Artists Archive
LAURA GIBSON is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter who grew up in a small isolated logging town called Coquille, in the South Coast region of Oregon, the daughter of the town’s kindergarten teacher and a forest ranger. Gibson has had a wide-ranging performance career, ranging from two years of weekly gig at an AIDS hospice, to receiving a standing ovation from an auditorium full of prison inmates, to a 3 1/2 hour improvised performance art piece with sound artist Ethan Rose and filmmaker Ryan Jeffery as part of the 2009 Time-Based Art Festival. Over her career, she has recorded three solo albums and a joint venture with Ethan Rose, and worked with members of Calexico, The Dodos, The Decemberists, and Menomena, among others. Gibson recently released her third album, La Grande, on Barsuk records.
Learn moreMiniature raconteur Laura Heit performs some of the smallest puppet shows around. Atop matchbox stages, her uncanny micro-plays come to life with fire, hand-cranked action, and pop-up paper engineering. Heit is a filmmaker, performer, and puppeteer whose work has been seen at REDCAT, Los Angeles; MoMA, New York; Great Small Works Toy Theater Festival at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppetry; and Puppetropolis, Chicago; as well as on PBS and at international film festivals. She was co-director of the Experimental Animation program at Cal Arts until 2011.
Learn morePhoto: Sarah Marguier
Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is a Brooklyn, NY composer, musician and artist. She produces solo albums, live performances and film/art soundtracks and frequently collaborates with artists in film, music, art, dance, multi-media, activitism and poetry, such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Caroline Monnet, Michelle Latimer and Martha Colburn. She plays violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, pedal steel guitar, sings through a megaphone, and makes field recordings. Ortman’s notable performances includes venues at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, MoMA P.S. 1, Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, SF MoMA, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, The Knitting Factory, CBGB’s, St. Marks Church, Dia Art Foundation, the Wave Farm, amongst countless other established and DIY venues in the US, Canada and Western Europe.
Learn moreLauren Davis Fisher (Los Angeles, CA) works between sculpture, installation, architecture and performance. She has recently performed and exhibited at The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Performa15 (New York), Parkview (Los Angeles), MoMA PS1 (New York), Shanaynay (Paris), Chapter (New York), Disjecta (Portland), Human Resources (Los Angeles), and EMPAC at RPI (Troy, NY).
Learn moreAnderson works as a visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist. In 1980, O Superman launched Anderson’s recording career, rising to number two on the British pop charts and appearing on Big Science, the first of her many albums. Anderson has toured internationally with shows ranging from simple, spoken-word performances to elaborate multimedia events, and has collaborated with Wim Wenders, Jonathan Demme, Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, and Robert LePage, among others. In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA, and in 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
Learn moreLeila Haile is a community organizer, tattoo artist and dancer serving and celebrating the Queer and Trans Communities of Color in Portland for the last 10 years. They currently organize with Sankofa Collective Northwest, Q Center, Black Lives Matter PDX, the Disability Arts & Culture Project and tattoo at Kuroo Tattoo in SE Portland.
Learn moreBorn in Los Angeles, USA in 1979, Leilah Weinraub currently lives in New York. She is an artist and director and also CEO of the Hood By Air fashion label. Her work focuses on the themes of race, class and gender with a particular interest in queer communities and people of color.
Learn moreLeland Butler (Grand Ronde/Siletz/Yurok) is a photographer and artist. Curiosity about self, land, and people led Butler to photography a decade ago. His sophisticated and often mysterious compositions explore the duality of light and shadow. Butler is the recipient of the 2024 Indigenous Place Keeping Artist Fellowship.
Learn moreFounded in 2012 by Libby Werbel, Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA) is an investigative project focused on the lack of major contemporary and modern art institutions within a growing metropolis. PMOMA has produced more than 50 exhibitions and events within the context of a self-actualized and community-grown modern art museum.
Learn moreLigia Lewis is a dancer and choreographer. She has worked in multiple contexts, including those of the theatre and museum. Engaging with affect, empathy, and the sensate, her choreography considers the social inscriptions of the body while evoking its potentiality. Her work can be described as experientially rich and complex. Within her practice, Lewis continues to provoke the nuances of embodiment. In 2017, Lewis was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Production for her latest stage work, minor matter and was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe for her work Sorrow Swag. In 2018 she was granted a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award in the field of dance. Both her stage works minor matter (2016) preceded by Sorrow Swag (2014) continue to tour internationally. Her work has been shown at various venues and festivals including the following - Abrons Art Center/American Realness (NYC), Flax/Fahrenheit (LA), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), TATE Modern (London), Stedelijk Museum/Julidans Festival (Amsterdam), REDCAT/Pacific Standard Time (LA), and Tanz im August presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). As a dancer, Lewis has performed and toured extensively for artists including Ariel Efraim Ashbel, Mette Ingvartsen, and Eszter Salamon. She has collaborated with visual artist Wu Tsang, musical artist Twin Shadow, and with the DJ collective NON Worldwide. Ligia Lewis is currently managed and produced by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and she is a factory artist at tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf.
Learn moreIn early 2010, Holland Andrews began a solo project behind the alias of Like a Villain. She pulls her influences from notable minimalist composers such as Arvo Pärt, contemporary vocalists including Diamanda Galás, modern experimental musicians like Björk, and is heavily influenced by broadway and opera music. By creating tapestry of live loops using her voice, clarinet, and glockenspiel, her aim is to put emphasis on the roots of organic sounds, and to create an emotional realm of sonic healing and magic.
Selected Press
"Holland Andrews (HA) of Like a Villain," Cameron Clowers, Bridge.Town.Low.Down, April 11, 2010.
Selected Video
Learn moreLili Chopra, Executive Vice President and Artistic Director of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in New York City, is founder and curator of its trans-disciplinary fall festival Crossing the Line. She has extensive experience in programming, producing, and marketing international events and performance works in both France and New York. In addition to working with various festivals and independent artists as an administrator and producer, she spent four years at New York Live Arts (formerly known as Dance Theater Workshop) working closely with David White as Associate Producer and as Curator of its Gallery. She received her Masters in Theater and Performing Arts History at Paris X University, and her M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University in New York.
Learn moreLeyya Mona Tawil (Lime Rickey International) is an artist working with sound, performance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Tawil uses voice, transactive choreography, interactive surfaces, and electronics to build hybrid performances and sound compositions. Her work has been presented in over 40 cities throughout the states, Europe, and the Arab region. She was nominated for a Bessie Award in Music for Lime Rickey International’s Future Faith, commissioned by Abrons Arts Center (NYC) and KONE Foundation (Helsinki). Recent residencies and exhibitions include Wysing Art Centre/British Council (UK), Arab American National Museum/JAM3A Festival 2021, FUSEBOX Festival 2022, and the Tarek Atoui Sound Residency at Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE). As a curator/producer, Tawil is on the team of Live In America Festival, Southern Exposure Gallery, TAC (Temescal Art Center), and was also the 2020 ISSUE Project Room Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow for her NOMADIC SIGNALS series, which continues into 2022. She is the founding director of Arab.AMP.
Learn moreLinda Austin deploys movement, sound, text, visuals, and props to create non-linear, poetic works laced with an eccentric wit, teetering on the edge between the immediately reprehensible and resolutely mysterious. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Performance Works NW, a Portland non-profit dedicated to the cultivation of experimental performance. Awards include a 2019 Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship, the 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Merce Cunningham Award, and a 2015 RACC Performing Arts Fellowship. Austin has presented work at Performance Space 122, the Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, PICA’s TBA Festival, the Risk/Reward Festival, and On the Boards NW New Works Festival, among others. Her work has been supported by residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Djerassi, and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Current projects: Ordinary Devotions (solo), a world, a world (ensemble project), and The Thief & the Traveler (collaboration with Allie Hankins.)
Selected Press
"Stop Making Sense: Linda Austin's 'A Head of Time'," Bob Hicks, Oregon Arts Watch, March 26, 2011.
Learn moreOregon native and Portland resident Linda K. Johnson has been a professional dance-based, transdisciplinary artist for 40 years. Over these decades of creative practice, Johnson has taught, performed, choreographed, curated, and produced extensively, influencing and forwarding the development of infrastructure (studios and dance programs), funding (support), and conceptual networks (information and training) for professional colleagues and students. Hybrid in her practice, Johnson’s concerns as an artist are social and environmental—curious equally about both the human and nonhuman, addressing our collective relationship to site, place and community. Since creating her first site-based, large-scale interdisciplinary performance in 1992, Finding the Forest, Johnson has gone on to author over 17 major dance/movement installations, most recently Mycelium Dreams, 2022 and Polka Dots/Pioneer Square, 2020, which have utilized forests, intersections, waterways, derelict lots, neighborhoods, green spaces, warehouses, and galleries, as well as formal performance spaces, as staging grounds for presentation. A recipient of the 1999 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, Johnson’s work has been consistently funded and commissioned by public, private, and individual sources, and has received critical review in many venues, including Dance Magazine, Landscape Architecture, NPR’s Living on Earth, Oregon ArtsWatch, and Metropolis Magazine. She has been awarded residencies at the Rauschenberg Artist Residency at Captiva, Yaddo, Caldera Arts, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology to further the development of her work. She is honored to be one of six international custodians of Yvonne Rainer’s seminal postmodern dance work Trio A, and to have been included in Kristin Timken’s 2015 book The New Explorers: Making Meaning in the 21st Century American Landscape, which includes a forward by Lucy R. Lippard. Now considered a “mother tree” (from Suzanne Simard’s work on forest ecosystems) in her community, Johnson’s current practice is devoted to advancing networks of inclusion and collective memory (Mycelium Dreams).
