Artists Archive
Hiro Kone is the alias of Nicky Mao, a New York-based musician and producer. She uses a combination of hardware, synths, and modular to cultivate her sound - a visceral meditation on rhythm, noise, and melody that has seen her release on leading experimental labels including DAIS Records and BANK Records. No stranger to manipulating macabre disorientations into enchanting new shapes, her music exposes the unsettling and sublime. She is known to draw upon a combination of modular synthesis, noise and field recordings. Instinctively responding to the precariousness of humanity, Kone’s cascades of twisted field recordings find an inherent partner in the effervescent current of synthesis and in the process, forge new terrains.
Learn moreHitoshi Toyoda was born in New York City and grew up in Tokyo. He returned to the United States in 1990 on a grant from Neo Vision Co. For several years, Toyoda traveled throughout the U.S. taking photographs, before settling in New York in 1993. He has presented his work in public spaces, galleries, museums and film festivals such as Ann Arbor Film Festival (MI), Images Festival (Toronto), Museum Of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), Setagaya Art Museum (Tokyo), Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo), Anthology Film Archives (NY), and graf media gm (Osaka).
Learn moreMIKA ARASHIKI AND MARI FUKUTOME formed dance duo Ho Ho-Do in 2001. Their work is created through exploring the delicate sensitivities and impulses they feel in everyday life based on the relationship between two individuals and by their various ways of communication. They adapt not only ordinary dance techniques, but also small, and some might say trivial, gestures from daily life as motifs that reveal their poetic world-view. They have collaborated with a range of artists including playwrights and musicians. Their recent site-specific series, Ho Ho-Do @***, typifies their signature style of presenting work outside of traditional performance venues, fusing ordinary places as an extension of daily life. As part of this series, they’ve performed in houses, on stairs, in corridors, on roof terraces, at cafés, and at street crossings. Ho Ho-Do has filmed their performances presented at these venues, posting the results monthly to YouTube since 2009.
Learn moreHolcombe Waller is one of America’s most distinct voices in music theater. He is a 2011 United States Artists Berresford Fellow in Music, an award which noted his mournful, folk-inflected style, and his approach to music “as total theater.” He is a Creative Capital artist, a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, and a 2013 Joan Shipley Fellow of the Regional Arts and Culture Council. Waller has been presented and commissioned by numerous theaters, arts institutions, and festivals. Holcombe Waller "Hardliners" Music Video from Two Penguins on Vimeo.
Learn moreHolland Andrews (they/them) is a vocalist, composer, clarinetist, and performance artist whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and dissonance. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing, they create a realm of live performance that is boundlessly present. They have been commissioned by REDCAT, ISSUE Project Room, and the 2024 Whitney Biennial, where they created two sound installations and the performance work Speaker. Notable musical collaborations include Son Lux, Nils Frahm, JJJJJerome Ellis, Christina Vantzou, William Brittelle, Peter Broderick, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste. Their work is presented nationally and internationally, collaborating with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Sonya Tayeh, Dorothée Munyaneza, Otobong Nkanga, Jenn Freeman, NARCISSISTER, Demian DinéYazhi, Oliver Beer, and Will Rawls. Andrews is a Guggenheim Fellow, Creative Capital Awardee, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Awardee, and United States Artists Fellow.
Learn moreHolly Mititquq Nordlum is an Iñupiaq (Inuit) artist who comes from the northern village of Kotzebue, Alaska. Nordlum works in a variety of media, using each to best cast light on Indigenous people. Her tattoo work and traditional markings revitalization effort is based on a 10,000-year Inuit history and is a machine-free process that facilitates healing, pride, and celebration from the traumas of colonization and individual experience. She organizes trainings, using traditional patterns in in-depth sessions to foster real change for people—in the end, creating community in the marks left behind. Nordlum’s public artwork educates about the still-surviving tribes of Alaska: their stories, histories, and cultures. Holly speaks publicly about the systems which continue to oppress her people and prevent their thriving.
In 2004 she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Alaska, and in the last five years she has received a Time Warner Fellowship from Sundance, an Art Matters grant, an Alaska Humanities Forum grant, an Alaska Native Visionary Award, a Rasmuson Artist Project Grant and Fellowship, an NDN Collective Indigenous Artists Grant, and she was part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Artist Leadership Program.
Learn morehome school is a free pop-up art school co-run by manuel arturo abreu and Victoria Anne Reis, in its fifth year of curriculum presenting multimedia, genre-nonconforming edutainment and creating welcoming contexts for critical engagement with contemporary art.
manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is an artist and writer from the Bronx. They received their BA in Linguistics from Reed College in 2014, and currently live and work in a garage in southeast Portland. Recent group exhibitions with Rhizome and the New Museum (online), the Cooley Gallery (Portland), Chicken Coop Contemporary (Portland), Veronica project space (Seattle), and AA|LA Gallery (Los Angeles). Recent publications in Art in America, Rhizome, CURA, SFMoMA Open Space, AQNB, et al. abreu is the author of List of Consonants (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and transtrender (Quimérica Books, 2016), and their debut collection of critical writing is forthcoming 2018.
Victoria Anne Reis (b.1982, East Meadow, NY) is trying to be a good mom and a good person. She lives with her parents and daughter, and works on a tree farm, in Boring, OR.
Learn moreHowie Chen is a New York-based curator involved in collaborative art production and research. Chen is a founder of Dispatch, a curatorial production office and project space founded in New York City, later transitioning to a peripatetic exhibition model. Dispatch offers a model for curatorial production: an office for receiving and originating exhibitions, projects, and concepts treated as time-sensitive transmissions. He has organized exhibitions and programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Kitchen, Circuit (Switzerland), IMO (Copenhagen) among others.
In 2003, with artist Mika Tajima, he formed New Humans, a moniker for collaborations with musicians, artists and designers. New Humans was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial—a collaboration with Vito Acconci and musician C. Spencer Yeh—and more recently projects at SFMOMA and South London Gallery with collaborator Charles Atlas.
In 2010, Chen co-founded JEQU, a research project to assess how sociological and cultural economic approaches to art world debates can augment artistic critique. Past program presentations include a lecture by Olav Velthuis, seminar with Luc Boltanski, and exhibitions at USC Roski School of Fine Art and Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club. Chen also launched Collectionof, a new online platform for presenting the diverse creative productions of international artists, art producers and art spaces.
In addition to curatorial activities, Chen has been a Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design in the Painting Department and is currently teaching at the New York University Steinhardt School. He holds a degree in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program as a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow.
Learn moreIbrahim was born in Dallas, Texas and lived there for 11 years before moving to Oregon. His parents immigrated from Sudan a few months before he was born. He is a student at the Oregon Islamic academy and is involved in several local organizations. He started an initiative in which ethnic minority students in a Portland public school were given disposable cameras to express their cultures and identities through photography, and started a photography pen pal program with a local non-profit, Yo Ghana!. He is the coordinator of GPSEN's (Greater Portland Sustainability Education Network) Youth Network, initiating local efforts to promote sustainability, including economic sustainability. Late in 2016 he presented on this Youth Network in Indonesia at the Global RCE Conference, a United Nations University initiative on Sustainable Development. He is also a youth adviser for the Young Leaders in Action of the World Affairs Council. Ibrahim has a passion for language learning and is fluent in Arabic.
Learn moreMichael Gaughan is a musician and artist who graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2002. It is then that he began rapping as Ice Rod and playing music in the rock n’ roll scavenger hunt band Brother and Sister. Ice Rod currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. An exhibition of Gaughan’s drawings of fantasy bands were recently on view at The Future Perfect Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.
Learn moreMisevičiūtė is a performing artist and curator, she has performed in such venues as The Kitchen, New York; dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel; de Appel art center, Amsterdam; Center Pompidou, Paris; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius; and Performa 09 at Swiss Institute, New York.
Selected Press
"Dream Catcher," Kate Sutton, Artforum, September 1, 2012
Learn moreHailing from North Carolina but currently residing in Portland, OR, II TRILL has been active in the Portland club scene since 2011.
Learn moreIlana Harris-Babou's (New York, NY) work is interdisciplinary, spanning sculpture and installation, but grounded in video. She speaks the aspirational language of consumer culture, mimicking cooking shows, music videos, and home improvement television, among others. She has exhibited work throughout the US and Europe. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University, and a BA in Art from Yale University. Illana Harris Babou Website
Learn moreIlyas Ahmed has been releasing records as a solo and collaborative artist for almost 20 years. His most recent solo album, A Dream of Another, was released in 2023. He is also a member of the experimental rock band Grails, whose last record Anches En Maat was released in 2023 as well. Records forthcoming on all fronts in the next year. Ilyas lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreIna Diane Archer is a Media Conservation and Digitization Assistant at The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. She is a filmmaker and visual artist whose multimedia works and films have been shown nationally. Ina was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA multidisciplinary Fellow, a 2005 Creative Capital grantee in film and video, and she has been awarded numerous residencies. Prior to joining NMAAHC, Ina was adjunct faculty at Parsons The New School for Design. She is the former co-chair of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund. Ina earned a BFA in Film/Video from RISD and a Master’s in Cinema Studies at NYU focusing on race, preservation, early sound cinema and technology and she studied Moving Image Archiving and Preservation at UCLA (MIAS) and NYU (MIAP). Finally, Ina is a regular contributor to Film Comment Magazine, and she participates on their podcasts and she is juggling at least three blogs!
