Artists Reach Out: Gabrielle Civil

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Gabrielle Civil

Gabrielle Civil in
Experiments in Joy
(photo: Dennie Eagleson)

Gabrielle Civil is a Black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit MI. She has premiered fifty original performance art works around the world including in Puerto Rico, The Gambia, Ghana, Canada, Zimbabwe, and Mexico where she lived as a Fulbright Fellow. She is the author of the performance memoirs Swallow the Fish (2017) and Experiments in Joy (2019) and was lead contributor to Experiments in Joy: a Workbook (2019). A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches creative writing and critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.

Gabrielle Civil
(photos: above, Fungai Machirori. Below: Starr Rien)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

The project of living has been affected by the pandemic. The project of teaching, breathing, being, and being connected to loved ones. The project of keeping time. It’s been almost three months since these questions arrived, and I can’t believe how long it has taken me to respond--except that everything takes longer now. Things feel both sped up and slowed down. In my house, I swim through pools of time: dog paddling or trying to hold off a crashing wave but sometimes floating in memory or hope. Lately, I’ve been riding the swell of the Mississippi River from the headwinds of Minnesota all the way down to the crumbling confederate shores....

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

Maybe it was reciting a speech for MLK Day at church as a kid in a pink velveteen suit with a hat. Or poring over the “Sugar Plum Tree” in Childcraft Vol. 1 Poems & Rhymes (which I still have on my shelf). Or hearing my mother recite "Dreams" (Hold fast to dreams....) by Langston Hughes while she cooked in the kitchen. I’m not sure, but I know that literature, art, and performance have always been juicy to me.

In college, I trained as a poet. And I loved readings and open mics and slams and spoken word events but after a while, I grew restless.... I craved new cadences, new ways to circulate language in space. Despite my limited performance background--I had never seriously danced or acted on stage--I craved activating my body. In my book Swallow the Fish, I talk about turning to performance art as a way to make a different kind of poem, as a way to embody poetry itself. I move from figures of speech to figures of the body and back. That’s still the heart of my practice today.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

Right now, I am practicing performance / writing. My new book, the déjà vu, is about experiential echoes and Black feminist double vision. It’s due at the end of the year, so I’m practicing imagining, crafting and believing in my wild ideas! I’m practicing dreaming and trying to show up for a new, better world that might crack through this time. I’m practicing preparing.

I’ve got a rad performance residency at Automata in LA later this summer where I’ll activate the idea of living objects. In the fall, I’ll actually teach a class with this title on Black material culture, so this embodied exploration will be key. I’m practicing serious patience. I’m writing this half way through a 14-day self-quarantine in Michigan. Once I’m done, I’ll get to see my parents in Detroit and I will hug human beings for the first time in months! I am envisioning that hug with my entire body!

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I love reading writing teaching performing art-making listening learning connecting Black people body hugging books poetry archives liberation and joy. My practice and visioning are about all of those....

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

It’s got to go deeper. The dual moment of pandemic and uprising is unprecedented and foretold. Creativity and imagination are the way forward—plus a lot of bravery. Hold fast, slow down and transform.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Becca Blackwell

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Becca Blackwell

Becca Blackwell
(photo: Max Bernstein)

Becca Blackwell is a NYC-based trans actor, performer and writer. Existing between genders, and preferring the pronoun "they," Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expand our sense of personhood and the body through performance. Some of their collaborations have been with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf and Lisa D'Amour. Film/TV includes: Ramy, High Maintenance, Marriage Story, Shameless, Deadman's Barstool, and Jack in the Box. Becca is a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, Franklin Furnace Award and the Creative Capital Award.

Becca Blackwell
(photo: Kevin Yatarola)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I was in the middle of performing a new solo show called Schmermie’s Choice that was a bit of an extension of my prior show They, Themself and Schmerm. And the tour of Half Straddle’s show that I had worked on with creator/director Tina Satter, Is This a Room, had all the tours canceled (or postponed? Nah...most likely canceled).

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice. 