Learn moreLisa Jarrett (she/her) is an artist working in social and visual forms. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and prisms. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions; the most urgent of which is: What will set you free? Her current work connects an interest in tracing lost histories and homelands to the Beauty Supply store and Beauty Salon as critical spaces of Black cultural production with their own sets of aesthetics, desires, and complications.
Lisa is also co-founder/director of projects like KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art); the Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice in NE Portland, OR; and the art collective Art 25: Art in the 25th Century. She is a professor at Portland State University where she teaches classes in art and social practice.
Learn moreLisa Radon makes poems that may be publication, object, essay, installation, website, performance. Her books include The Plumb and The Wave (2014), Prototyping Eutopias (2013), An Attempt at Exhausting a Place (2013), The Book of Knots (c_L, 2013), A Reading (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 2012), Sentences on Sentences on Paragraphs on Paragraphs (Publication Studio, 2011). Her work has been presented recently in solo exhibitions at Pied-à-terre, Littman Gallery, and White Box, as well as in exhibitions at Hedreen Gallery and LxWxH, and publications for MK Gallery, Disjecta, and Appendix Project Space. Radon publishes the journal EIGHTS.
Learn moreLittle people makes downtempo electronic music.
It is part beats, bleeps and snippets of other people's music... real live instrumentation.
Selected Video:
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"Marley Carroll 'First Thought, Best Thought (Little People Remix)'," XLR8R, by Melkorka Licea, April 18, 2014
"Listen to a New Jiberish Mix, Curated by Little People," HYPETRAK, by Petar Kujundzic, May 13, 2014 Learn moreLiz Harris lives and works on the Oregon Coast. She has been recording, performing, and releasing solo material under the name Grouper since 2005 on various imprints including Kranky, Type, and her own YELLOWELECTRIC. Her work is characterized by a fascination with paradox, literal and impressionistic experience of environment and human behavior. Her music compositions have been commissioned and shown across Europe and the United States, including Galerie Zdb in Portugal, the Berkeley Art Museum in California, and Issue Project Room in NYC. She has recently completed art and music residencies in Lisbon, Marfa, TX, and the Bunya Mountains, and was awarded residencies in 2014 with Signal Fire and The Ucross Foundation.
Learn morelocust is the performance brainchild of musician and composer Zeke Keeble and performer/choreographer Amy O’Neal. Since 2000, they have created Leave me Inside (2001), Left-out (2002), DEFACE (2004), convenience (TBA 2005), and mockumentary (2006). locust performs in theaters, nightclubs, galleries, and streets and has been presented in Seattle by On the Boards, the Seattle Art Museum, Experience Music Project, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle Theater Group, Bumbershoot, and Velocity Dance Center. Nationally, they have performed at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (MA), The Myrna Loy Center (MT), Joyce Soho (NYC), SUSHI Performing Arts (CA), and Bates Dance Festival (ME). locust has been described as the avant-garde garage band of the Seattle dance scene.
Learn moreLola Arias is a writer, director, performer, and songwriter from Argentina, and founder of the interdisciplinary Compañia Postnuclear. Her works include Striptease (2007), El amor es un francotirador (2007), Mi vida después (2009), Familienbande (2009), and That Enemy Within (2010). Together with Ulises Conti, she composes and plays music, and has release two albums. In 2010, Arias and Stefan Kaegi founded Ciudades Paralelas, a festival of site-specific urban performance projects in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Zurich, and Singapore. Her performances have been staged at festivals including Festival d’Avignon, In Transit Festival in Berlin, We are here in Dublin, Spielart Festival in Munich, Alkantara Festival in Lisbon, and Radicals Festival in Barcelona.
Selected Press
"An interview with Lola Arias," Brighton Festival, April 16, 2013.
Learn moreLori Goldston plays written, traditional, and spontaneous work on the cello and works as a composer, teacher, producer, bandleader, and prolific, widely varied collaborator.
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, self-described as “semi-feral,” her voice as a cellist is singular, deeply textured, and original, investigating thresholds, instability, and connections between far-flung modes of thought. She travels throughout the US and abroad, often working in artist-run spaces with an eye for bridging communities.
Well known for her work touring with Nirvana and contributing to their Unplugged In New York live album, she works prolifically and with composers, film makers, writers, theater directors, choreographers, visual artists, orchestras, and bands including Earth, BBC Scottish Symphony, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Ya Tseen, Judith Hamann, Mirah, David Byrne, Jem Finer, Jessika Kenney, Lonnie Holley, Trimpin, Stuart Dempster, Shelley Hirsch, Maya Dunietz, Michael Hurley, Chris Cochrane, Laura Cannell, Ilan Volkov, Charles Hayward, Jem Finer, Embryo, Josephine Foster, Mik Quantius, Jooklo, Ghedalia Tezartes, Senga Nengudi, Ellen Fullman, Lynn Shelton, Terry Riley, and many, many others. She’s composed and performed live scores with dozens of experimental and early silent films throughout the US, Europe, Australia, and Mexico.
Her solo and collaborative work has been released by Mississippi Records, Nyahh, Relative Pitch, Eiderdown, Yo Yo, K Records, Sub Rosa, Second Editions, Sub Pop, PIAPTK, Full Spectrum, Marginal Frequency, and Broken Clover, among others; in 2026, she will release an album on ESP-Disk.
Learn moreLo Steele is a singer, songwriter, and award winning actor and poet from Portland. Known for her frank lyrics and simple melodies, like that in her most recent single “Insecurities”, she aspires to make art “that makes people feel seen”. You may have recently seen her in the one-woman-show Queens Girl in the World at Clackamas Repertory Theatre for which she won a Drammy for “Outstanding Solo Performance”. Check out her website or follow her on social media to find out what she has been creating while in isolation.
Learn moreSince 2001 songwriter Carolyn Berk has established her unique voice as Lovers, with four acclaimed, haunted and heart-broken releases. The addition of waveform artist Kerby Ferris and multi-talented instrumentalist Emily Kingan (of the hardcore duo, The Haggard) focuses three wildly ambitious and boldly sincere artists on hooky beats and interactive performance. Their first CD release together will be available in September 2010 on the label Badman.
Selected Press
Leak: Lovers, "Figure 8," Dark Light (Badman Recording Co.), Casey Jarman, wweek.com, July 12, 2010.
Learn moreluciana achugar (b. 1970) is a latinx immigrant from Uruguay; grew up mostly in Venezuela in political exile and developed her voice as a choreographer between New York and Montevideo, Uruguay. She makes work from the rage of being a LatinAmerican living in the belly of the Empire in a post-colonial world. She makes work as a practice of growing a new body; an uncivilized body, a decolonized body, a utopian body. She makes work as a practice of building a new theater, another/other theater, OTRO TEATRO, a utopian theater. She makes work as a practice of growing as one would grow a plant. She makes work with a desire to escape the oppression of the arrow of time; to arrive at a place of beyond time, ritual time, body time…
Since 2013 she has been developing her Pleasure Practice, a deeply sensorial embodied practice to allow for other knowledges to emerge from the knowing in the body, an embodied rebellion by practicing being in pleasure; a practice that she teaches internationally and that continues to inform her creative process and her relationship to making work as resistance and as a possibility for healing and mysticism.
Her work has been shown in most contemporary dance venues in NYC and many venues across the US such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN and the Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX; as well as in a few Festivals in Europe, in Mexico, Cuba and in Uruguay. She was a two time Bessie Award recipient plus once nominated; and has received numerous accolades such as the Alpert Award in Dance, the Creative Capital Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant and the Guggenheim Fellowship.
Learn more"lucky dragons" means any recorded or performed or installed or packaged or shared or suggested or imagined pieces made by Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and/or any sometimes collaborators who claim the name.
the name "lucky dragons" is borrowed from a japanese fishing boat caught in the fallout of hydrogen bomb test at bikini atoll in the 1950's. the crew stricken ill, and the boat itself contaminated, the "lucky dragon" became a crystalizing symbol for the previously diffuse worldwide anti-nuclear sentiment. eventually the boat was painted black, renamed the "dark falcon", and put into reuse as a fishing vessel, until it was retired and disposed of on the man-made trash island "dream island", where it remains today.
lucky dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures--equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don't know why. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances--with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together--building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. It sounds--and looks--like simple and ancient patterns coming together and falling apart in a sincere attempt to let wires and screens and words become clear and crystal.
Fischbeck and Rara have presented interactive performances and installations in a wide variety of contexts--including MOCA Los Angeles, The Smell, Smithsonian's Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial), The Kitchen and PS1 in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, REDCAT and LACMA in Los Angeles, Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, ICA London, ICA Philadelphia, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
lucky dragons' sister projects include "sumi ink club"--a weekly collaborative drawing society, and "glaciers of nice"--a small press and internet community.
Learn moreLucy Cotter is an independent writer, curator and trained artist, holding a PhD in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam. A regular contributor to journals such as Mousse, Flash Art, Frieze and Third Text, her edited book Reclaiming Artistic Research was published in 2019. She was curator of the Dutch pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017, presenting artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh. Cotter was formerly director of the Master Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. She is currently based in Portland, Oregon and working on new projects that experiment with the boundaries of the artistic, the curatorial and the theoretical.
