities. www.miaojiaxin.com/pageviewer.html

HONEY JERNQUIST

www.honeymcmoney.com

ANJA IBSCH 

Anja Ibsch (Berlin), born in 1968, has been actively working as an artist and curator in the areas of performance and installation since 1993. Currently based in Berlin, she creates intense works that explore personal, cultural and social aspects of human presence while researching the endurance and tolerance levels of her body. Frequently inspired by myths of sainthood, sacrifice and release, her work emphasizes and extends connections between her body and the earth. Her varied actions have included eating dust, offering the surface of her skin as a nesting ground for worms, and melting ice on her eyes. She has performed primarily in Europe, Asia and Canada and South America.

In her work, Anja Ibsch characteristically tests her bodily limits, creating images that combine conceptual concerns with tasks of endurance or physical strength. For the audience, these images work to transform the way we view or understand the performer's physical identity. At the same time, the works engage the performer in a changing perception of her relationship to the world around her. Ibsch creates her work in response to the circumstances that present themselves, adapting to local environments and situations. https://anja-ibsch.jimdo.com

DOMINIQUE DUROSEAU

Statement from the artist: “I create narratives. I document, cross-examine, create cultural hybridizations. I de-contextualize/re-contextualize texts, topics, and issues on Black Culture’s constant striving within today’s society. I work within the cusp of her cultures as Haitian, American, and African Diaspora, then link unresolved issues across time as a political strategy.  This takes into account the nuances of language and mannerisms, while illuminating social issues and injustice; depicting contemporary struggles against indifference, coded vernacular, and entrenched economic dispositions. The issues addressed in my works may at first seem outdated and irrelevant, but instead have actually remained persistent, and morphed. The work folds in residuals of colonial influence, women's issues, and criticism of imperialist white-supremacist patriarchal cultures.” www.dominiqueduroseau.com/

GERALDO MERCADO

Geraldo Mercado is a Brooklyn based Performance and multimedia artist. Born in Yauco, Puerto Rico and raised in Westfield, Massachusetts; Geraldo moved to New York City in 2008 to work as the Video Production Manager at Exit Art, a pioneering Manhattan Art Space that closed its doors in 2012 after thirty years. Having complete access to their digital archives introduced him to the world of performance art. Since then, Geraldo has performed nearly non-stop.

As a performance artist Geraldo creates kinetic pieces of art using his body. A good artist uses all of the tools at their disposal, and having been born with a high tolerance for pain, he pushes his body to the limit as a means of exploring identity, empathy, and the cultivation of understanding. His aesthetic is punk rock in its ethos and in the way that he incorporates music, dance, theatricality, and storytelling while not being trained in any of those disciplines at all. Geraldo aims to tell stories with his body and reveal the underlying machinations of performance art as a medium.

Geraldo is a member of the Social Health Performance Club, a loose collective of artists creating performative works that directly confront systematic social issues. In 2013 Geraldo was one of the artists-in-residence at Animamus Art Salon: A Living Gallery London. In 2014 his non-narrative short film “The Land Scape” was a part of El Museo Del Barrio’s retrospective show “MUSEUM STARTER KIT: Open With Care”. Geraldo’s first solo show In The Universes Where I Died took place in 2015 at Gallery Sensei in Chinatown, New York in conjunction with Animamus Art Salon. His second solo show…And What Will We Do When We Get There was held at cloyingPARLOR in 2016. Geraldo holds a Bachelors of Science in Communications Media with a concentration on Directing for Film from Fitchburg State University. geraldomercado.com/

AYANA EVANS

Ayana Evans is a NYC based artist. She frequently visits her hometown of Chicago whose Midwestern reputation is a major influence on her art. Evans received her MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University.  She has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center.  In 2015 she received the Jerome Foundation's Theater and Travel & Study Grant for artistic research abroad. During Summer 2016 Evans completed her installment of the residency, "Back in Five Minutes" at El Museo Del Barrio in NYC. She completed a series this Summer 2017 "A Person of the Crowd" at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA; as well as FAIP an international performance festival, Martinique; "Light Happenings II" presented by Lab Bodies, Baltimore, MD; and Rapid Pulse Retrospective, Chicago, IL. Evans also performed at Ghana'a Chale Wote festival in August 2017.

