Studio 170 | Residency | Archive
Projects through the Years
Marcelline Mandeng Nken (b. Yaoundé, Cameroon) works with sculpture and time-based media. Her practice draws from concepts of syncretism, non-human intelligence, and the labor traditions of the Global South. In 2024, she earned an MFA from Yale School of Art and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recently, she completed a Dance Research Fellowship at the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The fellowship culminated in a performance presentation titled "Queening The Knight: Baryshnikov's Vulnerability and Masculinity On Display," which is set to premiere at the Performing Arts Library in January 2025.
Rush Hour is a performance installation that unfolds inside a moving train as a cinematic narrative structure. From themes of migration, displacement, and time travel, it links the concept of Sankofa, a call back into history to remember, with the theory of self-reference as fertile ground for sculptural forms, spatial interventions, and movement phrases. Through a surrealist lens, the work disrupts dichotomies between body and machine, nature and industry, and stellar motion and mechanical time. Staged in three acts, Rush Hour affirms language as a care tool that shapes self-determination beyond feminine sacrifice into storytelling and dreams. The choreography and suit of objects in the work point to the cyclical nature of history. As a vehicle, the train is a liminal space that reflects the motives of colonialism, journeying to paradise for discovery as a measure of conquest. As a 2025 Studio 170 resident at the Goethe-Institut Boston, Mandeng Nken will preview Vestibule or Act 2, in which the body animates a projection of images as a fleeting, playful exercise with light, and silhouette. She will also present Act 1, Conductor, where the train's operator becomes a storyteller who combines banal observations with cosmological mysteries. Set inside and around a miniature train set, the rhythm of this section follows the repetition of a ticking clock that breaks into a glitch.
Installation, Performance and Artist Talk
Thursday, April 24, 6 PM
Learn more: https://www.mandengarchives.com/
Rush Hour - A Performance Installation
Rush Hour is a performance installation that unfolds inside a moving train as a cinematic narrative structure. From themes of migration, displacement, and time travel, it links the concept of Sankofa, a call back into history to remember, with the theory of self-reference as fertile ground for sculptural forms, spatial interventions, and movement phrases. Through a surrealist lens, the work disrupts dichotomies between body and machine, nature and industry, and stellar motion and mechanical time. Staged in three acts, Rush Hour affirms language as a care tool that shapes self-determination beyond feminine sacrifice into storytelling and dreams. The choreography and suit of objects in the work point to the cyclical nature of history. As a vehicle, the train is a liminal space that reflects the motives of colonialism, journeying to paradise for discovery as a measure of conquest. As a 2025 Studio 170 resident at the Goethe-Institut Boston, Mandeng Nken will preview Vestibule or Act 2, in which the body animates a projection of images as a fleeting, playful exercise with light, and silhouette. She will also present Act 1, Conductor, where the train's operator becomes a storyteller who combines banal observations with cosmological mysteries. Set inside and around a miniature train set, the rhythm of this section follows the repetition of a ticking clock that breaks into a glitch.
Installation, Performance and Artist Talk
Thursday, April 24, 6 PM
Ngoc-Tran Vu (she/her) is a 1.5-generation Vietnamese-American multimedia artist, cultural organizer, and advocate based in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Her socially engaged art practice weaves together photography, painting, sculpture, and installation to explore themes of diaspora, memory, and healing. Deeply rooted in her Vietnamese heritage and community, Ngoc-Tran’s work amplifies underrepresented voices and fosters connections across generations. She is dedicated to creating collaborative and reflective spaces that honor resilience, cultural identity, and social justice.
Vietnamese-American multimedia artist and cultural organizer NGOC-TRAN VU activates the Goethe-Institut Boston with an installation that explores themes of diaspora, memory and healing toward Journey of Light: A 1975 Memory Field on February 13-16, 2025.
