A experimental artist residency on Washington Street
SUMMER SATURDAYS | 1 - 8 PM
A recap of the inaugural 2021 season. See below for artist details.
Sun Dae Day Daze is an interactive dance installation spreading radical joy through ice cream and summer vibes. Dancers Hannah Lillevoy and m i c c a are inviting you to build this artwork with them as you enjoy a cool cone. Come play with us! Decorate us in ice cream as we build sculptures together. Let's celebrate summer and dance. It’s gonna be sweet.
--
Hannah Lillevoy and m i c c a are a gender queer duo who have been performing together for ten years in NYC. They met while dancing for various site specific dance companies such as Kinesis Project Dance Theatre and Shandoah Goldman's Carte Blanche. Hannah quickly became m i c c a's main muse for their choreography which has been featured in hand ball courts in Rockaway Beach, Dave's Lesbian Bar Block Party, Idgy Dean performances at Harvard Divinity School and House of Yes, Estrogenius Festival at the Kraine Theater, Queensboro Dance Festival, and more. This year these dance wives are taking their relationship to the next level as Hannah and m i c c a begin to share the process of production and choreography. Together they create site specific dance installations that build a communal connection through sensory experiences. Their performance practice is invested in their own genuine visceral explorations, and offers opportunity for somatic empathy while supporting shared space. Site specific work allows them to utilize familiar spaces to support accessibility to dance and the arts, as well as an element of pleasant surprise. They believe in allowing their audience choice in how they view or interact with their artwork, to emphasize the many roles incorporated into the fabric of a moment while replicating and valuing community.
Shell Platform is an installation created from thousands of spent shotgun shells which will appear to grow and sprawl over the platform. The shells themselves are colorful and will engage the viewer as the glow in the sun. At first glance the viewer may not realize what the shells actually are; upon discovery there may be a bit of a shock or uneasy feeling in the viewer. The piece attempts to start a dialogue with the audience on guns, gun control and gun violence.
--
Margaret Roleke is a contemporary mixed media artist. She creates installations, sculptures, and works on paper.Her work deals with current problems in America including racism, gun violence, global warming, and an assault on the truth. Roleke has had solo exhibits at Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT, Pen+Brush Gallery, New York, NY, AHA Fine Art New York, NY, and several others. Her work has been included in shows at The Aldrich, Katonah Museum of Art, Art Space New Haven, ODETTA Gallery , Brooklyn, NY among many other venues. Roleke has participated in art fairs including Spring Break, Pulse, Scope, Governor’s Island, Cutlog, Flux, 14c, Fountain and Verge. Roleke had a residency at Governors Island in New York City through the organization 4 Heads in 2021.
Three whimsical and larger-than-life garment-sculptures are activated by contemporary mime performers to tell stories about our interior selves and undeniable connection with each other.
--
Jenny Lai is an artist and fashion designer exploring how clothing intersects with multiple mediums from contemporary music to film, puppetry to dance. Jenny has been designing under the brand, NOT, for the last 10 years with the goal of making
the physical experience of dressing a surprising and playful experience. Her designs have been shown at New York and Paris Fashion Weeks, at renowned concert halls around the world on today’s leading classical soloists, and in exhibitions at the Museum of African Design (South Africa), Design Indaba, Wallplay (New York), and The Community (Paris).
Broken Box Mime Theater (BKBX) is a collaborative theater company that performs original, contemporary short plays entirely through movement. Based in NYC and founded in 2011, BKBX reimagines French pantomime through the lens of contemporary US American theater. BKBX has toured to cities across the US, and taught physical storytelling in classrooms and theaters from NYC to Taiwan. Winners of Innovative Theatre Awards for Outstanding Movement/Choreography, Performance Art, and Ensemble.
Stills and Successions is multi-media photographic installation, and durational dance/performative activation. It will be a transposition of a shorter duet we created for the stage that explored intimacy, loneliness, and togetherness during the first part of the pandemic.
