Performance Art Week XII
April 22-26, 2024
April 22-24 - Emmanuel Art Gallery
April 25 - auraria campus/downtown denver/mca denver’s Holiday theater/16th Street Clocktower (video projections)
April 26 - evans school
Performance Art Week (PAW) is an annual performance-based program open to all Auraria Campus students, alumni, and professional artists. Now in its twelfth iteration, this event is intended to offer a unique opportunity to activate space, engage viewers and to experience live performance, video projections and workshops. We welcome all proposals, a selection of which will be invited to perform at one of several venues participating in PAW.
The Emmanuel Art Gallery, a public arts space located on the Auraria Campus, will host performances on April 22-24. The following day, April 25, the PAW schedule will be devoted to outdoor venues on the Auraria Campus and in downtown Denver. That evening, PAW featured performer Alexis Gideon will debut his new performance, Two Books, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver's Holiday Theater, followed by PAW Xtra Large, our annual evening of projected videos on the 16th Street Clocktower. The week will wrap up on April 26 with performances at the Evans School (1115 Acoma St, Denver, CO 80204) in the evening followed by a closing party.
Prior to the week of performances, MSU Denver’s teaching gallery will host a pair of workshops. Stephanie Spindler will lead a workshop on April 16 from 1-4pm in Arts Building Room 198, and Laura Shill and John Lake will lead another workshop on April 17 from 1-4pm in Arts Building Room 296.
FULL PAW XII Schedule
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9:30am Iesha Bold The Price of Citizenship 15 min
9:50am Samuel Michael Pace to my Pace (a bball warm-up) 5 min
9:55am Lanaea Simon Just a Girl 5 min
12:40pm Giovanni Gurrola Jared
12:40pm Cole Zimmerman Creation of Form 15 min
1:00pm Taylor Trujillo Reclaiming my skin 10 min
1:15pm Alyssa Perry Digestion 8 min
1:40pm Clara Somerset To Reveal and Examine Oneself II 15 min
2:05pm Katelyn Todd Disordered 7 min
2:25pm Alexandra Conner The Plight of the Unlucky Rabbit 15 min
3:00pm Delanee McKenna Brutal Honesty 10 min
3:15pm Maite Russell Teddy Takes a Bath 10 min
3:30 Emmanuel Balderama Moreno Constructive Criticism 20 min
3:50 MSU Denver 4D Class Silent Mosh Pit 5 min
4:00pm Fike & Harris Late One Afternoon 15 min
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9:00am Gabrielle Naftulin Subliminal Messages for a Collective Conscience 10 min
9:05am Winter Hermann Death & Decay 10 min
9:10am Julian Gosden Memory Lane 10 min
9:15 Mary Jane Burgess Tree 5 min
9:20 Racheal Bennett A Proper Feast 15 min
9:30am Aidan Campbell, Ket Buhler & Max Cummins Break It Down 10 min
9:45am Gunner Garcia, Sophia Rosales, Megan Hatak, Brittany Loya, Spelling Bee 10 min
Cal Daley, Alyssa Bailey, Dallas Smith
Jose Cisneros Ulloa & Jerry King
11:00am -12:00pm BREAK
12:30- 1:30 Heather Sincavage To My Small Hearth, His Fire Came 20 min
1:30pm Flint Holmes Sacrifice (3pm) 2 hours
2:00pm Aika Rieser, Katerina Koldabtsov Grocery Shopping 10 min
& Jackeline Deras
2:10pm Asher Hoffman & Matthew Foster Meditation: Breath & Flow 5 min
2:15pm Flynn Zook, Robert Buchanan, FIGHT 2 min
Jacob Tatro, Chris Henkel,
Eli Dodd & Bryce Nakamura
2:30 New Genres Collective N/A I I See Myself in You 1-2 Hours
2:45 Kara Kirika Overshare 5 min
3:00pm Fae Berry Becoming Normal 10 min
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9:00am Christine Garza Through the lens of life and science 15 min
9:15am Josie Clark First Impressions 30 min
9:30am Katherine Uchaykin & Cecilia Chigo Sagal Healing the Inner Child 15 min (outdoors)
9:45am Katie Sullivan walk on me 15 min
10:00am Christopher Lilly Rolling Color 15 min (outdoors)
10:00am Olivia Massey TBD
10:30am Jose Martinez Perpetual 15 min
10:45am Jimena Diaz Freedom, Truth, and Love 15 min
11:00am Wilson Read All Eyez on Me 15 min
11:15am -12:00pm BREAK
12:00-1:30pm Alexis Gideon There Is Not an Infinite Space between Two Points + Artist Talk 90 minutes
2:00pm Ryan Daigle Cooking with Sanji 45 min (outdoors)
2:00pm Ellie Bautista The Need and Want of Beauty 5 min
2:10pm Erica Rawson I Should've Been a Poet 15 min
2.25pm Andrew Cline untitled 5 min
2:30pm Clara Somerset Archival Spiral 20 min
2:30pm Katelyn Todd Psychotic 10 min
2:50pm Alyssa Perry Do You Get It Yet? 10 min
3:30PM Laura Shill & John Lake Working On Myself 20 minutes
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7:00pm Alexis Gideon Two Books * 60min
8:30pm Various Artists PAW Xtra Large (video projections)^
*This performance is taking place at MCA Denver’s Holiday Theater. For more information, click here.
