Artists Archive
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Shirotama Hitsujia discovered her passion for cabaret singing and performance art after studying literature at Meiji University in Tokyo. In 1994, she founded Yubiwa Hotel, a key force in Japan’s alternative theatre scene. Yubiwa Hotel has created more than forty works, all written, directed, and performed by women. They are known for a burlesque–like aesthetic that ranges from the delicate to the outrageous, and often use non-traditional spaces like warehouses, galleries, underground dance clubs, rooftop tennis courts and strip clubs. Their work has toured internationally and includes Long Distance Love (2001), Yubiwan Beauty (2001), and It’s Up to You (2003).
Learn moresidony o’neal is an artist and writer working from interdisciplinary research and pre- to post- machine computing. o’neal’s practice treats conceptual art and mathematics as related forms of industrial culture that have shaped human relationships to objects, labor, and technology over time.
Recent solo exhibitions include Et al. (SOFTMAX HARD HASP), San Francisco, CA; Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, (The Pudding Butcher), Princeton, NJ; Dracula’s Revenge (NOT TALKING UNTIL BAD COMPANY JOINS), New York, NY; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Enchiridion: Aisle, Spline, Resort), Portland, OR; and Veronica (AuguRing), Seattle, WA. Duo and group exhibitions include Third Born (Continuous Dimensional Thorax), Mexico City, Mexico; ICA at Maine College of Art and Design (ENTER:), Portland, ME; and SculptureCenter (In Practice: Total Disbelief), Long Island City, NY. o’neal has participated in residencies at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and Banff Centre, Banff, AB, among others. o’neal is the co-founder of INFANT design firm. Performances as a part of DT have been presented with Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Volksbühne Berlin, and Performance Space New York. o'neal is the recipient of awards and fellowships including the Oregon Arts Commission's Joan Shipley Award and a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. In 2023, o’neal was awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship. Learn moreSigne Becker is a freelance scenographer and artist. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in scenography from the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA) in Fredrikstad (2006) and a Master’s Degree in visual culture from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2008). Her artistic projects include theatre and dance productions, as well as personal art projects as installations, pictures and video work. In recent years, she has worked on a number of productions in Norway, and for six years she has been a permanent scenographer at Verk Produksjoner. Their The Eternal Smile won the prize of The performance of the year (2011), and Becker was nominated for best scenography for the performance Stalker, 2013. She also curates and organizes «++», a monthly art event held in the foyer at Black Box Theatre, Oslo.
Learn moreSilvia Bottiroli is a curator, researcher and organizer in the contemporary performing arts field. After completing a Ph.D. in Visual and Performing Arts at Pisa University, she attended the EU training program SPACE / Performing Arts Managers on the Move (2009-2011), and several international seminars and gatherings, such as the conference “Beyond Curating” at Pact in Essen (2011), the marathon “Truth is Concrete” at Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz (2012), the Spring Meeting at PAF / Performing Arts Forum in St Erme (2013), the program Watch and Talk at Basel Festival (2014) and the workshop Empty Stages, Crowdes Flates on Curating the Performing Arts in Cracow (2014).
Silvia is the co-author of two books and numerous papers and essays about the XX Century and contemporary performing arts scene, focusing especially on the dimension of collective creation and collaborative practices. Additionally, she has supervised diverse critical, curatorial and educational projects in collaboration with art organizations and public institutions in Italy and abroad, including with a.o. SNDO School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, Homo Novus Festival in Riga, and Ghent University, Vooruit and Campo in Ghent.
Since 2011, Silvia has served as Adjunct Professor at Bocconi University in Milan, where she teaches Methodology, Critique and Research in the Arts and Theatre, Festivals and Live Performances. From 2008 to 2011 she worked for theatre company Societas Raffaello Sanzio and has been part of the Critical-organizational Committee of Santarcangelo Festival, directed by Chiara Guidi/Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Enrico Casagrande/Motus and Ermanna Montanari/Teatro delle Albe. From 2012 to 2016, she has served as the artistic director of Santarcangelo Festival, one of the most relevant contemporary performing arts festivals in Italy.
Learn moreSimon Liu (b. 1987, Hong Kong) is an artist filmmaker working between alternate documentary forms, abstract diary films, 16mm projection performance, and video installation. He has exhibited at film festivals and institutions globally including the New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam: Tiger Short Competition, Toronto International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, British Film Institute, The Shed, M+ Museum, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Cinéma du Réel, Sheffield Doc/Fest, “Dreamlands: Expanded,” and a solo-presentation at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Modern Mondays series. The M+ Museum and MoMA recently acquired Liu’s quadruple 16mm projection “Highview” with other recent works for their Permanent Collections. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a teacher at the Cooper Union School of Art, and a member of Negativeland, an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently editing his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.