--
Mar Undag, born in the islands of the Philippines, is a movement artist, choreographer, and educator who received his BFA in Modern Dance from University of Utan currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He teaches Dance Church and freelances as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher(dance and yoga) independently. Mar has had the opportunity to perform in works by various artists and dance companies including Salt II, Polaris Dance Theater, Repertory Dance Theater through their company dancer choreographed show, Emerge, and Shaun Keylock Company.
Elliott Keller is an educator and movement artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently on faculty at Wagner College on Staten Island where I teach Jazz and Contemporary dance courses. In 2021, he graduated from The University of Utah with a Master of Fine Arts in Modern Dance where I was the recipient of the L. Scott Marsh Mentorship Award and the LGBT Resource Center Scholarship. His current research is centered around intimacy, connection, and embodiment as it relates to the experience of being a gay man as well as the decolonization of Jazz dance. He is deeply passionate about his work as an educator and advocates for co-creating classrooms that are inclusive, empowering, and energizing.
The "Meditative Zone" a hand woven interactive installation that incorporates windchimes and bells. Those who enter the Meditative Zone can weave in the ambience.
--
Miriam Vergara is a textile artist born in Brooklyn, New York. They are a queer first-generation Mexican-American who creates autobiographical work. Through a multilayer process of embroidery, dyeing and weaving, they expose their desire for intimacy, longingness for nature, and insecurities in mental health. They've been teaching textiles since 2015 through the use of workshops to demonstrate how textiles heal the mind and body.
Master MingLiang Lu creates a live performance of 3D Paper Portrait Cutting for the first time in Dumbo. Spectators can volunteer to be models for 3D Paper Portrait Cutting; MingLiang will look and talk with participants while making the paper cutting creation, and he will finish a paper portrait cutting art using paper and scissors within 5 to 10 minutes.
--
MingLiang Lu "master of 3D paper portrait cutter” was born in Shanghai, China where his artistic practice focused on stone sculpture and the Chinese stone stamp-seal carving. Master Lu practices several ancient Chinese art forms, including teaching Chinese calligraphy, Chinese brush painting, and paper cutting at the New York Chinese Cultural Center for over 20 years. Paper cutting dates to the Han dynasty and Master Lu started exploring paper-cutting art at age of five with his father who encouraged him to learn fine art. His paper-cutting artwork has been exhibited in the American Museum of Natural History and he has been featured in The New York Times articles for his 3D paper portrait cutting. Lu has been conducting Chinese cultural programs and art workshops for Queens Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and New York Public Library in person and online since 2016. He is a 2021 New York City Artist Corps Grant Recipient, 2022 and 2020 New York Brooklyn Arts Council Grantee, and a SUCASA Teaching Artist.
Two performers interact and recline on geometric planes. A black and white checkerboard pattern covers all surfaces, including the performers in matching suits. This project is a reference to the ancient intuition that all matter and all "reality" is energy and is all part of an inseparable whole. A field of energy flows through us and all matter. The black and white pattern represents the positive and negative of the protons and electrons of this energy field, and the interflow of this energy field from object to object and foreground to background.
--
Kevin Kelly was born in upstate New York and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1982. He has been living and working in Brooklyn since 2006. He has shown his work across the United States, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Santa Fe and Westport. His work is in numerous collections including Simon Cowell in Los Angeles. Kevin’s piece Solar Powered Cell Phone Charger was installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of the 2012 Dumbo Arts Festival. His work is also in numerous public spaces including the NYU Medical Center. He completed a commission for a 13 foot high version of his dice double helix sculpture entitled Double Down in 2018. Kevin’s 10 meter high permanent outdoor sculpture DodecaCaryatid was installed in Markham, Ontario in December 2015. His sculpture has also been featured in films and network TV shows such as The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Duplicity, Arthur, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Remember Me.
The live painting Painted Poetry mixes visual art with live painting and poetry. It will start by creating a stage, painting two large live canvases on each side of the platform, inspired by various poets and various languages. Once that first activity is finished and the stage is created, the poet Marcos de la Fuente will recite poetry on the platform, while the artist paints his white jumpsuit. The artist’s intention is to make the viewer curious, first about the creation of a live art piece, second about the mix of disciplines, and finally about the use of poetry. Painting directly on the poet while he recites his poetry creates a second skin metaphor, of ideas and feelings. It will be a show full of color, sensitivity and empowerment of the arts.
