Intro and Mission
Genesis Project, Los Angeles is a collaborative, artist’s residency catering to artists whose practice exists between disciplines and works with and through the body. The project is modeled after Genesis, Dublin, Ireland, which began in 2004 when dance artists Julie Lockett and Ella Clarke, in conversation with seminal post-modern choreographer Deborah Hay, asked the question 'as an artist, what do I need?'
Our mission is to support artists in accessing space in which to work and fortify a practice and a community from which to act globally. By asking artists to commit to regular inquiry without focus on a final product, Genesis aims to heighten productivity of the collective at work in the project and to sharpen the potency of each artist’s daily practice.
Genesis facilitates an environment wherein creativity is the act of investigation rather than what is produced from it. As was evident in the Dublin incarnations of Genesis, this model yields a unique environment for investigation and the creation of innovative artistic, body-based work.
Directed by Los Angeles-based dance artist Hana van der Kolk with assistance from New York City-based multi-media artist Arturo Vidich, the first Genesis, LA will take place in August of 2008 at Sea and Space Explorations in Highland Park. The project will support six artists in engaging in daily, autonomous practice while providing opportunities for regular and focused exchange among the resident artists. Genesis, LA will offer participants space, time, an artistic collective, and a variety of other resources, though artists will be responsible for their own housing. The project will serve a culturally and artistically diverse group of five LA-based artists, tapping a variety of artistic communities in order to attract the group, along with one international artist.
Project Structure
Each of the six artists will sign a contract with Genesis, agreeing to work in the provided space for 2-3 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week throughout the month of August. In addition, participants will arrive 15 minutes before the start of their individual designated practice time and will sit in on the practice time of the preceding artist. This overlap window could include observation, dialogue, or collaboration as determined primarily by the artist already in the space. The Project Director as well as the participating artists will post suggestions, to be referred to or not, for ways in which these interactions might be structured.
The Genesis Project artists will have exclusive and 24-hour access to the gallery at Sea and Space Explorations. As such they will be able to store supplies in the space and make it comfortable for practice/work sessions, rest, and gathering. The gallery has a concrete floor, which will, for the purposes of movement practice, be covered with cardboard and marley for the duration of the residency. Each Saturday the group will clean and maintain the space. An announcement board will be displayed, which participants may use in the service of offering one another ideas for structuring daily investigation. A collective journal will also be kept for more extensive writing on the practice sessions.
Weekly Group Meetings and Workshops
On Saturdays the group will gather for 8-10 hours to clean and maintain the studio, converse about the work they are engaged in, have optional showings of their investigations, and evaluate and refine of the structure of the residency. On these days the group will be provided with a delicious, home-cooked meal. The weekly meetings will also include participant-led workshops and/or workshops led by people from the Los Angeles community. In the months prior to Genesis Project Director Hana van der Kolk and the six participating artists will communicate with one another via an online discussion board in order to determine the nature of these workshops. Participants may make proposals to lead a workshop or may suggest an outside workshop leader. Workshop topics could include video or sound editing, collective communication, various creative/movement practices, or other topics deemed useful, exciting, and relevant by the group. Throughout the residency, and particularly during the Saturday meetings, collective decision making about space maintenance, revisions to the residency structure, workshop topics and schedules, and other key components to the project, will be engaged as much as possible, though the Project Director will act as facilitator when necessary.
Documentation
Consistent documentation of all practices within the project will take place on a daily basis in written, photographed, filmed and inter-media form. This will provide the artists with a way of reflecting on and developing their practice after the project as well as serving as an archive for the development of future incarnations of Genesis.
Open House
The group will have the option of hosting an open house towards the end of the month, during which the public will be invited into the studio to observe artists’ raw practice sessions.
Post-residency Web Contact
During the year following the residency (and beyond) Genesis Project artists will be able to stay connected via the project’s discussion board and website. Artists will be able to upload photos, video, and text to the site and may receive feedback on their work from the other participants with whom they have hopefully developed a trusted artistic relationship. The LA-based artists will meet twice during the year following their residency to discuss how the residency has affected their artistic work in an effort to further develop future incarnations of the project, and to re-connect with the other Genesis participants and share current projects.
Additional Resources
Throughout the month wireless internet, coffee, tea, and water will be available in the space. Before the start of the project artists will submit a list of requested supplies needed for their work sessions, which might include arts materials or technical equipment. In the months prior to the start of the project Genesis will acquire as much of the requested supplies as possible.
