INVERSE Performance Art Symposium

Sandrine Schaefer, To Make Grievable (2021)
SandrineSchaefer.com | @abandonedtires

Animal lives are often positioned as inherently more killable than humans’ just by virtue of their species membership. This positioning renders the grief felt for animal death socially unintelligible. To Make Grievable resists this erasure by acknowledging the everyday violence enacted by the U.S. industrialized animal agricultural system. The building now known as the Momentary functioned as a cheese plant for Kraft Foods Company from 1947-2013. In To Make Grievable, Sandrine slowly builds a memorial to make visible the bovine lives lost to sustain Kraft Foods Company during its history on this site. In an outdoor location on the Momentary’s campus, this piece creates space to unthink and undo the conceptualization of cows as a commodity and extends grievability across species lines.

Molly Joyce, Perspective (2021)
www.mollyjoyce.com | @molly.joyce 

Perspective is an ongoing multimedia work featuring disabled interviewees responding to what access, care, interdependence, and more means to them. Past iterations of the project have been taken from one-on-one interviews with the interviewee and artist which are aurally recorded and then woven into the aural content of the piece (with my musical underscoring involving voice and vintage toy organ) and displayed visually via open caption videos, in order to underscore disability culture’s value of accessibility.

This iteration of Perspective will see a new experimental format undertaken. Audience members will be asked to text a response that will be read aloud via a screen reader and will feature my live underscoring. This undertaking therefore involves essential elements of accessibility, namely open visual captioning and screen reader voiceover, alongside live musical accompaniment to enhance and heighten the material.

Siri Gurudev, Medium 2.0 (2021)
mivellopublicoblog.wordpress.com/ | @siri_gurudev 

This piece uses the devising technique of “transference” (Anthony Howell) as performance art methodology to create interactions between the performer and one participant. These one-to-one encounters explore channeled communication and avatar production to hold a 20-minute interaction into the unknown and the unexpected, the interstice of reality/fiction, life/art. Participants can choose between two options for interaction. They will be the avatar for me, the artist, taking a different identity than themselves for a brief period of time; or they will have me to be an avatar for them, and I will stand in front of them as someone else, someone they know but I don’t. In that state of “channeling,” we will talk and feel into the experiment. Choose your own adventure! No preparation or previous knowledge is needed; the artist will explain all details in situ.

Christian Cruz, Untitled (Brick Altar) (2021)
www.christiancruzperformance.com | @christiancruzperformance

Untitled (Brick Altar) is an 8 durational performance installation created with materials specific to Arkansas. The installation is created with vintage bricks. The design and layout of the bricks are in relation to the architecture of The Momentary’s Tower (interior) space. The performer will  inhabit the installation and remain still, praying on their knees, with their head bent over their  clasped hands. The performance illustrates how a person can seemingly do “nothing” but indeed be doing something of great value. Similar actions include: thinking, remembering,  daydreaming…and more. The performer also takes pride in bringing a humble material such as  dirty, old bricks into the clean, new space of The Momentary. Praying inside The Momentary can be interpreted in different ways. Consider: “Why museums are the new churches,” (BBC,  2015) “Museums must go further if they want to be seen as ‘temples of the secular’” (Museums  Association, 2020)

Natacha Voliakovsky, State Control (2021)
www.natachavoliakovsky.ru | @natachavoliakovsky

State Control is a performance created specific to Arkansas that proposes to expose the biopolitical regimes of regulation of our bodies in which we find ourselves immersed, making visible how our survival is in the hands of the decisions of the states.

In recent years, the right to abortion in the U.S. has been weakened by an increasingly restrictive panorama with hostile laws in several states, making access to this right difficult or almost impossible in many cases.

This performance exhibits the governmental control suffered by those of us who are more fragile and claims with an upright body and a message written in blood, under the silent cry of -For a state outside our bodies!-

Abortion laws are not about woman, abortion laws are not about the body, abortion laws are about capitalism.

Kyoung eun Kang, Care package IV (2021)
kyoungeunkang.com | @kyoungeunkang_studio

Care package is an ongoing performance series Kang has developed over the last 14 years. This latest performance piece Care package IV opens as the artist enters the space carrying a care package from South Korea. This package, sent by the artist’s mother, is unpacked over the course of the performance, which incorporates poetry, sound, objects, and movement. Kang’s deeply personal performance invites the audience into the uniquely intimate relationship that has evolved between the artist and her mother over their period of long separation. As we continue to navigate the global pandemic, Kang’s highly relevant performance explores connection and family bonds across the chasm of physical distance.

Tuty Moreno Campos, Formed of fragments (2021)
tutymorenocampos.com/ | @tutymorenocampos

Formed of fragments is a performance that shows the importance of noticing and responding to emotional states. Departing from anxiety, this piece presents exercises advised to control it, such as exercising, changing our point of view, and finding new ways of relaxing. All of which are executed as private rituals to avoid our bodies from collapsing.

The performer creates a dialogue between releasing anxiety and mastering patience. She presents a space of reconfiguration, for listening and revisiting our own image departing from rupture.

Sylvain Souklaye, Depopulated + Disconnected + Unlimited = Uprooted (2021)
www.sylvainsouklaye.com | @sylvain.souklaye

A collective performative journey and ritual process about separation and togetherness.
What changes are emerging from individuals inside a group after months of consciousness/unconsciousness of bodily and mental struggle?
What inner epiphany drove those visible/invisible changes?
How do those elements influence and transform intimate and collective linguistic?
When ‘going back’ is not an option, who and what are we becoming?
Is there someone inside? Can we rekindle with our former selves? What are the mental limits of digital emotions? Are we still here, grounded?
Depopulated + Disconnected + Unlimited = Uprooted is an ode and celebration of the unknown and absurdity.

Group Performance (2021)

The Group Performance is a laboratory where the artists will create live art images, actions, sounds, and rituals in situ, fluid and unapologetic. These interactions with one another will always be in response to the moment and with a sense of urgency. The artists will take their individual methodologies, make them transparent to each other, and create an interactive space of play and experimentation. For two hours, guests are invited to The 2021 INVERSE Cohort Happening, offering a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural performance dialogue.

Roundtable Discussion

The roundtable discussion will offer a unique opportunity and gathering together of the 2021 INVERSE Cohort artists, in discussing and offering insight into their symposium performances, artistic practices, and outlooks overall on the act of performance. The cohort’s origins span the U.S., Europe, South America, and more. Performance origins involve communal engagement, drama, music, visual art, and more. Through offering a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue involving their practices, the cohort members will seek to investigate how the act of performance can be inherently political, social, cultural, and ultimately powerful in its own right.

Additionally, the roundtable discussion allows audience members to engage directly with the cohort to ask questions and engage in further dialogue. While some of the cohort members’ symposium works are participatory, the roundtable discussion will give the opportunity for the public to join the ever-generative dialogue of investigating performance.