Learn moreRichard Bishop, guitarist and founding member of the band Sun City Girls (1981-2007), released his first solo record (Salvador Kali) in 1998 on John Fahey’s esteemed Revenant label under the moniker Sir Richard Bishop. Since then he has released albums on a variety of labels: Improvika, Elektronika Demonika, and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust Music); Fingering the Devil (Southern Records, UK); Hypostasis: A Work in Three Parts (VDSQ); Intermezzo (Editions Mego); The Unrock Tapes and Road to Siam (Unrock); and Polytheistic Fragments, The Freak of Araby, Tangier Sessions, and Oneiric Formulary (Drag City).
“Sir Richard Bishop forces one to alter that hoary cliche ‘jack of all trades’, to master of…damn near all. Renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, Bishop has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that’s nearly unrivaled among today’s guitarists. Bishop strums spiritual with incantatory ragas, free-folk excursions, crystalline flamenco flourishes, ruddy Appalachian folk, Middle Eastern-tinged fantasias and gypsy arabesques. This is eclecticism done with respect and third-eye-dilating filigree; his compositions attain a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.” - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)
Learn moreS.J Norman (b. 1984) is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer. His career has so far spanned 18 years and has embraced a diversity of disciplines and formal outcomes, including solo and ensemble performance, installation, sculpture, text, video, and sound. He is a non-binary transmasculine person and a diasporic Koori of Wiradjuri descent, born on Gadigal land. Since 2006 he has lived and worked between Australia, Germany, the UK, and the United States.
His practice is routed through the volatile interstices of the social and the corporeal. Working extensively with durational and spatial practices, as well as intimate/one-to-one frameworks, Norman's primary medium is the body. Drawing on embodied ancestral lineages of ceremonial praxis, Norman frequently utilises relational and process-based choreographies as a mode of structural critique: reflected in his work is an abiding interest in the space of co- and inter-corporeality, the forces that suffuse it, and how the live act might be utilised as a mean to examine, disrupt and re-inscribe prevailing systems of social power.
Norman has received major commissions from the Biennale of Sydney (AU), Performance Space New York (US), Dark Mofo (AU), The National Gallery of Australia (AU), Venice International Performance Week (IT), Spill Festival of Live Art (UK), Fierce Festival (UK), In Between Time (UK), Arnolfini (UK), Liveworks (AU), Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AU), Unsound Festival (PL), Fusebox Festival (US), Melbourne Festival (AU), Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (AU) and Tate Modern (UK), the Science Gallery London (UK), Die Fabrikanten (AT), and the Festival of Live Art (AU), to name a few. He has received numerous awards for his work including a Sidney Myer Fellowship and an Australia Council Fellowship, two of Australia's most prestigious honors for art.
Aside from his artistic and curatorial practice, he is also a writer of fiction, essays, and poetry. He has won or placed in numerous literary awards, including: The Peter Blazey Prize, The Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award, The ABR/Elizabeth Jolley Award for Short Story, and the Overland/Judith Wright Prize for Poetry. His award-winning debut short story collection, Permafrost, will be published by the University of Queensland press in 2021.
Learn moreFresh out of the backwoods of sunny Tampa, Florida, S. Loper was educated in "The Greatest City in America," Baltimore, Maryland at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2010, degree in hand, Sloper stepped into the professional arena, pioneering as a toy expert and acting as a videographer, and sole animator for one of Tampa's finest cinematic enterprises. In result of a high-stakes bet, Sloper made the move to Portland, Oregon where all sorts of charm and adventure seem to follow in tow.
Learn moreFormerly known as Adelaide, Small Sails is a music and film collective based in Portland. Their music is a gorgeous mix of electronic post-rock anthems, with visuals performed live using original 16-mm film loops on dual projectors. A field of dandelions plowed over, silhouettes of overlapping faces, a flowing river of color, sing-song vocals, and warm spacey melodies, that’s what Small Sails looks and sounds like. Chanting, humming vocals hint at tangibility, while remaining half-submerged; rhythms are a baby-bouncing jumble of eclectic percussion and twittering electronics; and soaring over the top, achingly gorgeous melodies stripped down to the still-gleaming bone.