Journey of Light: A 1975 Memory Field is a temporary public art installation and community engagement series in Dorchester that honors the resilience and contributions of Boston’s Vietnamese-American community while addressing the enduring legacy of the War in Vietnam. Rooted in Vietnamese cultural traditions and shaped by local narratives and cultural narratives, the project creates a space for reflection, connection, and dialogue, fostering a deeper understanding of migration, displacement, and community resilience toward the long-term vision of the 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Memorial.
Installation Opening
Thursday, February 13, 2025: 6-8 PM
Installation Engagement and Viewing
Saturday, February 15, 2025: 2-4 PM
Installation Engagement and Viewing
Sunday, February 16, 2025: 2-4 PM
Learn more: https://www.tranvuarts.com
Journey of Light: A 1975 Memory Field is a temporary public art installation and community engagement series in Dorchester that honors the resilience and contributions of Boston’s Vietnamese-American community while addressing the enduring legacy of the War in Vietnam. Rooted in Vietnamese cultural traditions and shaped by local narratives and cultural narratives, the project creates a space for reflection, connection, and dialogue, fostering a deeper understanding of migration, displacement, and community resilience toward the long-term vision of the 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Memorial.
Thursday, February 13, 2025: 6-8 PM
Installation Engagement and Viewing
Saturday, February 15, 2025: 2-4 PM
Installation Engagement and Viewing
Sunday, February 16, 2025: 2-4 PM
Hailed by The Washington Post as a "captivating" performer who brings "bright humanity and expressive depth" to contemporary music, Steph is a marimba soloist and chamber musician, currently performing in venues across the United States — including Merkin Hall (NYC) and The Broward Center for the Performing Arts (Ft. Lauderdale, FL), among others. Integrating romantic, 20th century, and contemporary Western classical music, traditional African American spirituals, and traditional and contemporary Ghanaian gyil music, their performances explore the historiography of African American culture and freedom movements from an Africana womanist, Afrofuturist, and decolonial perspective. Through their arrangements and commissions, Steph has contributed over 20 works by Black composers to the marimba's solo and chamber repertoire. They have premiered works by Alissa Voth, Avik Chari, Bilin Zheng, Christa Duggan, Damien Geter, Jingmian Gong, and Pamela Z. A versatile and passionate collaborator, they have performed chamber music noted musicians and concert series throughout the United States. Steph proudly endorses Marimba One instruments and mallets as a Marimba One Premier Artist. Their current projects include recording their debut solo marimba album and writing a book of marimba arrangements and adaptations of music from the African diaspora.
A researcher and scholar of African American music and culture, Steph is a teaching artist with Castle of our Skins, a Black arts institution. They also teach music theory at the Boston Conservatory. They have presented performances and masterclasses on marimba and vibraphone at the University of Central Florida, University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Center of Mallet Percussion Research at Kutztown University.
Steph has been awarded residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Boston Center for the Arts, and artist fellowships with the Antenna Cloud Farm Experimental Institute and Music for Food. They were semifinalist in the Southern California Marimba International Artist Competition and a finalist in the Boston Conservatory Concerto Competition.
Steph received their Master of Music in marimba performance from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where they studied with Nancy Zeltsman. They also hold a Bachelor of Music in percussion performance from the Conservatory. Other areas of study include music composition, African and African American music/history and Africana philosophy. They serve on the boards of directors at Castle of our Skins.
Steph resides on unceded land of the Neponset band of the Massachusett tribe, bordertown Boston, MA.
Through her performance art, Dzidzor dismantles the conventional notion of a passive audience, instead beckoning them to step forward and become integral participants in the experience. Her body of work is a tapestry woven with threads of curiosity, exploring profound inquiries about divinity, community, home, blackness, and identity. She sensitively acknowledges those ensnared by a system that has historically overlooked black and brown individuals. She leans into Octavia E. Butler’s question, “What do we need to do now, to create the world we want to live in?” Dzidzor explores the possibility within bodies to unshackle themselves from internalized oppression, both in the mind and body, through practices of rest, and deliberate stillness.