Learn moreLucy Raven was born in Tucson, Arizona in and lives in New York City and Oakland, California. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings internationally at Berlinale, Berlin (2013); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012); Whitney Biennial, New York (2012); MoMA, New York (2010); and PS1, New York (2010). Raven is a contributing editor to BOMB magazine, and her writing has appeared in Artforum, BOMB, and October. She has curated projects for the Goethe Institute, New York (2010); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2008); and was the co-creator of Bump City, a series of online documentaries for the Oakland Museum of California (2012).
Selected Press
"Lucy Raven," Jason Simon, BOMB, Fall 2012.
"Greater New Yorkers | Lucy Raven," Kevin McGarry, T Magazine, May 13, 2010.
Learn moreLuis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio was a Mexican playwright.
Learn moreLuke George is an artist working in dance and performance. He grew up in Tasmania and is based between Melbourne and Brooklyn. George makes his own performance work, as well as collaborates and performs with other artists. George has a BA from the Victorian College of the Arts and has been in the works of many artists including Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Phillip Adams BalletLab, Chunky Move and Jo Lloyd. George received Melbourne's Greenroom Award for Best Male Dancer (2011) and recently performed with the Swedish band The Knife. George’s own works have been widely presented internationally. George was the recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Awards and the Russell Page Fellowship. George collaborates across disciplines on projects in theatre, film, live-art, socially engaged practices, and in queer club nights. George also works as a dramaturge and co-curates a regular Melbourne dance and discussion night called First Run.
Selected Press
"Dance Massive: Sunstruck, NOWNOWNOW," Theatre Notes, March 20, 2011
For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Luke George, collaborator Hilary Clark, and their work, click here to view a PDF of collected reviews, interviews, articles and links. A great resource for those who really want to dive into the Festival!
Learn moreLuke Gutgsell is a Portland-based dancer and dance maker. Gutgsell graduated from The Ohio State University with a BFA in Dance and attended the Naropa Institute. Gutgsell trained on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio, and apprenticed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and Shen Wei Dance Arts. He has danced with David Dorfman Dance, Tiffany Mills Company, Risa Jaroslow, and many others throughout the United States, Australia, France, Ireland, and Poland. His choreography has been presented through Danspace Project, LaMamma Theater, Dixon Place, Teatro Merida, Ten Tiny Dances, Performance Works NorthWest, Zoomtopia / Studio 2, and Velocity Dance Center. He has been a guest artist at NYU, Connecticut College, and Reed College, as well as facilitated workshops for underserved populations throughout the five Boroughs with Risa Jaroslow and Dancers. Gutgsell is perpetually fascinated with the nuances and complexities found within improvisational forms.
Learn moreAU is the work of multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland. Begun back in 2005 while finishing up his degree from the Massachussetts College of Art, Wyland moved the band across the country to find its roots in the thriving community of Portland, Oregon. It’s now a working live band with an ever changing roster of players that currently includes Dana Valatka (Jackie-O-Motherfucker) on drums, Jonathan Sielaff (Parenthetical Girls, Nick Jaina) on guitar, clarinets and saw, and has been blessed by the help of Mark Kaylor (Hamor of Hathor, CexFucx), Becky Dawson (Saw Whet, Ah Holly Fam'ly) and Sarah Winchester (A Weather) on its recordings.
Au’s sound is vast and “deftly treads a narrow bridge between the loose-associations of the backwoods freak-folk crowd and the more formalized concoctions of art-poppers like Brian Eno.” Both on record and on stage Au “manages to erase the high art/low art boundary between American contemporary classical music and American pop music, blending them into a simple, compelling, verse-chorus celebration…[and] is the rare band that can reinvent its songs live and still manage to match their recorded quality.”
Learn moreLumi Tan is curator at The Kitchen in New York, where she organizes exhibitions and produces performances with artists across disciplines and generations. Most recently, Tan has worked with Half Straddle, Sara Magenheimer, and Sondra Perry. Previously she co-curated From Minimalism into Algorithm (2016), a year-long performance and exhibition series, as well as projects with artists including Ed Atkins, Gretchen Bender, Glasser, George Lewis, Anicka Yi, and Danh Vo and Xiu Xiu. Prior to The Kitchen, Tan was Guest Curator at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de-Calais in France, director at Zach Feuer Gallery, and curatorial assistant at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, The Exhibitionist, and numerous exhibition catalogues.
Learn moreLu Yim is based between NYC and Portland, OR. They are a choreographer, movement facilitator and poet. Yim’s work is influenced by their peers and by community care practices. They create in dialogue with embodiment practices, interested in articulations of imperceptible states. Their choreography has been shown at SculptureCenter (NY), ICA London, Center for Performance Research (NY), TBA Festival (Portland, OR), and recently at No Gallery (IL) in collaboration with sculptor Catalina Ouyang. Yim co-organizes two artist-run, queer and BIPOC centered collectives: PE and pidzn club. They were a 2019 Fellow at UCross Foundation (WY) and 2020-2021 AIR at Center for Performance Research (NYC). They have been published in interdisciplinary online publications: FormIV:Issue 12, curated by Isabel Mallet, and Ear Wave:Issue Six, curated by Jules Gimbrone.
Learn moreLydia Brawner is the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at New York’s Performa. She holds a Ph.D in Performance Studies from New York University, where she also received her M.A. She is the current assistant editor of Performa Magazine, and previously was the managing print editor of the San Francisco Arts Quarterly (SFAQ), and the reviews editor of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, New York University and the College of Staten Island, serves on the advisory committee for the Center for the Arts and Religion at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, and much of her research focuses on the place of religion and spirituality in contemporary performance.
Learn moreMack McFarland is an artist, curator, educator, and dreams of being an impresario one day. As one of the Public Art Project Manager for Regional Arts & Culture Council, Mack spends his days flexing his passion and skills for supporting artists, engaging with communities and clients, all the while advocating for the impacts art and culture have on our lives. For the last twenty years, it has been his privilege to collaborate with many cultural producers in the process of bringing to life the shared cultural experiences that are so vital for sustaining and creating communities, while aiding us in grappling with and discerning meaning from the events of our world. As an artist Mack has shared his postcards, videos, and performances at Portland Biennial- Oregon, Kaunas Biennial- Lithuania, Time Based Art Festival- Portland, OR, documenta 13- Kassel Germany, Northwest Biennial- Tacoma, WA, and many other venues and festivals. As a curator he has been fortunate to work with many artists, including commissioned projects from tactical media practitioners Critical Art Ensemble, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Disorientalism; as well as solo exhibitions with Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Joe Feddersen, David Horvitz, Joe Sacco, Cauleen Smith, and many others. In May 2020 he co-founded Congress Yard Projects with Ariana Jacob, an outdoor exhibition space begun in the time of physical distancing.
Learn moreMadison Brookshire lives in Los Angeles, CA, where he makes films, paintings, and performances. His work invites viewers to become aware of perceptual processes and the sensuous experience of time. He frequently collaborates with musicians and composers, such as Ezra Buchla, LCollective, Laura Steenberge, Mark So, and Tashi Wada.
Learn moremadison moore is an artist, cultural critic, dj and performance-maker based in London and Berlin. His work touches pop culture, queer studies, nightlife, sound, media, visual culture and contemporary art. madison holds a ph.d. in american studies from yale university and is currently an ERC funded researcher in 'Modern Moves' in the Department of English at King's College London, where he is also the Director of the Queer@King's research centre.
madison's scholarly and popular writing has been published by The Creators Project, Splice Today, Thought Catalog, Out, Aperture, Interview, Art in America, Theater, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Dancecult: the Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-songwriter. He has given invited lectures, held residencies and performed at universities, art galleries and nightclubs around the world, including King's College London, the University of Oxford, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of St. Andrews, University College London, Reed College, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, CUNY Graduate Center, the Barbican, East Bloc (london), Elektrowerkz (London) and Performance Space Sydney. His first book, The Theory of the Fabulous Class: Creativity at the Margins, will be published by Yale University Press in 2018. He is currently working on a new project on club culture and creativity as well as an EP.
Learn moreMagic Luscious Spirit Sounds (MLSS) is a non-hierarchical cross-abilities collective that aims to create an inclusive, welcoming space where people with and without disabilities can share their love for music.
We believe in the transformative power of courageously embracing imperfection. Through collaboration, we break down barriers to music, making it accesswible and available for all.
Our collective encourages creative freedom and the courage to make music in new ways. As Octavia Butler said, "The only lasting truth is change" and we actively welcome impermanence to guide our group.
We believe that everyone is a musician, every voice should be heard and valued, and there is no right or wrong way to make music.
Learn moreMalik Nashad Sharpe, also known as Marikiscrycrycry, is a choreographer and movement director known for his provocative and formally engaging performance works that address themes of violence, alienation, horror, melancholia, and the horizon. He holds a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honors from Williams College and a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography. He has received commissions and shown his work at venues and festivals across the UK, Europe, and Canada, and is currently an Associate Artist at The Place, London and a studio resident of Somerset House Studios, London. He has held artistic residencies at Sadler’s Wells, Barbican, Performance Situation Room, Dance4, Duckie, and Tate Modern. In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine and is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2022, recognized for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements. He currently lives in London and is a guest professor in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden.
