Artists Archive
Lili Chopra, Executive Vice President and Artistic Director of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in New York City, is founder and curator of its trans-disciplinary fall festival Crossing the Line. She has extensive experience in programming, producing, and marketing international events and performance works in both France and New York. In addition to working with various festivals and independent artists as an administrator and producer, she spent four years at New York Live Arts (formerly known as Dance Theater Workshop) working closely with David White as Associate Producer and as Curator of its Gallery. She received her Masters in Theater and Performing Arts History at Paris X University, and her M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University in New York.
Learn moreLeyya Mona Tawil (Lime Rickey International) is an artist working with sound, performance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Tawil uses voice, transactive choreography, interactive surfaces, and electronics to build hybrid performances and sound compositions. Her work has been presented in over 40 cities throughout the states, Europe, and the Arab region. She was nominated for a Bessie Award in Music for Lime Rickey International’s Future Faith, commissioned by Abrons Arts Center (NYC) and KONE Foundation (Helsinki). Recent residencies and exhibitions include Wysing Art Centre/British Council (UK), Arab American National Museum/JAM3A Festival 2021, FUSEBOX Festival 2022, and the Tarek Atoui Sound Residency at Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE). As a curator/producer, Tawil is on the team of Live In America Festival, Southern Exposure Gallery, TAC (Temescal Art Center), and was also the 2020 ISSUE Project Room Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow for her NOMADIC SIGNALS series, which continues into 2022. She is the founding director of Arab.AMP.
Learn moreLinda Austin deploys movement, sound, text, visuals, and props to create non-linear, poetic works laced with an eccentric wit, teetering on the edge between the immediately reprehensible and resolutely mysterious. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Performance Works NW, a Portland non-profit dedicated to the cultivation of experimental performance. Awards include a 2019 Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship, the 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Merce Cunningham Award, and a 2015 RACC Performing Arts Fellowship. Austin has presented work at Performance Space 122, the Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, PICA’s TBA Festival, the Risk/Reward Festival, and On the Boards NW New Works Festival, among others. Her work has been supported by residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Djerassi, and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Current projects: Ordinary Devotions (solo), a world, a world (ensemble project), and The Thief & the Traveler (collaboration with Allie Hankins.)
Selected Press
"Stop Making Sense: Linda Austin's 'A Head of Time'," Bob Hicks, Oregon Arts Watch, March 26, 2011.
Learn moreHutchins is a Portland, Oregon, artist with a background in textiles and computer engineering. She was awarded the Juror's Prize for her wall drawing in the Tacoma Art Museum's 2009 Northwest Biennial, and has received national press coverage from American Craft, Fiberarts, and Art in America. She is represented by Pulliam Gallery in Portland.
Selected Press
Art Review: 'silver and rust' at Nine Gallery, Lisa Radon, Oregon Arts Watch, December 29, 2011.
Learn moreOregon native and Portland resident Linda K. Johnson has been a professional dance-based, transdisciplinary artist for 40 years. Over these decades of creative practice, Johnson has taught, performed, choreographed, curated, and produced extensively, influencing and forwarding the development of infrastructure (studios and dance programs), funding (support), and conceptual networks (information and training) for professional colleagues and students. Hybrid in her practice, Johnson’s concerns as an artist are social and environmental—curious equally about both the human and nonhuman, addressing our collective relationship to site, place and community. Since creating her first site-based, large-scale interdisciplinary performance in 1992, Finding the Forest, Johnson has gone on to author over 17 major dance/movement installations, most recently Mycelium Dreams, 2022 and Polka Dots/Pioneer Square, 2020, which have utilized forests, intersections, waterways, derelict lots, neighborhoods, green spaces, warehouses, and galleries, as well as formal performance spaces, as staging grounds for presentation. A recipient of the 1999 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, Johnson’s work has been consistently funded and commissioned by public, private, and individual sources, and has received critical review in many venues, including Dance Magazine, Landscape Architecture, NPR’s Living on Earth, Oregon ArtsWatch, and Metropolis Magazine. She has been awarded residencies at the Rauschenberg Artist Residency at Captiva, Yaddo, Caldera Arts, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology to further the development of her work. She is honored to be one of six international custodians of Yvonne Rainer’s seminal postmodern dance work Trio A, and to have been included in Kristin Timken’s 2015 book The New Explorers: Making Meaning in the 21st Century American Landscape, which includes a forward by Lucy R. Lippard. Now considered a “mother tree” (from Suzanne Simard’s work on forest ecosystems) in her community, Johnson’s current practice is devoted to advancing networks of inclusion and collective memory (Mycelium Dreams).
Learn moreLinda Wysong is an interdisciplinary visual artist who works at the nexus of social practice and public space. Examining the relationship between the built and the natural environment, her practice is not centered in object making but rather utilizes place, space and experience. Participating in the civic dialogue, Wysong has contributed to numerous design and planning teams. She has public art installations in Seattle’s Northgate district, and at the Interstate MAX, Springwater Trail and RiverEast Plaza in Portland. In 2011, she was invited to be part of an international trans-disciplinary team to revitalize the historic Ute Ulay mine in Lake City, Colorado. Wysong’s work has been shown nationally and internationally. Her video Beneath Our Feet was included in Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s (PICA) TBA:05 and her performance/tour Backyard Conversations in TBA:08. Selected exhibition venues include: Exit Art in New York, Southern Exposure San Francisco, the National Building Museum, Washington DC, and Kunst en Complex, Rotterdam. Wysong has been a part-timePNCA faculty member since 1990, teaching Sculpture, Art Theory, Professional Practices, and Art History.
Learn moreDr. Lisa Bates studies how economic policy, institutionalized racism, and human perception contribute to housing inequities. Dr. Bates, who is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning and Director of the Center for Urban Studies, works with local government and community organizations to strategize planning, policy, and programmatic responses to displacement. Her research focuses on social justice in housing policy design and implementation, as well as how neighborhoods and housing submarkets change over time and in response to investment.
She recently co-edited an equity-focused issue of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, served as co-chair of ACSP’s Planners of Color Interest Group and contributed to Portland’s Strategic Planand Gentrification and Displacement Study. Dr. Bates was recently awarded both the inaugural Ed Sullivan Housing Advocate Award from Housing Land Advocates (HLA) and the 2016 William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning from Cal Poly Pomona.
Learn moreLisa Jarrett (she/her) is an artist working in social and visual forms. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and prisms. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions; the most urgent of which is: What will set you free? Her current work connects an interest in tracing lost histories and homelands to the Beauty Supply store and Beauty Salon as critical spaces of Black cultural production with their own sets of aesthetics, desires, and complications.
Lisa is also co-founder/director of projects like KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art); the Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice in NE Portland, OR; and the art collective Art 25: Art in the 25th Century. She is a professor at Portland State University where she teaches classes in art and social practice.
Learn moreLisa Radon makes poems that may be publication, object, essay, installation, website, performance. Her books include The Plumb and The Wave (2014), Prototyping Eutopias (2013), An Attempt at Exhausting a Place (2013), The Book of Knots (c_L, 2013), A Reading (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 2012), Sentences on Sentences on Paragraphs on Paragraphs (Publication Studio, 2011). Her work has been presented recently in solo exhibitions at Pied-à-terre, Littman Gallery, and White Box, as well as in exhibitions at Hedreen Gallery and LxWxH, and publications for MK Gallery, Disjecta, and Appendix Project Space. Radon publishes the journal EIGHTS.
Learn moreLittle people makes downtempo electronic music.
It is part beats, bleeps and snippets of other people's music... real live instrumentation.
Selected Video:
Selected Press:
"Marley Carroll 'First Thought, Best Thought (Little People Remix)'," XLR8R, by Melkorka Licea, April 18, 2014
"Listen to a New Jiberish Mix, Curated by Little People," HYPETRAK, by Petar Kujundzic, May 13, 2014 Learn moreLiz Harris lives and works on the Oregon Coast. She has been recording, performing, and releasing solo material under the name Grouper since 2005 on various imprints including Kranky, Type, and her own YELLOWELECTRIC. Her work is characterized by a fascination with paradox, literal and impressionistic experience of environment and human behavior. Her music compositions have been commissioned and shown across Europe and the United States, including Galerie Zdb in Portugal, the Berkeley Art Museum in California, and Issue Project Room in NYC. She has recently completed art and music residencies in Lisbon, Marfa, TX, and the Bunya Mountains, and was awarded residencies in 2014 with Signal Fire and The Ucross Foundation.
Learn morelocust is the performance brainchild of musician and composer Zeke Keeble and performer/choreographer Amy O’Neal. Since 2000, they have created Leave me Inside (2001), Left-out (2002), DEFACE (2004), convenience (TBA 2005), and mockumentary (2006). locust performs in theaters, nightclubs, galleries, and streets and has been presented in Seattle by On the Boards, the Seattle Art Museum, Experience Music Project, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle Theater Group, Bumbershoot, and Velocity Dance Center. Nationally, they have performed at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (MA), The Myrna Loy Center (MT), Joyce Soho (NYC), SUSHI Performing Arts (CA), and Bates Dance Festival (ME). locust has been described as the avant-garde garage band of the Seattle dance scene.