Learn moreSNAP! is a monthly party that happens every last Friday of the month at Holocene in Portland, Oregon. This DANCE PARTY is held down by Portland resident DJs: Doc Adam, Colin Jones, Freaky Outty and hosted by Ms Coco B. The vision behind the party is to offer a slice of nostalgia that will deliver booty-shaking, head-nodding, and memories of all those awesome middle school dances. SNAP! is proud to have hosted some of the most talented DJs/Producers touring the world currently.
Learn moreVocalist & songwriter Soot Uros delivers a new sound with a strikingly ancient spirit. The music of Soot Uros introduces a refreshing experience to the magic of chanting & singing, while exploring the darker musical spirits of Hip Hop & Jazz, with a rich & soulful under-world tone.
Learn moreSounds et al is an independent record label exploring sound, product design, collaboration and curation.
Learn moreRecognized worldwide as one of today's most accomplished monologue artists, Spalding Gray is also a celebrated writer, actor, and performer. He has created over 14 monologues which have been performed throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia, including Swimming to Cambodia, which also earned him an OBIE Award. Mr. Gray has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. His work is noted for its eccentric detail, razor wit, and encyclopedic obsessiveness. Regarded as the "high priest of anxiety," his monologues and stories are autobiographical in nature, built through improvisation, and reflect the mastery of years of experience.
Learn moreSpencer Byrne-Seres is an artist, preparator and culture-worker based in Portland, ORE. His activities range from woodworking and custom fabrication to administrative and curatorial project management for museums, non-profits, commercial galleries, colleges, small alternative spaces and for himself.
Spencer has been making research based and socially engaged projects that look at the intersection of broad systems with the daily and the personal. Spencer is interested city infrastructure, international time standards, and submarine cables. These often opaque or invisible structures allow us to connect, and inform how we think about and move around to built environment.
He currently co-runs a conceptual art club called Sunday Painters Group in collaboration with Roz Crews, and maintains 2xfourtune, a library of recycled dimensional lumber for recycle and reuse by artists around Portland.
He has recently been experimenting with kite mapping on the Oregon coast, planting signs on college campuses, and cultivating an obscure vlog personality.
Learn moreFounded in New York in 1980 with Deb Margolin, Split Britches continues with the duo and solo work of Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw which spans satirical, gender-bending performance, methods for public engagement, videography, digital and print media, explorations of aging and well-being, and iconic lesbian-feminist theatre.
Learn moreStacey Tran is a writer from Portland, OR currently based in Providence, RI. She is the creator of Tender Table, a storytelling series about food, family, identity. Her writing can be found in BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and diaCRITICS. She is the author of Soap for the Dogs (Gramma, 2018).
Learn moreStephanie DeGooyer (TBA:16 Guest Scholar) is Assistant Professor of English at Willamette University. Her work focuses on the intersections of law, politics and aesthetics. She is co-author of The Right to Have Rights (forthcoming from Verso Books) and is completing a manuscript titled The Aesthetics of Democracy. Beyond the academy, DeGooyer writes for the art magazine frieze. She is also co-organizer of Moonlighter Presents, a lecture series that invites scholars to speak on topics outside their field of expertise.
Learn moreStephanie Snyder is the Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, a position she has held since 2003. Snyder graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College and completed her graduate studies in Art History and Art Education at Columbia University. In 2008, Snyder received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Getty Foundation, and in 2014 she was a Fellow in the Getty’s Museum Leadership Institute. In 2013 she received an award for her critical writing from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the CUE Foundation, New York. The author of numerous catalog essays and other writing projects, she is a regular contributor to Artforum.com.
Learn moreStephen Slappe is an artist and curator whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the South Carolina State Museum; The Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow; The Sarai Media Lab in Delhi; Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco; and The Art Gym at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR. Slappe was the recipient of a Couture award from the New American Art Union in Portland for his 2009 exhibition entitled Shelter in Place.
Learn moreStephen Thompson, originally from Calgary, Alberta is an inter-disciplinary artist working between Canada, USA and Europe. Stephen’s introduction to movement and performing was through competitive figure skating. He received a Bachelor of Kinesiology (art and science of movement) and Dance from the University of Calgary. In 2015 at the World “Figure” Championships in Lake Placid, Stephen received the bronze medal. In 2016 he received a Victor Martin-Lynch award from the Canada Council for the Arts. Past choreographic work and collaborations: 2012 Bessie award winning Antigone Sr. (Large), The Ghost of Montpellier and the Samurai (2014) with Trajal Harell, Culture Administration & Trembling (2014), Les Etudes (2017), Chaud (2020); Jennifer Lacey, Antonija Livingstone, Dominique Pétrin, whatwearesaying (2014); Public Recordings (2 Dora Mavor awards Toronto), numerous projects with Benoit Lachambre, Relative Collider (2015); Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard, Service #5: Try to keep kids off naturalism and Kein Paradiso with Adam Linder recipient of the Mohn Prize at the L.A. Bienniale, Stitchomythia with Nadia Lauro and Zeena Parkins, Dramaturge for Such Sweet Thunder (2019) recipient of 8tensions Impulstanz, Compulsory Figures (2019) co-signed with French visual artist Xavier Veilhan.