Evans’s on-going performances/public interventions include: "Operation Catsuit" and "I Just Came Here to Find a Husband." She has curated and co-curated performance art shows throughout the U.S and worked in arts education for a decade. She is Editor at Large for www.cultbytes.com.  Her recent press includes articles on New York Magazine's The Cut, Hyperallergic, the Huffington Post,  gallerygurls.net and CNN. www.ayanaevans.com/

IV CASTELLANOS AND AMANDA HUNT

Amanda Hunt is a Brooklyn based performing artist. Amanda has performed solo work at Judson Church, AUNTS, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Larkin Arts (Harrisonburg, VA), Segundo Piso (Puebla, MX), and Open Engagement at the Oakland Museum. Hunt has attended the Old Furnace Artist Residency (Harrisonburg, VA) and has worked with Kira Alker + Elke Luyten, Sam Kim, IV Castellanos, and De Facto Dance, and Kathy Westwater (2013 - present).

IV Castellanos is an abstract performance artist who has performed at the Queens Museum, Gallery Sensei, dfbrl8r (Chicago), Gruentaler9 (Berlin), and Grace Exhibition Space. Castellanos and Hunt performed their newest work 04.14-15.17, "SurForm i & ii", as a part of Work Up at Gibney Dance Center. They have been on the curatorial committee and performed regularly at Panoply Performance Laboratory 2017 and past.

As a duo, the artists IV Castellanos and Amanda Hunt explore the continuous catching and falling of one another’s bodies, and through this idea that takes many aesthetic forms, aim to define arrival as reciprocity. This work of jumping, catching, holding, climbing, falling and/or dropping, and dragging one another on repeat, is juxtaposed with task based labor driven work. Using moulds of utilitarian objects (hammers, saw blades, deformed objects) casts from plaster, the work aims to render the execution of “simple” and “everyday” tasks, just as hammering or cutting, as possibly without goal and possibly other(ed). The artists wear work suits and work boots, both for the proposition of viewing functionality and ordinary-ness as art and as a nod to the long history of Queer folx that have worn these outfits before them. We are very Queer and non Cisgender-men which all aspects of the work, non-negotiably, exudes. Our work sets the stage for the Queer and Feminist utopia we'd like to live in and would like to invite you into. The set choreography is built on the idea that holding and being held requires different (and often metaphorically overlapping) skill sets/strengths, which is why we consciously choreograph each performer doing many types of both holding and catching. An equal distribution of labor gestured by different bodies. www.ivcastellanos.com/iv-castellanos-amanda-hunt/

RAFAEL SANCHEZ

Rafael Sanchez (b. Newark, New Jersey, 1978) is a performance artist who often takes his work to the streets and other unconventional spaces. In his performances, Sanchez frequently subjects his body to extreme stress and pain to materialize ideas of memory, spirituality and endurance. In an early work titled Back to Africa (2000), Sanchez wandered around New Jersey in white face, carrying a suitcase and waiting for a bus that never arrived. In 2007, for Calienté/Frio, the artist traced the migration process of two women from Cuba to America during the 1960s. Sanchez has been deeply influential on performance art in the NJ/NYC metro area, from the days of Exit Art and English Kills Gallery through the days of Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Grace Exhibition Space, and up through the present. He lives in Newark with his wife and young daughter and works as a teacher and counselor at a local High School.

LORENE BOUBOUSHIAN

Lorene Bouboushian works within dance, experimental music/noise, and performance art. They build a rhizomatic practice through visible forays into performances and workshopping, and less visible forays into writing, dialogue, modes of care and support, and resource sharing. They utilize "self-exposure and vulnerability in real, risky ways" [CultureBot, 2011], and produce “thought-provoking commentary on social limits” [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2016].