Learn moreLola Arias is a writer, director, performer, and songwriter from Argentina, and founder of the interdisciplinary Compañia Postnuclear. Her works include Striptease (2007), El amor es un francotirador (2007), Mi vida después (2009), Familienbande (2009), and That Enemy Within (2010). Together with Ulises Conti, she composes and plays music, and has release two albums. In 2010, Arias and Stefan Kaegi founded Ciudades Paralelas, a festival of site-specific urban performance projects in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Zurich, and Singapore. Her performances have been staged at festivals including Festival d’Avignon, In Transit Festival in Berlin, We are here in Dublin, Spielart Festival in Munich, Alkantara Festival in Lisbon, and Radicals Festival in Barcelona.
Selected Press
"An interview with Lola Arias," Brighton Festival, April 16, 2013.
Learn moreLori Goldston plays written, traditional, and spontaneous work on the cello and works as a composer, teacher, producer, bandleader, and prolific, widely varied collaborator.
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, self-described as “semi-feral,” her voice as a cellist is singular, deeply textured, and original, investigating thresholds, instability, and connections between far-flung modes of thought. She travels throughout the US and abroad, often working in artist-run spaces with an eye for bridging communities.
Well known for her work touring with Nirvana and contributing to their Unplugged In New York live album, she works prolifically and with composers, film makers, writers, theater directors, choreographers, visual artists, orchestras, and bands including Earth, BBC Scottish Symphony, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Ya Tseen, Judith Hamann, Mirah, David Byrne, Jem Finer, Jessika Kenney, Lonnie Holley, Trimpin, Stuart Dempster, Shelley Hirsch, Maya Dunietz, Michael Hurley, Chris Cochrane, Laura Cannell, Ilan Volkov, Charles Hayward, Jem Finer, Embryo, Josephine Foster, Mik Quantius, Jooklo, Ghedalia Tezartes, Senga Nengudi, Ellen Fullman, Lynn Shelton, Terry Riley, and many, many others. She’s composed and performed live scores with dozens of experimental and early silent films throughout the US, Europe, Australia, and Mexico.
Her solo and collaborative work has been released by Mississippi Records, Nyahh, Relative Pitch, Eiderdown, Yo Yo, K Records, Sub Rosa, Second Editions, Sub Pop, PIAPTK, Full Spectrum, Marginal Frequency, and Broken Clover, among others; in 2026, she will release an album on ESP-Disk.
Learn moreLo Steele is a singer, songwriter, and award winning actor and poet from Portland. Known for her frank lyrics and simple melodies, like that in her most recent single “Insecurities”, she aspires to make art “that makes people feel seen”. You may have recently seen her in the one-woman-show Queens Girl in the World at Clackamas Repertory Theatre for which she won a Drammy for “Outstanding Solo Performance”. Check out her website or follow her on social media to find out what she has been creating while in isolation.
Learn moreLouise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. Her work spans the greater part of the 20th century, and over her career she worked in a wide variety of mediums, including painting, but was best known for her sculpture and installation works. Bourgeois died in 2010 at age 98.
Learn moreSince 2001 songwriter Carolyn Berk has established her unique voice as Lovers, with four acclaimed, haunted and heart-broken releases. The addition of waveform artist Kerby Ferris and multi-talented instrumentalist Emily Kingan (of the hardcore duo, The Haggard) focuses three wildly ambitious and boldly sincere artists on hooky beats and interactive performance. Their first CD release together will be available in September 2010 on the label Badman.
Selected Press
Leak: Lovers, "Figure 8," Dark Light (Badman Recording Co.), Casey Jarman, wweek.com, July 12, 2010.
Learn moreluciana achugar (b. 1970) is a latinx immigrant from Uruguay; grew up mostly in Venezuela in political exile and developed her voice as a choreographer between New York and Montevideo, Uruguay. She makes work from the rage of being a LatinAmerican living in the belly of the Empire in a post-colonial world. She makes work as a practice of growing a new body; an uncivilized body, a decolonized body, a utopian body. She makes work as a practice of building a new theater, another/other theater, OTRO TEATRO, a utopian theater. She makes work as a practice of growing as one would grow a plant. She makes work with a desire to escape the oppression of the arrow of time; to arrive at a place of beyond time, ritual time, body time…
Since 2013 she has been developing her Pleasure Practice, a deeply sensorial embodied practice to allow for other knowledges to emerge from the knowing in the body, an embodied rebellion by practicing being in pleasure; a practice that she teaches internationally and that continues to inform her creative process and her relationship to making work as resistance and as a possibility for healing and mysticism.
Her work has been shown in most contemporary dance venues in NYC and many venues across the US such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN and the Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX; as well as in a few Festivals in Europe, in Mexico, Cuba and in Uruguay. She was a two time Bessie Award recipient plus once nominated; and has received numerous accolades such as the Alpert Award in Dance, the Creative Capital Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant and the Guggenheim Fellowship.
Learn more"lucky dragons" means any recorded or performed or installed or packaged or shared or suggested or imagined pieces made by Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and/or any sometimes collaborators who claim the name.
the name "lucky dragons" is borrowed from a japanese fishing boat caught in the fallout of hydrogen bomb test at bikini atoll in the 1950's. the crew stricken ill, and the boat itself contaminated, the "lucky dragon" became a crystalizing symbol for the previously diffuse worldwide anti-nuclear sentiment. eventually the boat was painted black, renamed the "dark falcon", and put into reuse as a fishing vessel, until it was retired and disposed of on the man-made trash island "dream island", where it remains today.
lucky dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures--equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don't know why. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances--with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together--building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. It sounds--and looks--like simple and ancient patterns coming together and falling apart in a sincere attempt to let wires and screens and words become clear and crystal.
Fischbeck and Rara have presented interactive performances and installations in a wide variety of contexts--including MOCA Los Angeles, The Smell, Smithsonian's Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial), The Kitchen and PS1 in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, REDCAT and LACMA in Los Angeles, Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, ICA London, ICA Philadelphia, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
lucky dragons' sister projects include "sumi ink club"--a weekly collaborative drawing society, and "glaciers of nice"--a small press and internet community.
Learn moreLucy Cotter is an independent writer, curator and trained artist, holding a PhD in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam. A regular contributor to journals such as Mousse, Flash Art, Frieze and Third Text, her edited book Reclaiming Artistic Research was published in 2019. She was curator of the Dutch pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017, presenting artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh. Cotter was formerly director of the Master Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. She is currently based in Portland, Oregon and working on new projects that experiment with the boundaries of the artistic, the curatorial and the theoretical.
Learn moreLucy Lippard (born 1937 in New York City) is an internationally known writer, activist, and curator from the United States. Lippard was among the first writers to recognize the de-materialization at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. She is the author of 21 books on contemporary art and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations
Learn morePhiladelphia-based artist Lucy Liyou synthesizes field recordings, text-to-speech readings, poetry, and elements from Korean folk opera into sonic narratives that explore the implications of Orientalism and Westernization. Though their music reflects the work of genres such as post-industrial and musique-concrète, Lucy Liyou is greatly influenced by audiobooks as well as music from the Impressionist peri-od and Neoclassical period. Liyou’s work has earned acclaim from Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, The Quietus, them., Tone Glow, Wire Magazine, NPR Music among others, and received notable airplay on NTS Radio, KEXP, NPR, and Sonos Radio’s Radio Hour with Thom Yorke. Lucy Liyou’s first two full-length albums Welfare / Practice were reissued on vinyl for the first time in May 2022 via American Dreams Records.
Learn moreLucy Raven was born in Tucson, Arizona in and lives in New York City and Oakland, California. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings internationally at Berlinale, Berlin (2013); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012); Whitney Biennial, New York (2012); MoMA, New York (2010); and PS1, New York (2010). Raven is a contributing editor to BOMB magazine, and her writing has appeared in Artforum, BOMB, and October. She has curated projects for the Goethe Institute, New York (2010); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2008); and was the co-creator of Bump City, a series of online documentaries for the Oakland Museum of California (2012).
Selected Press
"Lucy Raven," Jason Simon, BOMB, Fall 2012.
"Greater New Yorkers | Lucy Raven," Kevin McGarry, T Magazine, May 13, 2010.
Learn moreLuis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio was a Mexican playwright.
Learn moreLuke George is an artist working in dance and performance. He grew up in Tasmania and is based between Melbourne and Brooklyn. George makes his own performance work, as well as collaborates and performs with other artists. George has a BA from the Victorian College of the Arts and has been in the works of many artists including Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Phillip Adams BalletLab, Chunky Move and Jo Lloyd. George received Melbourne's Greenroom Award for Best Male Dancer (2011) and recently performed with the Swedish band The Knife. George’s own works have been widely presented internationally. George was the recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Awards and the Russell Page Fellowship. George collaborates across disciplines on projects in theatre, film, live-art, socially engaged practices, and in queer club nights. George also works as a dramaturge and co-curates a regular Melbourne dance and discussion night called First Run.
Selected Press
"Dance Massive: Sunstruck, NOWNOWNOW," Theatre Notes, March 20, 2011
For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Luke George, collaborator Hilary Clark, and their work, click here to view a PDF of collected reviews, interviews, articles and links. A great resource for those who really want to dive into the Festival!