Learn moreTharp was raised in Ontario, Oregon, and presently resides in Portland. He received his BFA from Cornell University. His work was featured in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and has been acquired by The Whitney Museum of American Art, Albright Knox Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Portland Art Museum, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Reed College. He is represented by PDX Contemporary Art (Portland), Nicole Klagsbrun (New York) and Galerie Bertrand & Gruner (Geneva). Selected Press Critic's Pick: Storm Tharp, Stephanie Snyder, Artforum.com, August 3, 2010. Perfect in the Middle, Matt Stangel, Portland Mercury, June 24, 2010. Storm Tharp's eighth show at PDX Contemporary Art features latest work, 'Hercules', John Motley, The Oregonian, July 30, 2010. Storm Tharp, Richard Speer, art ltd., May 2010. Interview with Storm Tharp, Bean Gilsdorf, Daily Serving, January 4, 2010. Virtuoso Vindicated: Storm Tharp at PDX Contemporary, Jeff Jahn, PORT, January 10, 2007. Storm Tharp: Arrangement in Flesh Color and Black, Stephanie Snyder, PLAZM, September, 2008. Selected Video Storm Tharp Artist Talk at the Portland Art Museum. Storm Tharp on OPB Art Beat
Learn moreIt’s not enough to call Strategy a producer of electronic music; Portland-based Paul Dickow stretches his skills among ambient and dub, high-spirited techno, house and sound art, all couched in musicianship and a community-minded DIY weird-punk approach. As complex and nuanced as his music can be, it’s not distractingly ornate: Dickow embraces certain low-fi aesthetics, layering dubby tones, crunchy noise and exacting rhythms using high-tech hardware and instruments of varying vintages, mixers, machines of his own making and effects strung strategically together. Recording as Strategy since 1999, Dickow released albums Futurerock and Drumsolo’s Delight on Kranky in the mid-2000s, 12-inches on Toshiya Kawasaki's Endless Flight, and most recently, albums on Peak Oil and Field Hymns, followed by 2014’s Boxology on 100% Silk. He co-runs independent label Community Library and plays electronic noise, keyboards and drums in underground-sound bands Fontanelle, Nudge and several others, an ongoing influence that bleeds into his stage and studio time as Strategy.
Learn moreSue Tompkins (b. 1971, Leighton Buzzard) lives and works in Glasgow.
Working with fragments of language gathered from everyday encounters and experiences, Tompkins’ practice incorporates text, sound, installation and performance.
Tompkins graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1994, and has been involved in exhibitions and performances worldwide including solo exhibitions at The Modern Institute, Glasgow; Inverleith House, Edinburgh; Spike Island, Bristol; and Contemporary Art Musuem, St. Louis. She has presented performances and been included in numerous group exhibitions including those at: Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; the 29th São Paolo Biennale, São Paolo; the British Art Show 7 at the Hayward Gallery, London and touring; MACBA, Barcelona; ICA and the Tate Modern, London; and Artists Space, New York.
Tompkins recently produced web-based project, My Kind Book with Dia Art Foundation, New York, 2012, and has a collaborative publication with her twin sister Hayley Tompkins, through and through, published by LemonMelon in 2013.
Tompkins was shortlisted for the Beck’s Futures Prize in 2006, and received the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2011. She was formerly a member of the Glasgow based art collective Elizabeth Go, and the band Life Without Buildings.
Learn moreMy art is born from the everyday dance of life—landscapes, encounters, history, politics—and from the soul stories we tell each other—crystalline moments in time that hold a myriad of meanings, summoned through the nature of re-membering and witnessing. Movement & images & sounds & words are all at play in the experiments that form the choreography of a story. The eye of life comes alive through body imagination, in memory places where life and art intersect.
