Low Lives 2
All artwork in this catalog, including images and videos, is copyrighted. All rights reserved by the individual artists.
Low Lives is made possible through the support and generous donations of the following institutions: Founding Supporters: FiveMyles, Brooklyn labotanica, Houston Diaspora Vibe Gallery, Miami Project Row Houses, Houston Supporters: El Museo del Barrio, NYC Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark Fusebox Festival, Austin GalerĂa de la Raza, San Francisco Diaspora Vibe Gallery, Miami Obsidian Arts, Minneapolis the temporary space, Houston Co-Lab, Austin Terminal (APSU), Clarksville Studio 304, Brooklyn Artists Television Access (ATA), San Francisco
Low Lives 2 April 30, 2010
Produced and Curated by Jorge Rojas
El Museo del Barrio Manhattan, NY
Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art Newark, NJ
GalerĂa de la Raza San Francisco, CA
Fusebox Festival Austin, TX
Diaspora Vibe Gallery Miami, FL
Obsidian Arts Minneapolis, MN
Terminal APSU- Clarksville, TN
Co-Lab Austin, TX
the temporary space Houston, TX
Studio 304 Brooklyn, NY
Artists Amelia Winger-Bearskin
Lawrence Graham-Brown
Hector Canonge
Michelle Isava
Vienne Chan
Tina La Porta
Osvaldo Cibils
Elizabeth Leister
Gabrielle Civil
Luke Munn
Marcus Civin
Olek
Chris Coy
Wanda Ortiz
The Bridge Club
Jacklyn Soo
Francesca Fini
Michael Smith
Linda Ford
Sam Trubridge/Rob Appierdo/Stuart Foster
Lynne Heller
Migdalia Luz Barens-Vera
Anni Holm
Marcus Vinicius
Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa
Martin Zet
Las Hermanas Iglesias
Agni Zotis
Acknowledgements Jorge Rojas
An exhibition of this nature requires a great deal of collaboration and would not have happened without the essential support and generous contributions of numerous individuals and organizations. I would like to thank Gonzalo Casals and Carolina Valderrama at El Museo del Barrio; Edwin Ramoran and Christine Walia at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art; Rosie Gordon-Wallace and Patricia Roldan at Diaspora Vibe Gallery; Raquel de Anda and Carolina Ponce de León at Galería de la Raza; Ron Berry at Fusebox Festival; Roderic Southall at Obsidian Arts; Sean Gaulager at Co-Lab; Barry Jones at Terminal (APSU); Keijiro Suzuki at the temporary space; and Mara Catalan at Studio 304. The dedicated technicians that support these institutions enabled the live performances and broadcasts that took place at many of the above listed venues. I’m especially grateful to Jessie Suarez and Carlos Bayley at el Museo del Barrio for their technical assistance and consulting, and to Dayv Jones at Artists Television Access (ATA) for partnering with Galería de la Raza and helping facilitate the production of the event.
I would like to acknowledge a number of friends and colleagues who offered their support and assistance early on. These individuals’ insights, expertise and introductions to numerous artists and art directors in the field, added greatly to the overall growth and success of the exhibition: Hanne Tierney, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, Rick Lowe, Cheryl Parker, Ashley Clemmer Hoffman, Kelly Kleinschrodt, Jeremy Chu, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Gisela Insuaste, and Alan Schnitger. I extend my utmost appreciation to the artists in the show for their remarkable artistic contributions and for their willingness to share in this experimental project. Together they helped build an exhibition that reflects their individual practices while offering insights that are significant to our human collective. And finally, I would like to thank my partner, Jenna Pike, for her love and support throughout this project, and particularly for being my technical “co-pilot” during the live broadcast.
Curator’s Notes
Jorge Rojas Curator
Now in its second year, Low Lives is a one-night exhibition of live performance-based works transmitted via the internet and projected in real time at multiple venues. The project celebrates both the transmission of ideas beyond geographical borders, and also what is blurred, gained, or reconfigured in the process as we communicate and present ourselves online. The lo-fi aesthetic, with its pixilated images, low sound quality, and the ever-present potential for “technical difficulties,� is an integral aspect of communication via contemporary web technology, and also of this exhibit. There is something very human about this D.I.Y. quality that draws us in and appeals to our natural voyeuristic tendencies. At a time when there is much debate about the validity of presenting performance through video, Low Lives offers global audiences a critical and contextual frame from which to consider live performance in virtual space. There are a number of aspects of this project that make it unique. The first is that each participating artist is specifically required to incorporate live video streaming technology
into his or her own artistic vision. While most of the artists in the show work in new media, the majority used live video streaming here for the first time. A second quality that differentiates this show is its efficiency. Arts organizations worldwide are exploring ways to reduce production costs while still presenting quality exhibitions. The minimal requirements for presenting this show (computer, internet connection, projector) offer an interesting alternative to the costly execution of traditional exhibits. In one evening, the artists in Low Lives 2 presented their work to live audiences at eight art venues and to an online audience of hundreds. The interactive element made possible through online chat also adds to the unique character of the project. Live, online chat allows artists and audience members the rare opportunity to comment on, celebrate and critique the work in the moment with other participants around the world. The fourth, and probably most important, element of this project is its experimental nature and the excitement that comes from taking risks throughout the creative process. Some of the words I hear most often repeated by participants in reference to their experience are: intimate, spontaneous, transparent, awkward, voyeuristic, visceral, and emotional. These words define performance art and demonstrate that technology can contribute to, and even intensify, the fundamental elements of performance practice. The twenty-eight international artists and artist collectives that contributed to Low Lives 2 transmitted their live performances from nine countries: Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. These artists work in a variety of media and styles including performance, video, sound, web art, process art, and conceptual art. The themes they address are widely varied, yet they each explore aspects of our human and social makeup, as well as our relationship with technology. I hope you are as inspired by these artists’ ephemeral performances as I have been.