Dzidzor has performed at the ICA Boston, Old North Church, Isabella Stewart Gardener, Marsh Chapel, Harvard, University of Ghana and so much more.
Presently, Dzidzor is engrossed in her latest venture, 'Wilderness', an experimental performance piece that probes the essence and complexity of black womanhood, existence, and spirituality in the context of religious teachings and the divine. Simultaneously, she serves as a Community liaison for the Reckonings Project and pursues a master's in Divinity at Boston University. Her passion for the curiosity of sound and experimentation has the distinguished title of 'rhythm architect', bestowed upon her by Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
06.-08. September 2024
Goethe-Institut Boston
September 6th
6:00-9:30 PM Installation Opening
September 7th
Installation is open, exact times TBA
4:00 PM Installation is open
6:30 PM Doors open, Reception
7:30-8:30 PM Live Performance
September 8th
12:00 PM Installation is open
1:00-2:00 PM Postures of Prayer: A Performance Ritual
2:30-3:30 PM Panel Discussion with guests
An invitation to listen closely “‘Every Tongue Confess' is an evening-length performance inspired by Zora Neal Hurtson folktales. Layering poetry, marimba music, proverbs, and prayers, physical space becomes a container for memory and healing, and reflection about “how it feels to be here on earth or leaving, or about the sweet pain of hanging on between the coming and going.” (Hurston, 2001).
Dzidzor’s ability to collage live poems and soundscapes from speakers, sermons, and nature, combined with Steph Davis’ ability to stir, evoke, and shape the complexity of humanity through the marimba, is a merge of artistic innovation and profound storytelling — a glitch, a disruptive tapestry of memory and confession. The audience is invited to participate as witnesses through the practice of listening closely (Hurston, 2001), call and response, and embodiment.
The performance will weave themes of freedom, spirituality, healing, and pain through visuals, sound, and movement inspired by traditional African/African-American practices. The performance forges a space to manipulate time and disrupt the sonic environment of colonialism. We invite the audience to sit with the discomfort and wonder of the dead, the living, and beyond —as we honor traditions of possibility, resilience, collective care, liberation, and truth-telling.
Gardeners for a Geologic Afterlife (Spring)
Installation with plants, sculptures made from bio-based materials and found objects, containers and structures commonly found in gardensApril 22 - Mai 4, 2024
Goethe-Institut Boston
Erin Woodbrey’s Gardeners for a Geologic Afterlife is a site-specific installation realized for the Goethe-Institut’s 2024 170 Residency Program.Developed in this winter before residency, the installation mirrors the choreography of a gardener as they prepare for the growing season, weaving together sculpture and gardening practices to form a spatial narrative of a garden in spring.
Opening
Thursday, April 25, 6-8 PM
Open Studio/Plant Exchange
Saturday, April 27, 12-4pm
Finissage with snacks and a performance by Erin Woodbrey and Sarah Williams of Aesthetically Complex Pies
Saturday, May 4, 11am-1pm
More about Erin Woodbrey
Black Meridian
Installation with Sound and PhotographyDecember 4-10, 2023
Goethe-Institut Boston
What does it mean to be "Black"? At face value, it is the descriptor du jour for descendants of the African diaspora. However, since even before the Enlightenment, the term black has had social, political, religious, scientific, and philosophical implications reaching far beyond race. Our understanding of blackness today has been impacted by these preceding and concurring formulations, and is perhaps not something that can be directly observed, but, like black holes, can be seen through it's proximate effect. This is the approach of Black Meridian. Through sampling, appropriating, and assemblage, the sum total of this installation paradoxically narrows and expands the scope of black ontology through image, sound, and text.
