CUE Art Foundation is pleased to announce Embodied Scores: Methods of Archiving, a series of collaborative lectures organized by Cori Olinghouse on behalf of The Portal (Portal) with Shona Masarin. This series explores multiple entry points into Portal, a living archives initiative, research studio, and visual storytelling platform formed in 2017 by artist, archivist, and curator Cori Olinghouse. Joined by acclaimed archivist and curator Ann Butler, filmmaker and visual artist Jules Rosskam, and choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener we contemplate distinctions across theory and practice, preservation and the ephemeral.
Embodied Scores: Methods of Archiving challenges known forms of archival practices, approaching the discipline as a generative tool for artists. This series continues CUE’s dedication to exploring the ways in which artistic practice confronts, or becomes enmeshed with other disciplines and institutional forms, such as education (Have, Want, Need: Towards a Collective Approach to Education, 2018), collectivity and political action (Again...The Lumpen Headache, 2018), graphic design (Relevant Content, 2018-19), and arts administration (The Admin series, 2017-ongoing), amongst others.
The Portal (Portal) is a curatorial platform dedicated to the archiving and contextualizing of performance practices and embodied histories in motion. Expanding upon the archiving and preservation of objects and materials, Portal looks at the body as a repository of knowledge, asking how we can house and care for embodied forms of knowing. Since 2017 Portal has partnered with numerous institutions, including: the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, BRIC Arts Media, Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Mark Morris Dance Group, The Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Trisha Brown Dance Company, and Our Steps Foundation.
Cori Olinghouse is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of performance, archives, and visual storytelling. In 2017 she founded Portal as a way to explore the knowledge that arises in performance and improvisational systems towards the trajectory of social action. Her approach to performance archiving has been celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art, Duke University, Bard College, and Wesleyan University. As part of this work, she’s engaged in a constellation of projects with artist Autumn Knight, choreographers Jean Butler, Yanira Castro, Mina Nishimura, Kota Yamazaki, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Melinda Ring, Gwen Welliver, and visual and performance artist Sylvia Palacios Whitman. Recently, Olinghouse collaborated with video artist Charles Atlas on a moving image installation of Trisha Brown’s archival materials for Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, an exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art. Formerly, as archive director for the Trisha Brown Dance Company, she developed a cataloging and preservation initiative to assist in the legacy planning for Brown’s company and archive (2009-2018), a company she danced for from 2002-2006. She holds an MA in Performance Curation from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University, and serves as visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Method as Trace
with Ann Butler and Cori Olinghouse
60 minutes with time after for Q&A
Thursday, October 10, 6.30-8pm
FREE
In a conversation about different approaches and methods of working with archives, Cori Olinghouse and Ann Butler, Director of the Library and Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College develop a poetic lexicon and way of thinking around the archiving of curatorial projects, time-based media, and performance practices. Moving through a series of words, gestures, and tempos to metaphorically unpack archival concepts, they explore what it means to physically encounter an archive.
Ann Butler is the Director of the Library and Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. For the past twenty years she has held positions within academic research libraries and museum archives and she has been instrumental in the building of several archival programs and research collections including the Library & Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, the Downtown Collection at the Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU, and the Guggenheim Museum Archives. She serves as faculty at CCS Bard and lectures widely on subjects including: contemporary art archives methodologies and practices, intellectual property within the contemporary arts, and moving image preservation. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MA in Media Studies from the New School, and an MLS from Rutgers University.
Desire Lines: Lecture
with Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, moderated by Cori Olinghouse
90 minutes with time after for Q&A
Saturday, December 7, 6-8pm
FREE
*Audience will be invited to participate in aspects of the Desire Lines practice - no movement experience is needed
In this expanded lecture involving live demonstration, archival video, and guided exercises, choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener explore the improvisational practices and provisional methods of archiving that underlie their unfolding and iterative project, Desire Lines. In nature and landscape architecture, ‘desire lines’ are alternate, unofficial routes or social trails. They represent an accumulated record of disobedience and transformation in public space. Applying this phenomenon to a process of group improvisation, this practice puts deep focus on the path-making we deploy in our thought and memory structures for movement, navigation, and structure building. Archived on colored index cards that are continually added to and revised, Mitchell and Riener, with ever-changing participants, construct a living index that feeds into their practice.
To date there have been four iterations of this work. Desire Lines: Prismatic Park, a 12-hour movement marathon at Madison Square Park in 2017, Desire Lines: Retrofit, a durational installation with found objects at SFMoMA in January 2018, and Desire Lines: Translation, a process of transmission and the beginnings of archival production at the Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center at Florida State University in March of 2018. Most recently at the Joyce Theatre, they premiered SWITCH, a spoke of Desire Lines that focuses on the mechanics of spontaneous creation.
Collaborator Cori Olinghouse will conclude the evening with a discussion exploring the ways their work builds sensorial relations or assemblages with people, places, and objects and the unruly and tactile methods of archiving that travel adjacently.
Since 2010, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener have created dance in response to complex and active spatial environments, often merging elements of fantasy, absurdity, and quiet contemplation into challenging multifaceted performance. After working together in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Mitchell and Riener developed a keen interest in the way abstraction and representation coincide in the body. Their collaborative work takes many forms, from site-specific installations, improvisational dances, and traditional proscenium pieces to highly crafted and intimate, immersive experiences. Historical influences and aesthetic forms collapse into a visually charged hybrid physical language. Together they have been part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Dance Development program, the New York City Center Choreographic Fellowship, and have been artists in residence at EMPAC, Mount Tremper Arts, Wellesley College, Jacob’s Pillow, and Pieter. Their work has been presented at MOMA PS1 as part of Greater NY, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, REDCAT, ICA Boston and Summer Stages Dance, and Walker Art Center.
Practices for Slow Encounters
with Jules Rosskam and Cori Olinghouse
60 minutes with time after for Q&A
***Due to unforeseen circumstances, the organizers have decided to postpone the event scheduled for December 17th. We apologize for the inconvenience and will reschedule it in Spring 2020.***
In this performative lecture, artists Jules Rosskam and Cori Olinghouse bring their respective forms of documentary filmmaking and performance/archives into conversation asking, “How do we look with the body, not at the body?” Encouraging an embodied relationship between the camera and the body, the lecture takes a tactile view through lens-based work exploring questions of agency and representation. Through their evolving collaboration called “Practices for Slow Encounters,” they apply deep listening, somatics and phenomenological approaches to expand what’s possible and legible in their fields, rethinking how to make present rather than represent.
Jules Rosskam is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, artist, and educator. Through the use of autoethnography and hybrid forms, Rosskam's interdisciplinary practice investigates the construction of social self-identities and the radical potential of liminal spaces. His work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Moving Images, Queens Museum of Art, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, the Gene Siskel Film Center, the British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, and at film festivals worldwide. Rosskam’s scholarly work has been published in Somatechnics, Women and Performance, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Make/Shift Magazine. He is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Rosskam holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Film, Video, New Media, 2008). http://www.julesrosskam.com/
All events are free and open to the general public. RSVP is required.
CUE Art Foundation is wheelchair accessible. Sign Language Interpretation and Real Time Captioning are available upon request with at least two weeks advance notice. Please contact Programs Associate Josephine Heston at (212) 206-3583 or josephine@cueartfoundation.org to submit your request. Service dogs are welcome. There is an all-gender, ADA compliant, single stall bathroom in the gallery. The space is not scent-free, but we do request all those attending come low-scent. Children are welcome. The nearest wheelchair accessible MTA subway stations are Penn Station and Herald Square Station.