Presenters’ Notes
Gonzalo Casals Director of Education & Public Programs El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio’s Education and Public Programs Department is dedicated to providing its diverse audience with unique bilingual education programs. While offering an important resource for Latinos in New York City and the tri-state area, El Museo’s programs remain accessible and relevant to all audiences. We believe art is a tool for social change, cultural empowerment, and civic engagement. Raphael Montañez Ortiz refers to the founding of El Museo del Barrio as a response to the community’s need for a “powerful cultural institution that would reveal its past; affirm and guide its present (critically and with respect); and inspire its future, with integrity and intellectual authority.” El Museo’s approach to education is rooted in the tradition set by Ortiz, an artist educator himself, who continues to be an inspiration for the institution. El Museo del Barrio was proud to be part of Low Lives. Now in its second year, the program provided a new alternative and efficient medium for presenting and viewing
live performance-based works. Low Lives 2 was a fun challenge for us at El Museo. The collaboration opened up the opportunity to interact with new audiences and virtually reach other places around the world. The format is enjoyable and innovative and the work shown has a wide range of creativity. It was exciting to see performers such as Wanda Raimundi Ortiz, whose work has been shown at El Museo’s galleries, become a character on our screen, further connecting us to our artists after their work was shown here. And Lawrence Graham-Brown, whose performance The Neighbors are Talking and Ras-Pan-Afro-Homo-Sapien “bloodsucker” version took place in El Museo. Graham-Brown dealt with themes of sexuality, class, and religion. His performance explored gay self-hatred and Black-ness feelings within the context of his Jamaican background. A night of electronic voyeurism!
Edwin Ramoran Director of Exhibitions and Programs Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art
Our mission remains: Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, fosters excellence in the visual arts through exhibitions and educational programs that serve as a catalyst for inclusiveness and diversity, promote cross-cultural dialog, and enable us to better understand the time in which we live. Public understanding and support of the visual arts are strengthened through collaboration and community-based educational programming. Aljira seeks out the work of emerging and under-represented artists and brings the work of more established artists to our community. Through the visual arts Aljira bridges racial, cultural and ethnic divides and enriches the lives of individuals. Co-presenting with El Museo del Barrio for Jorge Rojas’ galactic Low Lives 2 provided a unique opportunity for two cultural institutions in the metropolitan area to collaborate on cutting edge programming. This partnership enabled something unusual in our immediate
cultural landscape. Rojas’s insistence that Aljira and El Museo work together really helped to re-calibrate perceptions in contemporary art and society and bridge traditional separations and antagonisms: museums versus smaller contemporary art centers, New Jersey versus New York, public programs versus curatorial projects, esoteric versus accessible, and peripheries versus centers. Yet, the most salient and complex matter expressed was the public presentation of gay themes and black Caribbean identities in Jamaican, New Jersey-based artist Lawrence Graham-Brown’s premiere performance. The mix of the specific cultural politics and visceral art in Graham-Brown’s work with Rojas’s artistic/curatorial/technological thrust truly pushes us to be more courageous, critical, open, unfettered, and even sensual all at the same time. These characteristics of this very particular collaboration help to reify the idealism inherent in and at the core of Aljira’s mission statement.
Raquel de Anda Associate Curator Galería de la Raza
In addition to continuously fostering an appreciation of Latino/Chicano art practices, Galeria de la Raza offers an avenue for the development and presentation of multi-media work, which ‘explores new aesthetic possibilities for socially committed art.’ With our participation in Low Lives 2 we entered into unfamiliar territory, inciting both excitement and anxiety as we simultaneously ran three projectors, two computers, a DVD player and a video camera on a program we had never before used. Fortunately, the partnership we held with Artists Television Access (ATA) helped create a relatively seamless event. This partnership mirrored the many ‘virtual’ bridges that were created during Low Lives 2, as we all patiently watched the event unfold, transcending borders and time zones. Showcasing such a distinct grouping of artists from around the world while expanding our potential as an art space underscored our continued interest in taking risks to support the presentation of experimental art forms. Low Lives 2 proved to be an exceptionally humanizing event presenting an opportunity to witness a humbling and unfiltered artistic process. At once, we were all forced to succumb to the higher technological forces that be while allowing the process to unfold before us. As an alternative arts space, the investigation into this new medium allowed us to engage with a wide array of artists in one sitting all the while entertaining the potential of our rapidly advancing technology and the formats it will soon allow us to support.