Participant Stipend Fundraising Invitation
Participating artists are asked to raise $400 each from their communities prior to the start of the residency to be used for their own weekly stipends to cover their costs of transportation and food. Artists are expressly asked not to pay this money out of their own pockets, but are instead invited to connect with their community of colleagues, friends, family, and patrons in gathering these funds. This funding structure will not only provide artists with the necessary support of their personal stipend during the residency, but will also act as a means of connecting them with their communities. Donations might be made by fellow artists or other interested parties, and the entire sum might be raised through several small donations of $25 or less. The hope is that this fundraising plan will ask participants to articulate their artistic needs and practice to the people in their life. In doing so they will also tell people about Genesis and its importance, and the importance of other programs like it, in the development of body-based, inter-disciplinary work. It is anticipated that donors will then have an investment in Genesis and that the project will cast a wider net of influence, functioning as a service not only to the resident artists, but also to these artists' communities. Patrons may make tax-deductible contributions to Genesis Project, which Genesis will then redistribute to the individual artists at the start of the residency.
Applying
Artists at any stage in their career who are working with and/or through the body are invited to apply. Please consider the questions below and if you answer yes to most of them and would like to be one of the six artists in the first annual Genesis Project send an email of interest to hjvanderkolk@gmail.com by April 28th, 2008. In your letter please address why Genesis appeals to you and include anything you would like the screening committee to know about your current creative practice. Please also let us know of any questions you have about Genesis and give us a general idea of your availability for the month of August. The committee is thinking broadly about definitions of ‘artist’ and ‘creative practice’ and is unattached to notions of who is ‘right’ for this project.
Questions to Consider
Would you like to be supported and challenged in your artistic practice by connecting with a small, diverse group of other inter-disciplinary, body-based artists?
Do you aim for your artistic process to be continually evolving and challenged?
Are you able to direct and motivate your own artistic practice?
Do you identify as working between disciplines, and/or are in the process of expanding your arts practice into other disciplines? Does your work make connections between or maintain parallel practices?
As an artist are you unattached to any one particular set of skills or training?
Are you curious about the possibilities of engaging your body in a daily practice without knowing the outcome of your investigations? Are you discontent with irregular or unfocused practice? Do you feel your work could benefit from a focused period of unstructured, daily, body-based practice time in a private studio space?
Do you value daily artistic inquiry as creativity in and of itself rather than only as a means to a creative product?
In your arts practice, do you wish to cultivate a fearless desire to fail: as an integral part of the creative process, and/or to glean a deeper understanding of your artistic inquiry?
Funding
Genesis Project, Los Angeles 2008 is generously hosted by Sea and Space Explorations in Highland Park. The project is made possible through support from Art 2102 of Los Angeles and from numerous individual donors. Additional private donors directly supported the artists, who were asked to raise $400 to be used as a weekly stipend for themselves to cover costs of daily transportation and food. Genesis also receives extensive support in the form of in-kind donations of supplies and equipment. We are currently researching funding options for expanding the project in 2009 to serve more artists over a longer period of time. Please consider supporting the inaugural year of Genesis Project, Los Angeles – Contact program director Hana van der Kolk at hjvanderkolk@gmail.com if you would like to make a contribution to Genesis 2009.
Advisory Board
An advisory board of a diverse array of Los Angeles-based artists, scholars, and community organizers are advising the Program Director in the design and implementation of the project. The artists on the board, coming from a range of artistic and cultural backgrounds, are offering feedback on the nature of the project and insight into their needs as practicing inter-disciplinary artists. The group also serves as a network for attracting a diverse pool of applicants to the residency and is assisting the Project Director in finding sources of support in the city.
The advisory board is Michael Parker, Adam Overton, Rae Shaolan Blum, Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Carol McDowell, Flora Weigmann, Christine Suarez, Robby Herbst, Ron Milam, and Jesse Green.
Project Director
Hana van der Kolk is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and facilitator of movement experiences. Her choreographic projects combine elements of conceptual practice with the techniques of postmodern choreography and take place in a wide range of sites, including the stage, studios and galleries, in writing, on film, and in outdoor, public spaces. Hana brings to Genesis her experience with daily investigation as a body-based artist as well as her commitments to building community and considering her work as an artist in a wider social context. She is highly influenced by her long-time engagement with the work of legendary post-modern choreographer Deborah Hay, whose work she has been learning and adapting since 2000. Hay's methods for rigorous daily practice deeply shape Hana's work as an artist and inspire her as a teacher and director of Genesis Project. Her various adaptations of Hay's The Ridge and Boom, Boom, Boom have been performed/screened throughout the country.