Exhibition Opening
Monday, December 4, 6-8 PM
Finissage
Saturday, December 9, 4-6 PM
Strat Coffman uses the multi-facing tools of architecture to explore how capital, institutions, and design discourses conspire to produce material, social, and epistemic bodies. They are an Architecture Fellow at University of Michigan and co-instigator of the architecture research and design working group Proof of Concept with Isadora Dannin. They hold a BA from Wesleyan University and M.Arch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they received the Imre Halasz Thesis Prize and the AIA Henry Adams Medal. Their work has appeared in Log, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Multimedia Anthropology Lab at University College London. They were previously an editor of Thresholds 48: Kin and a fellow at the MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative and are currently a 2023 artist-in-residence at the Goethe Institut.
Aaron Powers is a designer based in Los Angeles where he is currently working with creative director Willo Perron. He has worked internationally at design firms such as BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group and Buro Ole Scheeren, where he has been involved in prominent projects including the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion at the Serpentine Galleries in London and the Guardian Art Center in Beijing. Aaron has been a lecturer at the Ohio State University where he taught undergraduate and graduate design studios. He holds a master’s degree from MIT.
Team:
Aaron Powers
Strat Coffman
Ellie Ervin (fabrication)
Sabrina Ramsay (fabrication)
Poly Pockets
May 13-19, 2023
Goethe-Institut Boston
Inspired by the new street uses that emerged during the pandemic, Poly Pockets is a public art installation in the form of a series of reconfigurable tent structures.
During the pandemic, buildings turned inside out. Things that used to happen inside moved into the street. The tent became the enclosure of choice for this new zone, but it has been used almost exclusively for dining. Poly Pockets is a set of modifications made to generic tent materials to expand what the street tent can host and what is legally permitted and culturally desired within the street. A roll of poly sheeting is subdivided and sewn into pockets that take on versatile roles when stuffed with whatever is on hand. Sand or crushed aggregate to make weighted pockets. Insulation to make thermal mass bodies. Soft stuffing to make comfy pads for resting. Sheet material to make rigid planes. Or mostly anything else. Through cutting, stitching, attaching, and filling, the building enclosure is deconstructed into pockets with special talents that can be recombined and linked together into different formats, from piles to lean-to’s to columns to [ ].
poly won't you won't you
Displayed alongside these assemblages will be a new video piece starring the pockets, by the performer, digital artist, and clown Carlos Sanchez. Performed through the lens of the eponymous Polly Pockets, "poly won't you won't you" is an absurdist clown short that tests the limits of the pocket's immaterial capacity.
Pockets Opening
Saturday, May 13, 6-8 PM
Join us for Poly Pocket's big debut. Residents Aaron Powers and Strat Coffman will introduce Poly, while visitors toss around, drag, and crawl under the pocket assemblages, to the sounds of a dj set about holding and being held. Munch on hot pockets and empanadas while laying on some pocket piles and watching the debut of the pocket video performance, poly won't you won't you. Together we'll give new life to Poly.
Pockets Listening Session
Tuesday, May 16, 7-9 PM
Relax among the pocket structures and piles, and listen to live ambient sounds created by local artists.
Game Night with Pockets
Friday, May 19, 6-8 PM
Enjoy an evening of game playing with our German Game Guru Stefan Sadecki amid a backdrop of pockets.
Liu Wa (b. 1994) received her B.A. in Anthropology and Art from Yale University and is pursuing her M.S. in Art, Culture and Technology at MIT. She won the International Emmy Awards Young Creatives Award, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list, Porsche Young Chinese Artist of the Year, among other honors. She was nominated to participate in international exhibits, such as Busan Biennale (2020) and Guangzhou Triennial (2018). Her works have been globally exhibited at prestigious institutions including UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, TANK Shanghai, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Javits Convention Center of New York, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, M Woods Museum, Today Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Guangdong Museum of Art, etc. Liu’s solo presentations include: Late Night Savage (Cc Foundation, Shanghai, 2021), SOUNDMASS (TANK Shanghai, 2021), Hear A Century Ahead (No.1 Waitanyuan, Shanghai, 2021), Moon Milk (MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2020), Glimpse (Asia Now, Paris, 2019), Glimpse: a passing look (Sabsay Gallery, Copenhagen, 2018).