Rosie Gordon- Wallace Excutive Director Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Inc.
Diaspora Vibe is committed to promoting and nurturing emerging Caribbean artists by supporting multi-disciplinary work. We presented Low Lives 2 at two venues: one in our Miami Space and the other at the Atlantic Center for the Arts to the class attending the Alliance of Artists Communities’ Leadership Institute. Both venues buzzed with anticipation and excitement. Although there were technical glitches, the content and artists were superb. Our gallery attendees enjoyed the technical vulnerability of the event, and Diaspora Vibe enjoyed the experimental value Low Lives 2 added to our programming. These cutting edge performances transmitted through internet technology entertained, provoked, and challenged – all at one time. Low Lives 2 was successful in fostering new relationships, encouraging cultural collaboration, and introducing a new method of exhibiting to emerging artists in many venues. Jorge Rojas, in his second year of curating Low Lives, conceived a technically smart and accessible format. This low technology, internet-based work is unpredictable, high-energy, and immediate in its ability to allow artists to share ideas around the globe. The distinct group of artists closed the gap on borders and helped to expand Diaspora Vibe’s reach as an art space. Bring on Low Lives 3 in 2011!
Ron Berry Artistic Director Fusebox Festival
Fusebox is an annual contemporary art and performance festival that champions new and innovative works from around the world. At its heart, the festival serves as a platform for conversation. It’s an idea engine: a space where artists and audiences can take risks, ask questions, break rules, and blur boundaries. Much of our energy focuses on the creation of meaningful conversation between Austin and the world (and visa versa). We’re particularly interested in how this pertains to live performance, as we’re constantly grappling with the issue of Austin’s geographic isolation with regard to live performance. In many ways this was the genesis behind the creation of the festival itself. Low Lives 2 elegantly and deftly created an international conversation (if only for a few hours) that was alive and relevant. Fusebox is also constantly exploring the use of technology in art. Not so much because we’re interested in the latest gadgetry, but because we’re interested in how technology impacts our lives. Low Lives 2 embodies this idea perfectly. It employs readily available technologies (technology we use everyday often without thinking about it) in a smart, meaningful manner--ultimately helping us to re-examine our relationship with technology (as well as our relationship with time, distance, borders, place, etc). All too often video/technology in performance becomes problematic: it’s so seductive and appealing but often quite difficult to activate in an interesting way. Low Lives 2 overcomes this hurdle. The technology/video is made vulnerable. It is humanized. It is live. This is a considerable achievement and we were thrilled to be a partner.
Keijiro Suzuki Manager the temporary space
Presenting Low Lives 2 at the temporary space was a rewarding means for us to simultaneously expand the notion of exhibition spaces and methods of communication. the temporary space focuses on ephemeral qualities and experiences of conceptual, experimental, collaborative and performance projects. Both the temporary space and the Low Lives series reflect the needs and the interests of our contemporary communities. Low Lives 2 connects diverse cultural and social communities through ideas, collaborations, and technologies, not restricted by physical and geographical limitations. Low Lives 2 gave us an insightful and intelligent approach to experience experimental performances performed in both private and public spaces. The presence of the audience and the performers created a playful, unpredictable aspect to the project. This unpredictability gave the audience an opportunity to discover surprising messages and discoveries. It was also a democratic means to examine biases, prejudices and stereotypes formed by technology and mass media. You might have seen the series of performances with your friends, with your girlfriends, with strangers, with your lovers or by yourself, with ex-boyfriends, with enemies, with haters‌ Whomever you experienced it with, Low Lives offered an entrance for individuals to engage with communities and their critical messages.
Roderic Southall Curator Obsidian Arts
Obsidian Arts’ vision is to provide artists, particularly local artists, with access points to participate in the global dialogue on black visual culture. We work to foster experiences that place artists in direct and “knowing� dialogue with one another. Including Low Lives 2 as a facet of our programming schedule allowed our constituents and their guests to feel and experience our vision in elemental form. Low Lives 2 provoked a series of hyperpresent and hyper-intimate personal and group moments across time zones, cultures, art forms, and technology. In Minnesota we felt the raw aspirations, technical sprints, and missed opportunities of other participants around the world. The fragility of the use of this technology, and the social subject matters included, embedded a dynamic cohesion in Low Lives 2. We are so very fortunate to have delivered such art-filled visceral moments to our screening guests.
Sean Gaulager Director Co-Lab
For the past two years Co-Lab has played host to a weekly slew of media projects as a fundamental part of its mission to provide opportunities to artists working in new media. Projects such as Low Lives come along to remind us why the space was created and continues to thrive. By way of Jorge Rojas (and all involved parties) Low Lives has exemplified the possibilities of web based video technology and brought the performance art world into our living rooms. Contrary to some notions, technology used in this manner does not restrict us to ever smaller and disconnected boxes but rather unites us in our digital artistic expressions and experiences. If we lived low lives daily I believe we’d find a more robust cultural experience in the all too often homogenous and flat digital world.