Collaborations with fellow poets of memory and history define the varying SO&SO&SO&SO projects, on-going since 1976. SO&SO dance and theatre works have been performed on stages, in studios, schools, and found spaces in the US and abroad. In collaboration with four other artists, I opened the doors to Dreams Well Studio, 1990-2002, a modest, lively petri dish for performance experiments and body-mind practices. Memorable offerings of dance, theatre, multi-media storytelling, kids’ performances, poetry, music, and community ceremonies came forth from this activated dream space/laboratory.
The creative lab is the bedrock of my teaching methods in universities, classrooms, and studios over the years and of continuing practice as a writer, choreographer, and community activist.
No Strangers Here Today (premier 2008) and The Hillsboro Story (premier 2010) are multi-voiced investigations that illuminate the role my hometown of Hillsboro, Ohio, played in American civil rights history and the journey to encounter that history directly. Both theatre works, with soundtracks and live music scores by David Ornette Cherry, toured nationally and are expanded into a non-fiction book, The Hillsboro Story/A Kaleidoscope History (Spuyten-Duyvil Press, NYC).
Nu History, an educational model designed to empower students to investigate history directly, and Great Serpent, a multimedia performance score, are in development in concert with Mr. Music/theme & thought, featuring the collaborations and vision of jazz/world music composer, the late David Ornette Cherry.
I am deeply grateful to walk this path and give thanks to the great teachers who have led the way and the collaborators with whom I have shared and continue to share this journey. I believe that creative practice is essential to nourishing and understanding oneself in relationship to the natural and social worlds. The intention is to awaken the senses, embody the voice, ignite the action, and enjoy the process.
“We are not condemned to accept the future. We may invent it.”
--Eduardo Galeano
Learn moreSutapa Biswas was born in Santinekethan, India, in 1962. Her poignant films and poetic artworks have been shown in museums and art galleries worldwide. Biswas studied at the University of Leeds from 1981-85, at the Slade School of Art from 1988-1990, and at the Royal College of Art between 1996-1998. She works in a wide range of media including installation, film and video, drawing and painting. Her works are conceptual and since the mid 1990s Biswas has been interested in exploring themes of time and space particularly in relationship to gender, identity and desire.
She has exhibited extensively internationally, and her recent solo shows include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2000), Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham (2004), and the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon (2006). She has shown at numerous group exhibitions including: From Tarzan To Rambo, Tate Modern, London (2002-2003), Art Through the Eye of A Needle, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo (2001), The Unmapped Body: 3 Black British Artists, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (1998), and the 6th Havana Biennale, Cuba (1997), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006). Biswas was a Fellow at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1990 and 1992. She is currently a Reader at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London and lives and works in London. Biswas is represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, USA.
Learn moreSylvan Oswald is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Philadelphia who creates text-based projects exploring trans identity, history, and nonviolent dramaturgy. He seeks alternative structures designed to respect all people. He seeks spaces that interrupt consumption and open up new styles of satisfaction.
Current work includes High Winds (Fusebox Festival, X Artists' Books); text for choreographer Meg Foley's Blood Baby; and an essay titled "Towards a Trans Theater." Projects include "Cut Piece," a personal history of play publishing; Play A Journal of Plays (2003-2011); and Outtakes, a lo-fi semi-improvised web series starring Becca Blackwell and Zuzanna Szadkowski, hosted at weareopentv.com. Plays include Trainers: A Theatrical Essay (Gate Theatre, London, Oberon Books); A Kind of Weather (Diversionary Theater, San Diego); Profanity (Undermain Theater, Dallas); Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb, New York); and Pony (About Face Theater, Chicago). Pony is a seminal work about queer and trans belonging revived summer '22 in a production directed by Jess Barbagallo.
Honors include a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rosati Fellowship from Duke University Libraries, the Thom Thomas award from The Dramatists Guild, a Jerome Fellowship, and residencies at Sundance/Ucross, Macdowell Colony, and Yaddo. Sylvan is an alum of CTG's Writers' Workshop, an affiliated artist at Clubbed Thumb, and an alum of New Dramatists.
Learn moreSymara Sarai, a Portland, OR native currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, has immersed herself globally in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies with deep recognition. Named Dance Magazines’ 2025 “Top 25 to Watch,” a 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, and a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago, she is known to be a courageously committed performer and maker. The New York Times stated, “Sarai is a daring solo improviser, and her uninhibited spirit infuses.” Sarai is a 2019 graduate of the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, State University of New York. She was most recently a MoMA PS1 Greater New York Artist and was commissioned in 2025 by Danspace Project and BOFFO. Between 2024 and 2026, they were a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and an Abrons Arts Center Performance AIRspace Resident. She participated in Live Artery Festival 2025, Triple Canopy Symposium 2025, and more. Their work as a performer and maker has been reviewed and featured in prominent publications such as The New York Times and Brooklyn Rail. She has most notably danced with Urban Bush Women, Joanna Kotze, and Ogemdi Ude, among others.