Learn moreLuke Gutgsell is a Portland-based dancer and dance maker. Gutgsell graduated from The Ohio State University with a BFA in Dance and attended the Naropa Institute. Gutgsell trained on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio, and apprenticed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and Shen Wei Dance Arts. He has danced with David Dorfman Dance, Tiffany Mills Company, Risa Jaroslow, and many others throughout the United States, Australia, France, Ireland, and Poland. His choreography has been presented through Danspace Project, LaMamma Theater, Dixon Place, Teatro Merida, Ten Tiny Dances, Performance Works NorthWest, Zoomtopia / Studio 2, and Velocity Dance Center. He has been a guest artist at NYU, Connecticut College, and Reed College, as well as facilitated workshops for underserved populations throughout the five Boroughs with Risa Jaroslow and Dancers. Gutgsell is perpetually fascinated with the nuances and complexities found within improvisational forms.
Learn moreAU is the work of multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland. Begun back in 2005 while finishing up his degree from the Massachussetts College of Art, Wyland moved the band across the country to find its roots in the thriving community of Portland, Oregon. It’s now a working live band with an ever changing roster of players that currently includes Dana Valatka (Jackie-O-Motherfucker) on drums, Jonathan Sielaff (Parenthetical Girls, Nick Jaina) on guitar, clarinets and saw, and has been blessed by the help of Mark Kaylor (Hamor of Hathor, CexFucx), Becky Dawson (Saw Whet, Ah Holly Fam'ly) and Sarah Winchester (A Weather) on its recordings.
Au’s sound is vast and “deftly treads a narrow bridge between the loose-associations of the backwoods freak-folk crowd and the more formalized concoctions of art-poppers like Brian Eno.” Both on record and on stage Au “manages to erase the high art/low art boundary between American contemporary classical music and American pop music, blending them into a simple, compelling, verse-chorus celebration…[and] is the rare band that can reinvent its songs live and still manage to match their recorded quality.”
Learn moreLumi Tan is curator at The Kitchen in New York, where she organizes exhibitions and produces performances with artists across disciplines and generations. Most recently, Tan has worked with Half Straddle, Sara Magenheimer, and Sondra Perry. Previously she co-curated From Minimalism into Algorithm (2016), a year-long performance and exhibition series, as well as projects with artists including Ed Atkins, Gretchen Bender, Glasser, George Lewis, Anicka Yi, and Danh Vo and Xiu Xiu. Prior to The Kitchen, Tan was Guest Curator at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de-Calais in France, director at Zach Feuer Gallery, and curatorial assistant at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, The Exhibitionist, and numerous exhibition catalogues.
Learn moreLu Yim is based between NYC and Portland, OR. They are a choreographer, movement facilitator and poet. Yim’s work is influenced by their peers and by community care practices. They create in dialogue with embodiment practices, interested in articulations of imperceptible states. Their choreography has been shown at SculptureCenter (NY), ICA London, Center for Performance Research (NY), TBA Festival (Portland, OR), and recently at No Gallery (IL) in collaboration with sculptor Catalina Ouyang. Yim co-organizes two artist-run, queer and BIPOC centered collectives: PE and pidzn club. They were a 2019 Fellow at UCross Foundation (WY) and 2020-2021 AIR at Center for Performance Research (NYC). They have been published in interdisciplinary online publications: FormIV:Issue 12, curated by Isabel Mallet, and Ear Wave:Issue Six, curated by Jules Gimbrone.
Learn moreLydia Brawner is the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at New York’s Performa. She holds a Ph.D in Performance Studies from New York University, where she also received her M.A. She is the current assistant editor of Performa Magazine, and previously was the managing print editor of the San Francisco Arts Quarterly (SFAQ), and the reviews editor of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, New York University and the College of Staten Island, serves on the advisory committee for the Center for the Arts and Religion at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, and much of her research focuses on the place of religion and spirituality in contemporary performance.
Learn moreLynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and critic. Her novel American Genius, A Comedy was cited as one of the best books of the millennium (so far) by The Millions. Her other novels are Haunted Houses, Motion Sickness, Cast In Doubt, and No Lease On Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her most recent collection of stories, Someday This Will Be Funny, was published in 2011. Her other story collections include This Is Not It, stories and novellas written in response to the work of twenty two contemporary artists; and The Madame Realism Complex. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965-67, based on photographs by Stephen Shore (1995); and most recently, her second essay collection What Would Lynne Tillman Do?. Tillman is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, was a Rea Visiting Writer at the University at Virginia and a Kestnbaum Fellow at the University of Chicago. She writes a bimonthly column for Frieze art magazine, and is a Professor/Writer in Residence at The University at Albany. Weird Fucks was her first work longer than ten pages. She lives in Manhattan.
Learn moreMack McFarland is an artist, curator, educator, and dreams of being an impresario one day. As one of the Public Art Project Manager for Regional Arts & Culture Council, Mack spends his days flexing his passion and skills for supporting artists, engaging with communities and clients, all the while advocating for the impacts art and culture have on our lives. For the last twenty years, it has been his privilege to collaborate with many cultural producers in the process of bringing to life the shared cultural experiences that are so vital for sustaining and creating communities, while aiding us in grappling with and discerning meaning from the events of our world. As an artist Mack has shared his postcards, videos, and performances at Portland Biennial- Oregon, Kaunas Biennial- Lithuania, Time Based Art Festival- Portland, OR, documenta 13- Kassel Germany, Northwest Biennial- Tacoma, WA, and many other venues and festivals. As a curator he has been fortunate to work with many artists, including commissioned projects from tactical media practitioners Critical Art Ensemble, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Disorientalism; as well as solo exhibitions with Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Joe Feddersen, David Horvitz, Joe Sacco, Cauleen Smith, and many others. In May 2020 he co-founded Congress Yard Projects with Ariana Jacob, an outdoor exhibition space begun in the time of physical distancing.
Learn moreMac Smiff is a longtime journalist focused on Northwest culture for outlets such as The Oregonian, Portland Mercury, Vortex Music Magazine, and his own vehicle, We Out Here Magazine. Well known for holding police and government entities accountable, as well as his call to Defund The Police, his social justice activism has been chronicled by the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, The Intercept, NPR, Rolling Stone, and others.
A professional problem solver, his hobbies include gardening and raising children who understand basketball analogies.
Learn moreMadison Brookshire lives in Los Angeles, CA, where he makes films, paintings, and performances. His work invites viewers to become aware of perceptual processes and the sensuous experience of time. He frequently collaborates with musicians and composers, such as Ezra Buchla, LCollective, Laura Steenberge, Mark So, and Tashi Wada.
Learn moremadison moore is an artist, cultural critic, dj and performance-maker based in London and Berlin. His work touches pop culture, queer studies, nightlife, sound, media, visual culture and contemporary art. madison holds a ph.d. in american studies from yale university and is currently an ERC funded researcher in 'Modern Moves' in the Department of English at King's College London, where he is also the Director of the Queer@King's research centre.
madison's scholarly and popular writing has been published by The Creators Project, Splice Today, Thought Catalog, Out, Aperture, Interview, Art in America, Theater, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Dancecult: the Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-songwriter. He has given invited lectures, held residencies and performed at universities, art galleries and nightclubs around the world, including King's College London, the University of Oxford, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of St. Andrews, University College London, Reed College, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, CUNY Graduate Center, the Barbican, East Bloc (london), Elektrowerkz (London) and Performance Space Sydney. His first book, The Theory of the Fabulous Class: Creativity at the Margins, will be published by Yale University Press in 2018. He is currently working on a new project on club culture and creativity as well as an EP.
Learn moreMagic Luscious Spirit Sounds (MLSS) is a non-hierarchical cross-abilities collective that aims to create an inclusive, welcoming space where people with and without disabilities can share their love for music.
We believe in the transformative power of courageously embracing imperfection. Through collaboration, we break down barriers to music, making it accesswible and available for all.
Our collective encourages creative freedom and the courage to make music in new ways. As Octavia Butler said, "The only lasting truth is change" and we actively welcome impermanence to guide our group.
We believe that everyone is a musician, every voice should be heard and valued, and there is no right or wrong way to make music.
Learn moreMalik Nashad Sharpe, also known as Marikiscrycrycry, is a choreographer and movement director known for his provocative and formally engaging performance works that address themes of violence, alienation, horror, melancholia, and the horizon. He holds a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honors from Williams College and a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography. He has received commissions and shown his work at venues and festivals across the UK, Europe, and Canada, and is currently an Associate Artist at The Place, London and a studio resident of Somerset House Studios, London. He has held artistic residencies at Sadler’s Wells, Barbican, Performance Situation Room, Dance4, Duckie, and Tate Modern. In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine and is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2022, recognized for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements. He currently lives in London and is a guest professor in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden.
Learn moreMalique Pye is a visual artist from Atlanta, Georgia. He works in multiple mediums, his primary focus being photography. Malique's photographic career began with capturing wildlife and sports photography. Influenced from his experience working with dogs and horses in Florida, and playing rugby and experience break dancing.
He is based in Portland, Oregon, where he finished his BFA in Photography at Pacific Northwest College of Art. His current practice focuses on finding commonalities between subjects and exploring the way the perspectives in which they can be seen.