In his live performance SOUNDMASS at TANK Shanghai, Bao created a site-specific and ever-evolving soundscape that transformed the gigantic oil tank into an architectural instrument. He materialized the intangible music into a sonic monument that constantly devours and regenerates itself. In his sound installation Hear A Century Ahead commissioned by LOUIS XIII, Bao’s spatial-audio composition Infinity Music—GODSPEED mutates and refracts in infinity according to the progression of time and chance within the large metal installations. His original soundtrack The Kitty Knight for the major feature film I Am What I Am was globally released and well-received in 2022. His film DUALISM for composer Kaija Saariaho’s Graal Theatre was exclusively featured on Apple Music. Bao’s solo shows and projects include: Hear A Century Ahead (No.1 Waitanyuan, Shanghai, 2021), SOUNDMASS (Tank Shanghai, 2021), Late Night Savage (Cc Foundation, Shanghai, 2021).
Bao has frequently performed at prestigious venues, such as Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Lincoln Center in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, and Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. His recent concerts include Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 with China Philharmonic Orchestra in their Spring 2022 Concert Season.
Savage Confessions
Multi-sensory visual-soundscapeMay 4-9, 2022
Opening hours: May 4, 5 & 9, 10am-5pm
Opening reception: Friday, May 6, 4-7pm
Panel Discussion and Meet the Artists: Sunday, May 8, 4-7pm / panel at 5pm
The exhibit Savage Confessions by Liu Wa & Yang Bao creates a multi-sensory and ever-evolving visual-soundscape through video, music and painting, seeking to heighten our sensuous receptivity to the more-than-human world.
The first part of the exhibit features two-channel video Late Night Savage which focuses on the day and night of three plants at nuclear sites in the United States, the former Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. The two artists embarked on an 11,000-mile journey to conduct field research in Washington State, U.S. and Gansu, China, and lived among the plants. As a symbol for the American West, tumbleweeds, propelled by the force of the wind, travel around to spread radioactive seeds at the nuclear reactor in Washington State. Sunflowers are now planted at Chernobyl, as a cheap corrective method to clean up the contamination. Camel grass at the nuclear city in Gansu, China, embodies the patriotic zeitgeist for dedicating one’s life to the motherland. However, both camel grass and tumbleweeds are invasive species from Russia that disregard land borders, freely traversing the landscapes. Genetic mutation caused by ionizing radiation speeds up the plants’ aging process, leading to an increase in its entropy. While living means fighting a losing battle against nature, the short-lived plants still display incredible resilience and savageness.
As a continuation of the video work, an installation of paintings titled Savage Confessions by the two artists captures their impression and imagination of the plants that they encountered on their journey. In the daytime, the plants dedicate themselves to fulfilling the obligations assigned by humans, but in the nighttime, they morph into phantoms and savages, dancing till the end of the world. The intent of these works is not to anthropomorphize the plants, but to “vegetalize” our human perceptions and question the man-made boundaries amongst ourselves.
The silent carnival of these nameless actors has never been alien to us. We are all savages.
As part of the show “SAVAGE CONFESSIONS,” a panel brings together Yang Bao and Liu Wa in conversation with two pioneering artists and scholars, Bruce Brubaker and Gediminas Urbonas. Based on their own cross-disciplinary explorations, the four guest speakers will engage in an open conversation on the codependency between humans and nature at the time of global warming as well as the importance of multidisciplinary perspective in the increasingly complex world.
This exhibit has been made possible by the generous support from The Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT and the Council for the Arts at MIT.
Kapplow’s work has received American and European government funding; support from numerous private foundations; and commissions from galleries, film and performance festivals including the MIT List Visual Arts Center, ANTI-Festival, and ISEA International.