Learn moreIndira Valey (Portland, OR) is an avant garde multidisciplinary performer and a first generation Latinx Spanish speaker. Her ancient-sounding, resonant voice is a force of nature, and she utilizes looping technology, effects pedals, and a unique palette of instruments to create mesmerizing and memorable live performances that are ever-changing due to her spontaneous improvisational magic. Her debut album Recordar is a bilingual collection of oceanically soothing, powerfully healing songs about memory and finding your own inner power.
Learn moreIngri Midgard Fiksdal (b. 1982) is a Norwegian choreographer and performer. She is based in Oslo and has been making work since graduating from the MA in Choreography at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2006. Her work tours internationally to venues such as brut-Wien (AUS), Kampnagel (DE), Inkonst (SE), MDT (SE), In Between Time (UK), ANTI festival (FI), The Armory Show (US), LIMIT Festival (RS), HIFA (ZIM), Nordwind (DE), Baltoscandal (EST), and Homo Novus festival (LT). Fiksdal has recently been admitted into the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Program, and has from October 2013 commenced on a three-year artistic research project (PhD). Fiksdal’s work deals with perception and affectivity, and several of her pieces take shape as part performance and part live concert. The audience is always integral to the work, which aims to produce temporary collectives between performers and spectators. This notion of collectivity here refers to modes of attention and sensorial transference, rather than to interactivity. An ongoing theme within Fiksdal’s work is the ritual, and the rituals’ inherent capacity of transforming and ultimately transcending its partakers. This is approached from various angles to research how these capacities could be transferred to the performance-concerts created. Within this, the relation between cognition and affectivity, and how they operate in perception and in production of meaning, is central. Fiksdal often works in collaboration with other artists, such as visual artist, and composer Ingvild Langgård/Phaedra and scenographer Signe Becker.
Learn moreIngvild Langgård is a composer, musician and artist, educated from the Academy of Fine Art, Oslo (2006), specializing in sound art. She works in different media, and composes and performs music for stage, film, and in her own main music project, Phaedra. Phaedra released the album The Sea for Norwegian avant garde label Rune Grammofon in 2011. Phaedra´s music is a mix of folk and psychedelia with a dash of blues and soul; sacred death hymns and shimmering atmospheres, combining crystalline vocals, folk instruments and deep bass lines, with a touch of pure Scandinavian darkness. As with all of Langgård´s work it blends homegrown mythology, baroque aesthetics, and the possibility of altering the perception of the audience. Her work is shown in national and international museums and galleries, such as The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Lydgalleriet, Bergen, and and Chashama Gallery in New York. Langgård also works as a curator and co-founded the artist run gallery Rekord in 2006. Langgård has been awarded several grants for her work, and received the Norwegian State´s Working Grant for young artists twice. She currently is working on the next Phaedra album, to be released 2014, as well as upcoming Fiksdal/Langgård/Becker projects.
Learn moreIntisar Abioto is an artist working across photography, dance, and writing. Moving from the visionary and embodied root of Blackgirl Southern cross-temporal cross-modal storytelling ways, her works refer to the living breath/breadth of people of African descent against the expanse of their storied, geographic, and imaginative landscapes.
Learn moreIsabella Saavedra lives and works in Portland, OR. She originally hails from rural Northern California. Saavedra received her BS in Studio Art from Southern Oregon University in 2020 and began her MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Fall 2025. Saavedra received a 2024 Career Opportunity Grant from Oregon Arts Commission, as well as consecutive Arts3C Grants from Regional Arts and Culture Council in 2023 and 2024. She has attended residencies at ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership in Cleveland, OH, and p:ear in Portland, OR. Her exhibition record includes the Newport Visual Arts Center and Portland Center Stage. Most recently, she completed Understory, a permanent large-scale public art installation commissioned by the City of Portland’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program at the Mt. Scott Community Center.
Learn moreIsabelle Cornaro is a multi-material artist who grew up in post-colonial Africa, and studied 16th century art history before studying art at the Royal College of Arts in London and Beaux-Arts de Paris. She is currently based in Paris and represented by Balice Hertling Gallery. Recent solo exhibitions include The Whole World is Watching at Le Magasin, Grenoble (2012), FRAC-Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France (2012), and group exhibitions include Vide-Poche at Sculpture Center, New York (2011) and Rotary Connection at Casey Kaplan (2012). Cornaro was the recipient of the Ricard Foundation Prize (2010), a resident at ISCP New York (2009), and is included in the collections of Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris and Centre Pompidou, among many others.
Learn moreConsistently delivering a jaw-dropping performance experience, ISAIAH ESQUIRE is intensely emotive, athletic, and explosive, exhibiting an impressive and unique array of disciplines. He is most known for his mastery of face, character, intricate lip-sync, and absolute connection. A seasoned dancer/instructor/choreographer/creative director and internationally acclaimed entertainer, ISAIAH has over 13 years of professional experience. From studios to classrooms, universities to international festivals, ISAIAH instructs classes ranging from Hip-Hop to Jazz, African to Ballroom, Twerking to Heel-o-graphy, and more. The one consistent aspect to any Isaiah Esquire class is the confidence and self-awareness/acceptance that he inspires in his students.
Over the past year, in addition to joining the cast of the Super-Star Divas Megashow @ CC Slaughters, this powerhouse entertainer has been touring the country with Portland’s own gender fluid cabaret troupe, the Caravan of Glam, referred to by America’s Got Talent scouts as one of the top 10 traveling queer performance groups in the country. ISAIAH has been featured in multiple music videos (including “9inch Heels” By DJ Beyonda Doubt, “Quicksand” by Acoustic Minds, and “Put Em Up” By Priory). He has also appeared in film documentaries, magazines, websites, and even comic books.
You can catch ISAIAH and his partner, JOHNNY NURIEL, on stage and in life, headlining as their duo IZOHNNY every first Thursday for the mostly male spectacular: BOYeurism @ the Star Theater, a show created and produced by Isaiah himself.
ISAIAH continues to break down barriers of gender, sexuality, culture, and age. As a teacher he invites you to join in this movement and witness the magic as he shows you limitlessness self-expression through fearless art.
Learn moreIshmael Houston-Jones is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation.
Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. In 2020 he recieved a fourth "Bessie" for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project.
Learn moreIsla Leaver-Yap writes about and organizes projects with artists. She contributes to Afterall and Mousse, as well as other periodicals. At the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, she co-organized Nought to Sixty, and started the ongoing Artists Film Club. She curated the 2011 exhibition season Short Stories at SculptureCenter, New York. In 2012, she was a member of Banff Centre’s 2012 visual arts faculty for LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL STOP PLEASE ALLOW FEATURES ASSUME EXPRESSION INDICATIVE OF AMUSEMENT JOY PLEASURE BENEVOLENCE ETCETERA BY DRAWING UP CORNERS OF MOUTH AND GENERALLY RELAXING FACIAL MUSCLES STOP LOVE FOR ALL STEFAN STOP; was the editor of LUX’s Live Journal; and curator for The Biennial of Moving Images. She is on the advisory council for YU Contemporary.
Learn moreErdal was born in Jerusalem in 1974 and moved to Canada in 1999. Since designing his first play with frequent collaborator James Fagan Tait, Erdal has designed over 130 shows for companies in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Berlin, London, and New York. He’s been nominated for seventeen awards in four different cities and won the 2003 Sam Payne Award for Most Promising Newcomer, the 2005 Associated Designers of Canada's Jack King Award, the 2007 Dora Mavor Moore Award, Best Design at the Dublin Fringe in 2008, and a Jessie Richardson Award in 2009. The Chop Theatre is an award winning Vancouver BC-based company that has been building and touring original performances since 2004. Their work is known for its sophisticated experimentation with authenticity and has consistently involved some of the finest artists throughout Canada.
Learn moreIvana Müller is a choreographer, artist and author of texts. Some of the recurring subjects in her work are body and its representation, self-invention, the place of the imaginary and imagination, notions of authorship, and the relationship between performer and spectator. Müller has dedicated a great part of her research and practice to the idea of Social Choreography throughout her own projects (While We Were Holding It Together, Playing Ensemble Again And Again, We Are Still Watching, In Common, Partituur)m as well as in various collaboration.
Müller’s choreographies, performances, installations, text works, video-lectures, audio pieces, guided tours and web works have been presented and co-produced over the last 10 years in venues and festivals such as Rotterdamse Schouwburg (NL), STUK Leuven (Belgium), Impuls Tanz (vienna), Frascati Theater Amsterdam, Kampnagel Hamburg, La Villette Paris, Wiener Festwochen, Theatertreffen Berlin, DTW New York, National Museum of Singapore, Saddler’s Wells London, Springdance Festival Utrecht, HAU Berlin, Centre nationale de danse Paris, and Kaaitheater Brussels. She performed her piece How Heavy Are My Thoughts in TBA:05.
In 2007 Müller received the Charlotte Koehler Prize from the Prins Bernhard Funds (NL) for her œuvre, as well as Impulse Festival and Goethe Institute Prize for her piece While We Were Holding It Together.Next to her artistic practice Ivana Müller curates festivals, organises debates and teaches as a guest lecturer. (in, amongst others, Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdams (MA in visual arts), School For New dance Development, Amsterdam (BA in choreography), Master of Choreography in Amsterdam, Insitut for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen (MA in Theatre) etc). Ivana Müller is Croatian born and she lives in Paris and works internationally.
Selected Press
"Claudia La Rocco Presents: Interview with Ivana Müller," Claudia La Rocco, Dance-tech.tv, April 7, 2011.