^PAW Xtra Large is taking place at the 16th Street Clocktower
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All performances taking place at The Evans School
6:30 pm S3026
6:55 pm Teague McDaniel Shuck
7:15 pm Stephanie Spindler Framed Her Body
7:35 pm Jasmine Dillavou Sanctuary//Self
PAW XII Invited Artists
Alexis Gideon
Performing at the Emmanuel Art Gallery on April 24 at 12:30 pm and at the MCA Holiday Theater on April 25 at 7:00 pm
About the performance
There Is Not an Infinite Space between Two Points investigates the universality of feelings of loss and displacement as well as the concept of transgenerational trauma through the lens of the personal and collective; the trauma inherited from both the immediate family and the ancestral one. The music and lyrics of the piece are performed live by Alexis Gideon alongside the video projection.
About the artist
Alexis Gideon is an American visual artist, composer and performer, best known for innovative animated live video operas and interdisciplinary work. Gideon, whose career began under the mentorship of musical legend Anthony Braxton, uses music as the foundational element.
As a Jewish descendent of Holocaust survivors, Gideon creates interdisciplinary works that examine alienation, subjugation and the human condition. The New Museum of Contemporary Art paired Gideon with renowned South African artist William Kentridge for a joint program in January 2013.
Gideon has performed and exhibited throughout the world, including at Moderna Museet Stockholm, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Málaga, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Vdrome, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, and Time Zones Festival Italia.
Gideon’s work is in the collection of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS; the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Debra & Dennis Scholl Collection in Miami, FL; The Benter Foundation in Pittsburgh, PA as well as a number of private collections.
Laura Shill & John Lake
Performing at the Emmanuel Art Gallery on April 24 at 3:30 pm
About the performance
Originally conceived of as a sort of 'loneliness gym,' Working on Myself constructs a premise where performers engage with a series of contraptions--gym equipment, household objects that have been outfitted with cast silicone hands and reimagined to apply various forms of touch--repeating reps at each circuit indefinitely. Of course the machines in this loneliness gym are failures, but through repetition of the failure, perhaps failure transforms into something resembling routine. As the performers work on themselves, seemingly oblivious of each other while sharing close proximity, trying really hard, and doing everything just a little bit wrong, they lean into the absurd idea that with enough hard work and discipline, they can each cure loneliness on their own. And while they seek material solutions to their existential problem, on occasion they sync up into choreographed movements, (similar to how a school of fish swim in unison or a flock of starlings murmurates, individuals becoming part of a whole system, slipping into human nature despite a constructed system of alienation), they beg the question: How much will we contort ourselves to uphold these systems?
About the artists
Laura Shill is an interdisciplinary artist based in Denver, CO, whose work is a combination of sculpture, installation, performance, and photography. Her work addresses ideas of disclosure and concealment, agency and emotional risk, desire and discontent, often oscillating between humor and heartbreak.
A primary goal of her practice is to invite participation, whether active or passive, meeting participants where and as they are while making the distinction between spectatorship and participation. Often present in her work are the pronounced absences she creates to make visible the unseen power structures that inform our relationships to each other or conceal the work of care that props up the whole human endeavor. Her sculptural and installation works borrow theatrical conventions as a nod to the performance of the self that we undertake daily. Many of these works invite touch and blur boundaries between public and private space.
Shill employs repetition of form to create environments that make thousands of hours of invisible labor material. She uses everyday objects and supplies to make these works, often salvaged from roadsides and thrift stores or scavenged from former iterations of projects to test her theory that anything can be transformed with enough time and attention and care.
John Lake is an artist, curator, independent publisher, and educator based in Denver, Colorado. He studied at the SUNY Stony Brook, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, and the Visual Studies Workshop. Exhibiting and performing nationally, his work studies the ephemeral, psychological, emotional, and epistemological nature of photography.
heather sincavage
Performing at the Emmanuel Art Gallery on April 23 at 12:30 pm
About the performance
The current thrust of my performance work aligns fiber arts with contending with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and intimate partner violence- diversifying the definition of the term, ‘women’s work.’ The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one in three women have suffered as victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) (WHO 2021). These staggering statistics demand recalibrating the definition of ‘women’s work’ to include dealing with IPV in all its forms. The term is commonly used in reference to the unpaid labor that a woman performs within the home – housekeeping, child rearing and, domestic arts such as sewing, knitting, crochet and other craft activities.
The delineation of ‘women’s work’ is a patriarchal and capitalist concept meant to maintain men’s superiority over women. This division of labor undervalues domestic labor typically performed by women, enforces lower wages for women (often for equivalent responsibility) and in turn encourages dependence on their partner. However, ‘patriarchy readily accommodates some women into positions of power, provided that the women are male-identified, male-centered and act according to patriarchal values’ (Becker 1999). Ultimately, the sexual division of labor between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ responsibilities equates tasks with value, the ‘feminine’ considered of low value.