Learn moreJacob Ciocci is an artist; a current Eyebeam Fellow; one third of the American art collective Paper Rad; and a prolific producer of music, installations, websites, and animations. David Wightman is completing a PhD in Music Composition at UC San Diego where he is a Lecturer of Pop Music Studies. Some of his many musical projects include Fortress of Amplitude, Powdered Wigs, and Chariots of Fire. Together, Jacob and David connect like Voltron in the high-NRG electronic music band Extreme Animals. They have toured the country every summer for the past 8 years presenting their music, videos, and art.
Selected Press
Eleven Evocations (For Paper Rad), Ed Halter, Rhizome, September 2, 2009.
Learn moreThe Speculative Archive (Julia Meltzer and David Thorne) produces videos, photographs, installations, and published texts. From 1999 to 2003, Archive projects centered on state secrecy and the production of the past. Current works address the use of documents—images, texts, objects, bodies, and physical structures—to project and claim visions of the future. The Archive is a collaboration of Los Angeles-based artists Julia Meltzer and David Thorne. Recent projects have been exhibited in the 2006 California Biennial (Orange County Museum of Art), Gallery Akbank Sanat (Istanbul), Kunstmuseum Goteborg (Sweden), Palazzo de la Papesse, (Siena, Italy), Apex Art (New York), Momenta (New York), the Hayward Gallery’s (London) travelling exhibition program, Whitechapel Gallery (London), the Oberhausen Short Film Festival (Germany), the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Video Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among others.
Julia Meltzer believes in the power of art to build and transform communities and has worked to create opportunities for the marriage of art and advocacy for nearly three decades as a filmmaker and the founding director of Clockshop in Los Angeles.
She directed two feature films and multiple short films. Her films about a women’s Qur’an school in Damascus and a mother-daughter who arrive in LA escaping the war in Aleppo, Syria, are quiet feminist stories that upend expectations about who Muslim women are and what they can be.
Her film and video work has been broadcast on POV as part of the 25th anniversary season and as the opening film of the 30th anniversary season. Meltzer is a recipient of multiple grants including the John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Damascus, Syria in 2005-6 where she taught independent filmmaking at the University of Damascus. Her current project focuses on documenting and preserving histories of the neighborhoods along the LA river in Northeast LA where she lives with her family.
David Thorne is an Australian humourist, satirist, Internet personality and New York Times best-selling author. His work has been featured on the BBC, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Thorne gained public recognition in late 2008 for an email exchange in which he attempts to pay an overdue bill with a drawing of a seven-legged spider. The exchange spread virally via email and social networking sites, leading to a surge of visitors to his website 27b/6 (27bslash6). 27b/6 features a collection of humorous emails and articles from Thorne's life. These and additional essays appear in Thorne's book, The Internet is a Playground. Published by Penguin Group and released on 28 April 2011, the book debuted at number four on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Learn moreThe Suicide Kings are a spoken word power-house comprised of Geoff Trenchard, Jamie DeWolf, and Rupert Estanislao. Collectively, they are known for their explosive live performances combining gritty punk rock theatrics, a cappella hip-hop and vaudeville comedy. The Kings also facilitate workshops and host slams for the inmates in San Quentin Penitentiary and create feature length performances with at-risk youth. Their work has been featured on two seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, UPN, 60 Minutes and radio stations from the Midwest to the Phillipines.
Learn moreWith legendary bits like their signature audience participation costume changes and Guns n Roses trapeze act, The Wau Wau Sisters are widely recognized by their peers for revolutionizing circus aesthetics and carving out a new niche for circus events – where high physical skill, comedy chops, burlesque and outright nudity mix with just the right splashes of chaos and irreverence are so close and palpable you can see the tear in their fishnets, the sinew of their muscles and the sweat on their skin! Don’t miss them as they fly through their trapeze routines with all the adrenaline and abandon of a rock concert, deconstruct the humor and paradigms of country and heavy metal music, while playing matching guitars and barely sitting on one another’s shoulders! They do it all in a festive, freewheeling hour that keeps the audience guessing every second, who’s in control and for how long?!