Learn moreIvo Dimchev is the author of more than 30 performances. He has received numerous international awards for dance and theater and has presented his work across Europe, South America, and North America. He has led master classes at the National Theater Academy in Budapest, the Royal Dance Conservatory of Belgium in Antwerp, Hochschule der Künste in Bern, Switzerland, DanceWeb in Vienna, Giessen University in Germany, the Bremen Academy of Art, and other institutions. Dimchev is the founder and director of the Humarts Foundation in Bulgaria and organizes an annual competition for contemporary Bulgarian choreography. Dimchev is currently an Artist in Residence at Kaaitheater in Brussels. In 2014, he opened MOZEI in Sofia, Bulgaria, as an independent space for presenting contemporary art and music.
Learn morejaamil olawale kosoko (they/he/she/jlov) is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. jaamil’s work in performance is rooted in embodied ritual practice, poetics, Black critical studies, and queer theories of the body as a means to conjure and craft perpetual modes of freedom, healing, and care when/where/however possible.
jaamil is the recipient of awards including the 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize for Best Experimental Short Film, 2021/22 MacDowell Fellowship, 2020 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 2020 NCCAkron Creative Administrative Fellowship, 2019 NPN Creation & Development Fund award, 2019 Red Bull Arts Fellowship, 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellowship, 2018 NEFA National Dance Project Award, 2018-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency, 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellowship, and consecutive 2016-2020 USArtists International awards from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Blending poetry and memoir, conversation and performance theory, their book, Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts, was published in spring 2022.
Premiering in 2022, Black Body Amnesia (the performance reading) examines the shapeshifting, illegible, and fugitive realities of Black diasporan people negotiating the psychic lifeworlds of living inside the American context. It is performed with an alternating ensemble of performers including jaamil olawale kosoko, Raymond Pinto, mayfield brooks, and DJ Maij, with sound accompaniment by Everett Saunders. In this new work, Kosoko uses complexity theory—which they define as the study of adaptive survivalist strategies inside complex networks or environments—as a performance device. From this artistic vantage point, the artist explores how minoritarianized communities record and affirm their existence through collaborative actions and protests, and how they then archive these personal freedom narratives to subvert culturally charged fields of systemic oppression, loss, and erasure.
Their 2020 work Chameleon is a multimedia living digital art work, film, and audio transmission project that explores the fugitive realities and shapeshifting demands of surviving at the intersection of Blackness, gender fluidity, and queerness in a pirated virtual space. Chameleon is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; the New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency program; and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, in partnership with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) and Tanz im August/HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Additional development support for Chameleon was made possible, in part, with commissioning support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program.
Their 2017 work, Séancers, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in December 2017 and has toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Recent highlights include Mousonturm (Frankfurt, DE), FringeArts (Philadelphia, PA), Sophiensaele (Berlin, DE), the Wexner Center (Columbus, OH), Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), and Montréal Arts Interculturels (Montréal, CA), among others.
jaamil’s previous work #negrophobia (premiered September 2015, Gibney Dance Center) was nominated for a 2016 Bessie Award and toured throughout Europe appearing in major festivals including Moving in November (Finland), Take Me Somewhere (UK), SICK! (UK), Tanz im August (Berlin), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), zurich moves! (Switzerland), Beursschouwburg (Belgium) and Spielart Festival (Munich).
They are a Co-Curator of the 2015 Movement Research Spring Festival and the 2015 Dancing While Black performance series at BAAD in the Bronx; a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC); a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; a 2011 fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University where they earned their MA in Curatorial Studies.
As a performer, jaamil has created original roles in the performance works of Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, and Headlong Dance Theater, among others. In addition, creative consultant and/or performer credits include: Terry Creach, Lisa Kraus, Kate Watson-Wallace/anonymous bodies, Leah Stein Dance Company, Emergent Improvisation Ensemble, and Faustin Linyekula and Les Studios Kabako (The Democratic Republic of Congo).
In 2009, they published the chapbook Animal in Cyberspace. In 2011, jaamil published the collection Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). Other publications include the American Poetry Review, the Dunes Review, the Interlochen Review, the Broad Street Review, Silo Literary and Visual Arts Magazine.
jaamil has served on numerous curatorial and funding panels including the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the Baker Artists Awards, among others. From 2014 to 2020, jaamil served as a trustee on the Board of Directors for Dance/USA, the national service organization for dance professionals. jaamil is also a founding advisory board member for the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving, and currently serves as an artistic advisory member of The Field Center in Vermont.
jaamil has held producing and curatorial positions at New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and The Watermill Center among others, and has taught and lectured at various educational institutions across the world. In Fall of 2020, jaamil was appointed the 3rd annual Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair at UCLA World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department. Additionally, they lecture regularly at Princeton University, The University of the Arts Stockholm, and Exerce Master at ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France.
Learn more“Ferver’s performances are so extreme that they sometimes look and feel like exorcisms.” —The New Yorker
Jack Ferver has been creating full-length works since 2007. He has been presented at The French Institute Alliance Francaise (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), PS 122 (NYC), The New Museum (NYC), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Diverse Works (Houston, TX), Danspace Project (NYC), Abrons Arts Center (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), and Théâtre de Vanves in France. Shorter and solo works have been presented at MoMA/PS1, Andrew Edlin Gallery, Dance New Amsterdam, LaMaMa E.T.C., The Culture Project, and NP Gallery (all NYC). His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The New Yorker, ArtForum, Modern Painters, TimeOut New York, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, and Dance Magazine. As an actor, credits include the film Gayby, Strangers With Candy (Comedy Central), and numerous other film and theatre projects. His writing has been published in the magazine Novembre. He has curated for Danspace Project, Center for Performance Research, and Dance New Amsterdam. He also teaches at NYU, Bard College, has guest taught at SUNY Purchase, and has set choreography at The Juilliard School.
Selected Press
"Laughing and Crying at Ghosts, Fictive and Real," The New York Times, December 11, 2010
For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Jack Ferver and his 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 moreJacob Wren makes literature, performances and exhibitions. His books include: Families Are Formed Through Copulation, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed and Polyamorous Love Song, a finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose and one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2014. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created the performances: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information and Every Song I’ve Ever Written. He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art.
Learn moreJacqueline Shea Murphy teaches courses in critical dance studies in University of California Riverside's Dance department. She is author of The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), awarded the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Book of the Uear in Dance Studies by the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), co-editor of the collection Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance (Rutgers University Press, 1995), and has published in journals including Discourses in Dance, American Literary History, Theatre Research International, Interventions, and several anthologies. She was the 2009 recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Aotearoa New Zealand, and is writing a new book about ways that contemporary Indigenous choreographers in the U.S., Canada, and Aotearoa are inhabiting Indigenous epistemologies and thereby reframing colonizing institutions in their dancing and dance making.
Professor Shea Murphy regularly teaches courses such as "Dance: Cultures and Contexts," "Introduction to Dance Studies," "Dance, Gender, Sexualities," "Yoga for Dancers," and "Rhetorical Approaches to Dance Studies." She holds a Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, a Master's in fiction writing from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars Program, and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. She has previously taught at San Francisco State University (American Indian Studies) and Mills College (English). She has a background in modern dance, and is a longtime practitioner and certified instructor of Iyengar yoga.
Learn moreJaeda is an extremely gifted Master Makeup Artist, Lash Technician, Entrepreneur, and dancer who has provided her renowned artistry to a wide variety of clientele. Jaeda was born in the Dominican Republic and brings a multi-cultural perspective to the world of beauty and dance, she has the ability to connect with people from all walks of life. After being relocated to Birmingham, Alabama as a child, Jaeda went on to start her dance career with Alabama Ballet company at the age of 7. she trained with the company until she was 15 and that's when she was introduced to the world of majorette style dancing. Jaeda has taught multiple high schools and colleges (Jackson olin High, Caver High Woodlawn High Parker High Alabama State University, Miles College, Stilman college) just to name a few the art of majorette-style dancing. In 2008 she became the coach of Birmingham city school system summer camp and later on the assistant director of Jackson olin auxiliary department. Jaeda has judged many Competitions in the south and still has a love for dance.
Learn moreJaleesa Johnston; ⅓ of rise x fall
Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been the recipient of the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Centrum’s Emerging Artist Residency, and Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship. She has exhibited her work in cities along the West Coast, including San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and she occasionally facilitates workshops and classes in new media and performance art. Jaleesa also organizes public programs as Programs Lead in the Learning and Community Partnerships Department at the Portland Art Museum.
Learn moreJamarsa Peters, Meet Me On Da Floor President
Jamarsa Peters is a business professional with an astute financial acumen, an empathic heart, and a strong sense of business and personal responsibility. These qualities were shaped largely by his family dynamic. He is the oldest of two siblings. It was after the death of his mom that he assumed paternal responsibility for his younger siblings. With this responsibility, he decided to become this paragon for positivity and for excellence that his siblings could emulate. Because he wanted to be that example for his family, he chose to pursue higher education at Grambling State University where he majored in Business Information Systems; subsequently, earning his Bachelor of Science degree in 2006. In college, he was a member of the collegiate cheerleading team and received technical dance training while being a part of the Orchesis Dance Company under the direction of Dianne Maroney-Grisby, former Alvin Ailey dancer. In addition to his business acumen, he is an extremely powerful choreographer, dancer, and producer having danced with LGBTQ underground Legendary male J-Sette teams like Grambling X-Men, Memphis Elite, and the Texas Teasers where he currently resides in Dallas. Currently, he is recognized as an Icon in the Meet Me On Da Floor dance community where he now serves as President while continuing to change the narrative and making a difference one 8 count at a time!