--
Vanesa Álvarez is a Spanish muralist and visual artist based in Brooklyn. Álvarez paints large-scale murals, using color, symbols, patterns, and words, and creates slogans or poetry with a powerful message to reach the viewer’s heart in a direct way. She has been selected in international competitions such as PintaMalasaña (Madrid Street Art Project), The Flag Project in Rockefeller Center and the Arts in Medicine Program by NYC Health+Hospitals. She has created murals with social and feminist themes in Spain, Mexico, and New York City. In addition, she has carried out itinerant poetic actions, which have traveled around the world. She was an Artist in Residence through Project Art USA, and a Teaching Artist for LEAP NYC’s Public Art Program. Currently, she is creating with Artbridge/ Bridging The Divide project in Queens.
“A Seat At The Table” is an installation composed of seatless chairs protruding a patchwork "table" incorporating American Immigration Council data to interrogate immigrants' struggles and prospects of representation (ie: “having a seat at the table”). For longer than it should have been, immigrants are glorified as the backbone of America while their impacts and achievements are severely under-represented and undervalued. This installation is a portal to the day-to-day positive and negative visceral and emotional tensions between an immigrant and the society. The artist’s immediate connection to this concept is the original photo commemorating the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Despite the contributions of Chinese laborers, not even one was included in this historic document. The installation is a tool to inform and remind immigrant communities that however insignificant their day-to-day contributions seem, they build up to a tidal wave that pushes the country forward. The long term goal of this installation is to encourage and invite immigrant families to explore their own paths and opportunities to demand “a seat at the table”, and enjoy Immigrant Pride to the fullest.
--
Hong Wu (She/Her/Hers)
moved to New York City with her family in 1997 from Guangzhou, China. After a long career in men's fashion design, in 2020, she decided to commit to her artistic practice, with an emphasis on sustainability and advocacy. Hong’s work interrogates the social discourses rooted in imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism, and their relationships with recent social movements, more importantly, inspiring collective creative solutions to make the world more just and green. She also aims to promote immigrant joy and representation, and to spark conversations among young children from immigrant families on engaging in promoting civic rights and responsibilities. Primarily working with recycled materials and found objects, Hong often incorporates public interactive components in her works. She was part of the VOTE Project commissioned by NYLA during the 2020 Presidential Election. BWAC showed her "White Weave Chair" in the "Recycle" Group Show in June 2021, and in December 2021, she won the community-building Upcycled Holiday Tree competition organized by the Flatbush Nostrand Junction BID. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
The Pitting is a sculptural performance involving the slicing and sampling of a collection of invented fruits. The pitting process varies including: cracking, unscrewing, boiling, tearing, and mashing. Each fruit, constructed out of an array of edible ingredients, is strikingly different in size, scent, and texture, while the pits are all identical. Samples of the fruits will be offered throughout the afternoon, concluding with an Orange Mediation at dusk
--
is a multi-disciplinary artist working between sculpture and performance, exploring the musicality of instruction and the theatricality of the mundane. Recent fellowships and residencies include the NARS Satellite Program, Studios at MASS MoCA, AIM at the Bronx Museum, Vermont Studio Center, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, and a Fulbright Fellowship to study experimental music in Berlin. She is also the founder/co-director of Sprechgesang Institute, a project-based collaborative for artists working in an in-between language of two or more disciplines. In 2020, she launched the sculptural snack service Aesthetically Complex Pies.
Celebrating Orisha: Drums, Songs, Dances and Colors for education, wellness, breathwork, fun and celebration!