They have made appearances at these fantastic festivals and venues: The World Famous Spiegeltent,(VAC, Edinburgh, Auckland, Sydney, NYC), Lincoln Center (NYC), The Mayan Theater (Los Angeles), The Roundhouse (London), Olivia Cruise Lines, Feast Festival (Adelaide), Soho Bar (London), El Cid (Los Angeles), The Grammys (Los Angeles Staples Center), Irving Plaza (NYC), The Palms (Las Vegas), CBGB’s (NYC), The Hammerstein Ballroom (NYC), Joe’s Pub (NYC), The Bowery Ballroom (NYC), The Henry Fonda Theater (Los Angeles), The Pica Festival (Portland, OR), Edinburgh Fringe Festival/The Pleasance (Scotland), The Jermyn St. Theater (West End, London) , The Art House, Crown & Anchor (Provincetown, MA), Philadelphia Fringe Festival (Philadelphia, PA), Sydney Festival, Auckland Festival among countless other cities and venues!!
They’ve been profiled or featured in the pages of: The Village Voice, The New York Post, Time Out New York, Time Out London, The New York Times, Jane, BUST and New York Magazine, The Guardian, Metro, VENUS, The Sun, LA Weekly, GONYC, French Vogue, Spectacle, The Australian, The Times (London, Scotland), Sydnay Morning Herald and countless others!
Television & Film exploits include the feature film “Shortbus” by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), the film “Who’s the Top?” by Jenny Livingston (Paris Is Burning), ABC Australia’s “Sideshow”, Nipon TV’s “Good Morning Japan”, “The Isaac Mizrahi Show” w/ Rosie Perez, NPR’s “The Next Big Thing”, “Live From Downtown”, “The Sharon Osbourne Show”, and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Learn moreTim Smith-Stewart is a queer interdisciplinary artist based in Seattle who uses text as his primary medium for creating installations, performances and zines. For the past seven years, Tim has primarily been creating work in collaboration with artist/electrical engineer Jeffrey Azevedo. They are currently developing Salvage Rituals: a dance set on six piezoelectric tiles to premiere in the fall of 2019. Visual and durational iterations will be presented at various locations including Seattle University in the fall of 2018.
Most recently they premiered Awaiting Oblivion—Temporary Solutions for surviving the dystopian future we find ourselves within at present at On the Boards in February 2017 and The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun at the Henry Art Gallery in October 2017.
Selections of Awaiting Oblivion... have been presented at: On The Boards NW New Works festival (SEA), Risk/Reward Festival (PDX), Velocity Dance Center (SEA) and Fresh Oysters Performance Research (MSP). Tim and Jeffrey have presented multiple installations including their video/paper tapestry installation Queer City Lost at New Tomorrow, Erasure (curated by the Lion’s Main Art Collective), and the Velocity Dance Center Big Bang. They also presented Stained glass in my replacement church at the 2014 Lofi Arts Festival.
From 2010-2013 Tim & Jeffrey co-created The Eternal Glow Project—a four part performance/installation which premiered work at The Seattle Center Next50 (The Eternal Glow of Electric Hearts), On the Boards NW New Works Festival 2013 (Ω<1),and Lofi Arts Festival 2013 (Less than red, more than violet).
Learn moreTim Smith-Stewart | Jeffrey Azevedo is a Seattle based artist duo creating contemporary art at the intersection of performance and installation. They are currently artists in residence at On the Boards, where they are developing their latest project Salvage Rituals. Tim was recently a resident artist in the spring 2018 PICA Creative Exchange Lab cohort.Tim and Jeffrey premiered Awaiting Oblivion—Temporary Solutions for surviving the dystopian future we find ourselves within at present at On the Boards in February 2017 and The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun at the Henry Art Gallery in October 2017.
Twenty-minute selections of Awaiting Oblivion have been presented at: On The Boards NW New Works Festival (SEA), Risk/Reward Festival (PDX), and Fresh Oysters Performance Research (MSP). Tim and Jeffrey have presented multiple installations including their video/paper tapestry installation, Queer City Lost, at New Tomorrow, Erasure curated by the Lion’s Main Art Collective, and the Velocity Dance Center Big Bang. They also presented Stained glass in my replacement church at the 2014 Lofi Arts Festival.
From 2011-2013 Tim & Jeffrey co-created The Eternal Glow Project—a four part performance/installation which premiered work at The Seattle Center Next50 (The Eternal Glow of Electric Hearts), On the Boards NorthWest New Works Festival 2013 (Ω<1), and Lofi Arts Festival at Smoke Farm 2013 (Less than red, more than violet).