He is inspired by the ability to capture moments of movement that are often overlooked or missed in the real time we experience them. Preserving the energy and emotion of instances that capture passion and allow the opportunity to sit with them for longer periods of time. media
Learn moreMalkia Okech is an activist, Afrofuturist, and community archaeologist. She is currently a Digital Producer for the local creative agency Mighty Engine. She is also the Associate Producer for Black Spatial Relics, an artist residency and annual convening exploring slavery, justice and freedom and has been working as a Humanities Consultant for Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Project. She is a curator in the Philadelphia Black arts collective, Bad Apple Commune. Her interests include the cross-sections of multi-modal archaeology, art, cultural heritage, and decolonization. Malkia conducts social justice work as an anti-capitalist and abolitionist with the goal of fostering radical imagination.
Learn moreSouth African dancer, choreographer, teacher and activist Mamela Nyamza acquired a National Diploma in Ballet at Pretoria Technikon and has trained in contemporary, African and pantsula dance—as well as at the Alvin Alley American Dance Center. Born in Gugulethu and educated under an oppressive Apartheid Bantu Education system, much of Nyamza’s performance work addresses the politics of the body and important political and social issues existing in modern day South Africa, notably issues of sexuality, race and gender. Awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award in Dance in 2011, her works include Hatched (2008), Amafongkong (2011), and I Stand Corrected (2013). Nyamza’s performances and collaborations have been presented in various international contexts including the USA, South Africa, Mali, Egypt, Lebanon, France and Slovenia.
Learn moreFounded in 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. Mammalian creates site and social-specific performance events, theatre-based productions, gallery-based participatory installations, video products, art objects and theoretical texts. They create work that recognizes the social responsibility of art, fostering a dialogue between audience members, between the audience and the material, and between the performers and the audience. It is their mission to bring people from across the planet together in new and unusual ways to create ideal entertainment for the end of the world. For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Mammalian Diving Reflex's projects and philosophy, click here to view a PDF of collected reviews, interviews, articles and links. A great resource for those who really want to dive into the Festival!
Learn moreMandy Harris Williams | Image from https://www.mandyharriswilliams.com/
Mandy Harris Williams is a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, and internet/community academic. She is from New York and currently living in Los Angeles. In a nutshell, Mandy’s work seeks to get everybody the love that they deserve. She graduated from Harvard, having studied the History of the African Diaspora, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, and other contemporary black issues. She received her MA in Urban Education and worked as a classroom teacher for 7 years. She integrates a holistic didactic style in to her current creative practice. Her creative work has been presented at Paula Cooper Gallery, Navel Gallery, Knockdown Center and Women’s Center for Creative Work to name a few. She has contributed writing work to Dazed Magazine, MEL magazine, ForHarriet, and The Grio and is a frequent radio and podcast guest. Follow her at @idealblackfemale on Instagram.
TBA:20 Institute
A RESCREENING OF MANDY HARRIS WILLIAMS’ 2018 home school TALK
September 11, 2020
Learn moreManuela Infante, born in 1980 in Santiago, Chile, is a preeminent playwright, director, screenwriter, and musician. She holds a BA in Arts from the University of Chile and an MA in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam. With her stable group Teatro de Chile, Manuela Infante has staged plays such as Prat (2001), which took first place in the Víctor Jara Festival for Playwrights and Directors in 2002, Juana (2003), Rey Planta (2006), Ernesto (2010), and Loros Negros (2011). All works have been funded by FONDART (National Fund for the Arts). In addition, Infante has directed Fin (2008), co-produced and premiered at the festival of Modena, Italy and What’s He Building in There? (2011), created in residency at The Watermill Center, and premiered and shown in several spaces in New York. In 2012, she directed On the Beach, curated by Robert Wilson and premiered at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, as well as Don’t Feed the Humans, which premiered in Hebbel am Uffer in Berlin, Germany. Three of her plays have been published in Chile and abroad. Manuela Infante also works as a professor in several theatre departments in Santiago, Chile. She was selected as Artistic Director of the XVI Playwright Selection 2014, organized by the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes.
Infante is widely celebrated for feminist re-envisioning of famous historical figures, combining slapstick humor, prose, and memorable mise-en-scènes for works such as Cristo (2008), based on the life of Jesus of Nazareth. She regards her plays as essays in a corpus of broader currents of thought that stems from theoretical writings, science, and cultural studies. She characterizes her work as “a kind of ‘irresponsible philosophy’; irresponsible in the sense that we strive from stealing from theory to make work, and not having to inscribe myself responsibly/responsively back into the academic corpus. My work is about letting ideas acquire a material life of their own, watching them find their way into the material world, into our bodies and our relations, and thus into time.”
Learn moremanuel 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.
Learn moreManuel Pelmus studied dance in Bucharest, Romania, and performed extensively with the Romanian National Opera, Romanian television, and the state opera in Cluj, before spending several years performing with the Hamburg Opera, touring throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. Pelmus began creating his own works in 1997, and include Outcome, Common Grounds (a collaboration between Pelmus and two choreographers from Norway and Japan), and Punct Fix, all of which have toured widely in eastern and western Europe and North America. Pelmus will bring Punct Fix to the United States in the fall of 2003.
Learn moreManuel Solano (Mexico City, 1987): Through painting, performance and video, Manuel Solano’s work references pop culture and personal memories to inform on Manuel’s own queer identity and bittersweet experiences. After becoming blind for life in 2014 as a result of an HIV-related infection, Manuel’s rebellious nature drove him to keep making art rather than giving up his past life. He has since shown at Museo Carrillo Gil, Zona MACO and Galería Karen Huber.
Learn moreMa Qiusha was born in 1982 and currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Her work was recently featured in Personal Space, 24HR Contemporary Art Center, Australia; Landscape Topology, Magee Gallery, Beijing, China; Madrid, Spain; Anything is Possible, CCRN Luxembourg; and REFRESH: Emerging Chinese Artists at the Zendai Moma, Shanghai, China. Group exhibitions include the 35th International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2006); Rumor Décor, ddmwarehouse, Shanghai, China (2005); Beijing Documenta—Producing HIGH, Beijing, China (2005); 920 Kilograms, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (2005); Archaeology of the Future: the Second Triennial of Chinese Art, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing, China (2005); 2004 Automat Contemporary Art Exhibition, Suzhou Art & Design Technology Institute, Suzhou, China (2004); and SCARIFY—China Present Independent Video Exhibition, Beijing, China (2004). Ma Qiusha is represented by Beijing Commune in Beijing, China.
Learn moreMarbles Jumbo Radio is a dancer and movement thinker who works within performance, video, and discussion based platforms that engage experiences of social marginality with politics of place, belonging, land, and identity.
Learn moreMarc Bamuthi Joseph is an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, the winner of the 2011 Alpert Award in Theater, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. He is the founding Program Director of the exemplary non-profit Youth Speaks, and is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks through hip hop arts and focused environmental action. Mr. Joseph recently premiered the Creative Time commission “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” in New York’s Central Park, and is currently completing new works for the Chautauqua Symphony, the Philadelphia Opera and South Coast Repertory Theater while serving as Chief of Program and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His evening length piece “/peh-LO-tah/” has been commissioned by the Kennedy Center and will premiere at YBCA in the Fall of 2016.
Learn moreBorn in Salt Lake City, Utah, and residing in Chicago, Illinois. Torres mobilizes sound, sweat, and emotional projection to build sensorial performances. These experiences provide a portal into the sensoria of marginalized bodies and are designed to be ingested by viewers as physiological memories. Viewers are invited to share experiences of stress, fear, and celebration to simulate the heterogeneous embodiment of Queer POC, Latinx, and Indigenous people. Torres received a BA in Sculpture Intermedia and a BFA in Art History from the University of Utah, continuing their studies in MFA in Performance from School of the Art Institute Chicago. Torres has performed at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), The Momentary (Bentonville, AK), Fringe Festival (Detroit, MI), Experimental Actions (Houston, TX), and Time-Based Art Festival (Portland, Oregon). Torres has exhibited work at Recess (Brooklyn, NY), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL) UW-Parkside University (Kenosha, WI), Tropical Contemporary (Eugene, OR), Petzel Gallery (NYC, NY).
Learn moreMarcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of the collection Cenzontle (2018), which won the 2017 A. Poulin Jr. prize, and the chapbook Dulce (2018). His memoir, Children of the Land (2020), is his most recent publication. His work has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, PBS Newshour, People Magazine en Español, The Paris Review, Fusion TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, New England Review, and Indiana Review, among others. He currently teaches in the Low-Res MFA program at Ashland University
Learn moreMarc Handelman is a painter who has worked across media including film/video, installation and book arts. His recent projects have frequently examined the strange afterlife of the genre of landscape and conceptions of “Nature” as an ongoing “assembly of political order, without due process.” Marc Handelman has exhibited extensively throughout the United States as well as internationally in such venues as PS1 MoMA in Long Island City; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rubin Museum, (all New York, NY); The Dayton Art Institute, OH; The Orlando Museum of Art, FL; and the Royal Academy of Art in London, UK. He is a graduate critic at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Rutgers University.
Learn moreMarc Matchak is a writer and project person currently based out of San Francisco, California. Recently work has been presented through lecture at S1 and appeared in print at the Litman Gallery, The New School Library, and Split/Fountain. They will be showing work this fall at HQ here in Portland.
Learn moreMarco Kane Braunschweiler (Los Angeles, CA) is a Swiss-American artist and publisher. He has presented programs at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Art Institute of Chicago; and White Flag Projects, St. Louis. He has exhibited at the Swiss Institute, New York; 356 Mission, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; among others.