I got an in-school suspension and my drama teacher (I took that elective instead of journalism because it was less work) said I should try being in a play. I loved rehearsal and realized I had horrific stage fright. My college counselor, L’Tanya Evans, pushed me to audition for theater, and I got a little scholarship at a small liberal arts college and went. I realized in 1991 that Ohio theater was not something that knew what to do with me and came to NYC where I eventually found more queer people to make art with. I joined Circus Amok in 1999 and blessedly have found more and more community that I connected with. As there became a more opening of queer work that could be in larger formats meant that I could start to figure out how to make a living in the arts. That and grants I have received have kept me in the game.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I am using this time to get to the root of all my beliefs, no matter how uncomfortable. And then envisioning a world where deep self love can allow us to let go of a lot of concepts that limit us. Realizing that micro and macro are right there together. I am prioritizing the things that my work to maintain a career never would give me the time to do. More music, more reading, more learning languages, skills I always wished I had the time to cultivate. Listening to my body and not my mind. Thinking about a world where health and connection to nature is considered the baseline not the first thing we need to give up in order to survive. Deep listening, not to figure out but to allow myself to truly see. Also, I would like to re-enact every Murder She Wrote episode with my favorite people. Word for word. Gesture for gesture. That is sometimes all I think about. It might save some part of the world if I made that.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

That is the biggest goal...to actually see what I want to vision in my practice! The more I can truly love myself and offer the same compassion to myself that I have been trying to offer to others, the more I can actually truly love others. I am realizing the art I am curious about is reaching out and expanding. And most of what I do is rooted in humor because, when we laugh, our hearts open up. I am trying to find that line of cracking things open and seeing the filth as a gift. And as a way of finding many ways to see things. Our perspectives are all we have...so how do I want to see the world? It goes back to what my beliefs are, that is how I see the world. That’s the circle I am in. And I’m unpacking it as best as I can, learning and learning and (fingers crossed) also growing.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I wake up every morning knowing that this is the biggest obstacle...my mind. My mind likes to take the train to "panic town" and "self doubt town," sometimes to "you’re an asshat and a has-been town" and ALL kinds of other mini stops along the way. I know that the world now is one in a lot of emotional crisis. Myself included in this.

So, that is what I am deeply trying to rewire, that instinct to go to the worst case scenario, but instead SEE the future of each of us expanding. That this time even in its deepest, darkest place can lead to a place of possibility and SEE myself in a world/community that reflects that, encourages that and embraces that.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Pamela Sneed

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Pamela Sneed

Pamela Sneed
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, writer, performer and visual artist, author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery, KONG and Other Works, Sweet Dreams and two chaplets, Gift by Belladonna and Black Panther. She has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Hyperallergic and on the cover of New York Magazine. She is online faculty in SAIC’s low-res MFA teaching Human Rights and Writing Art and has also been a Visiting Artist at SAIC in the program for four consecutive years. She has performed at the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Poetry Project , MCA, The High Line, New Museum and Toronto Biennale. She delivered the closing keynote for Artist, Designers, Citizens Conference/a North American component of the Venice Biennale at SAIC. She appears in Nikki Giovanni’s, The 100 Best African American Poems. In 2018, she was nominated for two PushCart Prizes in poetry. She will publish a poetry and prose manuscript, Funeral Diva, with City Lights in Fall 2020.


Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I am working on my first musical performance which is a tribute to Big Mama Thornton. I received a commission from Denniston Hill through the Exodus Project in collaboration with Triangle Arts, Dumbo. I was doing vocal training and everything. The show was supposed to premiere this month on April 27. Because of the pandemic, it has been pushed to early November when Triangle reopens.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

It's hard for me to think back to how I became an artist as I feel now that it’s part of my DNA. I attended the New School /Lang College in the late 1980’s. Their campus was really the West and East Village. I trained as a writer there and got involved in poetry and performance through the East Village scene at the time.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

At present I am writing, performing, teaching and making visual art. I have a book coming out in the fall Oct 2020 with City Lights. It’s titled Funeral Diva, and it’s about coming of age during the AIDS era in New York and the impact on POC and LGBTQI communities. I am trying to document an important community and legacy. It’s poetry and prose. I hope to create more literature/more visual art and have more opportunities to perform on larger stages and share my political vision which is about revolution/at least that’s what my students tell me/I’m interested in social justice through the arts and interdisciplinary modes of working and thinking.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I believe many things--one, that my artistic practice is also a spiritual practice, one that keeps me whole and sane and working toward not just my own good but society's good as well. I also believe teaching is a spiritual practice and my job is to empower people to speak and express their truths through the arts. I also try to engage my students politically believing deeply the personal is political. All of my work reflects that. I also believe during this pandemic artists are on the frontlines and are also essential workers teaching people how to survive, transform and endure. My practices always reflect this. Funeral Diva is a personal and political book. My Big Mama Thornton performance project is to pay tribute to a Black woman who is known to have been a lesbian, possibly trans and was foundational to Rock and Roll.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I described in a talk that I did recently for an art school in Vienna that I consider myself to be both a pioneer in terms of  poetry and interdisciplinary forms and topics such as Black lesbian working class experience but, in duality, I also see myself as a late bloomer. I've started painting in the last five years, and this is my first year singing professionally. I am ever growing and believe I am just hurting my stride as an artist.