An avid collaborator, Kapplow has co-created ensemble projects at the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum (DK), Guggenheim Museum (US), Institute of Contemporary Art (US), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (US), Museo Arte Moderno (MX), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (US), and the Queens Museum (US), and performed within live artworks by La Pocha Nostra, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and On Kawara.
Kapplow is also an active member of two international art communities that produce work collectively: Flux Factory and Mobius Artists Group, and an affiliate artist at metaLAB at Harvard University.
With various collaborators Walker makes games that playfully place player’s bodies in physical relationship with global systems, dirt, bodies and microbiomes. His work has been shown internationally including: MassMoCA, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, and Flux Factory. His projects have received funding from the Danish Arts Council, the Arts Council of Wales and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Walker has created commissioned public works and participated in residencies from Saint Petersburg, RU to Portland, OR. He is currently collaborating with bacteria to grow experimental concrete in the Emerging Practices MFA at University at Buffalo. More at kosmologym.com, walkertufts.com and listeningwith.com.
Autolysis
Installation and PerformancesJune 1-15, 2022
Goethe-Institut Boston
Dirt/earth is the very base of our daily existence and also where we return to when we cease to exist. It nurtures us, and then we disappear into it.
In the Covid-era, when we have become profoundly oriented towards the digital, and where cleanliness has felt like a life or death imperative, Autolysis offers an immersive, tactile and olfactory experience of re-connection with the earth and to dirt.
Autolysis also opens conversations about personal relationships with the earth in a way that emphasizes the actual material of the earth rather than earth with a capital “E”, and creates space for gentle contemplation of end of life/end of species issues.
Dirty Library Hotline
(June 2022 only)
Bring or send us your dirt to 170 Beacon Street Boston MA 02116. Call us at 617-861-8898 and tell us about it on the telephone.
Dirty Walk
Saturday, June 4, 1-3 PM (rain date: June 12)
Join Autolysis artists Heather Kapplow and Walker Tufts in a guided walking experience.We’ll engage our senses and imagination, paying close attention to the Goethe-Institut’s neighborhood–its flora, its history, its soil–and gather materials that can be used to contribute to the evolving aspects of Autolysis.
Dirty Hang: Open Studio Drop in Hours
Tuesday, June 7 and Friday, June 10, 5:30 - 7:30 PM
Autolysis artists Heather Kapplow and Walker Tufts will be onsite working and hanging out, and you are welcome to come by and visit to investigate the work and ask questions. This is a casual time to get to know us and the work, informally. BYOB, and if you’re able, also bring a ziploc baggie or jar of some soil from somewhere that’s important to you that you can share with us. If you are unable to make our open studio drop in hours, get in touch–we can also be available by appointment.
Dirty Movie: Lessons of Darkness
Wednesday June 8, 6:30 PM
Director: Werner Herzog, documentary, 55 min., 1992
Shortly before the end of the Second Gulf War, Iraqi troops set fire to the oil fields and terminals as they withdrew from Kuwait. Herzog and his cameraman attempted to capture the unfathomable, the apocalypse, on film.
Finissage with Artist Talk and Dirty Karaoke
Wednesday, June 15, 6:00 - 9:30 PM
Join us for a closing party for Autolysis! We’ll begin with an artists talk, where Heather Kapplow and Walker Tufts will host a free ranging conversation about their work and how Autolysis fits into it, perhaps with special guests. Then we’ll all enjoy the soil one more time, and do a little dirty karaoke! Bring your favorite song about dirt, death or climate change and we’ll help each other keep our spirits up even though we know the end of the habitable world is nigh. Please bring a ziploc baggie or jar of some soil from somewhere that’s important to you that you can share with us for our ongoing collection.