Hana completed an MFA in choreography in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures and recently collaborated with Robby Herbst on a reinterpretation of Alan Kaprow's Household, the film of which was be presented by MOCA, with My Barbarian on The Case of the Stairs, a site-responsive performance for LACMA, and with interdisciplinary artist Jesse Green on Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik, a video installation on view at the Tate Modern this fall. She is engaged in an ongoing collaboration with Carolina San Juan in which they create an intersection between disco and minimalist performance. Hana's site-specific participatory performance event Interim Uses took place in "the Cornfields" (Los Angeles State Historic Park) in downtown LA in May 2007. Formerly based in New York, Hana was an artist in residence at the Queens Museum of Art in 2004, and is a recipient of grants from the UC Institute for Research in the Arts, The Puffin Foundation, and the Forti Family Scholarship. She has taught dance at UCLA, Fritz Haeg's groundbreaking Sundown Schoolhouse, Earthdance, Movement Research, Skidmore College, The National Dance Museum in upstate New York, and at several public and private high schools.
Arturo Vidich, Associate Director (NYC)
Arturo Vidich is an inter-disciplinary artist from New York City. His approach to experimental performance uses technology and movement to identify and reflect upon the way we process information through the senses. He is interested in treating the performer's body and sculptural materials as interchangeable objects, and in the possibilities that emerge out of resistance and limitation. Arturo likes doing projects that demand learning new skills.
In 2007, Arturo started an art organization called Culture Push, with Clarinda Mac Low and Aki Sasamoto. The mission of the organization is to create links between people and support artistic endeavors. We use and go beyond the world of specialization so that people of all backgrounds gain boundless access to life-changing ideas.
Arturo is a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence 2008-2009. He has collaborated with lower lights collective since 2004 at the Chocolate Factory as part of the Visiting Artist Residency, and through Movement Research. He has shown work in Dublin, where he was the first Red Stables International Artist-in-Residence in 2007, funded by Dublin City Council. Since apprenticing with Genesis Project in Dublin, Arturo teamed up with Hana van der Kolk to start Genesis Project, Los Angeles. In 2009, there will be a Genesis Project in Philadelphia at Base Kamp. In 2004 and 2005, Arturo participated in two of Deborah Hay's Solo Performance Commissioning Projects, performing them in New York and various locations in Europe. He has taught mask making and performance to children and adults. Arturo has also worked with Yvonne Meier, Daria Faïn, Allison Farrow, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Hari Krishnan, Eiko & Koma, Clarinda Mac Low, Christopher Williams and Nami Yamamoto. His writing has been published in two Movement Research Performance Journals. Other interests include Dog Training and writing short fiction.
Post Residency Goals
We hope…
1. That this unique population of artists will leave the residency having developed new skills and ways of thinking that will support them as they continue on their paths as cutting-edge multidisciplinary artists
2. To cultivate continuing cross-cultural and international dialogues that allow participants to leave the residency with a greater awareness about the broad artistic contexts they are working in both in
3. That artists will feel they have begun or deepened a rigorous investigation of their transitioning and/or multidisciplinary artistic practice and that they have discovered new directions that they are interested in continuing to investigate
4. Artists will create connections, engage in dialogues, and/or embark on collaborations with one another that may grow beyond the scope of the residency
Our success with these goals will be measured through regular and ongoing contact with the project’s participants in the year following the residency. We’ll track participants’ creative projects and the types of collaborative configurations in which they are working. We’ll dialogue with them at regular intervals about what kind of impact they feel Genesis Project had on their trajectories as artists.
Partial Wish List of Supplies
Paint
Paper
Pens and pencils
A color printer
A projector
Misc. materials – toothpaste, soil, scraps of this or that etc. etc. (we'll take anything)
Scanners (new for borrowing or used for owning and messing with)
Lamps
Stereo system
Big pieces of fabric to act as curtains
Cardboard and Marley (I'll be fashioning a makeshift dance floor on the concrete one)
Large boards
Coffee and tea
Snacks and food
Public Events
In conjunction with the residency, Genesis Project hosts two events that offer the public a way to discuss/participate in body-based art making practices and methodologies.
