DATES / TIMES
This work is on view at PICA from September 17 through October 3, 2021 | Open Hours: 12:00—6:00 PM Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
In-person performances of this work will take place at PICA on September 16, 17, and 18 at 7:00 PM each night. Seating is limited for these in-person performances, as such, if you would like to attend please make a free reservation through your Festival pass confirmation email or contact the TBA:21 Box Office at boxoffice@pica.org or call 503-224-PICA.
ACCESSIBILITY
PICA’s main warehouse space is on the ground floor and is accessible to those with mobility aids. ADA-accessible, gender-neutral restrooms and a water cooler are located inside of PICA. If you have questions about accessibility you can contact us at boxoffice@pica.org OR CALL 503-224-PICA
Emily Johnson / Catalyst
Raven Chacon
Drew Michael
Holly Mititquq Nordlum
(Mannahatta, Lenapehoking / Land with ties to the Tiwa, Tewa, Keresan, Tanoan, Anasazi, Diné, Apache and Genízaro / Lands of the Multnomah, Wasco, Kathlamet, Cowlitz, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla / Dena'ina Land)
Invitation To Being A Future Being
“I view our bodies as everything: our bodies are culture, history, present, and future, all at once. Out of respect for, and trust in, our bodies and collective memories, I give equal weight to story and image, to movement and stillness, to what I imagine and what I do not know.”
—Emily Johnson / Catalyst
DESCRIPTION
Celebrated for a distinguished body of dance works, Emily Johnson unites audiences in a shared experience of movement, place, history, collective action, and the continuance of Indigenous cultural practices and perspectives. As part of a creative residency at PICA, Johnson gathers an extraordinary group of collaborating artists to create an in-process activation and installation as part of her newest work in development, Being Future Being.
Johnson, along with composer Raven Chacon, visual and tattoo artist Holly Mititquq Nordlum, and artist and mask maker Drew Michael, delves into the power of creation to build a visual, aural, and ancestral landscape of Indigenous power. By (re)building new visions of the forces that brought this world into being, Being Future Being brings forth new futures with the potential to reshape the way we relate to ourselves, and to the human and more-than-human cohabitants of our world.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an organizer for justice, sovereignty, and well-being. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, she is based in Lenapehoking/New York City. Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and care processions; they engage audienceship within and through space, time, and environment, interacting with a place's architecture, peoples, history, and role in building futures. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life—where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, and our past, present, and future.
Her choreography and gatherings have been presented across the United States and Australia. Recently she choreographed the Santa Fe Opera production of Doctor Atomic, directed by Peter Sellars. Her large-scale project Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars is an all-night outdoor performance gathering taking place amongst 84 community-hand-made quilts. It premiered in Lenapehoking (NYC) in 2017, and was presented in Zhigaagoong (Chicago) in 2019. Her new work in development, Being Future Being, considers future creation stories and present joy.
Emily's writing has been published and commissioned by ArtsLink Australia, unMagazine, Dance Research Journal (University of Cambridge Press), SFMOMA, Transmotion (University of Kent), Movement Research, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, and the compilation Imagined Theaters (Routledge), edited by Daniel Sack. She was an advisory committee member for Creative Time's 10th Anniversary Summit and a Phase One working group member of Creating New Futures. She serves on the advisory committee for the Advancing Indigenous Performance Initiative of Western Arts Alliance, the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and the Native American Arts Program Expansion Committee for Idyllwild Arts. Emily is the Pueblo Arts Collaborative Diplomat at Santa Fe Opera, and a lead organizer of First Nations Dialogues.
Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on the Lower East Side of Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center. She is part of a US-based advisory group—including Reuben Roqueñi, Ed Bourgeois, Lori Pourier, Ronee Penoi, and Vallejo Gantner—which is developing a First Nations Performing Arts Network.
Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of a United States Artists fellowship in music, a Creative Capital award in visual arts, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.
• • •
Drew Michael was born in Bethel, Alaska, and raised in Eagle River, Alaska. He started his art career at the University of Alaska Anchorage in a carving class with Joe Senungetuk in 1997. From there, his practice has developed through the study of other artists' work and through his own experience in trial and error. He has learned under the guidance of Kathleen Carlo and Larry Ahvakana in Anchorage, AK.
His art is deeply influenced by the people and events he has encountered in his life. Currently, his work uses imagery of religious iconography blended with traditional mask making with the hopes of bringing to light different ways of healing. His work is created with a focus on using new materials and combinations of mixed media. He uses carving as a form of expression, to draw understanding and compassion from within, and is constantly using new materials to broaden the form of his work.
"With everything I create I aim to exemplify my thoughts on how our humanity exists within this world, emotions about my relationships with others, perceptions of energy in all things and the constant acceptance into balance. As I learn about my own path I blend my traditional knowledge with everyday living experience and somehow try to connect with that ancestral wisdom that I see us all having within and around."
• • •
Holly Mititquq Nordlum is an Iñupiaq (Inuit) artist who comes from the northern village of Kotzebue, Alaska. Nordlum works in a variety of media, using each to best cast light on Indigenous people. Her tattoo work and traditional markings revitalization effort is based on a 10,000-year Inuit history and is a machine-free process that facilitates healing, pride, and celebration from the traumas of colonization and individual experience. She organizes trainings, using traditional patterns in in-depth sessions to foster real change for people—in the end, creating community in the marks left behind. Nordlum’s public artwork educates about the still-surviving tribes of Alaska: their stories, histories, and cultures. Holly speaks publicly about the systems which continue to oppress her people and prevent their thriving.
In 2004 she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Alaska, and in the last five years she has received a Time Warner Fellowship from Sundance, an Art Matters grant, an Alaska Humanities Forum grant, an Alaska Native Visionary Award, a Rasmuson Artist Project Grant and Fellowship, an NDN Collective Indigenous Artists Grant, and she was part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Artist Leadership Program.
SPONSORSHIP
Being Future Being is commissioned by The Broad Stage at Santa Monica College and is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project supported by Bunnell Street Arts Center (AK), New York Live Arts (NY), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR), and NPN, with contributions from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, The Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional commissioning and development support is provided by Abrons Arts Center, Portland Ovations, Jacob’s Pillow’s Pillow Lab residency, a Movement Research residency funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund, and New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency with funding from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Partners for New Performance.
The creation of Being Future Being is made possible in part with support from New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Supported in part by a grant from the Western Arts Alliance Advancing Indigenous Performance (AIP) Touring Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation