Performative Actions
DIALOGUE II
Thursday, September 17
10am PT, 11am MT, 1pm ET
To continue the dialogue on performance based work in September we have invited four of our members to discuss their art practice. Following we will have a conversation with the presenters and participants about the range of performative strategies that can be employed during the fall elections and during the ongoing pandemic.
Members and one guest are free. General Public can attend for a $10. Capacity is 100 participants. All participants MUST REGISTER.
Member Presenters:
maru garcia
Maru García is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher working across art + science + environment. Her use of media includes research, installations, performance, sculpture, and video, usually with the presence of some kind of organic matter to help understand the biological processes occurring in complex systems. Her areas of interest are explorations on biosystems, interspecies relationships, and the capacity of living organisms (including humans) to act as remediators in contaminated sites. She questions the way science and technology have influenced the relationship between humans within nature. She holds an MFA in Media Arts, M.S. Biotechnology and B.S. Chemistry and is based in Los Angeles, California. marugfierro.com
billy x. curmano
Billy X Curmano is an artist/adventurer and former McKnight Foundation Interdisciplinary Art Fellow with awards for performance, film and a solo CD. He’s probably best known for extreme projects in the natural world. His water trilogy launched with a 2,367.4-mile Mississippi River Swim as performance and environmental statement, followed by a 40-day juice and water fast in Death Valley and topped by a public transportation journey to the Arctic Circle. His works are in the Malta National Collection, Museum of Modern Art Library and Franklin Furnace Archive among others. He’s toured extensively and been featured as a “Pick of the Week” (LA Weekly), on the “A List” (Minneapolis City Pages) and as the keynote performer for New York City's Art in Odd Places. On a lighter note, journalists have dubbed him the court jester of Southern Minnesota and compared him to a happy otter. billyx.net
andrea haenggi
andrea haenggi (she/her), Swiss-born, is breathing and working at this moment in Lenapehoking — now called Brooklyn, New York. Calling on plants as her guides, teachers, mentors and performers, her dance and ecosocial art/fieldwork practice creates a form of theater called Ethnochoreobotanography, which simultaneously explores issues regarding decolonization, ecology, feminism, power, labor and care. She has performed and exhibited locally and internationally in theaters, galleries and on outdoor living land and received her latest research residences as an “embodied scientist” at the Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich, Switzerland (2019) and at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY (2020). She holds an MFA in Creative Practice from Transart Institute/Plymouth University UK and is a Swiss Canton Solothurn Dance Prize recipient. In 2017, seeking to expand her art-activist approach with spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds), she co-founded the art collective Environmental Performance Agency (EPA), whose primary goal is to shift thinking around the terms environment, performance, and agency. environmentalperformanceagency.com weedychoreography.com
leslie sobel
Leslie Sobel is driven by dual perspectives of art and science. Her fieldwork driven practice feeds her studio work. She works in mixed media including photography, scientific data and painting, printmaking, sculpture and performance. She has shown widely including many solo exhibitions. She curates exhibitions and has been a juror multiple times, give talks and works widely to use her artistic practice to increase climate awareness and activism. Her practice includes working to change how we use urban land, starting with her own garden where she works to increase pollinator habitat, grow food and native plants. Grants include an upcoming cruise on the Arctic Circle in 2021, residencies on the Eclipse Ice Field, Colorado Art Ranch, the Loomis Chaffee School, & several Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs Professional Development Grants. University of Hartford Nomad Interdisciplinary MFA 2020, BFA University of Michigan School of Art 1983. lesliesobel.com