Learn moreMalkia Okech is an activist, Afrofuturist, and community archaeologist. She is currently a Digital Producer for the local creative agency Mighty Engine. She is also the Associate Producer for Black Spatial Relics, an artist residency and annual convening exploring slavery, justice and freedom and has been working as a Humanities Consultant for Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Project. She is a curator in the Philadelphia Black arts collective, Bad Apple Commune. Her interests include the cross-sections of multi-modal archaeology, art, cultural heritage, and decolonization. Malkia conducts social justice work as an anti-capitalist and abolitionist with the goal of fostering radical imagination.
Learn moreSouth African dancer, choreographer, teacher and activist Mamela Nyamza acquired a National Diploma in Ballet at Pretoria Technikon and has trained in contemporary, African and pantsula dance—as well as at the Alvin Alley American Dance Center. Born in Gugulethu and educated under an oppressive Apartheid Bantu Education system, much of Nyamza’s performance work addresses the politics of the body and important political and social issues existing in modern day South Africa, notably issues of sexuality, race and gender. Awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award in Dance in 2011, her works include Hatched (2008), Amafongkong (2011), and I Stand Corrected (2013). Nyamza’s performances and collaborations have been presented in various international contexts including the USA, South Africa, Mali, Egypt, Lebanon, France and Slovenia.
Learn moreFounded in 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. Mammalian creates site and social-specific performance events, theatre-based productions, gallery-based participatory installations, video products, art objects and theoretical texts. They create work that recognizes the social responsibility of art, fostering a dialogue between audience members, between the audience and the material, and between the performers and the audience. It is their mission to bring people from across the planet together in new and unusual ways to create ideal entertainment for the end of the world. For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Mammalian Diving Reflex's projects and philosophy, click here to view a PDF of collected reviews, interviews, articles and links. A great resource for those who really want to dive into the Festival!
Learn moreManuel Solano (Mexico City, 1987): Through painting, performance and video, Manuel Solano’s work references pop culture and personal memories to inform on Manuel’s own queer identity and bittersweet experiences. After becoming blind for life in 2014 as a result of an HIV-related infection, Manuel’s rebellious nature drove him to keep making art rather than giving up his past life. He has since shown at Museo Carrillo Gil, Zona MACO and Galería Karen Huber.
Learn moreMa Qiusha was born in 1982 and currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Her work was recently featured in Personal Space, 24HR Contemporary Art Center, Australia; Landscape Topology, Magee Gallery, Beijing, China; Madrid, Spain; Anything is Possible, CCRN Luxembourg; and REFRESH: Emerging Chinese Artists at the Zendai Moma, Shanghai, China. Group exhibitions include the 35th International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2006); Rumor Décor, ddmwarehouse, Shanghai, China (2005); Beijing Documenta—Producing HIGH, Beijing, China (2005); 920 Kilograms, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (2005); Archaeology of the Future: the Second Triennial of Chinese Art, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing, China (2005); 2004 Automat Contemporary Art Exhibition, Suzhou Art & Design Technology Institute, Suzhou, China (2004); and SCARIFY—China Present Independent Video Exhibition, Beijing, China (2004). Ma Qiusha is represented by Beijing Commune in Beijing, China.
Learn moreMarbles Jumbo Radio is a dancer and movement thinker who works within performance, video, and discussion based platforms that engage experiences of social marginality with politics of place, belonging, land, and identity.
Learn moreMarc Bamuthi Joseph is an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, the winner of the 2011 Alpert Award in Theater, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. He is the founding Program Director of the exemplary non-profit Youth Speaks, and is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks through hip hop arts and focused environmental action. Mr. Joseph recently premiered the Creative Time commission “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” in New York’s Central Park, and is currently completing new works for the Chautauqua Symphony, the Philadelphia Opera and South Coast Repertory Theater while serving as Chief of Program and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His evening length piece “/peh-LO-tah/” has been commissioned by the Kennedy Center and will premiere at YBCA in the Fall of 2016.
Learn moreMarc Handelman is a painter who has worked across media including film/video, installation and book arts. His recent projects have frequently examined the strange afterlife of the genre of landscape and conceptions of “Nature” as an ongoing “assembly of political order, without due process.” Marc Handelman has exhibited extensively throughout the United States as well as internationally in such venues as PS1 MoMA in Long Island City; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rubin Museum, (all New York, NY); The Dayton Art Institute, OH; The Orlando Museum of Art, FL; and the Royal Academy of Art in London, UK. He is a graduate critic at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Rutgers University.
Learn moreMarc Matchak is a writer and project person currently based out of San Francisco, California. Recently work has been presented through lecture at S1 and appeared in print at the Litman Gallery, The New School Library, and Split/Fountain. They will be showing work this fall at HQ here in Portland.
Learn moreMarcus Fischer is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Portland, Oregon. A first-generation American artist who creates, collects, and transforms sound into immersive, layered compositions that accompany performances and exhibitions. Site-specific assemblages of exposed speakers, tape loops, and objects are characteristic of his installations, paired with melodies of restraint and tension. He has released numerous recordings—both solo and collaborative —on 12k, a label that has decisively defined and developed its own concept of minimalism in the realms of experimental and ambient music. Fischer contributed two sound works and two performances to the 2019 Whitney Biennial and has been selected for residencies at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Rauschenberg Residency, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and MacDowell. In 2024 he was awarded The Ford Family Foundation’s Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts as well as the International Music & Composition Fellowship from the Montalvo Arts Center’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program
Fischer has performed and recorded as a solo artist, as a member of Wild Card and in collaborations with artists such as Taylor Deupree, Aki Onda, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Laura Ortman + Raven Chacon, Stephen Vitiello, Calexico and Simon Scott.
Learn moreMargaret Mathewson is a scholar, teacher and basket maker, weaving traditional styles since 1980. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she did graduate work at UC Berkeley focusing on contemporary issues in the maintenance of ancestral ways among native peoples in California. She also did post-doctoral work at the Smithsonian studying old basketry collections and working with tribes to revive traditions. She continues to attend Western Native weavers’ gatherings every year and works for tribes in several states on issues of land management, access to weaving materials and ancestral food plants and on cultural resources education.
In addition, she teaches at Oregon State University and the University of Victoria, Canada, including the following courses: Native Peoples of North America, Contemporary Native Issues, Ecosystem Science of Pacific Northwest Indians, Ethnobiology, Anthropology of Art, Ancestral Technologies and Fiber Arts/Basketry Technologies.
Margaret works with museums, tribal and other, to identify basketry and to create exhibits in collaboration with tribes, focusing on Native plants and ancestral technologies. A resident of Oregon, she runs the Ancient Arts Center, a retreat and school with classes in basketry, food ways, spinning, dying and felting, hide tanning, carving, pottery, stone and bone tools and many other skills from around the world.
Her own basketry work is a mix of ancient and modern and reflects her studies of the traditions of Europe and Japan as well as North America. All her work uses natural materials.
Learn moreBorn in Cyprus, Hassabi moved to the US in 1990 and received a BFA in Performance and Choreography from the California Institute of the Arts. Since moving to New York City in 1994, she has created seven evening-length works and seven short-form pieces. Hassabi has been presented in the US at venues such as PS122 (New York), The Kitchen (New York), Dance Theater Workshop (New York), and Ballroom Marfa (Texas). Internationally, she has been featured at festivals in Austria, Spain, Russia, France, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ 2009 Grants to Artists Award.
Selected Press
Playing Connect the Dots, From Aphrodite to Lil’ Kim, Gia Kourlas, New York Times, November 13, 2009.
Learn moreMariana Valencia | Photo credit Ian Douglas
Mariana Valencia, (creator/performer) has held residencies at Chez Bushwick (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), ISSUE Project Room (2015) and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2016-18). Nationally, she has held residencies at Show Box LA and Pieter Pasd (2014) in Los Angeles; and was part of PICA’s 2018 Creative Exchange Lab. Valencia is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient (2018), a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow (2014-15), a Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation grant recipient (2010-13) and a Movement Research GPS/Global Practice Sharing artist (2016/17). Her ethnographic research has taken her to Belize, Mexico and the Balkans and she has performed in works by Jules Gimbrone, Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, AK Burns, Em Rooney, robbinschilds, Kim Brandt, Fia Backstrom and MPA. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). She holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006).
Learn moreMariano Pensotti (Buenos Aires 1973) is an Argentine author and theater director. He studied cinema, visual arts and theater in Buenos Aires, Spain and Italy. He is a graduated from Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Rogelio Yrurtya (Buenos Aires) and was a fellow studient at Casa de América (Madrid) and La Loggia CISD (Italy). In theater, as an author and director, he created more than fifteen performances in the past ten years.