Barry Jones Director Terminal
Now in its third year, Terminal is a web space dedicated to presenting new media and “internet” art. Terminal is hosted and sponsored by the Department of Art at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. Clarksville is a long way from the cultural centers of the US, and Low Lives did exactly what we hoped it would do: bring some of the best artists and artworks in the world to our corner of the planet. Visitors to the event were able to view and experience work that would otherwise have been inaccessible. It was incredibly exciting to see what can be done with a web cam and an internet connection, and to participate in a “real world” event that included exciting and challenging performance art. We are very grateful for the possibilities this event opened up for our mainly student audience.
Mara Catalan Director Studio 304
Studio 304 is a Brooklyn-based art space for artist and photographers to exhibit and elaborate their projects. We present multi-media work and encourage interdisciplinary events and collaborations as a way to open a dialogue between artists using different media, from different schools of thought, and from different cultural backgrounds. Including Low Lives 2 in our menu was a most rewarding experience. It was exciting to transcend borders and time zones and to have access to work that would otherwise be unknown to us. One of the highlights for our audience was being able to chat with other venues and artists in real time, and to be both viewers and critics as we actively participated in the event. I want to thank Jorge Rojas for sharing his ideas and experience to make this event happen in the most coherent way.
Performances
Rob Appierdo, Stuart Foster, Sam Trubridge TIME CAPSULE
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Wellington, New Zealand Local Time: 12:00 pm
“A message from tomorrow: Time Capsule occupies a time zone ahead of most of the Low Lives presenters. It will be Saturday morning in Wellington when Passers-by will be invited to state the current date and time before providing a response to the question “What would you like to tell the past?” The work is a play on the distance that currently persists between different time zones and cultures, provoking contemplation on the attitudes that cause us to disregard the livelihood of future generations and geographically distanced communities.”
Anni Holm ANNI’S DINNER PARTY
Live Networked Performance 2010 4 min Location: West Chicago, IL Local Time: 7:06 pm
“I enjoy exploring the possibilities of human interaction and collaboration. In this case, I assemble eight random guests for a dinner party, for which I write a song. Based on a Danish tradition of special occasion home made dinner party songs, the song is performed by my guests and I between the entree and the dessert.
Francesca Fini CRY ME
Live Networked Performance 2009/2010 3 min Location: Rome, Italy Local Time: 2:11 am
“Video is a very important element of my work. I always conceive performances or installations where video has a crucial role, because to me it’s like a window to a secret truth.” “CRY ME is a “radiography of the soul”. During the performance, I reveal myself through video art, playing with a TV display where my secret “avatar” lives and sings. As a woman, I move the display over the three important parts of my body; the head, the heart and the womb, revealing the hell that lies inside of me.”
Luke Munn SUITE FOR WEBCAM
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Berlin, Germany Local Time: 2:15 am
“In ‘Suite for Webcam’ the surface of a studio wall is activated with a series of bodily gestures. The ripples and breaks, hollow points and smooth paint reveal a sonic landscape inherent in an everyday object.”
Osvaldo Cibils MULTIMEDIA HEAD Live Networked Performance 2010 4 min 47 sec Location: Rovereto, Italy Local Time: 2:21 am
“I am a visual and sound creator artist since soooo many errors.” Medium: video. self-portrait action-home with objects. objects: human head (osvaldo cibils) USB key (74 files: 34 drawings, 12 photos, 1 video and 27 noise sounds) - cassette (music by POLE) - cellular phone (15 contacts) - philosophical book (Systématique Ouverte by Kostas Axelos) - photo camera - mathematical calculator - cd Rom (one arquitectural project by Fiorella Alberti) - adhesive tape.
Elizabeth Leister I CAN SEE YOU, YOU’RE NOT HERE
Live Networked Performance 2010 3 min Location: Los Angeles, CA Local Time: 5:27 pm
“An intimate visual dialogue takes shape in “I Can See You, You’re Not Here” through my attempts to “get close” to a stranger who cannot see or feel me, nor can I see or feel them. The pleading voice is my computer attempting to seduce me. My work explores our current methods of communicating through technology and how this impacts and transforms our relationships with each other. Through my futile efforts to make a “real” connection with my machine (and the audience) using touch, the performance underscores our physical detachment from one another that technology exacerbates. “
Olek CROCHETED PAINTING TO SHAKE HANDS
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Berlin, Germany Local Time: 2:31 am
“I think crochet, the way I create it, is a metaphor for the complexity and interconnectedness of our body and its systems and psychology…” “Taking my lead from Fluxus artist Yoko Ono’s performance instructions entitled “Painting to Shake Hands” from her book Grapefruit, I created “Crocheted Painting to Shake Hands”, that relates to my ongoing interventions. This socially conscious public “action” shaped and transformed the dialogue between the performer, an observer and a participant. The audience developed new means of interacting with the piece. Their response was the art, and my work was a mirror.”