They have shared their work in galleries and theaters in Seattle, Madison, Athens, and Beirut, performing in festivals including New Genre Festival (Tulsa), Miami Performance International Festival, QueerNY and Queer Zagreb, Inverse Performance Art Festival, and Month of Performance Art-Berlin. They have shared their interdisciplinary teaching practice at universities in Kentucky, Beirut, and Mexico.

They have collaborated with Forced Into Femininity (as missdick vibrocis), Kaia Gilje, Lindsey Drury, Matthew D. Gantt, Valerie Kuehne, and Panoply Performance Lab, and performed for Yoshiko Chuma, Yvonne Meier, Melinda Ring, luciana achugar, Daria Fain, and Kathy Westwater. They are a former member of NYC based collectives XHOIR (organized by Colin Self), Feminist Art Group (organized by IV Castellanos), and Social Health Performance Club.

They are currently in process as a dancer with Jill Sigman/Thinkdance, working with a think-tank through 9 PROPOSITIONS (Panoply), and a member of the Civic Reflex cohort (also Panoply). https://lorenebouboushian.org/

MARIA HUPFIELD

Based in Brooklyn New York, Maria Hupfield is a member of the Anishinaabek Nation from Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada. Her first major institutional solo exhibit The One Who Keeps on Giving, is currently traveling and is a production of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto in partnership with Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax; and Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris. She is a current Triangle Artist in Resident 2018, the first Indigenous Fellow at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, ISCP in New York 2018 and finishing a residency with Native Art Department International at DTA/FABnyc in the Lower East Side.

Together with her husband artist Jason Lujan, Hupfield co-owns Native Art Department International based out of China Town New York, a project focused on presenting artwork by artists with demonstrated ongoing commitment to Native American communities alongside and on par with international artists. Hupfield also sings with  Nishnaabekwewag Negamonid a three-member Anishinaabe women’s hand drumming group based in Brooklyn, NY committed to language and cultural revitalization, using song to disrupt colonial spaces and speak to prior, persisting Indigenous presences. The group was born as part of an Anti-Columbus Day action in the American Museum of Natural History in 2016 and 2017.

Like her late mother and settler accomplice father, Hupfield is an advocate of Anishinaabek Womanism, Indigenous Feminisms, Accomplice building and Activism.

Maria Hupfield is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal Quebec Canada. https://mariahupfield.wordpress.com/

3DWARDSHARP

ohai, i'm 3dwardsharp. can we listen/talk/dance together? like, IRL? 

«…» 
SELECTED SUBSTANTIVEZ: 
a fucked-up scan from the back-section of a willa cather novel, um, literally, umm, as aesthetic codex that we could {un}pack, now or later or never. i mean, maybe it already happened, i looked again, and saw something else. 
IF YOU ARE READING THIS: then my performance has already started. a small gesture wedged in-between. 

in this performance @104 meserole i'm trying to see you more clearly but visibility is low. however, intentional, it, be.
NO PAIN, BABY, NO GAIN [let's get physical]

http://futuredeath.agency 

http://edwardsharp.com

JULIA SANTOLI

Julia Santoli is a multi-media artist based in New York. Her work synthesizes image, gesture, and sound while navigating memory and presence—how past experience manifests in the present as ruins, and how these traces transform through mediation to/from the body within the ghost-nature of sound. Her explorations take the form of vocal performance and body-generated audio feedback, sonic installation, video, and prints. She completed her BFA from the School of Visual Arts (Visual and Critical Studies), and has presented performative and visual work throughout New York. http://juliasantoli.net/

PPL (Panoply Performance Laboratory)