Non-Spectator Workshops
August 15, 2008
8pm – 10pm
Presenting four workshops developed and led by artists, to explore different methodologies for working with and through the body for creative exploration/production.
#1: Experience movement practice influenced by Deborah Hay's paradoxical performance meditations such as "What if every cell in my body has the potential to perceive the uniqueness and originality of time and space?" Led by Project Director Hana van der Kolk.
#2: Work in dyads with physical approaches to examining identity, fantasy, fetish, the other, intimacy, and "border crossing," as devised by Guillermo Gomez-Pena/La Pocha Nostra and led by Project Director Hana van der Kolk.
#3: A workshop in balance and awareness activities combined for practical lessons in stalking and conflict. Led by Joel Kyack.
Born in a cave and raised by wolves, Joel Kyack has recently received his MFA from the University of Southern California and will be participating in this year's California Biennial.
#4: Drawn from Afro-diasporic movement traditions to facilitate a corporeal/exploratory experience to and through your inner-boogie-wonderland. d. Sabela grimes facilitates a funk-filled movement session that seeks to bring each participant in tune with the healing properties related to Black social dance forms.
In addition to performing internationally as a vocalist, dancer, actor and poet, d. Sabela grimes also works in the music, film and television industry as a creative contributor and dance/movement specialist. He is interested in the physical and meta-physical efficacy of Black dance practices and his workshops celebrate the history, traditions and spiritual elements of African-American social dance. Sabela is a recent graduate of UCLA's World Arts and Culture MFA program.
Roundtable Discussion and Closing Reception
August 28, 2008
7:30pm – 10pm
Join the Genesis artists' in discussing their experiences from the month-long residency and its focus on movement-based methodologies. The conversation will also address the gaps between various movement- and body-based practices in contemporary practice.
Participants include Genesis Project artists-in-residence, Genesis board members Adam Overton, Rae Shaolan Blum, Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Carol McDowell, Flora Weigmann, Christine Suarez, Robby Herbst, and Ron Milam, artist Emily Mast, Lara Bank (Sea and Space), Jan Williamson (18th Street Arts Center), and more.
These public events are presented in conjunction with ART2102 of Los Angeles. Through 2008, ART2102's program aims to collaborate with and support a number of emerging artist-run spaces and initiatives, in and beyond Los Angeles. For more information, visit art2102.org.
Resident Artists
Liz Atkin is a visual artist based in London. She is interested in skin as a constantly transforming surface, ripe with memory, a flesh canvas. With a background in theatre and dance, physicality underpins her creative practice. Her work is situated in the tradition of Live Art performance and abstract expressionism. In her portraits, Liz works with her face and the surface of her skin, exploring texture and transformation through body focused repetitive behavior. Drawing with light, current photographic pieces are produced through flatbed scanners.
Brooke Smiley recently moved back to Los Angeles from London. She is a performer whose work investigates facial management and its affect on the body. By employing the use of white, non-expressive masks as a tool for the abandonment of the self, her work performs a body in the act of re-identifying itself, challenging and framing the body's behavioral impulse to move by re-negotiating anonymity as a means for transformation.
Alison O’Daniel is a hearing impaired former Texan ice skater turned double dutcher with an insatiable interest in handling materials, living abroad, being constantly engaged in education, making collaborative love, and participating in political gossip. In her own work she is interested in breaking from the historical language of representation and power that often defines film, documentary, and feminist theory, by constructing plastic, false situations and stepping back to watch how vulnerability grows over these facades like an uncontrollable landscape.
Cesar Garcia is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and cultural activist currently living and working in Los Angeles. His current research interrogates the erasure of locality in the context of biennial exhibitions, homogenizing global culture, and the ongoing technological revolution. His performance and body-based practice is rooted in intercultural collaboration, emphasizing the body as a communicative tool across cultural & generational differences and bringing attention to movement (of populations, ideas, and the body itself) as a platform for critical exchange and reflection.
Cheryl Banks-Smith is a dancer, choreographer, dance educator, improviser and interdisciplinary arts “explorer” who has collaborated in numerous projects with contemporary and internationally renowned jazz artists, musicians, performance artists, poets, writers and visual artists. While trained in the theory and craft of choreography, she considers herself to be a movement "smith" who explores and designs movement works from an intuitive, non-linear approach, like sketching with broad strokes and then filling in the lines and details later as the process reveals itself. She has performed and taught throughout the U.S. and globally and currently serves on the dance faculty at Pasadena City College.
