Siren Arts: Fluxus Sea
JULY 16 - AUGUST 20, 2020
4th Annual ‘Siren Arts’ Summer Residency & Exhibition Program for Emerging Visual Artists
Supporting an evolving & diverse roster of dynamic emerging visual artists based within the northeast corridor of Washington, DC to NYC through micro-residencies and public performances on the beach in Asbury Park, NJ for the past three years, Siren Arts was reimagined summer 2020 due to COVID-19. This year, the artist residency component was conducted as a series of zoom calls among the participating artists, with live performances and pre-recorded artist-led interviews presented online July 16 – August 20.
Transformer is honored to support and present the following artists in Siren Arts Fluxus Sea: Carolina Mayorga (DC), Samera Paz (DC), Armando Lopez-Bircann (DC), Hannah Spector (TX/DC), Muse Dodd (ATL, DC+NYC), and Yacine Fall (DC).
Created & curated by Victoria Reis, Executive & Artistic Director of Transformer – an 18 year old non-profit visual arts organization based in Washington, DC – Siren Arts is an expansion of Transformer’s mission to connect and promote emerging visual artists, to advance them in their artistic careers, and to build & engage audiences in new and best contemporary arts contexts and practices.
Siren Arts seeks to empower the participating artists and engage audiences in both reflection and positive action around the intersection of personal, civic, social and environmental activism, while introducing and advancing emerging contemporary art practices. Pursuing different themes each year, with Siren Arts: Fluxus Sea, the participating artists have been invited to respond to Fluxus art practices, concepts of ‘flux’, and the sea as it may relate to the ocean and/or movement.
Siren Arts: Fluxus Sea Events:
Approximately 30-minute performances will take place live via Zoom every Thursday at 7pm July 16 - August 20, with 10 minute artist conversations presented on Transformer’s IGTV on the Tuesdays between performances: July 21, August 4, and August 18.
PERFORMANCES:
Thursday, July 16: Carolina Mayorga
Thursday, July 23: Samera Paz
Thursday, July 30: Armando Lopez-Bircann
Thursday, August 6: Hannah Spector
Thursday, August 13: Muse Dodd
Thursday, August 20: Yacine Fall
ARTIST CONVERSATIONS:
Tuesday, July 21: Carolina Mayorga and Samera Paz on IGTV
Tuesday, August 4: Armando Lopez-Bircann and Hannah Spector on IGTV
Tuesday, August 18: Muse Dodd and Yacine Fall on IGTV
Thank you to Muse Dodd for technical production support of the Siren Arts: Fluxus Sea series.
PERFORMANCES
PERFORMANCE | Thursday, July 16, 2020
Carolina Mayorga, Latin Dance Fever
Watch and learn those Latin moves that will make you the star of the dance floor! Bring your beautiful feet to my dance studio and get ready for fast, easy and fun Latin dance lessons with one of the best! Watch my introductory class and start dancing the pandemic away! No partner or previous experience required.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Carolina Mayorga is a Colombian-born and naturalized American interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited her work nationally and internationally for the last 20 years. Her work is part of national and international collections and has been reviewed in publications in South America, Europe and the US. Mayorga’s artwork addresses issues of social and political content. Comments on migration, war, identity, translate into video, performance, site-specific installations, and Two-dimensional media in the form of photography and drawing. The artist lives and works in Washington, DC
PERFORMANCE | Thursday, July 23, 2020
Samera Paz, My Love Is Like the Sea
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Samera Paz is a Colombian-American visual artist, activist, community organizer born and raised in Washington D.C. Her work centers around the themes of womanhood, mental health, social justice and being a modern day woman of color. She uses her emotions and life experiences as inspiration for her work and works in the mediums of photojournalism, visual art, blood work, performance art and video.
PERFORMANCE | Thursday, July 30, 2020
Armando Lopez-Bircann, F.A.E. Medusa 2020
Arma’s practice focuses on decolonializing Fem, Latinx identities through performance, wearables & media. For Transformer's Siren Arts 2020 they performed as a member of the Federation of Anarchist Ecofeminists (F.A.E.).
“F.A.E. Medusa 2020” is an exploration of Fluxus kits. Through speculative designs the performance seeks to communally navigate trauma and identities. From the not so distant future, together we will explore our resistance to the overwhelming jellyfish blooms, gender trouble and pandemic of 2020.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Armando Lopez Bircann is a Latinx artist that engineers wearable sculptures, digital media and performances. His practice is framed by immigrant narratives, nonbinary gender expression and digital native sensibilities. They have designed works in collaboration with dancers, circus performers, photographers, videographers, musicians and other artists. He is also a former DC Commission of Arts and Humanities fellow. They graduated from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2013 and currently lives in Washington DC.
PERFORMANCE | Thursday, August 6, 2020
Hannah Spector, Oceanic Feeling
Oceanic feeling: the sensation of being one with the surrounding world. It is the feeling of the eternal, which very well may not be eternal, but may be without perceptible limits. Altogether, this feeeeeeeling is independent of any dogma, any credo, any organization of the church, any holy scriptures, or any hope for personal salvation. It is found in the contact.
In this intimate performance of storytelling and movement, Hannah Spector will take participants on a journey of listening and action. Working from the Fluxus lineage, Spector will employed performance scores and instructions to form a meditative experiment. Privately participate in a series of small tasks and meditations to get to know the energy of your bodies and the energy of your immediate environment.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Hannah Spector is a text-based video, sound, and performance artist. Spector received her MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Her work questions underlying power dynamics within language and seeks to frustrate our usual ways of seeing. Spector also uses poetry and poetic action to disrupt our static perception of language. www.hannahspector.com
PERFORMANCE | Thursday, August 13, 2020
Muse Dodd, Wavesss
Wavesss is a reclamation of Black Queer Trans identity through self-care ritual. Muse uses their body to map the lived experience of Africans in America channeling trauma to connect with, process and alchemize pain; both personal and collective through sound, video and poetry.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Muse Dodd is Multidisciplinary Artist, Curator and DJ working in both MD and NY. Their work centers on the questions, How do you remember and what do you choose to forget? Through the act of remembering, Muse uses their own body to map the lived experience of Africans in America reliving and channeling trauma to connect with, process and alchemize pain both personal and collective through movement, ritual and conversation. Muse is a Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist fellow, and was the 2019 DCAC Curatorial Apprentice. Muse's most recent grants include the Corrina Mehiel Fellowship and the Artist Relief Grant from Creative Capital.
PERFORMANCE | Thursday, August 20, 2020
Yacine Fall, Sunu Tek Dafaay Walangaan (Our Stillness Flows)
The word Walangaan in Wolof is used to refer to the flow of a river. This performance is an attempt to form and maintain the flow of water outside of my body and to mirror how water (blood) moves through the body. “Sama xol moungi walangaan comme dex”: my heart flows as the river does. It pulls from and pushes blood through the body. As I pull water from the river, it leaks through the ceramics pots tied to my head only to return to the river again.
The Baobab is traditionally known as the tree of life; it is what gives. The basis of its materiality, like that of the human body is water. It is what binds the fragile to the durable, the individual to the collective and the dead to the living. This work is an investigation of intimacy between and within us.
How do we navigate the land of the living with so many dead? Do our bodies feel the presence of all the lives taken too soon? In moments of restriction, tension, and isolation, how do we find space to mourn in stillness? How do we keep their spirits alive within us?