PPL the collective’s current configuration is lead by Esther Neff with Brian McCorkle, Kaia Gilje and many others. Working across spheres of visual arts, dance, theater, music, and cultural activism to research (e)motion and social movement, mentalities, forms of collective ideation, and modes of organization, PPL makes “operas of operations,” performance art, installation, tours, and social projects. Past and ongoing projects including Embarrassed of the Whole (EotW), Any Size Mirror is a Dictator (with Lindsey Drury), NATURE FETISH, and The Transformational Grammar of the Institutional Glorybowl I, II, & III have been performed at LMCC (14 Wall St.), chashama (42nd St, 37th St, Harlem site), Danspace, ISSUE Project Room, Dixon Place, Grace Exhibition Space, and ABC No Rio to name a few places in NYC, and across the USA (D.C, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Tulsa, Toledo, Columbus, Lexington, Detroit, etc) and in Berlin, Copenhagen, London, and elsewhere. PPL has also released recordings through Gold Bolus and organized conferences, exhibitions, and events all over the world.

www.panoplylab.org

Just Situations: Day 5, Reading Conditions

IV Castellanos. Photo by Laura Bluer
Thursday, July 20th 2017

JUST SITUATIONS: a performative convention https://www.facebook.com/events/1975315539357388/
justsituations.wordpress.com

Day Five: Reading Conditions
What are the elements of “a situation”? How do we inscribe, read into, interpret, and mark our world(s)? Abstraction, social magnetics, communication, (con)text, and forms of semiotic transparency perform “reads” of our conditions, backgrounds, ethics, identities, and ideals.

8pm-11pm
Ayana Evans
IV Castellanos
Nicole Goodwin
Danielle Abrams

+++SITUATOR CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION+++

DANIELLE ABRAMS
Danielle Abrams’ performances react to the social tensions that shape her experiences as a biracial lesbian. Her performances blend scripted and improvised language, and public encounters that rely on engaged participation. She adopts contradictory personae that are also autobiographical, and animates the ambivalent relationships between racial and ethnic groups. Her menagerie of personifications stage humorous encounters while reimagining the cultural narratives of art history, civil rights, and popular culture.

Danielle Abrams has performed at Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Detroit Institute of the Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston) Bronx Museum of the Arts, Roger Smith Hotel (NY), The Jewish Museum (NY), Queens Museum, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, WOW Performance Cafe, and The Kitchen. Abrams has received grants from The New York Foundation of the Arts, Urban Arts Initiative, and the Franklin Furnace Performance Art Fund. She is a Professor of Practice in Performance at School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. http://www.danielleabrams.com/

+

IV CASTELLANOS
IV Castellanos is an abstract performance artist and sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. They have performed at the Queens Museum, Gruentaler9 (Berlin), DFBRL8R (Chicago), Grace Exhibiton Space, IV Soldiers, Dixon Place, PPL, Gallery Sensei and Rosekill (Kingston, NY). They founded the F.A.G. (Feminist Art Group), 2016 with co-founder Esther Neff, which has alternating performers.

IV will perform a piece called: Brick x Brick v

+

AYANA EVANS

Ayana Evans is a NYC based artist. She frequently visits her hometown of Chicago whose Midwestern and sometimes controversial reputation is a major influence on her art. Evans received her MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. She has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2015 she received the Jerome Foundation's Theater and Travel & Study Grant for artistic research abroad. During Summer 2016 Evans completed her installment of the residency, "Back in Five Minutes" at El Museo Del Barrio in NYC..She also completed a series this Summer 2017 "A Person of the Crowd" at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA; as well as FAIP an international performance festival, Martinique; "Light Happenings II" presented by Lab Bodies, Baltimore, MD; and Rapid Pulse Retrospective, Chicago, IL.

Evans’s on-going performances/public interventions include: "Operation Catsuit" and "I Just Came Here to Find a Husband." She has curated and co-curated performance art shows throughout New York, worked in arts education for a decade, and is Editor at Larger for www.cultbytes.com. Her recent press includes articles on New York Magazine's The Cut, HyperAllergic, the Huffington Post and gallerygurls.net. https://www.ayanaevans.com/

For more information on her upcoming projects and impromptu public performances follow her on instagram @ayana.m.evans and visit www.ijustcameheretofindahusband.com

Artist Statement/ Performance practice:
I often articulate my ideas through different modes of actions and appearances from our daily living-practices. Mundane repetitive movements or physical struggles are my primary forms of expression. These actions collaborate in acknowledging, collecting, and creating evidence of my “self,” as they are laced with personal stories that exude both humor and pain. My performance practice continuously reveals larger explanations and speculations of (re)defining/categorizing significances, meanings and values within the hegemonic society. It is important for me to exert a conceptual and tactful way of thinking, seeing, inhabiting marginalized bodies (and spaces) through my art practices.