Among his latest creations are Cineastas (Filmmakers) (2013) premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels) and presented in Wiener Festwochen, HAU Berlin, Holland Festival and Theaterformen, El Pasado es un animal grotesco (The past is a grotesque animal) (2010/2012) premiered at Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires and presentd at Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Festival de Otoño (Madrid), Theaterformen (Hannover), Hebbel am ufer (Berlin), Auabirlewen (Bern), Norwich & Norfolk Festival (England), Kampnagel Festival (Hamburg), Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zürich), Tempo Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Fiac (Bahia), Rotterdamse Schowburg (Rotterdam), Frascati Theater (Amsterdam). Sometimes I think I can see you (2010/2011) premiered in Berlin at Hebbel am Ufer as part of Ciudades Paralelas Festival and presented in Buenos Aires, Cologne, Brussels, Zürich, Warsaw, Salamanca, Copenhage, Helsinki, Girona and Paris. Encyclopaedia of unlived lives (2010) premiered at Schauspielhaus Graz (Austria) and presented during Steirischer Herbst Festival and La Marea (2005/2011) premiered at the V Buenos Aires International Festival and later on invited to the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Hebbel am Ufer Theater (Berlin), Homo Novus Festival (Riga), Dublin Festival (Ireland), Festival Automne en Normandie (Rouen), Carrefour International de Théâtre (Québec), Festival Transamériques (Montréal), Yokohama (Japan), Festival Temporada Alta (Girona), Norfolk & Norwich Festival (England), Metropolis Copenhague (Denmark) and Push Festival (Vancouver).
Pensotti has become one of the most noted experimental directors throughout the world. He has been heralded as one of Latin America’s brightest theater talents and he and his company tour extensively throughout the year.
He formed the Grupo Marea together with set designer Mariana Tirantte.
For his work he received several awards worldwide. His texts has been published and translated to more than twenty languages. In his work he developed two different lines, one composed by stage performances where he write his own very literary texts and the play is strongly based in the work with the actors, and in paralell he produced several site specific performances where the main intention is to create a particular contrast in between fiction and reality with fiction placed in public places.
Selected Press
"Macklin Kowal interviews Mariano Pensotti," Macklin Kowal, THE OFFCENTER, February 16, 2012.
Learn moreMarina Abramović was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1946. A pioneer of performance as a visual art form, Abramović has used her body as both subject and medium of her performances to test her physical, mental, and emotional limits—often pushing beyond them and even risking her life—in a quest for heightened consciousness, transcendence, and self-transformation. Characterized by endurance and pain—and by repetitive behavior, actions of long duration, and intense public interactions and energy dialogues—her work has engaged, fascinated, and sometimes repelled live audiences. The universal themes of life and death are recurring motifs, often enhanced by the use of symbolic visual elements or props such as crystals, bones, knives, tables, and pentagrams. While the sources of some works lie in her personal history (the circumstances of her childhood and family life under Communist rule in the former Yugoslavia), others lie in more recent and contemporary events, such as the wars in her homeland and other parts of the world. Marina Abramović attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade (1965–70) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (1970–72). She received an honorary doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago (2004). She has also received many other honors, including a Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997); a Bessie (2003); and awards from the International Association of Art Critics (2003, 2007). Abramović has had major exhibitions and performances at the Garage Art Center, Moscow (2011); Manchester International Festival (2011); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2001); Irish Museum of Modern Art (2001); Documenta (1977, 1982, 1992); and the Venice Biennale (1976, 1997, 2009). Marina Abramović lives and works in New York City. -From Art21.
Learn moremario lemafa (b. 1990 / Hawai'i) is an artist and independent organizer based in Seattle, WA. their recent work includes presentations at the '19 Honolulu Biennial, SOIL Gallery, cogean?, and yəhaw̓ at King Street Station.
“when i was a child my mother used to like a certain Suave shampoo, "Tropical Breeze" (i believe it was called). it reminded her of home. nothing in the shampoo bottle reflected her material relation to the islands. while she wore a scent to remember a place, others might wear the same one with the desire to some day go there. i still think about that.”
Learn moreMarius Libman has a diverse work experience in the field of design and motion graphics, and currently holds the position of a Senior Product Designer and manager of the Design team at Elevate Labs. Libman also has a background in motion design and electronic music composition.
Learn moreMark Russell is a writer and cartoonist living in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of God Is Disappointed in You and has written several acclaimed comic book series, including the DC reboot of The Flintstones, Second Coming, and Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, which won the 2019 GLAAD Award for Outstanding Comic.
Learn moreMarne Lucas aka CuntemporaryArtist is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist based in Harlem, New York, using photography, video and installation to present unique aesthetic or social philosophies. Central to her practice are investigations of nature, culture, and the body, working in conceptual overlaps: life’s energy, the environment, beauty, identity, intimacy and mortality. Lucas’ current social practice project ‘Bardo’ explores creativity as a form of spiritual palliative care, collaborating with hospice patients. Towards this project she is training to be a certified end-of-life doula, a role acting as liaison to the dying.
An experimental filmmaker, her recent black & white infrared videos Haute Flash (2017), Mālama ‘Āina (WIP), and previous collaborations with Jacob Pander, Incident Energy (2013), ‘The Operation’ (1995) use military imaging technology to reference surveillance culture and the fragility of human existence. Lucas’ long-term social practice project ‘Bardo’ explores creativity as a form of spiritual palliative care; collaborating with hospice patients. Towards this project she is training to be a certified end-of-life doula, a role acting as liaison to the dying.
Marne is known for stylistic photographic portraiture in ongoing artist portrait series ‘Sitting City’ and MLSP, a self-portraiture series since 1995, share a similar process and aesthetic. Her elaborate Eco-Baroque installations made from recycled or natural materials, express an eco-based spirituality and include installation and land art.
Lucas has received Regional Arts & Culture Council project grants, participated in a 2016 Arts/Industry Kohler Co. factory residency (Foundry, Pottery), the Land Art Mongolia 360 Residency + Biennial, a 2012 CentralTrak experimental film residency, the Portland2010 Oregon Biennial, and made a public art commission for 'PSU Smith Memorial Student Union Public Art + Residency Projects: State of Oregon for Art Program' (2009). Her artist collective Blinglab (co-founded with Bruce Conkle) performed a long-form puppet show at PICA T.B.A. 2007 “The Untold Misadventures of Lewis and Clark”. She is co-founder of the feminist artist collective Cuntemporary Artists Presents.
Her recent film Haute Flash is part of ‘Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science’ (2018) a video exhibition and lecture series at Space Plus (Lincoln, U.K.) Peltz Gallery (London), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain, and Sala Borsa, Bologna, Italy.
Learn moreDancepod was an architectural installation that housed live-streamed dance parties in four cities simultaneously, Portland OR, Mexico City, Berlin, and New York. It was the first exploration of concepts laid out in the Swells performance/lecture.
Learn moreMaster Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is Black, Italian, Queer, Non-Binary, Neurodyvergent, and practices primarily in america. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people.
Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. In 2019 they developed the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School which has had many forms since, including Afro Futurist February, and three years of Fred Hampton Summer Camp. Supporting community efforts as well, taking the shape of support for the effort to Save Dr. Martin Luther King School from being displaced by the expansion of Interstate 5 which has triggered the need to move Harriet Tubman Middle School. Stevenson is currently working in the Albina community to develop a Living Archive at Jefferson High School with students, community, and the architectural design team. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, projects involving sculpture, drawing, and photography, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks. These include Tin Can Phone, a podcast all about life in and outside of prison, and Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project both of which are owned and operated by formerly incarcerated individuals. Stevenson pursues these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people and communities are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Learn moreMath Bass (Los Angeles, CA) received her MFA from UCLA. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY (2015); and Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2014). Exhibitions of Bass’s work have been presented by Cooper Union, New York, NY (2015); Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany (2015); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2014); White Flag Projects, Saint Louis, MO (2014); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY (2014); Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden (2014); and Silberkuppe, Berlin, Germany (2014).
Learn moreMatthew Day Jackson (born 1974) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, painting, collage, photography, drawing, video,performance and installation. Since graduating with an MFA from Rutgers University in 2001, following his BFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, he has had numerous solo exhibitions. His work has been shown at MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, Colorado; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA; the Portland Museum of Art Biennial in Portland, Maine; and the Whitney Biennial Day for Night in New York.
Learn moreMatt Keegan is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. At the root of his varied practice is a strong interest in language--as it relates to cognition as well as its centrality for communication and exchange. Keegan has employed familiar phrases in recent sculpture to highlight the materiality of language and translate open-ended phrases into iconic signage. An ardent archivist and amateur social historian, Keegan has recently begun making short documentary videos that are significant components of his exhibitions. Foundational to his archival interests, Keegan was the co-founding editor of North Drive Press, an annual art publication published between 2004-2010. Last spring, he edited ==, an art edition featuring commissioned texts, interviews and multiples, published by mfc michéle didier.
Most recently, Keegan had a solo exhibition at Galeria Pedro Cera in Lisbon, and a two-person exhibition, with Eileen Quinlan, at The Kitchen, New York. Over the last two years, his work has been featured at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, The Art Institute of Chicago, SculptureCenter, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Aspen Art Museum. Keegan will have a two person show with James Richards at the Rogaland Kunstsenter in Stavanger, Norway, in early 2014.
Learn moremaximiliano is ⅓ of rise x fall
mononymously named, maximiliano, is a conceptual artist working in BLKwvv, a generative multimedia mythos: a Black reclamation rococo aesthetic and agenda based in exploring and expanding the multiplicity and fluidity of the Black self through pleasure, desirability, innocence, and imagination as performance, video, GIF, sculpture, thought, and publications.
Learn moreMaxx Katz is a composer, musician, and performance maker based in Portland, OR, whose work draws on vocabulary from free improvisation, performance art, jazz, contemporary classical, and heavy metal. A classically trained flutist with an MA in Music from the University of Virginia, Katz uses flute, electric guitar, voice, and movement as instruments of radical transformation.
