The La MaMa Moves Festival, now in its 13th season, opens Thursday May 10. Curator Nicky Paraiso and artists Ellen Fisher, Jonathan Gonzalez, Adham Hafez and Ni’Ja Whitson recently shared some thoughts about their relationship to the festival.
In the alchemy of her performance, humor and transformation become means not of hiding the self, but of revealing it.
I know both the impossibility and necessity of such a Decolonizing.
As a central point of exploration: “Spaces are not exterior to our bodies, instead, spaces are like a second skin, they unfold in the folds of the body.”
With CHASM I wanted a way to get that back because I feel like that’s not about a career, or being an artist, it’s mine, it’s what I do, it’s what I’ve always done. It feels necessary for survival.
This idea of American desire and what’s encapsulated in that is this reckoning, but, also holding the truths of being white in American culture means you have to hold the history of being an oppressor. But, then, how do you hold that?
My collaborators on Pillowtalk have pushed me to envision a different time and place: a beautifully queer place that simultaneously grounds us in the deeply dangerous reality of American culture and propels us forward to claim the spaces for an equitable future governed by radical love.
“It started as a piece with very pared down visual corollary, but I soon realized that was beside the point. It was a much more interesting piece to use language to describe a thing and entirely remove the visual corollary.”
I would have this piece on an endless loop that I might wander through like a cherry blossom viewing “hanami” stroll, or soak in like a yuzu-scented hinoki bath in the woods. Joanna Kotze and Mina Nishimura share thoughts from inside their fractal realm.
Five Questions: Sam Schanwald with Hannah Wasileski, the projections designer from SLEEP
slowdanger is a performance duo from Pittsburgh. They are Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight, who speak their minds both alone and together. We talk about the queerness of being a multidisciplinary artist and the influence of technology on dance work, among much more. Their collaboration
Maura and Eugene de Poogene yelled over really loud music with Croatian curator and producer Zvonimir Dobrovic about his “Perforations Festival” – opening Friday.