All of my work has been described as important in the world's landscape. I read to some students yesterday and they said my work inspired them to change and fight for social justice. I think that’s where you can locate me in the landscape.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Rosamond S. King

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Rosamond S. King

Rosamond S. King
(selfie courtesy of the artist)

Rosamond S. King’s goal is to make people feel, wonder, and think, usually in that order.

She is a creative and critical writer and performer whose work is deeply informed by her cultures and communities, by history, and by a sense of play. Her guerrilla performance art has appeared somewhere near you; staged performances have been curated by: CalArts, Dixon Place, the VIVA! and Encuentro Performance Festivals, Brown University, the African Performance Art Biennale, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere. She has been an Artist in Residence with ChoreoQuest and Alice Yard.

Poetry publications include the forthcoming All the Rage, the Lambda Award-winning Rock | Salt | Stone and poems in more than three dozen journals, blogs, and anthologies. Scholarly work includes Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination.

King is Creative Editor of sx salon and Director of the Institute for the Humanities & Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. She is currently working on dis/obedience, a series of linked performances, and This     intentionally left blank, a book of erasures.

www.rosamondking.com

Rosamond S. King
Jardin d'hiver still
(photo: Swati Khurana)

Brandi Rei Tucker in #SAYHERNAME
by Rosamond S. King
(photo: RestorationArts)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

For almost a year, I’ve been working on sanctuary, a collaborative outdoor performance dreamed up by Ana Maurine-Lara with Ana, Akiko Hatakeyama, Courtney Morris, and myself, directed by D’Lo. It was to be presented in May at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Oregon. There’s deep disappointment, grief even, but we’ve done so much work on it that we know it will be presented at some time….

Ironically, I had also committed myself to regularly devising in proper studios this year to continue creating dis/obedience, a series of dances….

My next book of poetry, All the Rage, coming out next year, has been affected because I thought it was done, but I’m going to add some poems reflecting on the pandemic.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I’ve basically been dancing since I could walk, and I was put into formal classes when I was  three. My parents were committed to exposing their children to the arts: dance, painting, writing, music....

I started making performance art before I knew the term. I was visiting Paris, and having a hard time. I experience a lot of racism there because my skin color, hair, style, and fluency in French mean that people read me as African, and therefore as an undocumented or unwanted immigrant. I wanted to create an embodied response to that embodied experience, so I covered my colorful body in colorful fabric from The Gambia, and moved around Jean Dubuffet’s black and white installation, Jardin d’hiver. I asked a friend to photograph me, and when I showed people the images, they called it performance art.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I am literally practicing a lot by taking a lot of dance classes, and I am writing a lot of poetry. For the first month, envisioning through my own movement was difficult. I had imagined working in Mark Morris’ bright, wide studios, and now I am in the much smaller, furnished space of my apartment. But now I am finally trying to embrace our circumstances.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

Taking dance classes--and paying the instructors--aligns with how much I value creative community, particularly the communities of Caribbean and African dance, which sustain me. I am happy to dance with, learn from, and help sustain folks who are part of that.

Taking classes is also an important part of my self-care, since dancing, cooking, and sleep are probably the only times I’m not thinking about the pandemic.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I had a (long) moment when I thought the projects I am working on were irrelevant to the now, but I’ve realized that’s not true. We need sanctuary now more than ever, and people are having different responses to being in homes that are supposed to be sanctuaries. My dis/obedience series and All the Rage--both about black life in the USA today--are more relevant than ever, as black people die at alarming rates, as our deaths often go uncounted, as calls to militarize isolation will target us disproportionately--and as we continue to find and make joy, love, shine, and humor.