Learn moreHalf Straddle is an Obie-winning, Brooklyn-based ensemble of performers and designers that makes plays, performances, videos, and music led by Artistic Director Tina Satter. This critically acclaimed company began in 2008, and has toured its shows to cities throughout U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Tina Satter is an American writer, director, and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn-based, Obie-winning theater company Half Straddle. She is a recipient of a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award; a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award, and was named an Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch by Time Out New York. She has written and directed 9 full-length shows and a number of smaller performance and video pieces with Half Straddle that have premiered in New York City. Tina’s work has been presented at theaters and festivals in Europe, Asia, Australia, and other U.S. cities. Tina has had residencies at Yaddo, Headlands Center for the Arts, LMCC, The Performing Garage, Kitchen L.A.B., MASS MoCA, and New Museum for Contemporary Art. She’s been a visiting artist at Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, Reed College, and Fordham University—and a visiting playwriting professor at the University of Michigan. Drawing on her recent teaching work, Tina has been developing and leading generative writing and directing workshops to participants from a range of backgrounds and experience. Tina attended Mac Wellman’s graduate playwriting program at Brooklyn College and received an M.A. from Reed College and a B.A. from Bowdoin College. Her first collection of plays, Seagull (Thinking of you), was published by 53rd State Press in 2014.
Learn moreTravis Stewart is a contemporary Northwest artist of Chinook, Rogue River, and Kalapuya descent. He lives in Grand Ronde, Oregon, and works in a variety of mediums to depict stories defined by the cultural landscape and design of the Willamette Valley and Columbia River people. He also works as a curator at Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center (Grand Ronde, OR) and has devoted his life to the preservation of the art and culture of the tribes of Western Oregon. Travis is a founding member of the Shawash Ili?i Kanim Tilixam, which is a nonprofit cultural preservation group and canoe family that works to impart traditional teachings to at-risk tribal youth through song, dance, language, and art.
Learn moreWendy Red Star was born in Billings, Montana just outside of the Crow Indian reservation where she was raised. She grew up in a multi-cultural family. Her mother is of Irish decent, her father a full blood Crow Indian and her older sister is Korean. Wendy left the Crow Indian reservation when she was eighteen to attend Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana where she studied sculpture. She then went on to earn her MFA in sculpture at UCLA. Wendy has worked as an adjunct professor of fine art at Portland State University for five and a half years. In 2012 to 2013 Wendy was the manger of Chief Plenty Coups State Park located within the Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana. The park preserves the log home, sacred spring, museum, and farmstead of Chief Plenty Coups and is a National Historic Landmark. Wendy is currently the Program Associate for the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.
Wendy Red Star’s work explores the intersection between life on the Crow Indian reservation and the world outside of that environment. She thinks of herself as a Crow Indian cultural archivist speaking sincerely about the experience of being a Crow Indian in contemporary society.
Her work has been shown at the Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula, MT, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, The Fondation Cartier L’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, The CSULB gallery, Long Beach, CA, Research & Development, Chicago, IL, The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, And/Or gallery, Dallas, TX, The UCLA New Wight gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The L.A. Municipal Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France, The Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown, MA, The Plush Gallery, Dallas TX, The Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, The Luckman gallery, Los Angeles, CA,The Volitant gallery, Austin, Texas, Eiteljorg Museum of Native American & Western Fine Art, Yellowstone Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Studio Visit with Wendy Red Star in Portland Oregon from Amelia winger-bearskin on Vimeo.
Learn moreYUKIO SUZUKI studied butoh at the Asbestos-kan (Asbestos House) from 1997 and danced in the works of Ko Murobushi and other artists. In 2000 he started the Yukio Suzuki Company. He gained attention in the dance world for his documentary style of directing and choreography that uses compelling placement of dancers with a strong emphasis on their physical presence. In recent years he has expanded his activities with projects like choreographing for dancers of the Tokyo City Ballet Company. With a highly sensitive consciousness of the body, he conducts programs around the country aimed at creating dancer-specific works. In 2008, he received the prestigious Choreographer of the Next Generation (Grand Prize) at the Toyota Choreography Awards.
Learn moreZoe Scofield (she/her) is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a dance and visual artist based in Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. Zoe is the co-artistic director and founder with Juniper Shuey of zoe | juniper, a dance and visual art company since 2005. Her work has been commissioned and presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, On the Boards, RedCat, MASS MoCA, The Frye Art Museum, The Joyce Theater, PS 122, Carolina Performing Arts, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Zoe works in performance, video installation, photography, opera, and film. She has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the National Performance Network, and more. Zoe’s current piece, Tell the truth and shame the devil, is a live dance and music collaboration with Xiu Xiu. Zoe has an MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts.
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