--
OluDaré is a Balogun (Priest of Ogun), Aponni (Music Healing Ceremonial Leader), Omo Anya (Sacred Healing Drummer), Dancer and Author of Breathing With Orisha. He is a #RespiratoryActivist and believes in #RESPARATIONS- a spin off of reparations that includes the freedom and time for African Descendants to practice intentional healing through the breath, song and movements of their own ancestral lineages. Through Kìire Wellness, Oludaré brings this message to the world in a tangible, online, family friendly format. He teaches private and public chair breathing, dance, song, and music workshops that help to culturally restore African descendants while strengthening their physical and spiritual health. His work is dedicated to promoting wellness in African Descendant communities- and it all starts with the Breath.
A performer patiently sits underneath a sign that reads: “Hangout-iemos”, a spanglish phrase that translates to “let’s hangout”.
Hangou-tiemos is an interactive performance piece that fosters and initiates conversation. The isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic demands for mental health initiatives that provide relief and support. As we collectively recover from the pandemic, Hangout-iemos highlights the importance of talking as a means to cultivate mental well being. This one-day performance art piece is an invitation for strangers to find connection, to feel heard, and to find relief after a long year of isolation.
The Platform of Poof will birth confounding puppet creatures full of wonder and unreason. A cross between plant and animal, the Poofs are full body abstract puppets which welcome passersby to a personal encounter with curiosity and play. Kate Brehm is a puppeteer and movement director whose company, imnotlost, has been presenting art and theater in NYC since 2003.
By Kate Brehm.
"No Color Game" is what the artist defines as a “strategy” (an open-ended, shapeshifting object or experience). In this case, "No Color Game" takes on the form of a site-specific ephemeral project where the artist inserts herself into society and creates subtle provocations).
Not quite a performance or installation a strategy is an area between reality and fiction, play and intellect, fragility and crudeness. The strategy will serve as an artist experimental hub during the day; active game at night called “No Color Game” (similar to a carnival game). Over the course of the day Berdscarnival (Maraya Lopez) will make props, engage with the public and read impromptu poetry inspired by her surroundings.
The public will be asked to contemplate what DUMBO would look like with no color. Their answers will help the artist visualize the “No Color Game” which will start in the evening from 7PM-9PM. They will also be encouraged to partake in a live Instagram feed to help document the project and will become an active participant.
Furthermore, local sound from DUMBO and Coney Island will be combined with other sound to create a thought provoking and disorienting experience for the viewer.
By Berdscarnival (Maraya Lopez). Soundtrack in collaboration with Harvey “Ras(X)” Lackey.
Inspired by the Zoltar machine at Coney Island and in tribute to our many performing artists who have struggled for work due to the pandemic, OPERACADES creates a unique public performance venue and mobile public art installation. With the OPERACADES, Opera on Tap aims to create an artistic experience that evokes nostalgia for another time and type of performance practice. At the same time, they point towards a future for opera and classical music that puts innovation, community engagement, equity and inclusion at the forefront. Multiple configurations and interactive performance practices for and with the audience in open public spaces will be presented. OPERACADES are a vision conjured by Opera on Tap’s Artistic Director Anne Hiatt, Sound Designer Todd Perlmutter and Production Designer Ramona Ponce. The OPERACADES are brought to life through their partners at New Orleans Opera and their brilliant scenic builder Keith Christopher and scenic painter Nathan Arthur. The Six Foot Platform performance will be the official NYC premiere of OPERACADES.
By Opera On Tap
The platform is a natural stage for a tap dancer; it is a portal for the artist’s soul to connect to their audience.
Tapping the Soul is a continuous tap dance and musical performance that will bring you back into a vintage world. This experience is led and curated by Camila Aldet, who herself provides a joyous act of tap dance while singing your favorite oldies. Intertwining with guest appearances from diverse NYC top contemporary tap dancers, passersby will have a unique opportunity to interact and integrate into a world of rhythm.
By Camila Aldet
Paradise Lost is a site-specific mixed-media sculptural installation and performative activation, which explores the failing state of the American Dream, deflated promises and tainted optimism of a land of opportunity, through the immigrant lenz. Created from several pre-owned, hand dyed and embroidered vintage parachute canopies, the installation is intermittently activated throughout the day by a dancer, accompanied by sound composition. Through objects, gesture, movement, sound and text, Paradise Lost investigates the artist's journey towards becoming a permanent resident in the U.S and being separated and isolated from her family for several years.
