Object as Performer

Object as Performer brings together a variety of dance, performance, video and installation artists whose work centers around elevating inanimate objects beyond the role of a simple prop. The show will be accompanied by a book that will include photos and essays on the subject of the object as a performer. The book is currently available via an Indiegogo fundraising campaign.

Object as Performer will take place at 8 p.m. on February 3 and 4 at CPR-Center for Performance Research. Pre-sale tickets will be available on the venue’s website.

This project is being independently produced and curated by Sarah Dahnke.

For more information, contact Sarah Dahnke: sarah (at) sarahdahnke.com

About the artists/about the work:
barrish is the A.O. Movement Collective’s current work in process and is being developed through the MENU project. The MENU project invites everyday people to declare themselves curators and become radically intimate with the work, partnering with the company to create a unique version of barrish and re-envision the dance making economy. This version of barrish (curation #4) contains 3 sections of the 32 available.

curation #1 of barrish

Rebecca Davis’s work encompasses performance, installation and sculpture. She has been an active member of NYC’s dance community since 2000 as a choreographer, performer, curator and Feldenkrais practitioner. Rebecca is a 2010-2012 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. Davis was a Re-performer of Point of Contact in the Marina Abramovic retrospective: The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. She has since assisted Ms. Abramovic to train performers in Manchester, Moscow and Los Angeles. In 2011, she choreographed three works in collaboration with the visual artist duo Allora & Calzadilla for the U.S. Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, and for the Manchester International Festival. Visit www.rdavisprojects.com for more info.
Davis will present her new performance work Restless Nest, which explores leftovers and mutability through the lens of digestion, dreams, and trash.

Image from Davis's Restless Nest

Abigail Levine is a dance and performance artist from New York. Her performance works explore possibilities for new interactions between performer and audience and between bodies and their environments, examining their resonance with larger social patterns. They have been shown in the US, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and Taiwan, recently presented at the Movement Research Festival, Foro Performática, the Not Festival, and Art in Odd Places. Levine has performed most recently with Marina Abramović in her retrospective at the New York MoMA, Carolee Schneemann, and choreographers Marianela Boán and Larissa Velez. She is completing a Masters at NYU in Dance and Performance Studies.
Levine’s work Backshore, which uses masking tape to measure the distances and intimacies between performer, audience, and theater space, will be part of Object as Performer.

Slow Falls, by Levine.

Juri Onuki is a performing artist, originally from Ibaraki, Japan. She currently lives and works in New York City. As a performer, she has worked with Marina Abramovic, William Pope. L, Carolee Schuneeman, Vanessa Walters, Mana Kawamura, and Rebecca Warner. She has been collaborating with Atlanta based artist, Gyun Hur for over two years. She worked with a Brooklyn based band, Chairlift (Columbia Records) for their music video, “Amanaemonesia”.
Onuki will perform her solo piece Under, where she explores her senses in the relationship among her body, mind and the transparent material.

Image from Onuki's Under

Nina Schwanse (born Los Angeles, CA) is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union in New York and is currently earning her MFA at The University of New Orleans. Schwanse has had recent exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center, Good Children Gallery, Arthur Roger, and Barrister’s Gallery (all New Orleans), The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, and was included in screenings in New York, Chicago, and Montreal.
Schwanse’s three videos First Church, My Honda and Homegrown, which collectively deal with the gendered object as it is represented through strategies of local advertising and tradeshow marketing, will be screened in the Object as Performer gallery.

My Honda, by Schwanse

As an interdisciplinary artist, Felisia Tandiono‘s work explores expansive possibilities in the conversations of human senses, history, urban dwellings and visual thinking. Her work has been exhibited at Museum of Art and Design, Dumbo Arts Festival, X-Initiative, 25CPW, International Center of Photography and Printed Matter. She has been a fellow at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning and a resident artist at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council along with the collective she co-founded, Work Progress Collective. She is also a founding member of a curatorial duo, Pulp Legend. She holds a BA in Visual and Media Arts.
Her newest work Be Glow investigates an object-character commentary utilizing a common tool for public display, neon signs. It will be on display in the window of the Object as Performer gallery.

Tandiono performing in the Dumbo Arts Festival, 2010