+

NICOLE GOODWIN

Nicole Goodwin is the author of Warcries, as well as the 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow, the 2013-2014 Queer Art Mentorship Queer Art Literary Fellow, as well as the winner of The Fresh Fruit Festival’s 2013 Award for Performance Poetry. She published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” (Personal essay/Review for award-winning documentary Tough Love) in the New York Times’ parentblog Motherlode. Additionally, her work “Desert Flowers” was shortlisted and selected for performance by the Women Playwriting International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

http://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/post/55883219156/nicole-goodwin-poet
 

Performancy Forum: night terrors, sandwiches, and dream logics

Diane Dwyer I am an elephant 4min. 5 sec. & THUMB WARS video by Diane Dwyer, performance by Diane Dwyer & Matthew De Leon 2 min.40 sec digital video
Saturday, May 13th 2017

TARA AND DAVID GLADDEN: "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters"

AYANA EVANS

DIANE DWYER: "Night Sandwich"

QUINN DUKES

++++ABOUT THE ARTISTS/WORK++++

Quinn Dukes is a multimedia performance artist, activist and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work addresses sensory dynamics, social injustice and ritual. She has performed in galleries and festivals across the United States including Fountain Art Fair, Lumen International Video & Performance Festival, Wassaic Festival, Grace Exhibition Space, Local Project and Gallery Sensei. Dukes has received reviews in Flash Art, NY Arts Magazine, D/Railed and WhiteWall Magazine and written for blogs: Art in New York City and Art in Brooklyn. In 2014, following a heated discussion about the death of performance art, Dukes founded Performance Is Alive. She is a tireless advocate for performance art and higher education via appointments at Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn) and the School of Visual Arts (NYC).

Diane Dwyer was born in Japan, and grew up in New England.
She is an interdisciplinary artist focused on investigations of performance through public interventions and private actions. She is also curious about the performative aspects of drawing and other indexical signs. She lives in Brooklyn, where she host Diane’s Circus and cloyingPARLOR, two projects in her home addressing, in part, the negotiation of public and private space, as well as the labels ‘amateur’ and ‘professional.’ She received her BFA from The Museum School/Tufts University, and her MFA through a teaching fellowship at the University of Connecticut. She is currently a part-time Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design, and adjunct faculty at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Ayana Evans is a NYC based artist. She frequently visits her hometown of Chicago whose Midwestern and sometimes controversial reputation is a major influence on her art. Evans received her MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. She has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2015 she received the Jerome Foundation's Theater and Travel & Study Grant for artistic research abroad. Summer 2016 Evans completed her installment of the residency, "Back in Five Minutes" curated by Nicolas Dumit Estevez, at El Museo Del Barrio in NYC. Evans’s on-going performances/public interventions include: "Operation Catsuit" and "I Just Came Here to Find a Husband." Other recent works by Evans are: "Thoughts on Rape; A Response to After Midnight by SHPC" Queens Museum, NYC, “Parasol" a triptych video collaboration with Zina Saro-Wiwa, Tiwani Contemporary, London, and “Stopping Traffic," Gallery Sensei, NYC, and "Make Your Own Way" at Satellite Art Fair, Miami, and "Gurl I'd Drink Your Bathwater," PRIZM art Fair, Miami. Additionally, Evans has curated and co-curated performance art show throughout New York, worked in arts education for a decade, and is Editor at Larger for www.cultbytes.com. Her recent press includes articles on New York Magazine's The Cut, HyperAllergic, the Huffington Post and gallerygurls.net. For more information on her upcoming project and impromptu public performances follow her on instagram @ayana.m.evans and visit www.ijustcameheretofindahusband.com.