Re-Sette the Stage—a three-part conversation series happening in August, September, and October 2021—was conceived by Jamarsa Peters in partnership with Jermone Donte Beacham and jumatatu m. poe.
Learn moreBorn in a German working-class community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during World War II, Benning studied mathematics on a basketball scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; worked with migrant workers in Colorado; and started a commodity food program in the Ozarks. He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, and has taught filmmaking at Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin, University of Oklahoma, UC San Diego, and California Institute for the Arts. Over the past 25 years, Benning has completed 14 feature-length films that have shown across the world. His attentive, long-take aesthetic has categorized his work as minimalistic, but inherent in his films is a career-long, deeply political awareness, informed by his life.
Selected Press
Digital Watch, Michael Ned Holte, Artforum, January 6, 2010.
Talking About Seeing: A Conversation with James Benning, Danni Zuvela, Senses of Cinema, Issue 33 2004.
Learn moreJames Mapes is a lighting designer, writer, and board game creator who's lived in Portland, OR all his life. Working primarily in dance, he's toured all over the world with companies like BodyVox, Éowyn Emerald and Dancers, and Mammalian Diving Reflex. At home, he's the Festival Director for Risk/Reward and works a whole bunch of places. He has a family, who is great, and a library, which is secret.
Learn moreThis Actor/Dancer/Stripperformance Artist (primarily known for live work) has performed in New York & abroad since 1988. A Pioneer in the 1990s burlesque revival, Tigger! has been "acting like a stripper" since 1992 & remains a leading influence in the world burlesque scene. He won the first ever "King of Boylesque" title at Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas as well as several Golden Pastie Awards, including "Most Likely to Get Shut Down by the Law" & "Most Unpredictable Performer." He was ranked the #4 Burlesque Performer of 2010 (the only solo male) in an international online poll. Called "the Boylesque King...a heart-pounding climax" by LA Weekly, "hysterical and acrobatic" and "wickedly arch" by The New York Times, "disturbing, funny and oddly riveting all at once" by Vancouver Sun, "delightful...simultaneously hilarious and titillating" by TheaterMania, "the taboo-defying dynamo" by NEXT Magazine. He has acted in Shakespeare, Apollinaire, Wedekind, Horváth, Tennessee Williams and numerous original works with Taylor Mac, Julie Atlas Muz and other genius friends. He has recently performed in: Italy, Denmark, Cyprus, England, Hungary, Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, France, Mexico, Canada, and all around the U.S.
Learn moreJames Yarker studied theatre at Lancaster University, England. In 1991 he co-founded Stan’s Cafe, one of the UK’s foremost independent theatre companies, and has been artistic director of all of its productions. Stan’s Cafe tours regularly, encompassing a broad variety of media including theatre, radio, and site specific performances requiring extensive audience participation. Some of their recent work includes It’s Your Film, Be proud of Me, and The Black Maze.
Learn moreJamie Isenstein was born in Portland, Oregon in 1975, and lives and works in New York City.. She has presented her work in exhibitions including It is what it is. Or is it?, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (2012); MakeUp, A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy (2012); Liverpool Biennial: Touched, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2010); Marina Abramovic Presents, Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK (2009); One Minute More, The Kitchen, New York (2009); Hammer Projects: Jamie Isenstein: This Way to The Egress, The Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2007); Greater New York 2005, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005). Her work is represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York and Meyer Riegger in Berlin/Karlsruhe, Germany.
Selected Press
"The Lady Vanishes," Robin Tovey, Reed Magazine, March 2012.
Learn moreJamie Lee Mohr is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Putney, Vermont. She is the producer of collaborative public access television series “Coma Club” and “Oral Tradition TeleVision” and creator of the popup gallery “Be Your Own Placebo”. Through synthesis of social practice, performance, and filmmaking, she investigates the symbiotic relationships between physical landscape, individual narrative, and cultural identity. In 2015 Mohr examined interpersonal dimensions within these themes while conducting qualitative research at a geothermal greenhouse in an isolated sustainable community in Iceland. In Spring 2016 she traveled in Cuba to further explore ways that these concepts apply to the political and cultural identity of sovereign island nations. This Fall, Mohr will continue to integrate sociopolitical and environmental research with her art practice while sailing in the Arctic Circle. A longtime contributor to Bunnybrains, Mohr has also performed in “N.P.R. the band” and “Degeneration Dripping with Blood Fading Away”.
Learn moreJamondria Harris is a poet & multimedia artist based in Portland. They use words, sounds, wires, instruments, textiles & what falls into their hands to engage with blackness, desire, decolonization, religion, spirituality, fairy tales, queerness, femme supremacy, & body horror. They are a VONA Workshop Fellow, among other things. Their music can be found at soundcloud.com/meroitic.
Learn moreGooniyandi/Gija languages. Born c.1918. Died 2OO9.
Jananggoo Butcher Cherel’s career was defined by restless innovation. Cherel was born around 192O at Jalnganjoowa, near the homestead at Fossil Downs Station. His mother was Gija, his father Gooninyandi. Like many Indigenous people, Cherel was a polyglot, speaking his parents’ tongues, as well as Walmajarri and Bunuba. Working for most of his life as a cowboy, Cherel began painting regularly in the early 199Os, following the establishment of the Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency in Fitzroy Crossing. As one of the most senior elders of the Gooniyandi, he was instrumental in the revival of ceremony at the Muludja community where he spent his final years. Cherel was passionate about traditional culture and law, but he was also a committed and reflexive artist, challenging himself to find new ways to express his heritage and experiences in pictorial form. A master of turning complex designs into coherent visual statements, Cherel’s attention to detail can be seen through delicately detailed recurring elements, such as bush plums (girndi), which work in concert to create exquisite tapestries of motion. In Cherel’s hand, these graphically idiosyncratic experiments in color and form become the sublime device for combining deep cultural knowledge with astute observation of the natural world. In 2OO5, he was declared a Living Treasure by the Western Australian State Government, and in he 2OO6 he was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria. His works are held in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, along with numerous important collections in Australia and the U.S.
Learn morePeople are universally intrigued by mystery and delighted by discovery and understanding. This is the essence of science and it is why we all spend at least the first 10 years of our lives exploring the unknown universe just as scientists do. But at that age, we call it play.
With good fortune, I have been able to continue the work of my inner 10 year old and to share the mystery, discovery and understanding with my students. The delight I have in teaching comes every term when I get to see the universe through their eyes and perspectives. And in reminding everyone to tap into that 10 year old scientist that lives within.
My career in science began at age 5 with a visit to the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. It almost ended when I was 12 when I set fire to the basement of my house with a chemistry set! But I survived that test (and my parents never knew!). That’s when I knew I had a future in science!
My formal education includes a B.A. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Pittsburgh.
I started teaching astronomy and physics in 1975 at various universities and have served as director of three planetariums, including OMSI’s Kendall Planetarium. At OMSI I moved into the exhibit design and development phase of my career and totally reinforced my commitment to hands-on, discovery-based learning. That is the philosophy I use in my classes at Marylhurst University where I teach now.
I have also worked for two other Portland-based science exhibit companies, Levy Design and Promotion Products, Inc. Exhibits that I have developed are here in Portland, and museums in California, Ohio, Alaska, New Jersey, Boston, Saudi Arabia and Israel, among other places.
Learn moreJane Paik took her first dance class when she was 17 years old – ballet. And loved it. She spent 2 1/2 years studying modern at the age of 19 - Martha Graham. Old school, but solid. Since then, she has continued to be mainly self-taught, though she has had the chance to take class with some excellent teachers including Stefan Wenta, Augusta Moore, Ryan Heffington, Kitty MacNamae, and Oliver Steele.
In conjunction with her entrance into the world of dance, Jane found herself as a founding member of the San Francisco theater troupe Sassymouth. Helmed by writer/director John Fisher, the troupe earned a cult following in San Francisco with its cutting-edge examinations of gender, sex, and politics. She wore many hats with the troupe including Producer, Choreographer, Dancer, and Actor and was recognized for her various roles including Joy of Gay Sex (Best Ensemble), Combat! (Mark Goodman award for Distinguishment in Acting) , and Medea, the Musical. (HBO Aspen Comedy Festival - Pick of the Festival, GLAAD choice awards - Best Play, LA Weekly, Best Play, BATCC Awards -Best Choreography, Best Ensemble Cast)
She has appeared in a handful of independent shorts and films seen in various festivals including Outfest, Ladyfest, and the South by Southwest Film Festival.
She began producing works under the name Janet Pants in 1997 and Founded the Janet Pants Dans Theeatre (later Leg and Pants Dans Theeatre) in 2001. Often hailed as a pioneer in bringing experimental modern dance to the underground music scene - in a style that has been described as "punk rock in dance form" - she continues to mash together her take on dance/film/music in various performances, videos, and sounds.
Learn morePart Screamers intensity, part Misfits anthem, part RZA samples/beats and part Lightning Bolt art/freakshow, Japanther is quite likely the most unapologetically artsy punk-related band since the early days of Sonic Youth. Utilizing microphones made out of old-fashioned telephone handsets, electronic hardware, cassette decks, a three-stringed bass guitar and a drumkit, Japanther is a more playful and even more self-conscious update on the late-'70s no-wave scene, though deep roots in the skatepunk scene keep things from getting too precious. For the past seven years Japanther has baffled unsuspecting audiences and steadily grown a cult following. They've lived out of a van all over Europe, Australia, Mexico, Canada and the US, while working in museums on all types of "Art Projects." Recent projects include a collaboration with Dan Graham for Beyond — his first American retrospective — and Japanther in 3-D, a book and film companion to the band’s interactive rock opera, commissioned for PERFORMA 07 at P.S. 122 (New York). Synchronized swimmers, illegal performances, marionettes and giant puppets have all been employed in Japanther shows — all in an attempt to redefine what bands, groups and gangs can do.