Hector Canonge P/T CONVERSATIONS
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Queens, NY Local Time: 8:37 pm
“My work integrates various means of communication and artistic production using virtual spaces, physical environments, and new technologies to establish connections between human (inter)actions, social networks, and technological adaptability. “ “P/T Conversations is a series of public art performance/intervention to take place in a restaurant, club, or bar frequented by immigrant day laborers living in New York City. Strangers are invited to dictate a short letter to the artist who then types and re-enacts it as he reads it back to the sender.”
Agni Zotis MEDITATOR
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: New York, NY Local Time: 8:43 pm
“I explore the self, the human condition, transformation, transcendence through energy.� MEDITATOR Truth is always present. Truth is here and now not to be created, not to be achieved nor to be sought out. The mind seeks, desires, functions on then and there as in the future or in the past. The breath is a continuous flow from the moment of birth to the moment of death and everything else happens between these two points. The breath is the bridge between self, body and consciousness in space and time.
Vienne Chan AUTO-CANNIBAL
Live Networked Performance 2010 3 min 13 sec Location: Berlin, Germany Local Time: 2:49 am
“My works vary in subject mater but all strive towards an independence from the social constructs of natural language – and in a similar vein, the ruination of identity.” “Children often put everything into their mouths as they begin orienting themselves in the world; as such there is a bond between consumption and knowledge. As we grow old a desire to know ourselves emerges, and the taste of that knowledge may be one of ambivalence. This video performance contemplates sources of knowledge and destruction.”
The Bridge Club TORRENT ECHO
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Gunnison, CO Local Time: 6:53 pm
“Torrent Echo features one live performer interacting with projected footage of three other performers. This layering mirrors the audience’s experience in the gallery during the Low Lives event, where live viewers encounter live video feeds but are nonetheless unable to interact directly with the performers. This layered scenario addresses the conflation of the virtual and the live, as well as the interactivity and possibilities for human connection facilitated by each.”
Gabrielle Civil << MN – MX >>
Live Networked Performance 2010 4 min 28 sec Location: Minneapolis, MN Local Time: 7:59 pm
“The aim of all my work is to open up space.”
Martin Zet NIGHT AVERMENT
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Libusin, Czech Republic Local Time: 3:04 am
“Yes, believe or not, Martin Zet is not a fictitious entity- even when he/she himself sometimes feels so.” “Recently I hate being funny.”
Michael Smith
and University of Texas 2010 Performance Art Students
A 2010 STREAMING CLASS PORTRAIT Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min 28 sec Location: Austin, TX Local Time: 8:10 pm
Since 1999 Michael Smith has been taking his students to the Sears Portrait Studio to sit for a group class portrait, a picture that later may become their only memento and reminder of a semester spent together with Professor Smith. For Smith, it is not only a reminder of time spent with his class it is also a not so subtle reminder of years passing. When looking over a group of the Sears Class Portraits itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s apparent that the project is a chronicle of aging, the students stay the same age as Smith gets older. For Low Lives 2, Smith and his performance art students animate the Sears Sessions and sit together for a live tableau vivant portrait for online viewers. Quiet and still, the sitters will attempt to hold their poses and freeze a moment in time.
Amelia Winger-Bearskin
and her Portable Media and the Art of the Cell Phone Class
SUPER HERO DANCE OFF D-MAN VS. THE CHILL
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Nashville, TN Local Time: 8:16 pm
“I make performance and video art to help me reflect on how technology effects my life, why does having something so cool make me look so stupid?” “They are more than just arch rivals, D-Man is tired of being cut down by The Chill, who always spoils his glory and then pretends not to give a damn, this is more than a battle of wills, this will be a battle of moves. Whichever super hero gets the largest dance crew will win! Offensive and awful maybe, but we dare you to sit still.”
Linda Ford SELF-DISCIPLINE (LIVE IN THE STUDIO)
Live Networked Performance 2010 3 min 30 sec Location: San Francisco, CA Local Time: 6:28 pm
“The camera frames her reflection in the mirror, from behind the drawing board, creating tension between the multiple mediated “realities” of the artist as object and subject, live model and drawing, performer and voyeur; as well as the digitally recorded representations on the video screens.”
Las Hermanas Iglesias SIBLING RIVALRY (Pie Eating Contest)
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min 24 sec Location: Queens, NY Local Time: 9:32 pm
“Sibling Rivalry (Competitions)” is a series of contests between Lisa Iglesias and Janelle Iglesias documented in video shorts. The project exists both as a series of performance with various props, intentions and actions involved as well as the collection of documentations of these brief tournaments. Ranging from athletic maneuvers to tests of endurance, “Sibling Rivalry” explores the process of collaboration, the dynamic of sibling relationships and issues of competition. These rivalries are usually performed in the privacy of Las Hermanas’ studio involving homemade uniforms, low-tech lighting and props we have at hand. Watching the documentation of the event, the viewer is audience from a detached position, given the prerogative to root for either of the competitors and to laugh freely at the antics.”