Learn moreMarcus Fischer is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Portland, Oregon. A first-generation American artist who creates, collects, and transforms sound into immersive, layered compositions that accompany performances and exhibitions. Site-specific assemblages of exposed speakers, tape loops, and objects are characteristic of his installations, paired with melodies of restraint and tension. He has released numerous recordings—both solo and collaborative —on 12k, a label that has decisively defined and developed its own concept of minimalism in the realms of experimental and ambient music. Fischer contributed two sound works and two performances to the 2019 Whitney Biennial and has been selected for residencies at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Rauschenberg Residency, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and MacDowell. In 2024 he was awarded The Ford Family Foundation’s Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts as well as the International Music & Composition Fellowship from the Montalvo Arts Center’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program
Fischer has performed and recorded as a solo artist, as a member of Wild Card and in collaborations with artists such as Taylor Deupree, Aki Onda, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Laura Ortman + Raven Chacon, Stephen Vitiello, Calexico and Simon Scott.
Learn moreMargaret Mathewson is a scholar, teacher and basket maker, weaving traditional styles since 1980. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she did graduate work at UC Berkeley focusing on contemporary issues in the maintenance of ancestral ways among native peoples in California. She also did post-doctoral work at the Smithsonian studying old basketry collections and working with tribes to revive traditions. She continues to attend Western Native weavers’ gatherings every year and works for tribes in several states on issues of land management, access to weaving materials and ancestral food plants and on cultural resources education.
In addition, she teaches at Oregon State University and the University of Victoria, Canada, including the following courses: Native Peoples of North America, Contemporary Native Issues, Ecosystem Science of Pacific Northwest Indians, Ethnobiology, Anthropology of Art, Ancestral Technologies and Fiber Arts/Basketry Technologies.
Margaret works with museums, tribal and other, to identify basketry and to create exhibits in collaboration with tribes, focusing on Native plants and ancestral technologies. A resident of Oregon, she runs the Ancient Arts Center, a retreat and school with classes in basketry, food ways, spinning, dying and felting, hide tanning, carving, pottery, stone and bone tools and many other skills from around the world.
Her own basketry work is a mix of ancient and modern and reflects her studies of the traditions of Europe and Japan as well as North America. All her work uses natural materials.
Learn moreMarginal Consort is a Japanese collective improvisation group founded by members of East Bionic Symphonia, an outfit assembled from students of Fluxus artist Takehisa Kosugi’s class at the radical Bigaku School of Aesthetics in Tokyo in the 1970s. Current participants are former Taj-Mahal Traveller Kazuo Imai, engineer Kei Shii, artist and Gap member Masami Tada, and musician Tomonao Koshikawa. Their records together have been released by P.S.F. and PAN.
This performance has been organized in collaboration with PuSh Festival in Vancouver, B.C. and On the Boards in Seattle, Washington. Support for this project is provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), National Endowment for the Arts, and the Japan Foundation.
Learn moreMuscles. Beads of sweat. Surrender. Inversion. Agency. Resourcefulness. These images/ideas are linked for Maria Bauman. A Blackqueerwoman dancer, not-quite-southern belle who grew up poor, clear ideas of physical labor, beauty, and body presentation are each held in her every movement.
Maria Bauman is a multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. She founded her dance company MBDance in 2009 and co-founded ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity) in 2015. Her choreography, generative scores, writing and building for MBDance are based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity, and fascination with intimacy. She brings the same tenets to organizing to undo racism in the arts and beyond with ACRE. In particular, her dance-writing-installation work centers the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of Black queer people in non-proscenium performance ritual settings.
Bauman's art has been celebrated both formally and informally. She is a 2021 Redtail Artist in Residence and BRIClab residency winner. Bauman won a 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance with Skeleton Architecture. She is currently a Choreographic Fellow with the Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative, as well as being a 2019-20 Gibney Dance in Process resident artist. She and her company were awarded a 2020 Dance Advance grant from Dance/NYC and a 2020 Brooklyn Arts Foundation creation grant. She was an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange from 2017 to 2019 and was also 2017 Community Action in Residence at Gibney Dance. Bauman is also a mentor with Queer l Art. Some of the best recognition she has gotten is from teenagers in New Haven’s Black and Brown Queer Camp who, upon seeing her dance exclaimed “Ooooooooo! She baaaad!“
As a cultural organizer, Bauman has partnered with various kinds of groups to lift up important social issues and calls for justice via art. She and the other two co-founders of ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity), a grassroots community organizing group dedicated to ensuring racial equity within the performing arts, were honored with the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for “the work you do to undo racism in our daily lives while lifting up the work and lives of your membership.” Bauman has facilitated community engagement workshops for El Puente, Chorus America, Ramapo College, Rider University, and has helped create cultural campaigns with various locals of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). She has been a keynote speaker and core facilitator for the 2018 Day of Learning on Equity & Inclusion, Camille A. Brown’s 2016 Black Girl Spectrum Convening, several Cultural Organizing for Community Change symposiums, and for NOCD-NY’s From the Neighborhood Up Roundtable. She is a Core Trainer with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond working closely with them on Understanding and Undoing Racism workshops for arts communities, and is a WOW Café Theatre collective member (theater space by and for women and transgender artists). Bauman is a founding member of the Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts Working Group (NOCD-NY).
Learn moreBorn in Cyprus, Hassabi moved to the US in 1990 and received a BFA in Performance and Choreography from the California Institute of the Arts. Since moving to New York City in 1994, she has created seven evening-length works and seven short-form pieces. Hassabi has been presented in the US at venues such as PS122 (New York), The Kitchen (New York), Dance Theater Workshop (New York), and Ballroom Marfa (Texas). Internationally, she has been featured at festivals in Austria, Spain, Russia, France, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ 2009 Grants to Artists Award.
Selected Press
Playing Connect the Dots, From Aphrodite to Lil’ Kim, Gia Kourlas, New York Times, November 13, 2009.
Learn moreMariana Valencia | Photo credit Ian Douglas
Mariana Valencia, (creator/performer) has held residencies at Chez Bushwick (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), ISSUE Project Room (2015) and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2016-18). Nationally, she has held residencies at Show Box LA and Pieter Pasd (2014) in Los Angeles; and was part of PICA’s 2018 Creative Exchange Lab. Valencia is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient (2018), a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow (2014-15), a Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation grant recipient (2010-13) and a Movement Research GPS/Global Practice Sharing artist (2016/17). Her ethnographic research has taken her to Belize, Mexico and the Balkans and she has performed in works by Jules Gimbrone, Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, AK Burns, Em Rooney, robbinschilds, Kim Brandt, Fia Backstrom and MPA. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). She holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006).
Learn moreMariano Pensotti (Buenos Aires 1973) is an Argentine author and theater director. He studied cinema, visual arts and theater in Buenos Aires, Spain and Italy. He is a graduated from Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Rogelio Yrurtya (Buenos Aires) and was a fellow studient at Casa de América (Madrid) and La Loggia CISD (Italy). In theater, as an author and director, he created more than fifteen performances in the past ten years.
Among his latest creations are Cineastas (Filmmakers) (2013) premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels) and presented in Wiener Festwochen, HAU Berlin, Holland Festival and Theaterformen, El Pasado es un animal grotesco (The past is a grotesque animal) (2010/2012) premiered at Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires and presentd at Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Festival de Otoño (Madrid), Theaterformen (Hannover), Hebbel am ufer (Berlin), Auabirlewen (Bern), Norwich & Norfolk Festival (England), Kampnagel Festival (Hamburg), Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zürich), Tempo Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Fiac (Bahia), Rotterdamse Schowburg (Rotterdam), Frascati Theater (Amsterdam). Sometimes I think I can see you (2010/2011) premiered in Berlin at Hebbel am Ufer as part of Ciudades Paralelas Festival and presented in Buenos Aires, Cologne, Brussels, Zürich, Warsaw, Salamanca, Copenhage, Helsinki, Girona and Paris. Encyclopaedia of unlived lives (2010) premiered at Schauspielhaus Graz (Austria) and presented during Steirischer Herbst Festival and La Marea (2005/2011) premiered at the V Buenos Aires International Festival and later on invited to the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Hebbel am Ufer Theater (Berlin), Homo Novus Festival (Riga), Dublin Festival (Ireland), Festival Automne en Normandie (Rouen), Carrefour International de Théâtre (Québec), Festival Transamériques (Montréal), Yokohama (Japan), Festival Temporada Alta (Girona), Norfolk & Norwich Festival (England), Metropolis Copenhague (Denmark) and Push Festival (Vancouver).
Pensotti has become one of the most noted experimental directors throughout the world. He has been heralded as one of Latin America’s brightest theater talents and he and his company tour extensively throughout the year.
He formed the Grupo Marea together with set designer Mariana Tirantte.
For his work he received several awards worldwide. His texts has been published and translated to more than twenty languages. In his work he developed two different lines, one composed by stage performances where he write his own very literary texts and the play is strongly based in the work with the actors, and in paralell he produced several site specific performances where the main intention is to create a particular contrast in between fiction and reality with fiction placed in public places.
Selected Press
"Macklin Kowal interviews Mariano Pensotti," Macklin Kowal, THE OFFCENTER, February 16, 2012.