Therefore, as women contend with violence in their homes and suffer often without repercussions, as a culture we also undervalue their healing. The work I am looking to present is entitled “to my small hearth, his fire came” and centers on several representations of fiber arts (quilting and crochet) as embodied objects of ongoing labor, ‘women’s work.” This labor includes the contention of “triggers” that unravel years of trauma mitigation, suggesting the non-linear process of healing.
About the artist
Heather Sincavage is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in performance art but also includes drawing, sculpture, and installation. She uses her own experiences with intimate partner violence as a case study analyzing what it is to live with trauma.
Her work has appeared in the Tate Modern in London and LiteHaus Galerie in Berlin amongst other locations across Europe. She has performed at the Queens Museum and Grace Exhibition Space in NYC; Tempting Failure Festival of Performance Art & Noise in London, Alive at Satellite during Miami Art Basel; Latvian Center for Performance Art in Riga; and galleries across the United States. Additionally, her work has been projected on the historic Daniels and Fisher historic bell tower in downtown Denver, Co. She has exhibited in over 40 solo and group exhibitions across the United States and in Germany, Sweden, Spain, Finland, and Iceland.
Originally from Southeastern Pennsylvania, she received her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and her MFA from School of Art, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. She is an alumna of The Vermont Studio Center as well as numerous other residencies and fellowships in the United States and throughout Europe. Her work has been published in Surface Design Journal and the 2022 publication “An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Performance Art: SELF/S” by Dr. T.J. Bacon for the University fo Chicago Press.
In 2018, Heather received the Tanne Foundation Award, a peer-nominated honor for scholarship excellence and emergent contributions to the performance art field. She currently is an Associate Professor of Art and the Director of the Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University.
S3026
Performing at the Evans School on April 26 at 6:00 pm
Nima Bahrehmand and Laurids Sonne, collectively curate and organize cultural events under the monicker S3026.
In addition to their curatorial practice, S3026 also collaborates on moving images and installation work.
Presently, they are working on future iterations of their stratigraphic work-in-progress– object earth, in collaboration with the philosopher Michael Marder.
Stephanie spindler
Performing at the Evans School on April 26 at 5:30 pm
About the performance
I declare I am not a performer! Instead, I shift to making artwork in public. Framed Her Body is a public drawing: engagement, enactment, embodiment. My body is material. My body as material. My artwork is my research, the tangible relations of the body -the interiority of bodies or that interface of what a body could be. 'What is a body?' This question motivates me; it is personal and political; discrimination, stereotypes, inequality, misogyny, and self-worth are all reasons why I choose to investigate the phenomena of what it is to be a specific body, whatever that is to any body that is marginalized by the universal, white, male and straight ideology of androcentrism.
Drawing from personal experiences, historical contexts, and contemporary discourses, my artwork serves as a platform for rupture and introspection. My artwork and process invite viewers to confront their preconceptions and engage with gendered embodiment's profound social and cultural implications.
About the artist
Stephanie Spindler is an American artist. Owing to her father being in the U.S. Navy she was born in Japan and then settled in Virginia, USA. As an only child, Stephanie liked to draw with oil crayons on cut up paper bags. Her mother keeps the drawings in a box under her bed to this day. Spindler has created performative works by creating metaphorical bodies out of cardboard boxes and then wrestled them until they are both changed from the outside in and the inside out.
The practice-led research explores the structure of experience, using a theoretical feminist phenomenological methodology in relation to a sculptural installation practice, where feminist phenomenology and new materialism intersect to explore the experiential and material engagement of matter and meaning. This investigation turns to materiality that is at the core of artistic practice.
The subject provokes the specificity of a sexed body through the expression, motility, and materiality of the co-emergent and co-immersive processes of doing/undoing, touching/touched and moving/being moved with the artwork and the performative process of making as a line of questioning.
Spindler resists being labelled as a performer. Her sculptural installation practice has evolved into brining the processes of making to the forefront of her research as public making. The most intimate and powerful inquiry by making the body instrumental in the creative process. When she refers to the body she expands on this definition and would rather this concept be a question rather than a definitive answer. It is a somatic investigation.
Fike & Harris
Performing at the Emmanuel Art Gallery on April 22 at 3:30 pm
About the performance
Two men compete to keep a specific volume of air off the ground.
About the artists
Collaborating since 2010, Tobias Fike and Matthew Harris have dragged each other across the desert, wrestled each other’s shadows, and tried to catch glass objects while blindfolded. Their work addresses the everyday difficulties of human relationships, often using humor and irony to highlight the real struggles involved in negotiating difficult situations. They have exhibited widely, including the Fonlad Digital Arts Festival (Coimbra, Portugal), the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO), and the David B. Smith Gallery (Denver, CO). In 2013, they performed live for the opening of Denver’s Biennial of the Americas First Draft exhibition where they tested the collision of beach balls at high speeds.
For PAW XI’s summary and schedule, click here.