By Katya Grokhovsky. Sound composed by Sarah Martin-Nuss. Dancer: Rebecca Pristoop.
Photo: Katya Grokhovsky, Fantasyland, 2021, images courtesy of Smack Mellon. Photos: Etienne Frossard
What exists in the space between us? Five women mark time and space through a precise schedule of movement experiments lasting 9 hours. What they do will repeat from hour to hour as the sun moves across the sky, descends, and sets. Various people will enter and exit the intersection, bringing with them their thoughts, feelings, desires, and personalities. How does the shifting environment around and within the movers, affect each hourly repetition? Let’s witness this constant feedback loop between ourselves and what surrounds us. Where do we stop and where does the rest of the world begin?
By Holly Heidt in collaboration with the other four performers: Chloe Benitez, Alexandra Carter, Nicole Fuentes, and Tamara Leigh.
Get up-close, personal and experience the unusual combination of Gourds, beads and Crystals that form the “Rattle Chandelier” and feast your eyes on the characteristics of eight Orisha, beaded in the colors that represent them.
By Cheryl Thomas
Pennants and Poet is an installation and spoken word poetry event. Together with poets from the Fortune Society’s Writers’ Group, Jenny Polak will install 50+ pennant flags on the platform, each one printed with a poem or message from people who have been or are incarcerated. The Pennants were developed through meetings between Writers Group and Hour Children Working Womens’ Group participants and artist Jenny Polak in summer 2020, with additional poetry contributed by people in NYC jails in fall 2020. The combined messages form a powerful and moving collective call for an end to mass incarceration and empathy with the millions affected by it. The pennant form, with its nautical and sporting associations, together create a resilient and celebratory image.
By Jenny Polak
Bravura Outbreak by Art in Odd Places (AiOP) is a joyous, raucous mashup spectacle of intergenerational, culturally extravagant performance and installation projects presented as a continuously running radical runway fashion show. It’s time for a thundering experiential competition in a time of crisis expressly conceived for the Six Foot Platform stage! AIOP has a celebrated history, ranging from an occupation of 14th Street from Avenue C to the Hudson River as a runway; its May Day Protest Runway in Union Square; and AiOP 2019: INVISIBLE’s Promenade of Visual Flâneurs /Flâneuses across the length of 14th Street each day of the festival.
In SEA SHE, theatre artist Marina Celander will move and live on a six foot platform throughout the day. Sea She feels the proximity to the East River and feels drawn to her body of water flowing just beyond our postcard picture vantage point on Washington St, but she cannot leave her platform. She is the embodiment of all water; she flows and exists everywhere, yet she is trapped. Sea She is surface and depth; liberation and fear; ancient, yet always present. The music and soundscapes that accompany her moves are composed by Swedish composer Fredrik Söderberg. Magdalena Gomez, writer, spoken word artist, weaver of words and sounds, and poet laureate of Springfield MA, created the textual layers for our performance. Fiber artist Thomas Victor designed and handcrafted the Sea She costume.
By Marina CelanderPhoto Thomas Victor
Can you trust something that you can’t see? When an object does not have a form but is perceivable, does that object “exist”? What if there is an art object that can be “seen” by senses other than vision?
Invisible Sculpture On Wheels an experiential multi-sensory sculpture installed on a cart. The sculpture isn’t visually discernible, yet has a spatial form and occupies space. The viewer can perceive the sculpture through sound feedback that responds to their hand gesture and movement. As the sound changes, the audience senses the boundaries of the sculpture’s form.
After the experience, they’ll be invited to make physical versions of the sculpture using a handful of clay (individually wrapped to avoid Covid concerns). The “visible” sculptures made by the participants will become a collective perception of the invisible sculpture celebrating individual differences and diversity of human perceptions while questioning the idea of “normal” and “truth”. Will everyone see the same sculpture?
By Yeseul Song. Sound design collaboration with Jesse Simpson.