Learn moreMarina Abramović was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1946. A pioneer of performance as a visual art form, Abramović has used her body as both subject and medium of her performances to test her physical, mental, and emotional limits—often pushing beyond them and even risking her life—in a quest for heightened consciousness, transcendence, and self-transformation. Characterized by endurance and pain—and by repetitive behavior, actions of long duration, and intense public interactions and energy dialogues—her work has engaged, fascinated, and sometimes repelled live audiences. The universal themes of life and death are recurring motifs, often enhanced by the use of symbolic visual elements or props such as crystals, bones, knives, tables, and pentagrams. While the sources of some works lie in her personal history (the circumstances of her childhood and family life under Communist rule in the former Yugoslavia), others lie in more recent and contemporary events, such as the wars in her homeland and other parts of the world. Marina Abramović attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade (1965–70) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (1970–72). She received an honorary doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago (2004). She has also received many other honors, including a Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997); a Bessie (2003); and awards from the International Association of Art Critics (2003, 2007). Abramović has had major exhibitions and performances at the Garage Art Center, Moscow (2011); Manchester International Festival (2011); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2001); Irish Museum of Modern Art (2001); Documenta (1977, 1982, 1992); and the Venice Biennale (1976, 1997, 2009). Marina Abramović lives and works in New York City. -From Art21.
Learn moremario lemafa (b. 1990 / Hawai'i) is an artist and independent organizer based in Seattle, WA. their recent work includes presentations at the '19 Honolulu Biennial, SOIL Gallery, cogean?, and yəhaw̓ at King Street Station.
“when i was a child my mother used to like a certain Suave shampoo, "Tropical Breeze" (i believe it was called). it reminded her of home. nothing in the shampoo bottle reflected her material relation to the islands. while she wore a scent to remember a place, others might wear the same one with the desire to some day go there. i still think about that.”
Learn moreMarisa Anderson channels the history of the guitar and stretches the boundaries of tradition. Her deeply original work applies elements of minimalism, electronic music, drone, and 20th-century classical music to guitar-based compositions rooted in blues, jazz, gospel, and country music. Anderson’s music re-imagines the landscape of American music, asking questions about tradition, adaptation and belonging, and exploring how music travels with people geographically and across generations. The New Yorker calls Anderson “one of the most distinctive guitar players of her generation,” while NPR refers to her as among “this era’s most powerful players.” Her work has been featured in Billboard, Rolling Stone, NPR, SPIN, Pitchfork, the BBC, and The Wire. Festival appearances include Big Ears, Pitchfork Midwinter, Le Guess Who and the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. In addition to her solo work, Anderson is sought after as a collaborator and composer. Swallowtail, her second record in duo with drummer Jim White, was released May 10 on Thrill Jockey Records. 2024 also saw the release of the feature film score A Perfect Day For Caribou, as well as appearances on records by Charlie Parr, Myriam Gendron, and Big|Brave. Past projects include 2021’s Lost Futures with guitarist William Tyler, and contributions to recordings by Matmos, Tara Jane O’Neil, Beth Ditto, Sharon Van Etten, and Circuit Des Yeux, among others.
Learn moreMarius Libman has a diverse work experience in the field of design and motion graphics, and currently holds the position of a Senior Product Designer and manager of the Design team at Elevate Labs. Libman also has a background in motion design and electronic music composition.
Learn moreMark Mitchell (Seattle, WA) is an artist who speaks to social issues through sculpture. His contributions to the cultural community bridge a number of disciplines, including art, music, theater, fashion, activism, and education. Mark was recently artist-in-residence at The New Foundation Seattle where he continued to develop his new group of sculptures, Burial 2, concerning racism and mass incarceration.
Learn moreMark Russell is a writer and cartoonist living in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of God Is Disappointed in You and has written several acclaimed comic book series, including the DC reboot of The Flintstones, Second Coming, and Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, which won the 2019 GLAAD Award for Outstanding Comic.
Learn moreMark Searcy is a graphic designer, art director, web developer, and collage artist based in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreMarne Lucas aka CuntemporaryArtist is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist based in Harlem, New York, using photography, video and installation to present unique aesthetic or social philosophies. Central to her practice are investigations of nature, culture, and the body, working in conceptual overlaps: life’s energy, the environment, beauty, identity, intimacy and mortality. Lucas’ current social practice project ‘Bardo’ explores creativity as a form of spiritual palliative care, collaborating with hospice patients. Towards this project she is training to be a certified end-of-life doula, a role acting as liaison to the dying.
An experimental filmmaker, her recent black & white infrared videos Haute Flash (2017), Mālama ‘Āina (WIP), and previous collaborations with Jacob Pander, Incident Energy (2013), ‘The Operation’ (1995) use military imaging technology to reference surveillance culture and the fragility of human existence. Lucas’ long-term social practice project ‘Bardo’ explores creativity as a form of spiritual palliative care; collaborating with hospice patients. Towards this project she is training to be a certified end-of-life doula, a role acting as liaison to the dying.
Marne is known for stylistic photographic portraiture in ongoing artist portrait series ‘Sitting City’ and MLSP, a self-portraiture series since 1995, share a similar process and aesthetic. Her elaborate Eco-Baroque installations made from recycled or natural materials, express an eco-based spirituality and include installation and land art.
Lucas has received Regional Arts & Culture Council project grants, participated in a 2016 Arts/Industry Kohler Co. factory residency (Foundry, Pottery), the Land Art Mongolia 360 Residency + Biennial, a 2012 CentralTrak experimental film residency, the Portland2010 Oregon Biennial, and made a public art commission for 'PSU Smith Memorial Student Union Public Art + Residency Projects: State of Oregon for Art Program' (2009). Her artist collective Blinglab (co-founded with Bruce Conkle) performed a long-form puppet show at PICA T.B.A. 2007 “The Untold Misadventures of Lewis and Clark”. She is co-founder of the feminist artist collective Cuntemporary Artists Presents.
Her recent film Haute Flash is part of ‘Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science’ (2018) a video exhibition and lecture series at Space Plus (Lincoln, U.K.) Peltz Gallery (London), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain, and Sala Borsa, Bologna, Italy.
Learn moreMarta María Pérez Bravo was one of the artists whose work was featured in "Pushing Image Paradigms" this past summer (1996). Drawing specifically from synthesized religious elements of Catholicism, Candomble, and Santería, personal history, and metaphoric sign, Marta uses her body as a personal altar, transforming images of herself into symbols of ritual and sacrifice through which she explores her identity as a woman. Her work has been received with both controversy and critical acclaim. Marta currently lives and works in Havana, Cuba, and has received numerous awards and international recognition for her unique photography.
Learn moreMartha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, who over the past four decades created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. She began making these videos and photo/text works in the early 1970s while in Halifax in Nova Scotia, and further developed her performative and video-based practice after moving in 1974 to New York City, embarking on a long career that would see her gain attention across the U.S. for her provocative appearances and works. In 1976 she also founded and continues to direct Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums. In 2008 she had her first solo exhibition in New York at Mitchell Algus Gallery, “Martha Wilson: Photo/Text Works, 1971-74.” In 2009, “Martha Wilson: Staging the Self,” an exhibition of Ms. Wilson’s early photo/text work and one project from each of Franklin Furnace’s first 30 years, began international travel under the auspices of ICI (Independent Curators International); and in 2011, ICI published the Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces. Martha Wilson joined P.P.O.W Gallery, New York, and mounted a solo exhibition, “I have become my own worst fear,” in September, 2011.
Learn moreDancepod was an architectural installation that housed live-streamed dance parties in four cities simultaneously, Portland OR, Mexico City, Berlin, and New York. It was the first exploration of concepts laid out in the Swells performance/lecture.
Learn moreMarzz is a rapper, singer, and songwriter born and raised in the heart of Portland, OR.
Performing at Bloom, an open-air fundraiser for PICA o April 30, 2021, as a part of Friends of Noise.
Learn moreMaster Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is Black, Italian, Queer, Non-Binary, Neurodyvergent, and practices primarily in america. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people.
Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. In 2019 they developed the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School which has had many forms since, including Afro Futurist February, and three years of Fred Hampton Summer Camp. Supporting community efforts as well, taking the shape of support for the effort to Save Dr. Martin Luther King School from being displaced by the expansion of Interstate 5 which has triggered the need to move Harriet Tubman Middle School. Stevenson is currently working in the Albina community to develop a Living Archive at Jefferson High School with students, community, and the architectural design team. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, projects involving sculpture, drawing, and photography, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks. These include Tin Can Phone, a podcast all about life in and outside of prison, and Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project both of which are owned and operated by formerly incarcerated individuals. Stevenson pursues these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people and communities are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Learn moreMath Bass (Los Angeles, CA) received her MFA from UCLA. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY (2015); and Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2014). Exhibitions of Bass’s work have been presented by Cooper Union, New York, NY (2015); Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany (2015); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2014); White Flag Projects, Saint Louis, MO (2014); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY (2014); Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden (2014); and Silberkuppe, Berlin, Germany (2014).
Learn moreMatilda has spent half her life in the sex industry and is much more afraid of the violence of poverty than the potential violence of sex work clients. She's delighted and proud to have pulled off five years of art shows, but this show and all her work generally is only possible because of community support and a shared determination to make a better world. Thanks for being here and for sticking around five whole years!