Gathering
Exhibition and PerformanceDecember 2-11, 2021
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon Street, Boston
Opening Performance and Reception
Thursday, December 2, 6-8 pm
Finissage
Sunday, December 12, 2-4 pm
Gallery Hours
Saturday December 4, 2-4 pm
Sunday December 5, 2-4 pm
Thursday December 9, 6-8pm
Saturday December 11, 2-4pm
Sunday December 12, 2-4pm
Supported by the Goethe-Institut Boston, Gathering marks an important continuation in Smith’s work, emphasizing temporality, from the ephemeral to the sculptural. As is characteristic of his singular creations, Smith uses raw form materials (e.g., beeswax, clay, ash) for large-scale, process-based, and performance-aligned works.
Threads of Assumption: The Biases You Weave
Multimedia Performance InstallationJune 24-27, 2021
Goethe-Institut Boston
Threads of Assumption is an interactive performance and installation by Maria Finkelmeier, Sofie Hodara, U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, and Martha Rettig.
Our work responds to real stories about experienced bias, gathered on a virtual, anonymous conversation platform and analyzed by natural language processing artificial intelligence (AI). The resulting exhibition is a visual, sonic, and tactile representation of human truths and errors. The project asks us to reconsider our assumptions surrounding bias and what we accept as normal. How can we expect machines to extract meaning from what we don’t understand?
Data was collected from 22 sourced conversations. Each conversation was analyzed for emotional content and thematic language and transformed, by AI, into datasets. As artists, the concept of weaving this rigid data and the human experience became essential at every turn, similar to the way tactile weavings are made, with a tense warp and threaded weft.
The exhibition is centered around an interactive, room-scale loom, while hanging weavings, spoken word poetry, projections, and musical composition allows attendees to learn about and reflect upon the gathered data.
The data we gathered did not teach us anything new. It simply reinforced our society’s acceptance of harmful structures and individual’s perpetuation of rigid assumptions.
Thanks to our 44 participants, including:
Annie Lundsten
Bianca Mauro
Brian Calhoon
Jasmine Lellock
Kendall Rhymer
Ksenija Komljenovic
Lindsay Akens
Lisa Daria Kennedy
Lydia Lucas
Maria Servellon
Natalie Gray
Sheryl Pace
Susan Hodara
Ulrike Rettig
Wendy Richmond
Additional thanks to: Bianca Mauro of BRM Production Management, J. Cottle, The Loop Lab, Aram Boghosian, Adam DeTour, Gabi Ammirato
Fast forward to today, and Shane is an artist and jazz-inspired producer. He writes his own music and collaborates as a piano player and music director with some of Boston’s most distinguished R&B and hip-hop artists. He just recently released his debut album, A Star or a Lonely Dreamer, available on all streaming platforms.
Listen to Shane Dylan on Spotfy
Shane Dylan x Kae Alayah -- "I'm Yours"
Live Video PerformanceDecember 2021
Recorded live at Studio 170, piano player and composer Shane Dylan and Boston Music Award nominated R&B artist Kae Alayah join forces for a performance of a new song from their upcoming joint project. Featuring a string quartet composed by Shane and video directed by Kat Otuechere, this acoustic style video showcases a stripped down and intimate rendition of their music.
Shane Dylan - piano, composer
Kae Alayah - songwriter, lead vocals
Karim - backup vocals
Aldra - backup vocals
Tiffany Chang - violin
Caroline Jesalva - violin
Steven Tse - viola
Claire Park - cello
Kat Otuechere - video director
Sean Peloso - gaffer/lighting tech
Noel Pichardo - gaffer/lighting tech
Patrick Meany - audio recording and mixing
TBT popped out in 2019 with the Femmetasy mixtape, a mixed medium rap and poetry tape musing on what Black trans femme survival looks like in the 21st century. Playing a few small shows and getting some press coverage in local Boston papers and independent music blogs, her single "Hex Ur Ex" from that project did numbers after placement on a Spotify editorial playlist in 2020-remaining her top streamed song to this day and earning her coverage in Bandcamp Daily. After spending 2020 and all of lockdown experiencing, witnessing, and writing about the violence Black trans people face online, they began uploading their discography to Bandcamp and using half of all proceeds for mutual aid to support other Black trans people.
