Telematic Media Arts
presents
Bound and Boundaryless
Performance / Video / Art
Cathy Weis, Moe Satt,
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born,
Stuart Shugg
Curated by Clark Buckner and Jon Kinzel
July 10th – August 21st, 2021
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Bronx Gothic, 2017, courtesy of On the Boards, Seattle
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 10th, 2:00 PST
Closing Reception: Saturday, August 21st, 2:00 PST
Gallery Hours, by appointment.
Call: 917-664-5174 or 415-336-2349
Telematic
323 10th St. @ Folsom (SOMA)
San Francisco, CA
info@tttelematiccc.com
www.tttelematiccc.com
@tttelematicc
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
Bound and Boundaryless is an exhibition of performance video by four choreographers / performance artists, whose works present the moving body as a social field – phenomenal vessels – in which we come to understand ourselves and our place in the world, through the dance of corporeal exchanges with others. They mine the body as a field of clear intention and conflicted desire, informed by longing and fantasy, exploring movement as a form of personal and cultural expression, marked by history and the burden of past traumas.
In our bodies, we are bound by our breath and physical limitations, enthralled to compulsive impulses, and delimited by our social contexts. Yet, in this same way, the boundaries of our moving bodies dissolve, opening out onto one another and the world, revealing the alien strangeness always already in our midst, and holding open the possibility – indeed, the necessity – of transformation.
WORKS IN THE SHOW
The Pupa (from Gravity Twins), Cathy Weis, 1998
Performed by Jennifer Monson
The Pupa, was first produced as a component of choreographer Cathy Weis’ dance performance, Gravity Twins, a series of three duets that illuminate the often overlooked force of gravity, bringing it to light and exploring its inherent limitations and possibilities, through the use of video technology, comparing reality with the imagined. In The Pupa, specifically, a performer cocooned in layers of tulle is suspended in the air like a metamorphosizing insect. Punching and flailing, while she swings in the air, the Pupa battles a world of objects falling upward — plastic grocery bags full of air, long plastic tubing, and feathers. In the original performance, the dynamics of the Pupa’s movement are juxtaposed to that of the performers on stage.
Hands Around In Yangon, Moe Satt, 2012.
Hands Around in Yangon is both a secular and religious exploration of the meaning of hands in Myanmar. Moe Satt’s father is Muslim, while his mother is Buddhist. In the Buddhist context, hand gestures or mudras are often important in signifying the identity of deities. Here, Satt presents a conceptual video of intense observation of hands as a cultural signals by filming the manipulation of materials involved in various labor and tasks—counting money, cutting nails, peeling vegetables. While the faces of the filmed subjects are obscured, their identities and psychological expression reside in their quasi-ritualistic repetition of hand gestures as they perfect their particular craft with care. As the film ends with shots of hands patting a pregnant belly, the simple stroking points to the way minute gestures in the most mundane contexts can become responsible for the ultimate miracle of life.
F n’ F, Moe Satt. F n’ F explores formal relationships – 108 discreet movements – between the face and fingers. The dance configures a series of iconographies: blossoms (a memory from Moe’s childhood), or gun shapes, presented as gestural material. In Asian cosmology, the sacred number 108 signifies many things: 108 sensorial feelings, 108 earthly temptations, 108 questions posed to Buddha, 108 Ayurvedic pressure points, 108 Tai chi moves, and 108 bell chimes to usher the new year.
Bronx Gothic, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, 2017
Courtesy of On the Boards, Seattle
Written and Performed by Okwui Okpokwasili
Directed, with Scenic and Lighting design by Peter Born
Original Songs by Okwui Okpokwasili
With Music by Peter Born and Okwui Okpokwasili, Special Thanks to Veronica Okeke
Sound Design consultant Philip White
A solo creation at the intersection of theater, dance and visual art installation, Bronx Gothic gives palpable force to the charged relationship between two girls on the verge of adolescence in the 1980s—where Newports are bought in singles at corner bodegas, and sex-saturated notes are passed in class. In a performance of psychic and physical collisions that threaten to break the body, it’s an unflinching look into the exquisite turbulence of one woman’s memory. Created in collaboration with designer / director Peter Born, Bronx Gothic draws inspiration from Victorian-era novels and West African griot storytelling to reveal an honest, dark and powerful tale of sexual awakening. Originally presented by Portland Institute for Contemporary Performance at PSU Shattuck Hall Annex, Portland, OR.
Untitled, Stuart Shugg, 2013
Choreography, direction, and performance: Stuart Shugg
Video: Matthew Salton
Figure being carried: Tara Lorenzen
choreographer Stuart Shugg began creating this untitled piece by animating a character, unknown and alien to him. He improvised while embodying the character, recorded his improvisations and watched them back, looking for movements that were true to his new persona. Shugg then practiced and developed these movements, building a vocabulary that provided the basis for the final recorded dance.
ARTIST BIOS
Cathy Weis is a New York-based dancer, choreographer, videographer, and the artistic director of Cathy Weis Projects. Weis danced with the Louisville Ballet from 1961 to 1966 before leaving to study at Bennington College. Every year, between 1993 and 2005, she created and presented a full-length evening of work in New York City. She also performed regularly with Circus Amok. In 1996, she received a Bessie Award for her piece Fractured: Just the Fracts, Ma’am. In 2002, Weis also received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her choreography, which led to the creation of Electric Haiku and the subsequent “Haiku” series. She has toured her own work both nationally and internationally. In 2005, she purchased Simone Forti’s studio in SoHo, and named it WeisAcres, now home to Sundays on Broadway, a unique performance series of intimate one-off events. Weis has taught classes and workshops at Carnegie Mellon University, School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, EDDC – Arnhem, Temple University, and Wesleyan University.