Learn moreMatt Connors is an abstract artist interested in post-painterly concerns of the painting as an object. Connors was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1973, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2006. He has been featured in several recent solo exhibitions including: Cherry and Martin, Los Angles (2010); CANADA, New York (2008); Luttgenmeijer, Berlin (2008); The Breeder, Athens (2007); Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York (2005). Recent Group shows include: Praz-Delavallade, Paris (2010); and Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago (2008). He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Learn moreMatthew Cowan is the Archivist for Moving Images and Photography at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland. He worked previously at Anthology Film Archives in New York. You can reach him at matthew.cowan@ohs.org.
Learn moreMatthew Day Jackson (born 1974) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, painting, collage, photography, drawing, video,performance and installation. Since graduating with an MFA from Rutgers University in 2001, following his BFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, he has had numerous solo exhibitions. His work has been shown at MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, Colorado; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA; the Portland Museum of Art Biennial in Portland, Maine; and the Whitney Biennial Day for Night in New York.
Learn moreMatthew Rempes is a video instrument designer, synthesist, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. His work is centered around creating novel analog computing instruments, exploring obsolete analog video formats, and experimental sound design. Matthew is passionate about sharing the joys of audio/video synthesis and enabling others to create their own instruments, having taught dozens of workshops on synthesis theory and DIY synthesizers in the Portland area. He primarily administers Synth Library Portland's Lending program and organizes opportunities for local and visiting artists to lead synthesis-related workshops.
Learn moreMatt Keegan is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. At the root of his varied practice is a strong interest in language--as it relates to cognition as well as its centrality for communication and exchange. Keegan has employed familiar phrases in recent sculpture to highlight the materiality of language and translate open-ended phrases into iconic signage. An ardent archivist and amateur social historian, Keegan has recently begun making short documentary videos that are significant components of his exhibitions. Foundational to his archival interests, Keegan was the co-founding editor of North Drive Press, an annual art publication published between 2004-2010. Last spring, he edited ==, an art edition featuring commissioned texts, interviews and multiples, published by mfc michéle didier.
Most recently, Keegan had a solo exhibition at Galeria Pedro Cera in Lisbon, and a two-person exhibition, with Eileen Quinlan, at The Kitchen, New York. Over the last two years, his work has been featured at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, The Art Institute of Chicago, SculptureCenter, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Aspen Art Museum. Keegan will have a two person show with James Richards at the Rogaland Kunstsenter in Stavanger, Norway, in early 2014.
Learn moreMatt McCormick is a filmmaker and artist whose work crosses mediums and defies genre distinctions to fashion witty, abstract observations of contemporary culture and the urban landscape. He has had three films screen at the Sundance Film Festival, and has had work screened or exhibited at MoMA, The Serpentine Gallery, The Oslo Museum of Modern Art, the Reykjavik Art Museum, The Viennale, SXSW, The Seattle Art Museum, and in 2007 he was selected to participate in both the Moscow Biennial and Art Basil. He has received awards including Best Short Film from the San Francisco International Film Fest, Best Experimental from the New York Underground Film Fest, and Best Narrative from the Ann Arbor Film Fest, and his film The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal was named in ‘Top 10 / Best of 2002’ lists in both The Village Voice and Art Forum magazine.
Matt’s debut feature film Some Days are Better Than Others premiered at SXSW and was invited to screen in the New Directors / New Films series presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Starring Carrie Brownstein and James Mercer, the film was acquired by Palisades Tartan and was released theatrically in the spring of 2011. The New York Times wrote “(Matt) McCormick is a talented miniaturist, and Some Days is full of scenes and details that will make you smile” while the San Francisco Chronicle noted that “observant writer-director Matt McCormick takes his time on the small moments to make us care more about his characters.” Matt’s recent feature length documentary The Great Northwestpremiered at the 2112 International Film Festival Rotterdam and was selected for the Documentary Fortnight series at the Museum of Modern Art, while the installation version of The Great Northwest is part of the Tacoma Art Museum's permanent collection. The Willamette Week, after noting it is the best gallery exhibition of the year, wrote “… The emotional undercurrents, along with spectacular cinematography and wisely restrained storytelling, make The Great Northwest a film that will awe—and quite possibly choke up—anyone who loves the green-tinted paradise we call home.”
Matt has also directed several music videos for bands including The Shins, YACHT, Sleater-Kinney, Broken Bells, and Eluvium. His 2007 video for The Shins’ Australia was named as one of MTV’s ‘Top 20 Videos of the Year’ while Rolling Stone Magazine called Matt’s 2010 Broken Bells’ The Ghost Inside video “awesome, transfixing and hilarious.”
In 1996 Matt started the Peripheral Produce experimental film screening series and video distribution label. He also founded the PDX Film Festival in 2001 and served as the festival’s executive director until 2008. Matt also has an album of his music and soundtrack work titled Very Stereo that was released by Marriage Records.
Learn moremaximiliano is ⅓ of rise x fall
mononymously named, maximiliano, is a conceptual artist working in BLKwvv, a generative multimedia mythos: a Black reclamation rococo aesthetic and agenda based in exploring and expanding the multiplicity and fluidity of the Black self through pleasure, desirability, innocence, and imagination as performance, video, GIF, sculpture, thought, and publications.
Learn moreMaxx Katz is a composer, musician, and performance maker based in Portland, OR, whose work draws on vocabulary from free improvisation, performance art, jazz, contemporary classical, and heavy metal. A classically trained flutist with an MA in Music from the University of Virginia, Katz uses flute, electric guitar, voice, and movement as instruments of radical transformation.
They have toured extensively across the US, Europe, and Canada as part of various collaborative and solo projects. Katz was a resident at the 2019 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music with Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey, and Atlantic Center for the Arts with flutist Nicole Mitchell. They compose work for ongoing ensembles including Yelling Choir and Floom.
Katz has been commissioned by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, and has created work in collaboration with musicians and dancers including Tyshawn Sorey, Linda Austin, Tahni Holt and Muffie Delgado-Connelly, John Niekrasz, Julian Otis, lauren jean crow, and Eddie Bond.
Their Yelling Choir project has debuted compositions at the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, the American Choral Directors Association Northwest Conference, Congress Yard Projects, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and ACRE Residency. They have led Yelling Choir workshops at Banff and ACRE as well as Portland State University, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education teen and young adult meditation retreats, and Portland Public Schools.
Learn more"Maya Beiser treats her concert programs as expansive, evening-length compositions... deep and rich, with a lush vibrato, Ms. Beiser's rich-hued tone singing out from within a bed of sound loops ranged from the insistently rhythmic to the meltingly lyrical..." – The New York Times
"Beiser combines the best of two worlds. She is a classically trained cellist with the technical and interpretive resources to draw whatever kind of music she wishes from her instrument." – The Chicago Sun-Times
“With virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrument to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello.” – The Boston Globe
The New Yorker magazine once referred to Maya Beiser as "the cello goddess.” The Israeli-born cellist is equal parts glamour, passion, and musical artistry of the highest level, and she brings it all to everything she does – from her collaborations with Steve Reich, to her work with Brian Eno and Shirin Neshat, to her stage shows at BAM and other prestigious venues around the world. Maya captivates audiences with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instrument’s boundaries. Beiser is a graduate of Yale University, a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and a featured performer on the world’s most prestigious stages from Lincoln Center to London’s South Bank Centre. Her next recording, Uncovered, will be released in August 2014.
Learn moreMaya Mikdashi (TBA:16 Guest Scholar) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her current research/manuscript focuses on law, citizenship, secularity, religious conversion, sexual difference, and the war on terror. She has been a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014-2016 at Rutgers University, and a Faculty Fellow/Director of Graduate Studies, Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University (2012-2014). She has published widely in journals including International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Study of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. She is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya.com, co-director of the feature length documentary About Baghdad (2004) and co- founding member of filmmaking cooperative Quilting Point Productions. A film she co-conceptualized and co-wrote with Carlos Motta, Deseos, is screening at the 2016 TBA Festival.
Learn moreMaya Vivas is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums, such as ceramic, performance, painting, and installation. Maya has exhibited work, spoken on panels, and hosted workshops throughout the United States, including venues and institutions such as The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Louisiana State University, and Yale. Vivas is also co-founder of Ori Gallery. Whose mission is to redefine "the white cube" through amplifying the voices of Queer and Trans Artists of color, community organizing and mobilization through the arts
Maya is a 2022/3 Golden Spot Residency awardee.
Learn moreMEGA*CHURCH is a modern spiritual congregation exploring light, music, movement and pixels. A journey into a hybrid of technology and spirituality, the divine natural and the holy artificial, entertainment and sacrament. Audiovisual spectacles of spirituality. A hypergospel for a new world.
Learn moreStuart received her BFA in dance from NYU and was a member of the Randy Warhaw Dance Company for five years. On invitation from the Klapstuk Festival in Leuven in 1991, she created her first full-length piece, Disfigure Study. In 1994 Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods began a series of collaborations with visual artists, including Lawrence Malstaf, Gary Hill, and Ann Hamilton. Together with choreographer/dancer Benoît Lachambre and composer Hahn Rowe—both honored with Bessie Awards—Stuart created Forgeries, Love, and Other Matters.