C Tara and David Gladden are collaborative, interdisciplinary artists who use sound, video, installation, and performance to investigate ideas of identity, gender, psychology, politics, and perception. Their work has been presented/exhibited both nationally and internationally.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters references surveillance and ​Ganzfeld experiments to explore concepts of mind control and paranoia. This work delves into the darkness of subconscious experience; phenomena such as sleep paralysis, possession, and altered states. The darkness is a pit of resistance, of fear, of awareness without control. It is also a place where one can confront the darkness, where one can emerge with awareness of deeply buried secrets: a site of confrontation, struggle and transformation.

C Tara holds a BM in Voice Performance from Boston University. David holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Both hold MFAs in Performance and Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College and are educators at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD. David is an Assistant Professor of New Media Art and Tara is Art Galleries Manager and a Lecturer in the Art, Music and Interdisciplinary Studies Programs. Together, they curate the Seeing Sound Series and Electronic Gallery at Salisbury University as well as special projects at their own venues: John Cage Memorial Park in Chance, MD and at W.O.R.K., a center for experimental art on the downtown plaza in Salisbury, MD.​

Coloring/Harnessing/Labor-Supreme/Electives

Jessica Borusky: detail from "CalicoEconomies" historic downtown Las Vegas strip. Part of the Queer-A-Fest Destiny Project; ongoing. (Photo Justin Favela) http://jessicaborusky.com/
Saturday, November 5th 2016

****FREE MARKET SELF PROMO MONTAGE DOUBLE-DUTCH LIPSTICK BANDANA POLITIX BLOOD GLITTER MUD MURDER PUNCH ME VOTE FOR ME HEARTZ HEARTZ HEARTZ***** 

5-8pm: Coloring Coorain/Harness Cannons
Coorain Devin
Jessica Borusky

8-11pm: Labor-Supreme/Electives
Geraldo Mercado
Benjamin Lundberg
Arantxa Araujo
Ayana Evans

FIVE TO EIGHT PM: 
Artists Coorain Devin and Jessica Borusky create a collaborative performance work within the context of Devin’s online TV show, Coloring Coorain. The television program’s mission and purview is summarized in this one minute video: https://vimeo.com/132027363. For this event, Coorain will attempt to recreate the look and feel of the show, as well as imitate television for the audience. Coorain will introduce themselves and the show, interview guests, report news, as well as introduce a special segment, Harness Cannons, Borusky’s performance within a performance. A LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE IS WELCOME. 

https://vimeo.com/user7122487
http://jessicaborusky.com/

EIGHT TO ELEVEN PM:
Four short-form performance art works push bodies to their limits in extreme acts of elective strength and power, navigating self-presentation and media. 

https://geraldomercado.com/
http://www.jointhebenjam.org/
http://www.arantxaaraujotoca.com/
http://www.ayanaevans.com/

REMAINING/REMINDING/REMAINS/REMAINDERS

Saturday, October 1st 2016 to Sunday, October 2nd 2016

REMAINING/REMINDING/REMAINS/REMAINDERS
is open 11am-7pm on Saturday, October 1 and Sunday, October 2

+ IV CASTELLANOS + AYANA EVANS + ZACHARY FABRI + DAVID IAN BELLOWS/GRIESS + JON KONKOL + GERALDO MERCADO + HIROSHI SHAFER + NYUGEN SMITH + KIKUKO TANAKA +

Bushwick: long ago defaced and degraded by "mural style" ads, Bichon Frise shit, bro vomit, and crêpe trucks, we perch on the edge of an almost-imaginary recent past, clinging to an old lease as "postmodern mediterranean" buildings march us shoulder to shoulder towards total erasure. This exhibition briefly stages the melancholy, mortification, embattlement, righteousness, humor and violence of artists who were working in performance art before it became a joke on TV, artists who use "recycled materials" because they are free, artists whose politics, identities, and "socio-ethics" are core elements of practice not marketing tools. 