Michelle Isava EN_CELL
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago Local Time: 9:38 pm
â&#x20AC;&#x153;As a performer I am interested in the body as an object and what it has the potential to reveal about the subject. The Body embodies... it is a sponge that reveals every experience with every sub atomic particle; it is all present and willing to betray or reveal what has been buried within.â&#x20AC;?
Tina La Porta DIGITAL FOOTPRINT
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL Local Time: 9:44 pm
â&#x20AC;&#x153;For this work I am interested in creating a digital footprint. This should be seen as a data trace left by my own activity within the digital environment. Conceptually, this idea of the digital footprint leads me toward the direction of Psychogeography by way of the theory of the derive. Because this work is transmitted, traces of my presence unfold as a sign of my absence.â&#x20AC;?
Marcus Civin AMERICAN RIFLE 3 (EXCERPT)
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Houston, TX Local Time: 8:50 pm
“Influenced by silent film, Happenings, and experimental poetry, I investigate violence in the United States.” “American Rifle 3, a text and prop-based performance, explores human violence and human resourcefulness as informed by colliding research into the Great Depression, gruesome Los Angeles Sunset Strip murders, the Underwear Bomber, radical psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, and the silent film comedy of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. In American Rifle, a rifle is a weapon, a noun, but also think: to rifle through, verb, to look for something. I symbolically and metaphorically play with magically-attractive-but-unfulfilling aspects of the American Dream, referencing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and enlisting co-conspirators to regularly interrupt a song-and-dance number by throwing me against a wall-sized target.”
Lynne Heller THE ADVENTURES OF NAR DUELL – THE LOW LIVES EPIC
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Toronto, Canada Local Time: 9:56 pm
“My work occupies an awkward space – dreaming gone awry, missed or mismatched opportunities and the overreaching nature of human ambition. Alternate realities such as the online virtual world, Second Life, appear to me as the imperfectly modeled ‘real’. I marvel at how people have such a deep need to reflect on what we already know, our history and current reality are essentially embedded in every aspect of any alternate reality. Even as we reach for the new, the land of endless promise and fantasy we hearken back the familiar and comfortable.”
Chris Coy HOLOHRAMI ZABOOTYKH PREDKIV
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Lake Tahoe, NV Local Time: 7:02 pm
“I am an internet surfer, artist & filmmaker.” “My art is the visual residue remaining after a series of semiotic collisions.”
Jacklyn Soo HIDDEN BEHIND A SOMETHING
Live Networked Performance 2010 4 min Location: Singapore Local Time: 10:07 am
“I work on identity (self/others) and social constraints relating to these issues.” “This performance looks at five different characters using or abusing the internet - Nerd, Working Adult looking for a job, Activist, Perverted old man looking for hot girls on the internet and a Pirate looking for freebies.”
Migdalia Luz Barens-Vera COVER YOURSELF
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min 29 sec Location: New York, NY Local Time: 10:12 pm
“My praxis encircles the transit of the body as a process, as a concept and as a work of art.” “I have been able to reconstruct in process a new figuration in my work, where I have defined a mutable audience, that is transform(ed)/form(ed) as place, space and time.”
Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz ASK CHULETA
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: Bronx, NY Local Time: 10:18 pm
“What I have been doing as of late has been live performances as Chuleta (my ghetto girl character) doing Contemporary Art Q&A’s. I have been interested in viral video as a mode of communication, web cams and low fi technology, especially since most artists are working with such modest incomes and materials, as well as using the Chuleta character as a critique on the exclusionary nature of art world, the white box and the expectation of an urban woman not knowing much about contemporary art.”
Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa BIG PINK
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min Location: San Francisco, CA Local Time: 7:24 pm
“My video and performance work creates possibilities for transformation in understanding the fluid, ethereal and sex-positive manifestations of subversive hybridity. My concept of (a)eromestizaje challenges stereotypical representations of identity, community and sexuality that I explore through the aerodynamic filter of a new “mestizaje.”
Marcus Vinicius RESISTANCE
Live Networked Performance 2010 5 min 24 sec Location: Vitória, Brazil Local Time: 11:30 pm
“I focus my art work on my body like a territory for intensive experimentations, exploring the time, instability and limits. My body has been both subject and medium. Exploring my physical and mental limits, I have withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for my “inside”, the wastes of the body, spaces and time. I use strategies that can pass through different spaces, cities, territories, islands and archipelagos showing the subjectivity that embodies the life and give to the body and mind the reality purer (or the most cruel). “
Lawrence Graham-Brown RAS-PAN-AFRO-HOMO-SAPIEN BLOODSUCKER VERSION
Live Networked Performance 2010 2 min 45 sec Location: New York, NY Local Time: 10:36 pm
“Wrestling within the confines of class, religion, Blackness meaning (non/being and part of a collective and the opposite White which means super/individual and homosexual meaning same as “Black” in a new world context) I have incorporated and created the social construct of a Ras-Pan-Afro-Homo-Sapien. A Rastafarian, Pan-Africanist, homosexual militant while forging my life experiences as a gay, black, immigrant, working class man in the new world. I go about my narrative via found objects, mixed media and performance art.”
