Maya Pindyck
Maya Pindyck, re/touch (hand), 2018. Photo Credit: Maya Pindyck
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
Through a multidisciplinary practice that includes writing, drawing, installation, and public intervention, I examine intersections of memory, place, language, and the (in)visibility of bodies—human and nonhuman—in cultural spaces. I often work between the gap of word and image, between language and gesture, between name and thing. My projects tend to foreground points of tension and erasure in the sociopolitical contexts of the United States and Israel. For Art in Odd Places 2018, I perform Bruce Nauman’s Body Pressure (1974) on a bus stop wall and reassemble the instructions into a poem (available at Westbeth Gallery) that speaks to how touch can undo a regulating image. By reactivating Nauman’s piece in New York City, I hope to open up questions about how various ways of moving with other bodies can help to repair the isolating impacts of capitalism. “re/touch” is an experiment and an invitation to connect.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
To me, “body” means impact, residue, possibility– a capacity to move and be moved. A body comes from an encounter. It’s a thing always changing in relation to other bodies. A body happens, becomes, resists, fools, repeats, ruptures, repairs. Its outline is constantly dissolving.
Questions Collective
Questions Collective, Foundation, performance proposal, 2018. Photo Credit: Questions Collective
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
Questions Collective is an all-female Amsterdam based interdisciplinary collective. We combine our backgrounds in design, art, theater, music and choreography in performances, exhibitions and theater productions. Our project for AiOP BODY 2018: Foundation: on the cosmetic role of the artist in gentrification – is a commentary on the uncomfortable role artists play in urban development– of which 14th street is a primary example. It has developed from a dodgy industrial area, to an artist hot spot, to prime real estate. In the process, leaving behind original inhabitants, pricing out marginalized groups and ultimately even the artists. By making our role explicit, via the use of make up on an urban scale, we want to open up the discussion on the topic. By treating the street as a ‘facial canvas’ we visualize our role as a cosmetic device used to increase the appeal of an urban area. We, as creatives create value for others and are then, washed away.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
We grabbed onto the theme by conflating urban development with the body, and the use of cosmetics to increase the ‘appeal’ of the (female) body. We nod to our perspective as an all-female collective by using the language of tools expected to be found in a woman’s toolkit.
Kasie Campbell
Kasie Campbell, Crash My Room 2017. Photo Credit: Abigail Nyman
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
I am a visual artist working in Edmonton AB. I am interested in incorporating a variety of media, including sculpture, photography and installation with performative means. We are Revealed deals with the anxieties and vulnerabilities that I experience when I’ve become the object of someone else’s gaze. The costume that is worn for the duration of the performative installation, manipulates the emblematic nature of clothing and skin; poetically deeming its own connotations of what is attractive and repulsive. As the work continues to evolve and as I spend more time wearing the costumes, I have come to understand it as a manifestation of my anxieties in physical form. The work speaks directly to the paradoxical attractions and simultaneous tensions between what could be defined as beautiful or grotesque. The performative aspect of the work relies on the audience; using the spectators as a crutch, which in turn frees myself from any responsibility of my actions.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
My work thus far relates to women, the relationships they have with their bodies and the ways they may feel uncomfortable in social situations. The performance specifically deals with women’s issues, and traditionally feminine disciplines that are reclaimed in the name of equality.
Yali Romagoza
Yali Romagoza, 90 miles, 2018. Photo Credit: Lindsey Whittle
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
I am a Cuban-born artist currently based in New York City. My interdisciplinary art practice includes performance, video, installation and conceptual garments to discuss notions of femininity and identity, broader issues of migration, politics and social behavior. My project for AiOP is titled Meditating my way out of Capitalism and Communism. 12410 days of Isolation. A performance where I, as my alter ego Cuquita the Cuban Doll, meditate for 30 minutes in the form of a public action near the subways stations across 14th Street and as a performance for single-channel video in the Westbeth gallery. With the project, I examine my experience growing up in Cuba and as a recent immigrant to the US. 12410 days refers to my age through which I reflect on my past, and my present and I recognize how the systems in power oppress and marginalize the individual. Through the use of humor and absurdity, I intertwine the personal and the political to approach trauma and displacement.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
For me Body means nation. I find refuge within myself and understand my body as a space of survival that helps me to transform the space between my body and the body politic.
Giulia Mattera
Giulia Mattera, Testimony from a raped girl, 2018. Photo Credit: Giulia Mattera
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
Giulia Mattera is an Italian performance artist whose research-based practice questions gender, daily life and social structures as ritualized behaviors. By using repetition as a tool to erase pre-constructed meanings, she sets herself tasks that deal with failure and challenge the preconceptions of body-mind limitations. She has showed her work in the USA and all around Europe. She holds a Masters degree in Performance Making from Goldsmiths College (London, UK) and a BA from the University of Warwick, her studies have focused on performance art, sociology and communication. Giulia Mattera perceives performance art as a means to change our perspective on the world, as a moment of highlighted consciousness that creates the inner space for a change. Testimony from a raped girl is a one-to-one performance during which each person will be guided in a walking journey based on testimonies of women who have been raped in the areas they are passing by.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
The body is a site of memory storing everything we experience either consciously or unconsciously. The body is a forceful ally whose condition speaks the truth more than any rational imposition undermining our ability to trust body intelligence.
KINSFOLK : Holly and Jackie Timpener
KINSFOLK, Beard Wood, 2013. Photo Credit: Chris Blanchenot
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
KINSFOLK are constantly examining ideas of identity, beauty and memory. We are interested in questioning gender divides, expectations of gender and the judgment placed on appearance. We are longing to create new ideas of how we can live within this world as our true selves, without shame or fear. With Venus and Mars, we are exploring the differences and similarities between opposing forces. Three sets of repeated movements will be performed alongside one another each day of the festival. We are welcoming the work to transform as changing environments are embarrassed, new witnesses are present and our identities are intertwined. This work addresses our desire to understand what lies between us. How experiencing the other adds to ourselves and potentially changes our personal identity to become closer to the other.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
The BODY is our malleable material that we are encased in. We teach it and learn from it. We alter it and it alters us. We challenge our BODIES’ senses to adapt its agency, influenced by its surrounding environment; discovering freedom and the potential for personal and political expansion.
Stacey Cann
Stacey Cann, Shield, 2018. Photo Credit Jeremy Pavka
1. Tell us about yourself and your project for AiOP BODY 2018:
I am an artist living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I use performance and installation as a way of exposing elements of my daily existence, and pushing these daily activities to the brink of absurdity. My work for Art in Odd Places examines my experience as a woman in public spaces. Women’s bodies are highly regulated and judged in public spaces. If a woman is harassed or assaulted the public often blames what she is wearing or doing. This performance is a reaction to the suggestion that we can protect ourselves from attack through clothes that make us disappear in public. As women, clothing can help protect you or expose you to danger. You can’t be too covered up or too exposed, otherwise you are open to attack.
2. What does the theme BODY mean to you?
Women’s bodies have been highly regulated to try and control them. Clothing that is impractical, overly exposing, or overly burdensome is an outwardly apparent way of exercising control over women’s bodies. Women are criticized for showing too much or too little of their bodies.