REMAINING/REMINDING/REMAINS/REMAINDERS is visual works and video by artists who celebrate no "post" (gentrification)(modern)(colonial)(structural), working through ongoing colonial, imperial, and capital-driven histories, leaving remainders of performances, using remains and scraps of materials used for other purposes, providing reminders of what matters. 

PPL is a BOS Hub site.

PERFORMANCY FORUM: Electronic + Technologic Semiotics of the Bodily

Thursday, May 5th 2016

a technology can be as simple as a spoon
as sonic as a breaking trust
as somatic as a sprain
as symbolic as a noise
as sculptural as electrons making their way through muscles

6pm: Plural Authorship Collective (A. Liparoto & Z. Morales) lecture/performance “I want to agree with you but you are making it really hard for me”

7pm:
Kristin McWharter
Bobby English Jr., Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Austin Blakely
Luke Mannarino
Davindar Singh
Ayana Evans

http://www.performancyforum.net/

Device controlled: NIA NOTTAGE//FRANCES YEOLAND

Thursday, April 7th 2016 to Sunday, April 10th 2016

Device controlled. A collaboration between two artists (Nia Nottage and Frances Yeoland).

THURSDAY, APRIL 7: Opening, 8pm
FRIDAY, APRIL 8: Activations of the installation, 8pm: Geraldo Mercado, Ivy Castellanos, Amanda Hunt, Kaia Gilje
SATURDAY, APRIL 9: Activations of the installation, 8pm: Thea Little, David Ian Griess, Ayana Evans
SUNDAY, APRIL 10: Video/Film, 6pm

A constructed platform for experiencing physical sensation that is foreign to everyday physical perception. Hold/release, hold/ release, hold/ release; an apparatus for tension control.

NIA NOTTAGE
Performance artist | Detroit
nianottage.com
Romance lives in the gap between reality and the dream world.
You don’t have to be miserable to be deep, relationships with objects teach us a lot about ourselves, libido is only demonized b/c it’s a powerful tool for haptic touch that can inform corporeal understanding and cause alternate perceptions of happiness. Nia Nottage is a performance artist.

FRANCES YEOLAND
Visual artist | Sydney
francesyeoland.com
Human attempt at understanding is about ownership, and labeling is a symptom of this failure. This work is a composition of material that asks for meaning from the viewer based on its appearance of logic and rationality. It's is an absurd puzzle of familiar, tactile and industrial materiality. It is a system of symbols taken out of context, reframing our perception of value and meaning.

What It Is or What It Ain't* a one-night performance art exhibition

Thursday, December 17th 2015

6pm: Roundtable discussion moderated by the artists

8pm: Performances by Helina Metaferia (San Francisco), Tsedaye Makonnen (Washington, DC), Dell M. Hamilton (Boston), and Ayana Evans (Chicago/NYC)

Four artists come together to publicly deal with their agencies as performance artists working within and beyond institutions and artworlds. The evening begins with a public discussion sparked by examples of artists leveraging their own careers in critical ways, like Adrian Piper's pulling out of the exhibition of black performance art Radical Presence, and by the participating artists' own experiences as professional artists, educators, scholars, and curators navigating ethical, political, social, and practical decisions.

The public discussion is followed and framed by performance works by Helina Metaferia, Tsedaye Makonnen, Dell M. Hamilton, and Ayana Evans.

This evening as a whole debates four solo artists' relationships with their own practices, through both artworks and discussion of artworking, providing a public forum for performance practices that deal with beliefs in the strength in the collective voice of black people/women (even if those voices disagree or contradict) as well as resistances to processes commodifying and objectifying identities and artists.

*The title of the evening quotes curator Valerie Cassel Oliver's catalog statement from the 2013 Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art exhibition: "The intention here is to resist reductive conclusions about blackness: what it is or what it ain’t. What is clear is that it exists and has shaped and been shaped by experiences. The artists in this exhibition have defied the ‘shadow’ of marginalization and have challenged both the establishment and at times their own communities.” (2013)

A donation of $5-20 at the door is requested to provide barebones honorariums to the participating artists though no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

dellmhamilton.com
helinametaferia.com
tsedaye.com
ayanaevans.com

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