Learn moreJ. Ashlee Albies has been practicing civil rights and employee-side employment law for almost 20 years. She has devoted her legal career to advocating for clients who have been harmed by discrimination, retaliation, or unfair treatment by an employer or by the government. Ashlee has a long history of civil rights advocacy — working to use the legal system and her legal knowledge to advance human rights. She has provided legal support to many mass demonstrations in Portland and nationally, and represents community groups and individuals seeking to hold police accountable. She also helped organize legal seminars for prisoners and the Life Without Parole Storytelling Project at Oregon State Penitentiary in 2019. She regularly offers community education and continuing legal education seminars on the First Amendment, free speech, creative uses of the law, trial advocacy, and civil rights litigation.
Website: http://www.albiesstark.com/
Learn moreJasmine Elizabeth Johnson is a scholar-practitioner and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work explores the politics of Black movement including dance, diasporic travel, and gentrification. Johnson’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and elsewhere.
Learn moreJasmine Mahmoud is the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor and Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Performance Studies in the School of Drama at the University of Washington, with appointments in Art History and Comparative History of Ideas. Mahmoud’s research engages experimental performance, critical race studies, public policy, and geography, including relationships between theater and gentrification.
Learn moreJasmine Orpilla is a multipliced Ilokana/x-American vocal performance artist and operatic composer of experimental theatrical sound installations, in which she activates her lifelong practices of folk ritual dance, combat systems, and music of the Philippine diaspora, against the contemporary American framing of the first generation, imperialist military culture of her own childhood. Unlimited by “soprano” nor so-called classical beauty, her unfiltered voice-in-motion exorcizes eurocentric performance structures from her muscle memory, while remaining accountable to the oral legacies and languages of the Indigenous Pilipino musical systems she, her family, and community remains indebted to. With decades embodying center with her energetically intensive solo practice as a multi-instrumental and multilingual writer/performer, Orpilla’s work serves to humanize and honor the intersectionality of the Filipina/x-American body in agency, despite ongoing minimization of colonial history’s revisionist narratives.
Orpilla’s performance installations are intentionally embedded with materials from her own family archives, such as portraiture, heirloom jewelry, clay pottery, rare handwoven cloth, uniforms, medallions, defunct weaponry, soil, bone, gold, copper, hand-forged musical instruments and handwritten letters. As fragile materials that have survived wartime, she creates with them a kinetic, movement- and sound- sensitive space in which to re-visit, elevate, or question the inter-generationally impacted stories preserved in each object, while marking their decay over time in correlation to her voice and body.
Following intensive experience with world-renowned theater and opera directors such as Ariane Mnouchkine at Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, and Peter Sellars, over the past ten years Orpilla has taken space, internationally performing in genre-defying voices at REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; CAP UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA; Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany; Théâtre Paris-Villette, Paris, France; HAU Hebbel Berlin, Germany; and more. Jasmine Orpilla’s solo and collaborative work has been supported by Creative Capital, United Artists, California Arts Council, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Mairie de Paris, and more.
Learn moreJason N. Le (they/them) is an arts writer, critic, and cultural worker currently based in Northwest Arkansas, where they work in exhibitions planning at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary. Their academic and artistic research primarily explores queer artistic navigations of human-object relationships at the intersection of performance and sculpture. They have written for BOMB Magazine, Critical Conversations (The Ford Family Foundation & University of Oregon’s Center for Art Research), Portland Monthly Magazine, Oregon ArtsWatch, and more.
Learn moreJason Sturgill is an artist, educator, and illustrator based in Portland, Oregon with a background in advertising, graphic design, curatorial and education.
Clients and employers have included Wieden+Kennedy, Nike, Laika, Dark Horse Comics, and Modernista.
Jason holds an MFA degree in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University.
Learn moreJason Traeger has released music on Kill Rock Stars and K Records, performed with the art collective Oregon Painting Society at Portland 2010: Biennial of Contemporary Art, TBA:09, Tate Modern and he has shared the stage with some of the biggest names in stand-up comedy. He resides in Portland, OR.
Learn moreJayne Cortez was a poet, who spent much of her life and career in New York City. During her life, she published widely, and has works included in collections such as 1977's Mouth on Paper and 1996's Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere.
Cortez died in 2012.
Learn moreJen Delos Reyes was born in the city of Winnipeg, and educated first in its local music scene of the mid-90’s infused with the energy of Riot grrrl and DIY, and then in its university. [1] How she works today is rooted in what she learned in her formative years as a show organizer, listener, creator of zines, and band member. Graduate work at the University of Regina made the space possible for her to see her work as an organizer as a key component of her continued creative work.
Jen Delos Reyes is a creative laborer, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. Her practice is as much about working with institutions as it is about creating and supporting sustainable artist-led culture. Delos Reyes worked within Portland State University from 2008-2014 to create the first flexible residency Art and Social Practice MFA program in the United States and devised the curriculum that focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. The flexible residency program allows for artists embedded in their communities to remain on site throughout their course of study.
She worked with the Portland Art Museum from 2009-14 to create a series of programs and integrated systems that allow artists to rethink what can happen in a museum, and reinvigorate the idea of the museum as a public space.
She is the director and founder of Open Engagement, an international annual conference on socially engaged art that has been active since 2007 and hosted conferences in two countries at locations including the Queens Museum in New York. She is working on I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning, a book exploring the artist impetus toward art and everyday life.
Delos Reyes currently lives and works in Chicago, IL where she is the Associate Director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago.
[1] Credit to Saul Alinsky in form, and for the reminder that often the most formative educational experiences happen outside of the classroom.
Learn moreJenn Freeman (also known as Po'Chop) is Chicago-based performance artist who uses elements of dance, storytelling, and striptease to create performances and inspire students and collaborators across the country. Po’Chop is the co-founder of House of the Lorde and creator and author of the blogzine The Brown Pages. She has performed at the Brooklyn Museum in Brown Girls Burlesque’s Bodyspeak, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance for TedxChicago 2022, and headlined shows in New Orleans, Minneapolis, Denver, St. Louis, and New York. Po’Chop is a board member and cast member for Jeezy’s Juke Joint, an all-Black burlesque revue. Po’Chop performs in season two of Netflix’s Easy, appears in music videos for songs by Jamila Woods and Mykele Deville, and creates and performs in experimental dance films such as LITANY. Jenn Freeman has been recognized as a 2022 United States Artist Fellow, a 2022 Dance/USA Fellow, a 2021 Foundation of Contemporary Art Grants to Artists recipient, a 2019-20 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Fellow, and as a 2018 Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist. Po’Chop was voted among the top 50 Most Influential Burlesque Artists by 21st Century Magazine in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and was a dancer in residence at Rebuild Foundation in 2020.
Learn moreJennie MaryTai Liu is an artist working across performance, choreography, video, and writing. She has worked in institutions and artist-run spaces including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Human Resources, The Mistake Room, The Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, and Incubator Arts Center. She has been a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts, PICA, Bogliasco Foundation, Yaddo, EMPAC, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, and Center for Cultural Innovation. She co-founded and edited Riting, an experiment in writing that engages with performance being made now in LA. She is currently organizing a 2022 performance exhibition funded by the Mike Kelley Foundation engaging LA dance artists to respond to modern dance activity in early twentieth-century LA. Jennie frequently collaborates as a performer in the work of Big Dance Theater, Adam Linder, and Poor Dog Group.
Learn moreJennifer Monson is an American dancer and choreographer. She has been actively creating dance work since the 1980s. She works with dance improvisation and creates choreography that is at times improvised or devised through scores, as well as collaborating with other dancers, visual artists, architects and scientists.
Learn moreReeves is a New York-based filmmaker, who has shown at the Berlin, New York, Vancouver, London, Sundance, and Seoul Film Festivals, as well as at the Whitney Biennial, Princeton University, and the Museum of Modern Art. She has made 20+ film works since 1990, pushing the boundaries of film through optical-printing, film stock “misuse,” and direct-on-film techniques including hand-painting film frames.
Selected Press
When It Was Blue, Michael Sicinski, Cinema Scope, 2008.
Outward Bound, Ed Halter, artforum, October 27, 2008.
Learn moreJennifer West was born in Topanga, California and lives and works in Los Angeles. Significant commissions and special projects include High Line Art, New York (2012), 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium (2011); The Aspen Art Museum (2010); the Turbine hall at TATE Modern (2009) and she was Artist in Residence at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2011. Solo exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Essex, England and Vdrome.org (2014); High Line Art, NY and S1 Artspace, Sheffield, England (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Western Bridge, Seattle and Kunstverein Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2010); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2008); White Columns, NY (2007). West has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally including Nottingham Contemporary, England; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria; Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London; White Columns, New York; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Drawing Center, New York; Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York; Tel Aviv Museum of Art ; CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and Tate St. Ives, England. West has published 12 Zines that she gives away at her exhibitions. West was shortlisted for the 2012 3rd Annual Nam June Paik Center Award in Korea. She is an Asst. Professor of Fine Arts Practice at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles.