Artist Biographies Amelia Winger-Bearskin is currently an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Vanderbilt University in the area of Video and Performance Art, in Nashville, TN. She was classically trained as an Opera Singer in Rochester, NY at the Eastman conservatory of music, and then finished her Undergraduate degree at George Mason University in 2000. While at GMU she studied sculpture and time based art and received her BAIS in Performance Art. She went on to do her MFA in Transmedia (time based art) at University of Texas at Austin in 2008. www.studioamelia.com Lawrence Graham-Brown is a Jamaican artist living in New Jersey, who has been exhibiting in Jamaica since the 1990â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. His work is stridently race conscious, wrestling with issues related to Black and gay self-hatred, Black-ness, Jamaican-ness, Africanness, sexuality, class and religion. He achieves all this through a self-taught direct style that calls on Rastafari and Garvey symbolism. www.cawmagazine.com/articles/interviews/lawrence-graham-brown/index.php Hector Canonge is a filmmaker and new-media artist whose work incorporates the use of various media and commercial technologies with physical environments, cinematic, literary, and performance narratives. Based on notions of geographies, identity, gender roles, image appropriation, and the politics of migration, he explores contemporary issues affecting diverse communities in New York City. www.hectorcanonge.net
Vienne Chan was born in Hong Kong and studied the philosophy of religion in Canada. She began making experimental videos in 2007 and has been screening internationally since then. Her works vary in subject matter but all strive towards an independence from the social constructs of natural language – and in a similar vein, the ruination of identity. www.artreview.com/profile/Vienne Osvaldo Cibils was born in 1961 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He is an artist since soooo many errors. He lives in Rovereto, Italy. www.osvaldocibils.com Gabrielle Civil is a black poet woman and artist originally from Detroit, MI. As a 20082009 Fulbright Fellow in Mexico, she made significant new work under the project title “In and Out of Place.” She currently resides in St. Paul, MN where she teaches at St. Catherine University. www.gabriellecivil.com Marcus Civin is a text-and-prop-based performance artist from Los Angeles, California. Civin received BA in Theatre from Brown University and an MFA in Studio Art from University of California, Irvine. Civin has performed recently in Los Angeles at Francois Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibits (LACE), Sea and Space Explorations, and LA><ART, and in Houston, Texas at The Temporary Space. www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/12238-marcus-civin Chris Coy is an internet surfer, artist & filmmaker. He has shown work at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Sundance Film Festival, Netherlands Media Art Institute and numerous international art festivals and exhibitions. www.seecoy.com
The Bridge Club is a contemporary visual and performance art collaborative consisting of artists Annie Strader, Christine Owen, Emily Bivens, and Julie Wills. The Bridge Club’s interdisciplinary installation, video, live performance and digital media works are site and context specific, and each work investigates specific local histories, populations, contexts, stereotypes, expectations, and conflicts. Each work is conceived in specific relation to its site and audience. www.thebridgeclub.net Francesca Fini is a film director, video artist, performer who is developing projects of video art, urban art, performance art and multimedia. Since 2003 she is collaborating with New York artist Kristin Jones at “Tevereterno” project, creating urban installations in the City of Rome. www.francescafini.com Linda Ford was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and lives and works in San Francisco, California. She received her MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute (2002) and has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship and Residency. Her work is informed by her past paid employment at a peepshow and currently as a video editor for a gay bondage pornography company. www.lindafordart.com Lynne Heller is a Canadian artist/designer who works in a variety of disciplines including fibre, sound, new media (virtual worlds, principally Second Life), websites and sculptural installations. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally and has been included in both public and private collections. Heller completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She also runs a design/communications company. www.lynneheller.com
Anni Holm is a conceptual artist working within photography, installation, performance, and collaborative art. Born in Randers, Denmark in 1977 Holm attended Krabbesholm Højskole in Skive before she immigrated to the US in 1999. She graduated with a BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2004. She has performed and exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. www.anniholm.com
Gigi OtĂĄlvaro-Hormillosa is a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary performance artist, video maker, cultural activist, and curator. Her writing, video and performance work has been presented nationally and internationally. www.devilbunny.org
Las Hermanas Iglesias is a collaborative team of sisters, Janelle and Lisa Iglesias, born and raised in Hollis, Queens. Las Hermanas draw upon their backgrounds in cultural anthropology, fine art, gardening, pot-lucking and literature to produce project based works that are interdisciplinary, marked by strategies of fusion and hybridity and often times socially engaging. www.lashermanasiglesias.com
Michelle Isava is a first generation Venezuelan immigrant coming of age in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2009 she completed her B.A. in Visual Arts at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. She has been doing Performance Art since 2007. She experiments with different mediums including drawing, painting, installation and video because she believes the message should decide the mode of expression. www.michelleisava.blogspot.com