A videographer for dance and performance artists since the early 80s, Weis has an archive of hundreds of hours of footage documenting dance on the streets and stages of New York City, including performances by Eric Bogosian, Remy Charlip, Spalding Gray, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Bill Irwin, Bill T. Jones, Elvin Jones, Blue Lips, Jennifer Miller, Meredith Monk, Jennifer Monson, Mark Morris, Lisa Nelson, Steve Paxton, and Elizabeth Streb.
Moe Satt is a Burmese visual and performance artist who uses his own body as a symbolic field for exploring self, identity, embodiment, and political resistance. He is part of a renowned generation of experimental contemporary Burmese artists who overcame government censorship and oppression to engage with conceptual artwork, the body, and identity. He founded the Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Yangon, Myanmar.
Okwui Okpokwasili is a New York-based writer, performer and choreographer. In partnership with collaborator Peter Born, Okpokwasili creates multidisciplinary projects. Their first New York production, Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance premiered at Performance Space 122 and recieved a 2010 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production; an immersive installation version was featured in the 2008 Prelude Festival. Their second collaboration, Bronx Gothic, won a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production and continues to tour nationally and internationally. In June of 2014, they presented an installation entitled Bronx Gothic: The Oval as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival. Their current project in development is Poor People’s TV Room, an early iteration of which was presented by Lincoln Center in the David Rubinstein Atrium in June 2014. Her performance installation “when I return, who will receive me” premiered in the 2016 LMCC River to River Festival.
As a performer, Okpokwasili frequently collaborates with award- winning director Ralph Lemon, including How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?; Come home Charley Patton (for which she also won a New York Performance “Bessie” Award); a duet performed at The Museum of Modern Art as part of On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century; and, most recently, Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room.
Okpokwasili’s residencies and awards include The French American Cultural Exchange (2006-2007); Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Choreographic Fellowship (2012, 2016); Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist-in-Residence (2013); New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013); Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory (2013); New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship in Choreography (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Program (2014-16); The Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ artist grant in dance (2014); BRIClab (2015); Columbia University (2015), the Rauschenberg Residency (2015), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2016 Presidential Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts. Okpokwasili is currently the 2015-2017 Randjelovic/Stryker New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist.
Peter Born is a director, designer and filmmaker. In addition to his work with Okpokwasili, he is currently collaborating with David Thomson on he is own mythical beast a cycle of installation/ performances revolving around a post-sexual incarnation of Venus, happening throughout 2015-16. He created the set for Nora Chipaumire’s rite/riot, and he has created performance videos with Chipaumire, including the upcoming “El Capitan Kinglady”. He works as an art director and prop stylist for video and photo projects with clients such as Vogue, Estee Lauder, Barney’s Co-op, Bloomingdales, Old Navy, “25” magazine, Northrup Grumman, and The Wall Street Journal, with collaborators including Kanye West, Barnaby Roper, Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, Quentin Jones, and NoStringsUS Puppet Productions. He is a former New York public high school teacher, an itinerant floral designer, corporate actor-facilitator and furniture designer. His collaborations with Okwui Okpokwasili have garnered two New York Dance Performance “Bessie” Awards.
Stuart Shugg is an Australian dancer and choreographer who graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, in 2008. In Australia he worked extensively with Russell Dumas’s Dance Exchange and Linda Sastradipradja. He has also appeared in the works of Lucy Guerin, Philip Adams, and Antony Hamilton. In 2011, Shugg moved to New York. He danced with Jon Kinzel, Jodi Melnick, and was as a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. He’s been described in the New York Times as a “lucid dancer with scrupulous technique”, and a “dancer of uncommon grace”. His own work has been shown in NYC at Movement Research, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance Center, Roulette, Chez Bushwick, and Brooklyn Studios for Dance. Shugg received his MFA in Dance at Bennington in Spring 2018. He now lives and works in Australia.
About Co-Curator, Jon Kinzel
Jon Kinzel has received critical accolades for his work at The Kitchen, The Chocolate Factory, La MaMa, Danspace Project, Dublin Dance Festival, Gibney Dance/Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center; and The Invisible Dog Arts Center. He has contributed to publications such as SCHIZM Magazine, MR Performance Journal , and PAJ: a journal of performance and art ; received support from Harkness, Puffin, and Mertz Gilmore foundations; and held residencies at Gibney, The Yard, NYLA, EMPAC, BAX, and Jacob’s Pillow. He feels fortunate to have collaborated with influential contemporary artists, such as Jodi Melnick, Jennifer Miller, Cathy Weis, Ronnarong Khampha, Elena Demyanenko, Yvonne Rainer, Emily Coates, Jean Butler , and Matthew Barney. He has taught at Barnard, NYU, Yale, GWU, LIU, UMASS Amherst, Emerson, Vassar, The New School, New York Studio School, Merce Cunningham Trust, Lincoln Center Education, Tsekh in Moscow, and is a faculty member at Movement Research.