Learn moreJenny Hoyston is a performer and composter celebrated for diverse musical genre exploration and community-building. She began her professional touring career in 1994 as bassist for the Michigan punk band Day Twenty-Eight. Later, Jenny co-founded the San Francisco no-wave rock band Erase Errata, providing vocals, trumpet, and later guitar on the band’s studio albums and singles. Jenny has also released three solo albums and three albums with Hallways of Always, her project with blues/folk artist William Elliot Whitmore. Beyond her roles as a composer and performer, Jenny has a long history of music and art event organizing. Most notably, she produced the Fabulosa music festival in Yosemite, CA, from 2007 to 2022. She’s also active in DJing and organizing events in Austin, TX, including her annual SXSW showcase, Brainbutter Party.
Learn moreJenny Yang is a Los Angeles-based writer and stand up comedian who produces the first-ever (mostly) female, Asian American standup comedy tour, Dis/orient/ed Comedy and has been a writer and performer on the viral Buzzfeed videos "If Asians Said the Stuff White People Say" (over 8 million views), "What if Adults had Tantrums Like Toddlers?" and the "Ask An Asian" video series. Jenny was dubbed one of Los Angeles' "most fascinating people" of 2015 in LA Weekly's annual "People" issue. She was also a featured standup comic on Joan Rivers' 2013 Showtime documentary Why We Laugh: Funny Women.
Learn moreJen Rosenblit makes performance engaging bodies, architectures and ideas between New York City and Berlin. Her works focus on an improvisational approach to choreographic thought, locating ways of being together amidst impossible spaces. Recent works include Hands (upcoming, 2016, The Invisible Dog/New York Live Arts), a Natural dance (2014, The Kitchen), Pastor Pasture, in collaboration with composer Jules Gimbrone, (2013, Issue Project Room), In Mouth (2012, Dance Theater Workshop), and When Them (2010, Danspace Project). Rosenblit is a 2015-16 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Emerging Choreographer for a Natural dance and was awarded the 2012 Grant to Artists from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Rosenblit was included in MoMA PS1’s Greater New York exhibition in October 2015, and has received commissions from The Kitchen, The Invisible Dog, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, and Issue Project Room. Rosenblit has also collaborated and performed with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Young Jean Lee, Ryan McNamara, Yvonne Meier, Sasa Asentic, Anne Imhof, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns, and Kerry Downey with Joanna Seitz. Rosenblit's upcoming work, Swivel Spot, in collaboration with Geo Wyeth premiers at The Kitchen in March 2017. A new collaboration with Simone Aughterlony, Everything Fits in the Room, premieres January 2017 as a commission between HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Haus der Kulturen Der Welt in Berlin as part of their 100 Years of Now festival.
Learn moreWade is an American choreographer/dancer based in Berlin. He premiered his first evening length work titled Glory at Dance Theater Workshop (New York) in 2006, for which he received a New York Bessie Award. His most recent performance works include …and pulled out their hair (2007), Throwing Rainbows Up (2008), I Offer My Self To Thee (2009), and There Is No End To More (2010). Wade’s ongoing interest in curation evolved from his experience as a vibrant host of many parties in New York City during the early 90s to becoming a founding member in 2003 of Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn. He recently curated the Politics of Ecstasy Festival 2009 at the Hebbel am Ufer together with Meg Stuart, Eike Wittrock, and Brendan Dougherty. Wade is currently curating a queer performance series titled Creature Feature at Basso, Berlin. In 2013 Wade will construct three pieces: a choreography/group experience for an audience called Common Prayer, a new duet with Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu, and a solo vocal concert project for the AAAARRGH Festival at Gaîté Lyrque in Paris.
Selected Press
Without the Surrender You are Just a Robot – Abby Crain interviews Jeremy Wade, Abby Crain, The OFFcenter, January 21, 2012.
Learn moreDancing has been in my blood since I can remember. It started off with hip hop dancing for my high school -- I began to recognize my skill and talent. After 4 years of that, I was introduced to the world of J-Sette by women. J-Sette historically refers to Jackson State University’s female drill team that began in the 1970s. They “created” the dance style, and thus far have made it a distinctive form of dance. I was interested in this type of dance, but not entirely until I saw a group of males performing it. At that point, I claimed the style for myself and perfected it on my body. Currently, I have my own J-Sette line, Mystic Force, and plan to increase our already considerable renown in this style of dance in our community, and eventually internationally. Previously, I served as co-captain of Dallas’ Texas Teasers. I have participated and competed in several events and competitions, including 2 SetteItOff video challenges, Atlanta Pride 2010, Tennessee Classics 2009, and Memphis Pride 2008. In 2015, I was named New Legendary by the Meet Me on the Dance Floor J-Sette council, and have gained many titles since then, such as, Best Dancer and Most Entertaining.
Re-Sette the Stage—a three-part conversation series happening in August, September, and October 2021—was conceived by Jermone Donte Beacham in partnership with jumatatu m. poe and Jamarsa Peters.
Learn moreJérôme Bel was born in 1964 and lives in Paris. He studied at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine of Angers (France) in 1984-1985. In 1992, he was an assistant for the ceremonies of the XVIth Winter Olympic Games of Albertville and Savoie. His first piece, entitled nom donné par l'auteur (1994), led to a series of intensely personal dances: Jérôme Bel (1995), Shirtology (1997), and The Last Performance (1998). In 2004, Bel began a series of performance portraits of contemporary dancers, including Véronique Doisneau, Isabel Torres, Pichet Klunchun and Myself(TBA:08), Cédric Andrieux and Lutz Förster. His work, The Show Must Go On (2001), received a Bessie Award in 2005.
Selected Press
We Are People Before We Are Dancers..., Christine Hou, The Brooklyn Rail, October, 2010.
With "Cédric Andrieux" Jérôme Bel takes us below the dance, history, Wu Yi-hua, Geneactive.ch, December 1, 2009 (Translated from French).
Learn moreJesse Hayward received his MFA from California College of Art in 2002. His work has been exhibited at PDX Contemporary Art Window Project in Portland, OR; Southern Exposure and Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco, CA; and at The Affair at The Jupiter Art Fair. In 2006, Hayward’s work was included in the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. His work has been reviewed in The Oregonian, PORT, PDX Magazine, Willamette Week, and The Portland Mercury. Most recently, Hayward was shortlisted for the Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Award.
Learn moreJesse Hewit is a dance artist who lives in San Francisco. He has performed and had residencies with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CounterPUSLE, Z Space, KUNST-STOFF Headlands Center for the Arts, Ponderosa Tanzland, Firkin Crane, and others. Hewitt received a 2010 SFBG Goldie Award winner and was a 2011 YBCA Bay Area Now artist. He founded the THIS IS WHAT I WANT Festival with the National Queer Arts Festival, and has curated for THEOFFCENTER and Dancer’s Group/CounterPULSE’s 2nd Sundays series.
Learn moreJesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, and sculpture. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social development. Jesse has exhibited work in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; Drift Station, Omaha; Spirit Abuse, Albuquerque; the Knockdown Center, New York; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; the 21c Museum, Louisville; and High Desert Test Sites 2013. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Times. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, California.
Selected Press:
"Sitting in the Back of a Car by Chip Lord," The Architect’s Newspaper, July 2014
"Doing Battle with the Remains of Industrial America by Christian Frock," Hyperallergic, May 2014
"Jesse Sugarmann," John Motley, Frieze Magazine, March 2014
"Critic’s Picks: Jesse Sugarmann," Stephanie Snyder, Artforum, October 2013
"High Desert Test Sites, a Diary by Mutual Art," Huffington Post, October, 2013
"Subverting Deadly Materials: The Work of Jesse Sugarmann," Mack McFarland, NY Arts Magazine, October, 2013
Learn moreJessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina/Scottish American) is an Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching focus on music, sound, and media studies; critical race and gender studies; Alaska Native and Circumpolar Inuit cultures, histories, and politics; Urban Indigeneities; African and Native alliances and cultural production in the Americas; jazz and improvisational musics; research ethics and methodologies; critical theory and pedagogy. She completed her PhD in Musicology from UCLA in 2011 and was awarded a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Music at UC Berkeley from 2011-2013.
Jessica was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised forty miles north in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. She is an enrolled member of the Knik Tribe and a shareholder in Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (an Alaska Native Corporation). Her innovative dissertation research and dedication to community outreach were recognized with a 2010 Alaska Native Visionary Award, presented by the Alaska Native Heritage Month committee and board of directors.
Jessica’s writings have appeared in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, MUSICultures (formerly the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music / La Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne), the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Grove Dictionary of American Music (2nd edition), and an edited volume Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries (University of California Press, 2012).
Learn moreJessica Decker is a Vice President and Wealth Advisor at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. There, she spent more than a decade advising, executing, and delivering banking, lending, planning, and wealth management services with internal and external partners. Jessica delivers comprehensive wealth strategies, advice, and services to individuals, families, nonprofits, and foundations.
Jessica delivers comprehensive wealth strategies, advice and services to individuals, families, nonprofits and foundations. She partners with clients to help pursue their wealth objectives, advising them on wealth planning, portfolio design and management, treasury management and banking services.
Passionate about building lasting relationships, Jessica listens to each individual’s stories and builds long-lasting connections. She serves as an advocate, keeping values and goals top of mind as she constructs strategies to help clients flourish. Her goal is to take extraordinary care of their financial lives and legacies by bringing to bear the platforms, specialists and thought leadership of the firm.
Jessica transitioned to J.P. Morgan in 2023 from a Senior Relationship Manager role at First Republic Bank. There, she spent more than a decade advising, executing and delivering banking, lending, planning and wealth management services with internal and external partners. Previously, Jessica served as a Corporate Finance Associate at Orca Capital, which she joined in 2012. She spent her early career in New York working for top New York galleries Castelli and Mitchell-Innes & Nash.