Tina La Porta is a multi-media artist who lives and works in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1967. While Ms. La Porta has a personal history of working with New Media her most recent bodies of work include the use of Social Media as both a tool and a medium of personal expression. She has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Alternative Museum and turbulence.org to create web-specific art projects. www.tinalaporta.net Elizabeth Leister approaches digital media from a background in the fine arts. She creates video, performance installation, and collage that questions our connection to technology and the proximity and distance that it creates as it becomes an extension of our physical, emotional and psychological selves. Leister lives, teaches and works in Los Angeles, California. www.elizabethleister.com Luke Munn is a Berlin based sound-artist whose work incorporates performance, composition, and interdisciplinary projects. His practice centers on re-activating, and re-presenting real world sound - from the architecture of a space, to objects donated from the audience and field recordings. His work has featured in the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and the Venice Biennale Eventi Collaterali, amongst others. www.lukemunn.com Olek moved to New York City after graduating from Mickiewicz University in Poland. Rediscovering her crocheting skills as a sculptor landed Olek’s mixed media, sculptural environments in galleries in New York, Istanbul, Venice, Toronto, Salvador and Poland. Olek was a featured artist in the independent collective exhibition “Waterways” during the 49th Venice Biennale as well as in “Two Continents Beyond” at the 9th International Istanbul Biennale. www.agataolek.com
Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz is an interdisciplinary artist whose work ranges from mural painting, performance, video, poetry, storytelling, installation and drawing. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, most notably at the 2005 S-Files Bienal, Performa 05, New York and will be participating in Manifesta 8 in Murcia, Spain this fall 2010. She is a Skowhegan School Fellow and received her MFA from Rutgers University. She lives and works in the Bronx. www.ps1.org/studio-visit/artist/wanda-raimundi-ortiz Jacklyn Soo is a Singaporean Artist and Curator for Singapore Contemporary Young Artists Society (SCYA). She works on identity (self/others) and social constraints relating to these issues. Soo is interested in the genres of fantasy, dreams and memories and has for the past 3 years developed a performative character whom she is still undergoing process work on. She works in a variety of mediums and expressions including performance, sound, installation, sculpture, drawing and video. www.contemporaryart.sg Michael Smith is a video/performance/installation artist known for his eponymous performance persona named Mike, the central figure in an ongoing series of large-scale narrative based projects. Mike, an innocent who continually falls victim to trends and fashions while traversing an imperfect landscape, allows Smith to create an unsettling mixture of humor and pathos while commenting on discrepancies and absurdities in our culture. www.mikes-world.org Migdalia Luz Barens-Vera is a multidisciplinary artist whose work combines installation, photography, video, performance, public interventions, theater and movement media. Born in Puerto Rico, she now lives in New York and is currently working on her MFA in New Media at Transart Institute (Austria). www.migdalialuz.com
Sam Trubridge is a performance designer working across theatrical and performance art practices. His recent work focuses on ‘vanishing points’ and the interface between science and art, such as Sleep/Wake (Auckland Festival 2009) and the new work Ecology in Fifths. Stuart Foster is a lecturer in Spatial Design at Massey University, specializing in developing relationships between virtual and actual space. Rob Appierdo is a media artist and designer. His recent Storybox project installs large audio-visual performances within shipping containers to examine and reflect the taxonomies of each specific location. www.waking.co.nz
Marcus Vinícius is artist, researcher and independent curator. Since 2004 has made exchange projects, production and research in performance and action art. He has shown works at museums, galleries, projects and festivals at Brazil, United Kingdom, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, México, Portugal, United States and Poland. Lives and works in Vitória, Brazil. www.marcusvinicius.tk
Martin Zet is at the moment refusing to write a bio. Actually he wants to have a rest from the continuous task of creating a bio. You can consider this to be part of his fight for his freedom. www.martin-zet.com
Agni Zotis explores the self, the human condition, transformation, and transcendence through energy. She exhibits worldwide and her works are located in public and private collections. Zotis resides and works in New York City while traveling extensively examining cultures. www.agnizotis.com
Curator Biography Jorge Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist and curator whose work centers on the creation and processes involved in artistic production. Rojas uses both traditional and new media as well as performative elements to investigate communication systems and the effect of technology on artistic production, social structures and communities. www.jorgerojasart.com
El Museo del Barrio - www.elmuseo.org Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art - www.aljira.org Fusebox Festival - www.fuseboxfestival.com GalerĂa de la Raza - www.galeriadelaraza.org Diaspora Vibe Gallery - www.diasporavibe.net Obsidian Arts - www.obsidianartscenter.org the temporary space - www.thetemporaryspace.com Co-Lab - www.colabspace.org Terminal (APSU) - www.terminalapsu.org Studio 304 - www.studio304.org Artists Television Access (ATA) - www.atasite.org
Low Lives - www.lowlives.net
Layout and Design by Diego Aguirre - www.holadiego.com DVD Design by Joe Nanashe - www.joenanashe.com