They would later return in 2021 with their debut album CYBERBULLY, receiving press coverage in Dig Boston as well as the Boston Globe and going on to perform at Trans Resistance MA's 2nd Annual Trans Resistance March in Franklin Park, Massachusetts. Recently having relocated from Boston, Massachusetts to New York City, Trap Beat Tranny is hard at work finishing an EP and developing an upcoming virtual concert-she looks forward to sharing her work with her communities and continuing to use her music to redistribute funds to other Black trans people in need.
£!V€ hå©K
Virtual Multimedia ConcertDecember 2021 (rescheduled due to COVID-19)
Live Hack is a virtual multimedia concert combining prerecorded live concert footage with music videos to celebrate the discography of Trap Beat Tranny (TBT 4 da cissies!). From the Femmetasy mixtape to TBT’s debut album CYBERBULLY with even previews of what’s to come, this piece is a cybernetic vision of a world not unlike our own but dressed in the dreams of Black trans futures within systems that deem our death as fuel for the engine.
The filming took place in December 2021 at the Goethe-Institut. The video will be released in March 2022 and shared on this website. The residency was postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to COVID-19.
Participants:
Performer: Trap Beat Tranny
Backup Dancer and Costume Design: Khadija Bangoura
Backup Dancer: Oreine Robinson
Director: Sarah Shin
Dramaturg, Choreographer, Projections Operator: Joey Cosio-Mercado
Producer, Project Manager, Lighting Designer, Assistant Choreographer: Andrea Sala
Scenic Design: Steven Doucette
Audio Technician: Grace Hill
DJ: Chelita
Amongst others, her work was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, at Werkleitz Gesellschaft e. V. Halle, Trestle Projects Brooklyn, NURTUREart Brooklyn, Icebox Project Space Philadelphia, Bronx Museum of Art NYC, Museum of Contemporary Art Basel, and the Museum of Fine Arts Bremen.
Learn more
Exhibition: Quiet Fulfilment
October 10-16, 2020Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon Street, Boston
Janne works in video, animation and photography. She observes how technology and capitalism abstract and restructure movement, space and time. Recent works examine the flight paths of airplanes, the rhythm of container ships, and robots in automated warehouses.
Her videos take standardized formats and automatization as a starting point to organize physical space by virtual means. They reference real locations and are based on filmed footage. Through the use of production and post-production methods new hybrid, alienated spaces arise out of her works that tip between real-physical and virtually constructed environments. These spaces offer a picture that is bound by the context and events of the site.They emphasize how a neoliberal dynamic deconstructs and transforms space and time and how virtualization, digitization, and optimization of processes foster the creation of mobile topologies.
Previous Jury Members
Recent reviews have praised Mr. Vargas for his “highly emotional and thoughtful” playing and his “striking energy and uncompromising honesty”. Highlights of the upcoming 2023 season include a series of recitals in New England and California featuring music of what is to be his debut album titled “Souvenirs” as well as his debut with the National Symphony of Ecuador performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in honor of the composer’s 150th birth anniversary.
Besides his concertizing, Mr. Vargas is involved in several exciting projects that demonstrate the wide spectrum of his musical interests: The Roxbury Piano Program, Festival Esmeraldas and Roxbury Concert Series.
Find out more: www.carlosmanuelvargas.com
Prior to joining BCA in 2013, Hopkins was Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2008-2011), curating exhibitions including Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork, the 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize and Krzysztof Wodiczko: OUT OF HERE The Veterans Project. She was the co-founder and co- director of Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston’s SoWa (1998-2008), and a longtime weekly arts columnist for the Boston Phoenix (1998-2008). In addition to independent curatorial projects, she taught contemporary art history and curatorial practice in the Art & Music Department at Simmons University in Boston 2011-2019.