Jessica holds an M.B.A. in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. She earned a B.A. with a dual major in Fine Art and Art History and a minor in French from Scripps College in Claremont, CA.
Jessica lives in Portland, Oregon, with her young family. She values the importance of art accessibility and is a recent board member of Converge 45, Portland’s citywide contemporary art exhibition. She currently serves on the PAM CUT committee for the cinema and new media wing of the Portland Art Museum. She is also on the gala committee for the Oregon Symphony. She is passionate about financial empowerment for women and athletes and has recently led financial education workshops with Women in Nike, Women in Science, and the National Alliance of African American Athletes.
In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, cycling, hiking, and seeking new additions to her collection of contemporary art. She is fluent in French.
Learn moreJessica Diamond has been the subject of monographic shows at museums including The Birmingham Museum of Art, El Centro Andulaz de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville, Le Consortium in Dijon, The Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and Stedelijk Museum Het Domein in the Netherlands. In 1991, she was featured in the Whitney Biennial. The current revival of interest in Diamond’s work was triggered by her inclusion in the 2013 New Museum exhibition NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. Over the years, she has consistently received significant fellowships and accolades, including an award from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1989 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000.
Learn moreHutchins received her BA in Art History from Oberlin College and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hutchins has had solo exhibitions in New York and Portland, Oregon, and has been shown across the US, as well as in Iceland, the UK, and Germany. Most recently, Hutchins’ work was included in 2010: The Whitney Biennial. Later this year, Hutchins will be featured in Ephemera at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park; in Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture at the Saatchi Gallery (London), and at Timothy Taylor Gallery (London). She is represented by Laurel Gitlen (Small A Projects) in New York.
Selected Press
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Stuart Horodner, BOMB, Summer 2010.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, John Motley, Art in America, June 4, 2010.
Minor Miracles, Ben Davis, Artnet.com, March 26, 2010.
Critics' Picks: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Stephanie Snyder, Artforum, March, 2010.
500 Words: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Patricia Maloney, Artforum, July 22, 2009.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins' Hours and Ours at Small A, Jeff Jahn, PORT, February 1, 2008.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Chas Bowie, Portland Mercury, February 8, 2007.
Learn moreJess Perlitz’s work is informed by our formations of landscape and the body’s place within it, finding points of desire, incongruity, and disruption. Born in Toronto, CA, she is a graduate of Bard College and received an MFA from Tyler School of Art and clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. Perlitz is currently based in Portland, OR, where she is Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College, and most recently, the co-leader of the year-long Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project and the Experimental Arts Research Forest. Perlitz was named a 2019 Hallie Ford Fellow, won a Joan Shipley award, and received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in playgrounds, fields, galleries, and museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, NY; Cambridge Art Galleries, Cambridge, CA; De Fabriek in The Netherlands; and aboard the Arctic Circle Residency. Her project, Chorus, is currently installed at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA, as part of the museum’s ongoing artist installation series.
Learn moreJesus Rodales is a Hillsboro native. He started his dance career as a freestyler, specializing in Tutting and Popping. He is co-founder of Find A Way Threads, a lifestyle brand dedicated to its self-explanatory purpose. Through Find A Way, they hope to help create opportunities for their community!
Learn moreJibade-Khalil Huffman is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. He is the author of three books of poems, 19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008), James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011), and Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2014). His art and writing projects, spanning photography, video, performance and poetry, have been exhibited and performed at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, MoMA/P.S.1, Long Island City, NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.
Learn moreJibade-Khalil Huffman is an artist and author of three books of poems: Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2015); James Brown Is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011); and 19 Names for Our Band (Fence, 2008). His recent and forthcoming exhibitions include the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. (2014); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (2015); Jewish Museum, New York (2016); LAX ART (2016); Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2016); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017); Swiss Institute, New York (2017); KMAC Museum, Louisville (2018); Ballroom Marfa, Marfa (2018); The Kitchen, New York (2018); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2019). This fall he will present a new body of work along with a selection of recent projects at Tufts University Art Galleries, as well as a solo exhibition at Magenta Plains in New York.
Learn moreJibz Cameron is a performer, visual artist, and writer living in Los Angeles, most well known for her multimedia work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag. Over the last 20 years, Cameron has combined tragedy and comedy at such institutions as MOCA, PS1, Joe’s Pub, The Kitchen, REDCAT, The Broad Museum, The Hammer Museum, and the New Museum, among others. The New York Times has heralded her as “the funniest and most pitch-perfect performance seen in years,” and New York Magazine has called her “outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative.” Cameron has written and produced seven evening-length performance pieces and countless short works that have been performed in clubs and venues internationally. She has also produced multiple video works and three albums of original music. She is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2020 Creative Capital Awardee, and a 2021 United States Artist. Her film, Weirdo Night, made with director Mariah Garnett, is an official Sundance Film Festival 2021 submission. Cameron also produces and hosts Weirdo Night!, a monthly experimental comedy and performance event in Los Angeles + New York. Jibz is honored to be included in 2023’s Made In LA Biennale “Acts Of Living” at the Hammer Museum. Cameron's memoir, Hell In A Handbag, is being released by DOPAMINE Books in 2026.
Learn moreJillian Mayer's work explores how technology and the Internet affect our identities, lives, and experiences. Through videos, online experiences, photography, telephone numbers, performance, sculpture, and installation, her work examines and plays with the tension between physical and digital iterations of identity and existence.
Learn more1. JI YANG is a PUZZLE MAKER and a FICTION BUILDER. 2. JI YANG makes art like saying “2 x 2 = 5 ?” or “ fighting with a puffy pillow.” 3. JI YANG does it underwhelmingly.
Learn moreJJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist, surfer, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice.
Born in 1989 in Groton, Connecticut, USA the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house!
Concepts that organize the artist’s practice include: unknowing, improvisation, inheritance, opacity, prayer, gap, contradiction, aporia, eternity, unpredictability, interruption, and silence. Ellis researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time.
Learn moreJ.J. Murphy is a filmmaker, scholar, and author J. J. Murphy, writing on American Indie Cinema, screenwriting, avant–garde cinema, contemporary art, and the films of Andy Warhol.
Murphy's films have screened at various showcases, film festivals, and major art museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of the Moving Image, the National Gallery of Art, The Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), The Barbican Film Centre (London), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).
He has published articles in such journals as Film Culture, Film Quarterly, Millennium Film Journal, and the Journal of Screenwriting and he is the author of two books: Me and You and Memento and Fargo: How Independent Screenplays Work (Continuum, 2007) and The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol (University of California Press, 2012).
Murphy serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Screenwriting and is an editor of the new Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting series. He teaches film production, screenwriting, and film studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Learn moreLifelong neurodivergent artist.
Two main pathways: abstract painting and dance/performance.
As a painter of close to 50 years, my work is equal parts improvisation and design: chance elements sometimes kinesthetically generated, a studied compositional eye, and a deep love of color, movement, architecture, and gesture. I create abstract acrylic paintings with many layers and sometimes collage elements. My studio is in The Drawing Studio in SE Portland, which I co-own with Phil Sylvester, adjoined by the Findlay/Sylvester Gallery, in which my paintings can be viewed.
As a contemporary modern dancer I have created and performed my own, mostly solo performance work. Also worked extensively for many years with these choreographers:
Beginning in 1980 with Jann McCauley Dryer in CIRQUE (formerly Portland Dance Theater), Gregg Bielemeier and Gregg Bielemeier Dance Project, Catherine Egan and Eggshell Productions, and Bonnie Merrill, who, in addition to the many works I danced over the years, choreographed a solo for me that I performed while heavily pregnant.
Helen Buckingham, Kiken Chin, Linda K Johnson, Kimi Okada, Mary Oslund, Sara Padilla, Judy Patton, Ray Terrill.
Collaborated with artists in performance: Alva Bradford, costumer/puppet maker, Cristina DeGennaro, visual/performance artist, Van Findlay, singer/violinist, Daniel Storto, fashion/costume designer, Tyrrell Sweetman cellist, Phil Sylvester, composer/musician, and painter/set designer.
Designed and constructed sets, costumes, props, and hair designs for many choreographers/directors, including Gregg Bielemeier, Jann Dryer, Catherine Egan, and Randee Paufve.
Studied visual art and dance in the 1970’s at Portland State University with instructors who were creative working artists. In addition to modern dance have studied tap, ballet, African, improvisation, jazz, flamenco, as well as piano and drums. Influential teachers include Gregg Bielemeier, modern dance; Ruby Burns, African dance; Jann Dryer, modern dance; Cathy Evleshin, modern and jazz dance; Fred Heidel painting; Jim Hibbard drawing; Michi Kosuge sculpture; and Vincent Martinez-Grieco, modern jazz dance; Bonnie Merrill modern improvisation and tap dance; Judy Patton modern dance and performance collaboration; Barbara Remington ballet; and Claire Roche, tap dance.
Learn moreBorn and raised in Brooklyn, Joan Frosch (producer/director) explores 21st century artmaking through the voices of often previously marginalized artists and thinkers, including the emergent voices of contemporary dancers and choreographers in Africa, and the African Diasporas of France and the USA. Joan's 30 year creative path encompasses making and directing dance theatre, writing as a dance ethnographer/activist, and, now, directing her first documentary feature. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts, Laban Institute of Movement Studies, and Columbia University. At present, Joan is Professor of Dance and co-Director of the award-winning Center for World Arts at the University of Florida, and a founding member of the The Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium (USA).
