Virtual Encounters: New Entanglements in Performance and Media
Premiered March 1, 2023, and ran until June 30, 2023
Presented online and across various platforms
Curated by Christine Negus
With an extensive history rooted in a dialogue on “live”-ness and the ephemeral, performance art has weathered a major shift over the past few years. Though the COVID-19 global pandemic has undoubtedly impacted all arts-related programming, live and time-based practices in particular have been forced to renegotiate presentation modes and adapt to a more virtual, screen-based life. Performance art’s merge with the digital realm, with its seemingly opposite characteristics based in permanence and the archival, has raised challenges for both areas of work. Through this convergence, performance artists have been asked to reconsider these aforementioned essential disciplinary attributes in relation to their practice—both in presentation and developing new projects. These uncharted possibilities associated with the virtual have produced exciting outcomes, which continue to redefine and reimagine praxis, and the fields of both performance and media art, in novel ways.
A forthcoming online publication featuring contributions by C.W. Crawford, Blair Fornwald, Che Gossett, and Sandra Ruiz will be available February 2024
Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition,and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School. Kite’s scholarship and practice investigate contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Recently, Kite has been developing a body interface for movement performances, carbon fibre sculptures, immersive video and sound installations, as well as co-running the experimental electronic imprint, Unheard Records. Kite has also published in several journals and magazines, including in The Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), where the award winning article, Making Kin with Machines, co-authored with Jason Lewis, Noelani Arista, and Archer Pechawis, was featured. Kite is currently a 2023 Creative Capital Award Winner, 2023 USA Fellow, and a 2022-2023 Creative Time Open Call artist with Alisha B. Wormsley.
David Yu is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist that he subcategorizes under multimedia, installation, and performance. His work stretches from sculptural forms and installation, to audio, video, and live performers. David’s current research is based on performance within a frame of fluxus, where the audience places themselves into the work as participatory elements. He positions himself within the creator-catalyst role that generates situations for viewers to negotiate. David’s practice attempts to modify and pinpoint areas where sculpture/installation, performance, and audience intersect by exposing the notion of the performative gesture that can be embedded in the aforementioned elements. Through this he attempts to coerce viewers into performance, integrating themselves within the experience of the artwork.
Anyse Ducharme (elle | she | her) is a franco-ontarian (fr | en) media artist, curator + teacher from northeastern Ontario, Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory. Her artistic production locates itself in an opposition (from within) to digital colonialism through small, sometimes subversive acts: glitching images with internet comments; dismantling assumptions of transparency that are both promoted and compromised by the ways in which knowledge is increasingly organized in the era of the computer; and by exploring the malleability of data through the transformation of information into various representational states.
Jacob Wren makes literature, collaborative performances and exhibitions. His books include Polyamorous Love Song, Rich and Poor and Authenticity is a Feeling. As artistic codirector of the interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created performances such as: En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, Every Song I’ve Ever Written and Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition. PME-ART has also presented the online conference Vulnerable Paradoxes and the related free PDF publication In response to Vulnerable Paradoxes. His internet presence is often defined by a fondness for quotations.
Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and The Kennedy Center. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the 2-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass
John Dieterich is a guitarist, composer and producer based in Minneapolis, MN. He plays in the band Deerhoof and collaborates on a variety of musical and artistic projects.
Ellen Moffat is a sound artist whose installation and performative works have been presented in artist-run centres, public galleries, festivals, conferences, and residencies as solo, collaborative, and interdisciplinary projects. Her exhibitions include the Remai Modern (Saskatoon), Sonorities Festival (Belfast), Gallery 12-14 (Vienna), ICMC (Copenhagen), NAISA (Toronto), Kentler International Drawing Centre (Brooklyn), Dalhousie Art Gallery (Halifax), and Surrey Art Gallery. Her collaborations range from projects with media, performance, and visual artists to computer scientists and engineers and to community groups. From Toronto, she has lived throughout Canada and is currently based in London, Ontario.
Jerron Herman is a disabled dancer and writer who creates works to facilitate welcoming. He has premiered pieces at Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, The REACH (excerpt), and The Whitney Museum. His writings have been published nationally and abroad and his play, 3 Bodies, was published in Theater Magazine June 2022 issue. From 2019-2020 he curated the series Access Check 2.0: Mapping Accessibility for the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and Discourse: Disabled Artists at The Joyce for The Joyce Theater in 2021. As a model, Jerron has worked with HIMS, Rothy’s, Tommy Hilfiger, Samsung x i-D, and Nike. Other accolades: 2021 Grants to Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Dance from the Jerome Foundation. The 2021 PETRONIO Award and residency as well as a 2020 Disability Futures Fellowship by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Autumn Knight is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video and text. Knight’s video and performance work has been presented by various institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen (NY), and Performance Space New York. Knight is the recipient of the 2021-2022 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize in Visual Arts and a 2022-2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.