Learn moreMeg Whiteford writes books and makes theater. Her writing on visual art and performance has appeared in Artforum, Aperture, and X-TRA. She is the author of The Shapes We Make With Our Bodies (Plays Inverse, 2015), the Curator's Choice for the 2017 BAM Next Wave Festival Reading Room, and Callbacks (&Now and Northwestern U. Press, 2018), recipient of the 2016 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Prize. She has performed at Pieter, PAM, REDCAT, Machine Project, Coaxial, and Project Utopia. She is currently the managing editor of the Art Book Review and teaches dance and performance theory and history. Her ballet, Overture, a response to the drawings of artist Beau Rhee, will be published with Gravel Projects this fall. She is interested in creating wild rides.
Learn moreWolfe’s work has been presented at venues including REDCAT, Live Arts Exchange Festival, FRESH Festival, the New Original Works Festival, Off Center Festival/Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s, Dia Center for the Arts, The Kitchen, The Living Theater, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has performed in the works of Vicky Shick, Jérôme Bel, Molissa Fenley, Clarinda Mac Low, and Susan Rethorst. Wolfe has had residencies at REDCAT, Performance Works NorthWest, the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Program, and the Hothouse Residency program at UCLA, among others. She is the founder and director of Show Box L.A., and was a founding co-editor of itch dance journal.
Learn moreMelanie Flood (b.1979, NY) is an artist living and working in Portland, OR. Her practice employs photography as a tool for examining how femininity is constructed, commodified, and performed.
Flood has exhibited at Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Friend of a Friend, Denver, CO; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; ILY2, Portland, OR; Ruschwoman, Chicago, IL; and Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR. She has received support from the Oregon Arts Commission, The Ford Family Foundation, and Regional Arts and Culture Council. From 2008 to 2023, she directed Melanie Flood Projects, an artist-run exhibition space established in Brooklyn, NY. Flood holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Portland State University, Portland, OR. Flood teaches photography in the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design.
Learn moreMelanie Stevens is an artist, illustrator and writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree for Political Science from Yale University in 2001 and is the creator of the graphic novel, ‘Black Picket Fences’. She is the co-founder and editor of Miss Anthology, an organization that supports and publishes racially and economically diverse young comic artists who identify as female or genderqueer, as well as the co-curator of Nat Turner Project, a mobile gallery space that allows artists of color the freedom to create or express their own language within and without the parameters of racial commodification or designation. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts degree for Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreMelia Donovan lives and works in Beaverton, Oregon.
Learn moreMelissa Levin joined the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) in 2005 and is currently the Director of Cultural Programs. She is responsible for planning and programming LMCC’s Artist Residency Programs, the River To River Festival, Open Studios, and the Gallery in the Arts Center at Governors Island. Throughout more than a decade working in the arts, Melissa has been committed to innovative and holistic approaches to supporting artists and the creative process. Previous to LMCC, Melissa held positions at Andrea Rosen Gallery, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Artforum International Magazine. She has participated in panel discussions and served on juries at the National Endowment for the Arts, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, the Alliance of Artist Communities, Rhode Island School of Design, Baruch College, Lower East Side Print Shop, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts; and lectured at the Drew University, University of Oregon in Eugene, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, New York University, Parsons: The New School for Design, and The Cleveland Institute of Art. As an indepedent curator and writer, Melissa has also worked with venues including MoMA PS1, Real Art Ways in Hartford, Culturehall.com, NurtureArt, Cuchifritos Gallery, ISE Cultural Foundation, Andrea Rosen Gallery, and Taylor De Cordoba Gallery in Los Angeles. Melissa received her B.A. with honors in Visual Art and Art History from Barnard College.
Learn morePost-post-modern diva Meow Meow’s unique brand of ‘kamikaze cabaret’ and performance art exotica has hypnotised, inspired and terrified audiences globally. The spectacular crowd-surfing queen of song ‘drags cabaret kicking and screaming into the 21st century’ (Time Out NY), with trail-blazing sell-out seasons from New York's Lincoln Center and Berlin's Bar Jeder Vernunft to London’s Apollo Theatre, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Sydney Opera House.
Named a ‘cabaret diva of the highest order’ (New York Post), ‘SENSATIONAL’ (The Times UK), One of the Top Performers of the Year by The New Yorker, ‘The Queen of Chanson’ by the Berliner Zeitung and ‘a Phenomenon’ by the Australian press, multi-award winning Meow's works have been curated by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov amongst others, and she has created original works for numerous international arts festivals and venues as well as performing everything from Schubert and Schumann with orchestra to touring with punk outfit Amanda Palmer and The Dresden Dolls.
Meow starred recently on London's West End in Kneehigh Theatre and Michel Legrand's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and in her own solo concerts at the legendary Apollo Theatre. She had a sensational 21 show season of the Malthouse Theatre/Sydney Festival commissioned Meow Meow's Little Match Girl at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre in December and performed Cocteau's piece for Piaf, Le Bel Indifferent, for the Greenwich Music Festival U.S. She has won numerous Green Room Awards, Helpmann Theatre Awards, Sydney Theatre Critics, the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize, and the New York Franklin Furnace Performance Art Award amongst others.
Meow has just had her debut with The London Philharmonic under Maestro Jurowski as Jenny in Brecht/Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper in Paris Theatre des Champs-Elysees and London Royal Festival Hall. She joins the London Philharmonic again in July for further UK performances. She most recently sold out her Lincoln Center American Song Book Series concert and toured the concert halls of Australia with Barry Humphries and the Australian Chamber Orchestra in a programme of lost and re-found works from Weimar Germany in the 1920's. With long-time adored collaborator Pink Martini's Thomas M Lauderdale she has written and recorded the album Here Kitty Kitty ...The lost sessions, due for release in 2013. Meow's albums Vamp and Songs from a Little Match Girl, are available on iTunes.
Selected Press
"A Freewheeling Trot Around the Globe," Stephen Holden, The New York Times, April 1, 2013.
"Meet the Queen of Kamikaze Cabaret," David Hajdu, The New Republic, April 11, 2013.
Learn moreMere Tokorahi Boynton is a multitalented performance artist, singer, actor, and MC. She has had formal training in voice and developed her own unique style of performing that draws upon classical training and her Māori heritage.
Some of her most memorable singing engagements to date have been performing in Gareth Farr’s Te Papa, which was composed for the opening of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; singing and touring nationwide in the dance opera Jerusalem by Michael Parmenter; singing in the film Te Tangata Whairawa o Weneti (The Māori Merchant of Venice); and singing the lead role Taranga in ‘Maui One Man Against the Gods’ (2006). Boynton also performed with the avant-garde theater company MAU at the Vienna Mozart Festival in Requiem (2006) which was commissioned by Artistic Director Peter Sellars for the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart. Requiem was also presented in Brussels, Auckland, London and New York. In 2008 she performed in the NZIAF opera production ‘The Trial of the Cannibal Dogs’ by composer Matthew Suttor, and also performed in Ex Stasis by Gareth Farr and The Three Cornered Hat by Manuella de Falla with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
In 2013 Boynton sang in Jack Body’s Songs and Dances of Desire with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for the Auckland Arts Festival and Tokyo, Japan. Also that year, she performed again with MAU in the acclaimed all Māori women production Stones in Her Mouth and I Am a commemoration of the First World War Centenary WW100 in Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In 2021 she collaborated with composer Gareth Farr and taonga puoro (Māori musical instruments) artist Ariana Tikao to compose and perform Ngā Hihi o Matariki with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
In 2005 Boynton released her album Waikohu, which is a collaboration with composer/percussionist Gareth Farr; this recording features an eclectic range of compositions which have been given different vocal and musical treatments, from kapahaka (cultural performance) to classical string quartet with karanga (call of welcome). Her next album release was Aroha/Ahava at the Auckland Arts Festival 2015, a collaboration with composer Jonathan Besser which explores the expression of aroha (love).As an actor she is well known for her portrayal of the character Mavis in Once Were Warriors and has also performed in several other films for cinema and television including The Piano and more recently the full feature Deadlands, Hinekura, a short film in te reo Māori, (Māori language), Colonial Combat a television series in te reo Māori and The Untold Tales of Tūteremoana also in te reo Māori. Most recently, she acted in the acclaimed Witi’s Wāhine, a theater work written and directed by Nancy Brunning for the Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival.
Learn moreMerlin James was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1960 and currently lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. As well as a painter he is a writer on art, and from his days as a graduate at London’s Royal College of Art (when the school was located in the Victoria & Albert Museum) he has made extensive use of art history in his own work.
The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris by George Baker and I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation by Francis Picabia, Merlin James, Art Critical, March 1, 2008.
Learn moreMoroccan choreographer and dancer Meryem Jazouli has lived and worked in Casablanca since 1997. After pursuing dance studies and performing for several companies in Paris, Jazouli returned to her home country where her artistic work has been strongly influenced by the Moroccan context. She has worked extensively with collaborators in various disciplines, such as Mouna Sekkat, Bernardo Montet, Ambrose Bye and the visual-arts collective La Source du Lion. Works include: Temps de chien (2006), Keima…un cir à la mère (2009), Entre deux (2012), and Contessa (2013). Among other community-oriented initiatives, Jazouli established L’Espace Darja, a space in Casablanca dedicated to creation, artist residencies, training and experimentation in contemporary dance as well as a space to develop and expand exchanges and dialogues between artists of various disciplines and generations.
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