Alla Kovgan (co-director/editor) is a Boston-based filmmaker/intermedia artist/curator, born in Moscow, Russia. Her films have been screened at numerous venues around the world including Boston Museum of Fine Arts, New York Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and others. Among Alla's most recent endeavors is co-directing and editing “Traces of the Trade: a Story from the Deep North” by Katrina Browne about the role of the North in the US slave trade; co-producing with Russian filmmaker Efim Reznikov “Terpsychore's Captives II”, a feature documentary about Bill T. Jones and a Russian prima ballerina Natalia Balakhnicheva; and working with Kinodance Company, on a new intermedia performance "Denizen" that will premiere in May 2007 as a part of Bank of America Celebrity Series. Alla has been teaching and curating dance film and avant-garde cinema worldwide and acts as an International Director of St. Petersburg Dance Film Festival KINODANCE.
Learn moreJo Ann Hardesty is a veteran and civil rights leader whose compassionate vision brings Portland together. As the first Black woman elected to city council, Commissioner Hardesty championed the Portland Street Response, relieving the burden on police to respond to mental health crises. She helped build the coalition that set the national standard for local climate action, and at the height of the George Floyd demonstrations, she crafted a police reform measure that 82% of voters approved. She is a former state representative serving North/Northeast Portland and former President of the Portland NAACP.
Learn moreJoe Fyfe was born in 1952 and lives and works in New York. He has shown internationally throughout the last three decades. Recent solo exhibitions include White Columns, New York; Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne; ACME, Los Angeles; James Graham & Sons, New York; Ryllega, Hanoi, Vietnam; and Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg. Fyfe was awarded a Fulbright in 2006 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. In 2010, he curated the widely recognized “Le Tableau” at Cheim & Read, New York. Additionally, he has curated shows at Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton; Zurcher Studio, New York; and Apex Art, New York. Fyfe has written articles for Artforum, Art in America, Artnet.com, Hyperallergic, and BOMB. He is represented by Galerie Christian Lethert in Cologne, Germany and Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg.
Learn moreJoel B. Tan is an award-winning writer/performer and an internationally recognized trailblazer in connecting arts with social justice, public health, and community development. Tan has published three volumes of poetry, edited three fiction anthologies, and his various poems, plays, essays, and short fiction on race, power and identity have appeared in numerous academic and commercial venues. Since 2004, Tan has served as the Director of Community Engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where his work in the field of arts leadership has been recognized globally. Prior, he worked in Public Health for 16+ years, co-founding LA’s Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team Health Center. Tan is also Sister Baba Ganesh of the San Francisco Mother House of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. As Baba, he is the creator of the widely walked “Sistoric” Castro Procession, an historical audio walking tour produced with Queer DJ collective and Honey SoundSystem. He is also the producer of Project Nunway, a fashion fundraiser that pairs Sisters with designers to create a look from recycled materials based on a theme. Nunway is currently in its 6th year in San Francisco and is now replicated in 6 other Sister cities and growing strong.
Learn moreFrom the barrios of L.A. to the New York performance art scene, Joey has been an enduring figure in queer arts and culture through three decades. Working with the likes of Klaus Nomi and Thierry Mugler, his performances broke boundaries around the world. Friend and colleague Ann Magnuson describes Joey as a “cosmic surrealistic psychedelic glamour clown,” making him the perfect collaborator for third-generation puppeteer Basil Twist, a queer visionary in his own right.
Learn moreJohanna Billing lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. The artist uses performance and video to portray group interactions, merging the real and the staged. Billing received her MFA from Kanstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in 1999. She has been the subject of numerous solo shows over the last few years in Europe and the U.S. and was included in the 9th Istanbul Biennial, the 50th Venice Biennial and the 1st Prague Biennial, Marabou Park, Sweden, P.S. 1, New York and Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago. Her work is part of the collections of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Holland, Ulrich Museum of Art, Kansas and Moderna Musset, Stockholm.
Learn moreWorking in video and photography, Finnish artist Johanna Ketola reconstructs narrative that is built upon her quotidian observations of life. This results in both fictional and autobiographical characters and stories, which often reflect her state of being as affected by a kind of sweet and absurd hopelessness about the human condition. Her work has been exhibited at Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland; in Holden Gallery in Manchester, UK; in Espace Croix-Baragnon in Toulouse, France; in Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland; in the following Finnish museums: Jyväskylä, Rauma, Oulu, and Mikkeli; and in Gallery Jangva in Helsinki, Finland, among others.
Learn moreJohn Blasioli grew up in Connecticut, with a fondness for drawing and the Hartford Whalers. He received a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont, focusing on labor studies and domestic production. Blasioli initially began sewing as a creative response to his education.
He moved to Portland, Oregon after school and deepened focus on sewing and design. In 2005, he launched a menswear line under the name "a broken spoke" that continued until 2008. In fall of 2009, he released his first collection under his own name. In 2010 he was hired as one-third of the design team behind Pendleton’s contemporary line The Portland Collection, where he designed for five seasons. He released capsule collection with Bridge & Burn in fall of 2015. Blasioli is currently focusing on special projects and on relaunching his eponymous line.
Learn moreJasperse is Artistic Director/Choreographer of the New York-based John Jasperse Company/Thin Man Dance. He has created several short works and thirteen evening-length pieces for the company, as well as various projects in collaboration with other artists. His work has been presented by festivals and presenting organizations throughout the United States and Europe and in Brazil, Chile, Israel, and Japan. Jasperse and company have received numerous prizes, grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim and a “Bessie” Award in recognition of their body of work. Jasperse has created works for several companies including Baryshnikov's White Oak Project, Batsheva Dance Company, and The Lyon Opera Ballet.
Selected Press
Hamming It Up, With Pink Light, Flashes of Murakami and Flowered Bikinis, Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, June 18, 2010.
John Jasperse Company, Joyce Theatre, New York, Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times, June 18, 2010
Dance review: John Jasperse's flirty West Coast premiere at REDCAT, Victoria Looseleaf, LA Times, April 15, 2010.
True Lies: John Jasperse collaborates in search of beauty, Valerie Jean Johnson, NewCity Stage, April 5, 2010.
Of Men Who Go Naked With Women Who Aren't, Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times, June 3, 2000
Learn moreJOHN KING, composer, guitarist and violist, has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet; Ethel; the Albany Symphony/“Dogs of Desire”, Bang On A Can All-Stars; Mannheim Ballet; New York City Ballet/Diamond Project, Stuttgart Ballet, Ballets de Monte Carlo; as well as the Merce Cunningham Dance Co. His string quartets have also been performed by the Eclipse Quartet (LA) and the Mondriaan Quartet (Amsterdam), in addition to the Secret Quartet which has premiered many of his compositions at The Stone (June 2007, May 2015), The Kitchen (April 2009), Lincoln Center Festival (July 2011); and Roulette (Oct. 2014).
Learn moreJohnny Woods is an animator, video artist, and editor based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared at the Museum of Moving Image, the Sydney Opera House, MoMA, LACMA, the Hirshhorn Museum, ICA (Philadelphia), Imagine Science Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. Currently, Johnny is working primarily on short-form experimental films. He is co-founder of Ghosting.tv, a monthly screening event in Los Angeles featuring experimental animation and video art, programmer for Animation Breakdown at The Cinefamily, and director of Undervolt & Co., a label for experimental video artists.
Learn moreJohn Smith was born in London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 1977 he became involved in the activities of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op. John Smith has developed a body of work that deftly subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction.
Since 1972 John Smith has made over forty film, video and installation works and shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television throughout the world. His solo exhibitions include: Royal College of Art (London), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK), Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (Germany), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool), Pearl Gallery (London), and Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin). Smith’s work has been featured in retrospectives at the 2007 Venice Biennale and film festivals in Oberhausen, Cork, Tampere, Uppsala, Bristol, Regensburg, Glasgow, La Rochelle and, most recently, in the 2010 Berlin Bienniale. John Smith lives and works in London, where he teaches part-time at the University of East London as Professor of Fine Art. He is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin).
Selected Press
On the Street where You Live: The Films of John Smith, Adrian Dakes, senses of cinema, November, 2003.
Interview with John Smith, Brian Frye, Millennium Film Journal, Winter 2003.
John Smith, Michael O'Pray, LUXOnline, 2003. Learn moreDownload The Web app for iPhone, iPod, or iPad.
The Web app was developed for the Kessler's 2013 show The Web, an immersive video installation that invites the viewers to participate in the work by taking pictures on their hand held devices. Their photos get displayed on monitors throughout the exhibition as well as archived for future use.
Presented as part of Anna Craycroft's C'mon Language project and the TBA:13 Festival. For more details on weekly events, visiting artists and scholars, and other related events, please visit the C'mon Language event page below.
Jon Kessler was born in Yonkers, New York in 1957. His first exhibition was at Artist’s Space in 1983. Since that time he has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Asia. A retrospective of his work Jon Kessler’s Asia was mounted at the Kestner-Gesselshaft in Hannover, Germany in 1994 and traveled to the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, in Graz, Austria. His exhibition, The Palace at 4 AM, began at MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center in 2005 and travelled to the Phoenix Kulturstiftung / Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen and ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. His works are in many public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and MOCA. He is a Professor in the Visual Arts Division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts where he has taught since 1994. He plays guitar for the rock band Barbara Sukowa and the X-Patsys.
Learn moreJon Raymond is the author of the book of short stories, Livability; the novel, The Half-Life; and the movies Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. He was an editor at Plazm Magazine and received his M.F.A. from the New School University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Learn more