Beyond that, creativity of any kind reminds me that I am alive, and that life is worth living. As I say to the ghosts of the dead around me, I get to live, so I am going to live.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Aynsley Vandenbroucke

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Aynsley Vandenbroucke

Aynsley Vandenbroucke
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Aynsley Vandenbroucke is obsessed with the movement of ideas and the choreography of community experiences. Her work dances in the places in between somatics, performance, language, and social practice. She’s a Summer 2020 Narrative Arts artist in residence at Pioneer Works.  Her performances have been presented by The Chocolate Factory, Abrons Arts Center, Danspace Project, and Living Gallery at Gibney, among others. Her writing has been published by PAJ--A Journal of Performance and Art, Seneca Review, and The Brooklyn Rail among others.  She currently teaches at Princeton University where she has developed interdisciplinary courses with titles such as: Uncertainty; Stillness; Power, Structure, and the Human Body; Being and Doing; and Body and Language. She co-founded, and co-curated until 2014, Mount Tremper Arts in the Catskill Mountains. www.movementgroup.org

Vandenbroucke in performance
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I’ve been working on a project called, ahem, Gathering Space, and was set to start hosting events for it, one a month, over the next year.  In different iterations during development, I’ve called this project Art Church, Body and Language Project, and Contemplative Evenings That Sometimes Happen in the Afternoon. Since one of the main premises was to bring groups of people together in one room, it is definitely affected by this moment.

I haven’t yet imagined new approaches to the events, but some of my original reasons for wanting to do them are even clearer. The project grew out of deep urges for a kind of community and time together that has nothing to do with buying things or professionally accomplishing anything. In the midst of the extraordinary fear, suffering, and disruption we’re living through, I’m secretly--not so secretly--hoping that this forced pause makes room for some radically different ways of being, and being together. I’ve been spending some time imagining life itself changing for the better in ways that make my project less necessary.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I grew up dancing and making performances in my living room. I also grew up obsessed with questions about life and death and meaning-making. These all developed into a kind of patchwork of artistic, meditative, pedagogical, and community practices that explore questions through imagination, language, embodiment, and presence.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning? And how does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

These are THE questions I’ve been obsessed with for the last years, or --really--my whole life! In a way, what I am most practicing is a) seeing everything as a practice and b) not creating false distinctions between practices. I don’t want my artistic, spiritual, intellectual, community, healing, personal, and public sides to feel like they have to compete.

I’ve been teaching college students and--in distilling what matters to me to focus on in the courses--it has given me a chance to distill what matters to me in my own life. It has become clear that what I care about is the role of bodies and subjective experiences in shaping our lives. I care about movement as a way to know ourselves and to get to know others. I care about relative stillness. I care about imagination and creating something from nothing. I care about existing in unknown places and experiences at least long enough to learn something new. I care about the role of bodies and movement in helping us exist in unknown and scary places. I care about creating forms that specifically suit the content and intention of any activity.  I think about all of these tools we know from art-making as really fundamental tools for creating change in the world and just plain creating lives we believe in.

What am I envisioning? Close to home, I’m envisioning a life in which the forms of my relationships reflect a deep, thoughtful, and creative approach to commitment and care and curiosity. A life in which my work aligns with what I hope to see in the world.

What is it I hope to see? A place in which body-wisdom is listened to and trusted. In which bodies different from one’s own are respected and cared for. A place in which ways of knowing are known to be expansive and mysterious. A place in which people have the tools to slow down or stop or expand their sense of space rather than jump to quick and short-sighted solutions at the first sign of discomfort. A place in which people have the support they need from within their own bodies and also from the people around them. I’m passionate about working towards these visions through whatever mode is most appropriate at a given time whether that is dancing, writing, teaching, gathering people together and/or sitting quietly and with intention by myself.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

The clearest form of my practice right now is supporting students in being in their bodies and finding grounding and centering and community during this time. It’s been kind of extraordinary to get to go into a pretty big toolbag at this point to find helpful resources for them. One of the courses I’m teaching (online now) is called Stillness. It has pretty seamlessly transitioned into working with them to develop daily personal practices. We’re exploring the deep and quiet parts of ourselves that might actually be the strongest parts of ourselves during this time of upheaval. We’ve also gotten to look together at this cultural urge to get busy and productive in the midst of massive disruption. We’ve been able to pause together long enough to discern what needs to be done and what is, perhaps, taking us away from the parts of ourselves best able to discern.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

I take time first thing in the morning, before the news, texts, email, or even breakfast, to center and ground and feel the parts of myself that touch the timeless. I do a set of moving and sitting meditation practices for this. Within this time I usually remember what I most care about and get a sense for how to approach the day. Lately what comes to mind during this time is all of the people I’m grateful for and want to send love and care to from afar. I get teary thinking about the people I know and don’t know busting their asses to help people right now. It feels meaningful to be able to hold them in my thoughts. And to know there is incredible good in the world even in a moment that feels so scary.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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