Live Artery: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 1/12

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS features Live Arts commissioned artists and curated guests inside INTERSPACE, a dynamic 3D environment for screening and networking.|

Vanessa Anspaugh – Aggression Confession Processions; a multidimensional project consisting of an outdoor audience-based funeral procession, an experimental film, and an evening-length dance theater piece. All three components of this work echo and collide with one another conceptually and aesthetically from the vantage of bodies in mourning, and the historical concept of the “hysterical woman” as a diagnosis. Looking at the myriad ways we both hold and process atrocity, this project investigates and interrogates the question of how it is that we care for bodies.

Emily Johnson – Being Future Beingdelves into future creation stories. It brings into focus new futures with the potential to reshape the way we relate to ourselves, and to the human and more-than-human cohabitants of our worlds. Featuring a newly commissioned score by Raven Chacon, Being Future Being builds a visual, aural and ancestral landscape of Indigenous power and present joy.

Ni’Ja Whitson – The Unarrival Experiments; a transdisciplinary, multi-site, multi-form project that centers the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Trans-embodied lens. In addition to two book projects, intergalactic performance and research, core facets of this work include: iterative, site-specific outdoor and indoor performance installations accompanied by virtual reality technology; Black improvisatory gatherings that catalyze experimentation in pitch Black spaces; and a ritual performance series commemorating Trans lives lost in the U.S. between 2018 and 2020, with sound and herbal essences created for each memorial site.

Raphael Xavier – Kolâde-Xcape; a duet performance combining movement with live music/vocals and electronic technology. Xavier brings his hip hop aesthetic to this piece utilizing Breaking, poetry, spoken word and rap cadences that approach improvisation intuitively. 

The Future is Present: A Casting the Vote ProjectA seven-week performance and action laboratory that centers the voices and vision of Black and Indigenous young people, and builds concentric circles of solidarity around their demands on our collective future. These demands will be amplified through a series of rigorous, joyful, and high-distribution artistic interventions to be unveiled in 2021. Lead artists and organizers include Charlotte Brathwaite, Janani Balasubramanian, Justin Hicks, and Sunder Ganglani.

Image Credits: 1) Courtesy of Artist 2) Tracy Rector & Melissa Ponder 3) Scott Shaw 4) Courtesy of Artist 5) Sara Yumkini