They have toured extensively across the US, Europe, and Canada as part of various collaborative and solo projects. Katz was a resident at the 2019 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music with Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey, and Atlantic Center for the Arts with flutist Nicole Mitchell. They compose work for ongoing ensembles including Yelling Choir and Floom.
Katz has been commissioned by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, and has created work in collaboration with musicians and dancers including Tyshawn Sorey, Linda Austin, Tahni Holt and Muffie Delgado-Connelly, John Niekrasz, Julian Otis, lauren jean crow, and Eddie Bond.
Their Yelling Choir project has debuted compositions at the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, the American Choral Directors Association Northwest Conference, Congress Yard Projects, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and ACRE Residency. They have led Yelling Choir workshops at Banff and ACRE as well as Portland State University, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education teen and young adult meditation retreats, and Portland Public Schools.
Learn more"Maya Beiser treats her concert programs as expansive, evening-length compositions... deep and rich, with a lush vibrato, Ms. Beiser's rich-hued tone singing out from within a bed of sound loops ranged from the insistently rhythmic to the meltingly lyrical..." – The New York Times
"Beiser combines the best of two worlds. She is a classically trained cellist with the technical and interpretive resources to draw whatever kind of music she wishes from her instrument." – The Chicago Sun-Times
“With virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrument to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello.” – The Boston Globe
The New Yorker magazine once referred to Maya Beiser as "the cello goddess.” The Israeli-born cellist is equal parts glamour, passion, and musical artistry of the highest level, and she brings it all to everything she does – from her collaborations with Steve Reich, to her work with Brian Eno and Shirin Neshat, to her stage shows at BAM and other prestigious venues around the world. Maya captivates audiences with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instrument’s boundaries. Beiser is a graduate of Yale University, a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and a featured performer on the world’s most prestigious stages from Lincoln Center to London’s South Bank Centre. Her next recording, Uncovered, will be released in August 2014.
Learn moreMaya Mikdashi (TBA:16 Guest Scholar) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her current research/manuscript focuses on law, citizenship, secularity, religious conversion, sexual difference, and the war on terror. She has been a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014-2016 at Rutgers University, and a Faculty Fellow/Director of Graduate Studies, Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University (2012-2014). She has published widely in journals including International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Study of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. She is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya.com, co-director of the feature length documentary About Baghdad (2004) and co- founding member of filmmaking cooperative Quilting Point Productions. A film she co-conceptualized and co-wrote with Carlos Motta, Deseos, is screening at the 2016 TBA Festival.
Learn moreMaya Vivas is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums, such as ceramic, performance, painting, and installation. Maya has exhibited work, spoken on panels, and hosted workshops throughout the United States, including venues and institutions such as The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Louisiana State University, and Yale. Vivas is also co-founder of Ori Gallery. Whose mission is to redefine "the white cube" through amplifying the voices of Queer and Trans Artists of color, community organizing and mobilization through the arts
Maya is a 2022/3 Golden Spot Residency awardee.
Learn moreMEGA*CHURCH is a modern spiritual congregation exploring light, music, movement and pixels. A journey into a hybrid of technology and spirituality, the divine natural and the holy artificial, entertainment and sacrament. Audiovisual spectacles of spirituality. A hypergospel for a new world.
Learn moreStuart received her BFA in dance from NYU and was a member of the Randy Warhaw Dance Company for five years. On invitation from the Klapstuk Festival in Leuven in 1991, she created her first full-length piece, Disfigure Study. In 1994 Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods began a series of collaborations with visual artists, including Lawrence Malstaf, Gary Hill, and Ann Hamilton. Together with choreographer/dancer Benoît Lachambre and composer Hahn Rowe—both honored with Bessie Awards—Stuart created Forgeries, Love, and Other Matters.
Learn moreMeg Whiteford writes books and makes theater. Her writing on visual art and performance has appeared in Artforum, Aperture, and X-TRA. She is the author of The Shapes We Make With Our Bodies (Plays Inverse, 2015), the Curator's Choice for the 2017 BAM Next Wave Festival Reading Room, and Callbacks (&Now and Northwestern U. Press, 2018), recipient of the 2016 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Prize. She has performed at Pieter, PAM, REDCAT, Machine Project, Coaxial, and Project Utopia. She is currently the managing editor of the Art Book Review and teaches dance and performance theory and history. Her ballet, Overture, a response to the drawings of artist Beau Rhee, will be published with Gravel Projects this fall. She is interested in creating wild rides.
Learn moreWolfe’s work has been presented at venues including REDCAT, Live Arts Exchange Festival, FRESH Festival, the New Original Works Festival, Off Center Festival/Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s, Dia Center for the Arts, The Kitchen, The Living Theater, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has performed in the works of Vicky Shick, Jérôme Bel, Molissa Fenley, Clarinda Mac Low, and Susan Rethorst. Wolfe has had residencies at REDCAT, Performance Works NorthWest, the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Program, and the Hothouse Residency program at UCLA, among others. She is the founder and director of Show Box L.A., and was a founding co-editor of itch dance journal.
Learn moreMelanie Flood (b.1979, NY) is an artist living and working in Portland, OR. Her practice employs photography as a tool for examining how femininity is constructed, commodified, and performed.
Flood has exhibited at Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Friend of a Friend, Denver, CO; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; ILY2, Portland, OR; Ruschwoman, Chicago, IL; and Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR. She has received support from the Oregon Arts Commission, The Ford Family Foundation, and Regional Arts and Culture Council. From 2008 to 2023, she directed Melanie Flood Projects, an artist-run exhibition space established in Brooklyn, NY. Flood holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Portland State University, Portland, OR. Flood teaches photography in the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design.
Learn moreMelia Donovan lives and works in Beaverton, Oregon.
Learn moreMelissa Levin joined the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) in 2005 and is currently the Director of Cultural Programs. She is responsible for planning and programming LMCC’s Artist Residency Programs, the River To River Festival, Open Studios, and the Gallery in the Arts Center at Governors Island. Throughout more than a decade working in the arts, Melissa has been committed to innovative and holistic approaches to supporting artists and the creative process. Previous to LMCC, Melissa held positions at Andrea Rosen Gallery, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Artforum International Magazine. She has participated in panel discussions and served on juries at the National Endowment for the Arts, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, the Alliance of Artist Communities, Rhode Island School of Design, Baruch College, Lower East Side Print Shop, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts; and lectured at the Drew University, University of Oregon in Eugene, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, New York University, Parsons: The New School for Design, and The Cleveland Institute of Art. As an indepedent curator and writer, Melissa has also worked with venues including MoMA PS1, Real Art Ways in Hartford, Culturehall.com, NurtureArt, Cuchifritos Gallery, ISE Cultural Foundation, Andrea Rosen Gallery, and Taylor De Cordoba Gallery in Los Angeles. Melissa received her B.A. with honors in Visual Art and Art History from Barnard College.
Learn morePost-post-modern diva Meow Meow’s unique brand of ‘kamikaze cabaret’ and performance art exotica has hypnotised, inspired and terrified audiences globally. The spectacular crowd-surfing queen of song ‘drags cabaret kicking and screaming into the 21st century’ (Time Out NY), with trail-blazing sell-out seasons from New York's Lincoln Center and Berlin's Bar Jeder Vernunft to London’s Apollo Theatre, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Sydney Opera House.
Named a ‘cabaret diva of the highest order’ (New York Post), ‘SENSATIONAL’ (The Times UK), One of the Top Performers of the Year by The New Yorker, ‘The Queen of Chanson’ by the Berliner Zeitung and ‘a Phenomenon’ by the Australian press, multi-award winning Meow's works have been curated by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov amongst others, and she has created original works for numerous international arts festivals and venues as well as performing everything from Schubert and Schumann with orchestra to touring with punk outfit Amanda Palmer and The Dresden Dolls.
Meow starred recently on London's West End in Kneehigh Theatre and Michel Legrand's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and in her own solo concerts at the legendary Apollo Theatre. She had a sensational 21 show season of the Malthouse Theatre/Sydney Festival commissioned Meow Meow's Little Match Girl at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre in December and performed Cocteau's piece for Piaf, Le Bel Indifferent, for the Greenwich Music Festival U.S. She has won numerous Green Room Awards, Helpmann Theatre Awards, Sydney Theatre Critics, the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize, and the New York Franklin Furnace Performance Art Award amongst others.
Meow has just had her debut with The London Philharmonic under Maestro Jurowski as Jenny in Brecht/Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper in Paris Theatre des Champs-Elysees and London Royal Festival Hall. She joins the London Philharmonic again in July for further UK performances. She most recently sold out her Lincoln Center American Song Book Series concert and toured the concert halls of Australia with Barry Humphries and the Australian Chamber Orchestra in a programme of lost and re-found works from Weimar Germany in the 1920's. With long-time adored collaborator Pink Martini's Thomas M Lauderdale she has written and recorded the album Here Kitty Kitty ...The lost sessions, due for release in 2013. Meow's albums Vamp and Songs from a Little Match Girl, are available on iTunes.
Selected Press
"A Freewheeling Trot Around the Globe," Stephen Holden, The New York Times, April 1, 2013.
"Meet the Queen of Kamikaze Cabaret," David Hajdu, The New Republic, April 11, 2013.
