Will Rawls
(Brooklyn, NY)
[siccer]
(exhibition)
PROGRAM DETAILS
Exhibition Dates: September 23 to November 5, 2023
Opening Reception: September 23 from 12:00 – 4:00 pm
Gallery Hours: 12:00 – 6:00 pm Thursday & Friday / 12:00 – 4:00 pm Saturday & Sunday (free)
— The exhibition is open to the public and free to attend.
Performances: October 6 & 7 at 7:00 pm / October 8 at 2:00 pm
— The performances are ticketed at a sliding scale starting at $10. Click here to go to the performance page and to purchase tickets.
Artist Talk with Will Rawls and Kemi Adeyemi: Saturday, October 7 at 5:00 pm / free to attend
Masks recommended.
ACCESS
PICA’s main 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. If you have questions about accessibility, you can contact us at boxoffice@pica.org or call 503-224-PICA.
DESCRIPTION
In [siccer], Will Rawls experiments with stop-motion, a filmmaking technique in which still photographs are strung together to produce a moving image. Through a dance performance and accompanying video installation, Rawls invites us to consider the ways in which Black bodies are relentlessly documented, distorted, and circulated in the media. Throughoutﾠ[siccer]'s live performance (Oct. 6, 7, 8), five dancers are suspended in an uncanny reenactment of an iconic American film. When the camera’s shutter closes momentarily between photographs, a gap in surveillance occurs that allows Rawls and collaborators to play within this interval through physical and vocal improvisations.
The project's title is driven by the usage of “[sic],” a Latin adverb that indicates incorrect spelling within a quotation. [sic] is often employed to contrast Black vernacular with standard English. Upturning this perceived conflict, [siccer] illuminates the verbal, physical play that marks how Black performance actively eludes capture and speculates on the potential for collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.
Concept, Choreography, and Direction: Will Rawls
Performance: Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Sound Design and Vocals: Holland Andrews and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Director of Photography, Video Editor, and FX: Lauryn Siegel
Technical Director: David Szlasa
Lighting and Scenic Designer: Maggie Heath
Costume Designer: Saša Kovačević
Assistant Costume Designer: Dana Doughty
Audio Designer: Jimmy Garver
Dramaturg: Kemi Adeyemi
Studio Rawls Director: Rebecca Fitton
Producer: Sasha Okshteyn
Company Manager: Alejandro Flores Monge
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Will Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has created a solo exhibition for Adams + Ollman Gallery (2022) and a multi-part installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Everlasting Stranger (2021), as well as presenting work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.
SPONSORSHIP
[siccer] was originally commissioned by The Kitchen in partnership with co-commissioners, The Momentary, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, On the Boards, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.ﾠ[siccer] was made possible, in part, by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is a Creative Capital Project.ﾠ[siccer] is also a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information:ﾠwww.npnweb.org.ﾠ[siccer] also received substantial developmental support from THINKLARGE.US, a family run nonprofit created by Don Quinn Kelley and Sandra L. Burton to aid in the creation of new work.
[siccer] was developed and supported, in part, by residencies at The Momentary and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, with additional support by On the Boards and The Kitchen; a creative residency at Petronio Residency Center, a program of the Stephen Petronio Company; with financial, administrative and residency support from Dance in Process at Gibney with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Movement Research; the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles and The Hammer Museum Residency; the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University; with production support and residency provided by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Williams College and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.ﾠﾠ