Learn moreMere Tokorahi Boynton is a multitalented performance artist, singer, actor, and MC. She has had formal training in voice and developed her own unique style of performing that draws upon classical training and her Māori heritage.
Some of her most memorable singing engagements to date have been performing in Gareth Farr’s Te Papa, which was composed for the opening of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; singing and touring nationwide in the dance opera Jerusalem by Michael Parmenter; singing in the film Te Tangata Whairawa o Weneti (The Māori Merchant of Venice); and singing the lead role Taranga in ‘Maui One Man Against the Gods’ (2006). Boynton also performed with the avant-garde theater company MAU at the Vienna Mozart Festival in Requiem (2006) which was commissioned by Artistic Director Peter Sellars for the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart. Requiem was also presented in Brussels, Auckland, London and New York. In 2008 she performed in the NZIAF opera production ‘The Trial of the Cannibal Dogs’ by composer Matthew Suttor, and also performed in Ex Stasis by Gareth Farr and The Three Cornered Hat by Manuella de Falla with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
In 2013 Boynton sang in Jack Body’s Songs and Dances of Desire with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for the Auckland Arts Festival and Tokyo, Japan. Also that year, she performed again with MAU in the acclaimed all Māori women production Stones in Her Mouth and I Am a commemoration of the First World War Centenary WW100 in Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In 2021 she collaborated with composer Gareth Farr and taonga puoro (Māori musical instruments) artist Ariana Tikao to compose and perform Ngā Hihi o Matariki with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
In 2005 Boynton released her album Waikohu, which is a collaboration with composer/percussionist Gareth Farr; this recording features an eclectic range of compositions which have been given different vocal and musical treatments, from kapahaka (cultural performance) to classical string quartet with karanga (call of welcome). Her next album release was Aroha/Ahava at the Auckland Arts Festival 2015, a collaboration with composer Jonathan Besser which explores the expression of aroha (love).As an actor she is well known for her portrayal of the character Mavis in Once Were Warriors and has also performed in several other films for cinema and television including The Piano and more recently the full feature Deadlands, Hinekura, a short film in te reo Māori, (Māori language), Colonial Combat a television series in te reo Māori and The Untold Tales of Tūteremoana also in te reo Māori. Most recently, she acted in the acclaimed Witi’s Wāhine, a theater work written and directed by Nancy Brunning for the Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival.
Learn moreMoroccan choreographer and dancer Meryem Jazouli has lived and worked in Casablanca since 1997. After pursuing dance studies and performing for several companies in Paris, Jazouli returned to her home country where her artistic work has been strongly influenced by the Moroccan context. She has worked extensively with collaborators in various disciplines, such as Mouna Sekkat, Bernardo Montet, Ambrose Bye and the visual-arts collective La Source du Lion. Works include: Temps de chien (2006), Keima…un cir à la mère (2009), Entre deux (2012), and Contessa (2013). Among other community-oriented initiatives, Jazouli established L’Espace Darja, a space in Casablanca dedicated to creation, artist residencies, training and experimentation in contemporary dance as well as a space to develop and expand exchanges and dialogues between artists of various disciplines and generations.
Learn moreMia Habib (b. 1980, Houston, Texas) is an Oslo-based dancer, performer, and choreographer working at the intersection of performance, exhibitions, publications, lectures, teaching, mentoring, and curating. Her work is described as holding a critical cultural perspective on body, identity, society, and dance. She engages in labs and research with a variety of specialists including artists, scientists, and political activists.
Habib has collaborated internationally with Jassem Hindi, Guilherme Garrido, Steinunn Ketilsdottir, Julie Nioche, Rani Nair, Brynjar Bandlien, Monica Gillette, keyon gaskin, Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson, and Tommy Noonan. She danced with Carte Blanche, The Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance, from 2017-2018, for whom she also made the commissioned work, Gjallarhorn (2016).
Habib has been an associated artist of Dance House Oslo, co-initiated the artist network Sweet & Tender Collaborations, and is a former member of the board of The Norwegian Opera and Ballet. She holds an M.A in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from Tel Aviv University, and a B.A. in Choreography and Dance Pedagogy from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
Habib’s work has been presented: LaMaMaMoves!, Tanz im August, Dance House Oslo, Aerowaves 2015, Black Box Theatre Oslo, BIT Teatergarasjen, Theatre Freiburg, Tanzhaus nrw Dusseldorf, Spielart Festival, Gotheborg Dance and Theatre festival, On Marche Festival Marrakech, I'TRÔTRA Festival Antananarivo, and Keðja Reykjavík.
Learn moreMia Imani is an international interdisciplinary artivist (art + activist) and arts writer based in Berlin, Germany. She creates and curates liminal spaces that invite Black and Brown communities to heal individual and communal trauma through conscious (daydreaming, visualization) and subconscious (lucid, REM sleep) dreaming. These works aim to center the agency of marginalized communities and use dreams as a portal to manifest alternative past(s), present(s), and future(s). She received her BA in media communications studies from the University of Washington and is completing her master’s degree in North American Culture and Literature studies at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany.
Learn moreMic Capes is a hip hop artist from Portland, OR that represents the North Portland neighborhood, St.Johns. Capes is known for having vivid story telling ability, raw lyricism, and thought provoking social commentary as key components of his music. He released his debut solo album "Rise & Grind" and made a huge impact on the local hip hop scene and now gearing up for his highly anticipated sophomore offering "Concrete Dreams", slated to drop in 2015. He is a member of the Portland hip hop supergroup The Resistance of FRSH TRB.
Learn moreMichael Crowe is a writer and an artist. His diverse work has been featured in press internationally including Associated Press, BBC, the New Yorker, The Smithsonian and Financial Times Deutschland. He has exhibited in galleries including FRAC Paris, Simultanhalle in Cologne, Nottingham Contemporary and Kunsthalle St. Gallen in Switzerland. He's given talks at the New Museum New York, BFI London and taught at Tate Britain and the Camden Arts Centre. Michael's most frequent collaborator is Lenka Clayton, with whom he writes Mysterious Letters, an attempt to write a handwritten letter to everyone in the world.
Learn moreReinsch is a multidisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon, where he earned his MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2009. His work incorporates performance and activated sculptural props to explore human connection and disconnection, often through themes of celebration and melancholy.
Learn moreGroisman integrates visual art and physical games, devising wearable equipment to be used in various performances and interactive public encounters. He attended Uni-Rio Music College and has received art research scholarships from several Brazilian institutions, including Rioarte (2004), Vitae (2002), and Uniarte da Faperj (2000). His work has been shown in both performance festivals and museum settings, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; II Bienal, Lima, Peru; Festival de La Batiê, Geneva; and the In Transit Festival, Berlin. Since 2004, he has partnered with artist Gabriela Duvivier to develop collaborative projects.
Michel Groisman’s presentation was made possible by the Performing Americas Program (PAP), a partnership between the National Performance Network (NPN) and the Network of Cultural Promoters of Latin America and the Caribbean (La RED) designed to increase artistic exchange in the Western Hemisphere. Performing Americas Program is supported by the NPN with funding provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.
Learn moreMichelle Boulé is a NYC-based dance artist. Her work explores the intersections of traditional and contemporary healing practices with dance and aesthetic form, to create aesthetically enlivened experiences for the potential of what and who we are.
Boulé has received commissions and presentations from The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, Triple Canopy, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Summer Stages Dance @ICA Boston, River to River Festival, American Realness, The Met Breuer (with Okkyung Lee), and ISSUE Project Room. Recent awards include: Distinguished Legacy Award from the University of Illinois, New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, Boekelheide Creativity Award, Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant, and residencies from LMCC’s Extended Life Dance Development Program, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis Center, Movement Research, and Dance Ireland. She is a “Bessie” Award winning performer, having collaborated with Miguel Gutierrez (2001-16), Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, and Deborah Hay. She teaches internationally and maintains a healing practice.
Learn moreMichelle Ellsworth co-mingles technology, carpentry, and quilting with dance in an attempt to choreograph high-functioning coping strategies for geopolitical (and personal) phenomena. Ellsworth is currently making a 7-inch recording with drummer Sean Meehan, creating a new dance for wood camera and starting her next quilt, Quilt Complex #9. Among her honors are a Doris Duke Impact Award (2015), Creative Capital Fellowship (2013), Doris Duke Building Demand for the Arts Grant (2014), a NEFA National Dance Project Grant (2014), and an NPN Creation Fund Grant.
Learn moreMickey Pollizatto is a queer artist, musician, sound collaborator and dancer. They spent their earlier years in Portland creating music as the drag character Cabiria Jones, in the bands caught in candy and later CJ & The Dolls. From 2004-2013, they have contributed to Portland’s TBA festival, toured Europe, and the United States multiple times and later with Portland artists Carla Rossi, The Pepper Pepper and Jen Hackworth. They also contributed to Portland’s Risk/Reward and Dance+.
In recent years, they have provided sound and stage support for The Pepper Pepper’s productions, including Diva Practice: Duet and Solo. They also contribute as a dancer and music producer for Weighted Bodies, a fat forward dance troupe. Currently Mickey cohosts, produces and edits “What The Q,” a podcast exploring queer culture by inviting queer identified guests to have open discussions about the queer identity. Moving forward they hope to collaborate more with queer, fat and femme artists, specifically in the areas of music, dance, comedy, drag & outreach.
Learn moreMidori Hirose (b. Hood River, OR) is a Japanese American interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR.
In Hirose’s work, physical objects and materials are interchangeable with community bonds, recognizing space as a necessary part of the generative process through collaborations, historical narrative, perception (physiological and psychological), and storytelling.
Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, and Disjecta Contemporary Art Center (now called Oregon Contemporary) for the Portland Biennial. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at The Lumber Room in Portland, OR; East/West Project, Berlin, Germany; Newberg Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland; and Fylkingen, Stockholm, Sweden.
Learn moreMiguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator, and advocate who has lived in New York for over twenty years. He is fascinated by the time-based nature of performance and how it creates an ideal frame for phenomenological questions around presence, meaning-making, and the complexity of interiority. His work proposes an immersive state, where attention itself becomes a material that can be manipulated, stretched, strained, or dived into. He believes in an approach to art making that is fierce, fragile, empathetic, political, and irreverent.
In recent years he has been occupied with thinking about how he negotiates his queer, Latinx identity within the traditions of the white avant-garde. This led to This Bridge Called My Ass, a piece that bends tropes of Latinidad to identify new relationships to content and form. The piece premiered in 2019 at The Chocolate Factory as part of American Realness Festival and tours throughout 2019 and 2020 to a host of venues.
He has been presented in more than 60 cities around the world, in venues such as at Centre National de Danse, Centre Pompidou, Festival Universitario, ImPulsTanz, Fringe Arts, Walker Art Center, TBA/PICA, MCA Chicago, Live Arts Bard, American Realness, and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He has received support from Creative Capital, MAP, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, and Jerome Foundation. He has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, the Tides Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, an award from Foundation for Contemporary Art, a 2016 Franky Award from Prelude Festival, and four Bessies. He is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist. Other recent work includes Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us), a commission for Ballet de Lorraine inspired by the May '68 French protests. With Ishmael Houston-Jones he co-directed Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd, which received a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Revival. He has been an artist in residence at MANCC, LMCC, Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier, Centre National du Danse Pantin, Baryshnikov Art Center, and Gibney. He has created music for several of his works, for Antonio Ramos’ work, and with Colin Self for Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony. He performs with Nick Hallett as Nudity in Dance. He also currently performs a music project called SADONNA: sad versions of upbeat Madonna songs.
His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press. His essays have been published in A Life in Dance (ed. Rebecca Stenn and Fran Kirmser), In Terms of Performance: A Keywords Anthology (ed. Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola) and his essay “Does Abstraction Belong To White People” was recently published on Bomb’s website. He is currently developing a new TV show with his sister, Margarita Gutierrez, called “Boca,” about a father’s brain trauma and its effects on his immigrant family.
He has taught regularly at a variety of festivals and intensives such as Forum Dança, La Caldera, ImPulsTanz, Camping/CND, SFADI, Lion’s Jaw, American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, MELT at Movement Research, Earthdance, Danza Común, New Aesthetics, Performatica, and Ponderosa and he has been a Visiting Guest Professor at several universities including DOCH, Konstfack, P.A.R.T.S., Bennington College, Hollins University’s MFA Dance Program, School of Art Institute of Chicago’s Low Res MFA Art Program, Yale University’s MFA Program in Sculpture, RISD, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA, Princeton University, CalArts, University of Illinois, The New School/Eugene Lang, New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing, Hunter College, and many more. He is the program director for LANDING, a peer to peer network, non-academic educational initiative at Gibney. He invented DEEP AEROBICS in 2007, disseminated it for ten years, and then killed it in 2017. He is also a Feldenkrais Method® practitioner.
Learn moreGutierrez is a New York-based dance and music artist who makes solo and group pieces with a variety of artists under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. His work has toured internationally to festivals and venues including American Realness Festival in New York; Festival d’automne à Paris; Antipodes Festival in Brest, France; Out There Festival at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; UNAM in Mexico City; and ImPulsTanz in Vienna. He is the winner of three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards.
Learn moreMika Tajima is a New York-based artist who employs sculpture, painting, media installation, and performance in her conceptual practice. In 2003, she co-founded New Humans, a collaborative group including then-artists Eric Tsai and her now-husband Howie Chen to make works involving sound, installation, and performance actions. New Humans is a moniker for Mika Tajima's projects with other musicians, artists and designers.
Learn moreMike Barber has performed as a dancer in Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Portland. He performed on Broadway in Bill Irwin’s Largely New York, was a member of the Pat Graney Company in Seattle, co-directed Portland’s aero/betty aerial dance theater, and has also danced with the Gregg Bielemeier Dance Project, Oslund + Co/Dance, and Minh Tran and Dancers. Since 2002, Mike has produced and appeared in 35 iterations of the performance series Ten Tiny Dances, for which he is the Artistic Director and Founder. He currently works with adolescents and artists as a psychotherapist in Portland.
Learn moreMike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His controversial work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, was recognized as one of the year’s best theater pieces by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, San Jose Mercury News, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.
This fall he will premiere All the Faces of the Moon, a 29-night epic monologue performed over an entire lunar month, at the Public Theater in New York City. That work will be available for free online for people around the world to listen and watch as the story unfolds. At more than forty hours, All the Faces of the Moon will be the largest piece of sustained theatrical narrative since the 13th century medieval mystery plays.
As a playwright, his transcript of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was downloaded over 100,000 times in the first week it was made available. Under a revolutionary open license it has seen more than sixty productions around the world and been translated into six languages. The first Chinese production opened last year in Beijing, and will tour to Hong Kong and Shenzhen this year.
Since his first monologue in 1997, Daisey has created over fifteen monologues, including the critically-acclaimed The Last Cargo Cult, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the twenty-four-hour feat All the Hours in the Day, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, the four-part epic Great Men of Genius, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years.
He has performed in venues on five continents, ranging from Off-Broadway at the Public Theater to remote islands in the South Pacific, from the Sydney Opera House to an abandoned theater in post-Communist Tajikistan. He’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, the Late Show with David Letterman, a longtime host and storyteller for The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The Daily Beast, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. In a brief, meteoric career with This American Life, his two shows are the most listened to and downloaded episodes of that program’s eighteen year history. He is currently at work on a second book, an anthology of his monologues, and he stars in the Lawrence Krauser feature Horrible Child. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, five Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship.
Learn moreMilka Djordjevich is a choreographer, performer, and teacher based in Los Angeles. Her work has been shown at many venues, including the Kitchen, the Chocolate Factory Theater, the Whitney Museum, the American Realness Festival, and Danspace Project in New York; REDCAT, Grand Performances, Pieter, the Hammer Museum, Machine Project, Showbox LA/Bootleg Theater, and HomeLA in Los Angeles; Counterpulse and the Berkeley Art Museum in Northern California; and internationally in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, and the UK. Djordjevich was a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar, and she is currently a 2017-2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellow. Her other projects include serving as guest editor for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence, and initiating the Monday Morning Class series at Pieter. Djordjevich has co-authored works with composer Chris Peck, choreographer Dragana Bulut, designer Samuel Yang, and artist Marcos Luytens; and has performed for Heather Kravas, Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward, Sam Kim, Sasa Asentic and Ana Vujanovic, among others. She has twice served as Visiting Assistant Professor in the UC Riverside Dance Department and has taught at UC Irvine, AMDA, Pomona College, Movement Research, and PICA’s TBA:15 Festival. In 2016, Djordjevich established STANA, an organization cultivating Los Angeles, national and international dance connections.
Learn moreThe Miracles Club is a performance art and music group from Portland Oregon. Members Rafael Fauria, Honey Owens and Ryan Boyle explore the relationship between sound, movement, audience and artist.
Selected Press
Miracles Club, “A New Love”, Michael Manheimer, wweek.com, January 11, 2010.
Learn moreMiranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or. Miranda July’s most recent film is The Future (2011), which she wrote and directed and stars in.
Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker; her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007), won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty countries. Her latest book is It Chooses You (McSweeney’s, 2011).
July created the participatory website, learningtoloveyoumore, with artist Harrell Fletcher and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel); the work is now in collection of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Eleven Heavy Things, an interactive sculpture garden she designed for the 2009 Venice Biennale, was on view in Union Square in New York in the summer of 2010 and is currently being presented by MOCA in Los Angeles. Raised in Berkeley, California, she currently lives in Los Angeles. Learn moreMatreyek is an animator, designer, and multimedia artist working in Los Angeles. She creates animated short films as well as works that integrate projected animation and live performance/installation. Matreyek is interested in how animation, when combined with body and space, takes on a more physical and real aspect, while body and space acquire a more fantastical quality.
Selected Press
Miwa Matreyek: Illusion and Non-Illusion, LA RECORD, August 9, 2010.
Learn moreMK Guth is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work frequently has an element of audience participation at its heart. She appropriates archetypal characters and stories from fables and mythology in order to examine contemporary human issues and concerns. Guth has received a Betty Bowen Special Recognition Award administered through Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA) and an Award of Merit from the Bellevue Art Museum (Bellevue, WA). MK Guth was featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), and has exhibited with numerous other galleries and institutions, including Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati, OH), Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Melbourne International Arts Festival (Melbourne, Australia), Nottdance Festival (Nottingham, UK), Swiss Institute (New York, NY), White Columns (New York, NY), Artists Space (New York, NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA) and most recently had a solo exhibition at the Hallie Ford Museum (Salem, OR).
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