Siren Arts
deepwater
Background Image Credit: Zach Storm, “Unanticipated Cruise” featured in Transformer’s FlatFile
Exhibition: June 13 - September 15, 2024
Opening Reception: June 13, 2024 | 6 - 8 PM
Asbury Ocean Club / Corner of 4th Ave & Kingsley St, Asbury Park, NJ
Exhibition Hours: Saturday’s | 12 - 6 PM
Artist Residencies & Performance Art Series: July 8 - August 16, 2024
Artist Talks: 6pm Wednesdays / Siren Arts Exhibition Space
Performances: 7pm Thursdays / 2nd Avenue Beach, Asbury Park, NJ
All Audiences Welcome; All Programming Presented Free of Charge
Transformer celebrates the 8th year of its Siren Arts summer artist residency program and performance art series in Asbury Park, NJ, with a new exhibition space opening on June 13! Through the generosity of Starfield Companies (formerly iStar), Transformer is taking over the Asbury Ocean Club’s corner space at 4th Ave & Kingsley St, Asbury Park, NJ, to further advance its mission of support to emerging artists, and to enhance community engagement with its innovative Siren Arts program and contemporary art practices.
Opening with a reception on June 13, 6-8pm, the new space will feature a summer long exhibition of Siren Arts performance photography by Sara Stadtmiller (Neptune, NJ), along with new paintings by Zach Storm (Raleigh, NC) and additional evolving artwork selections from Transformer's FlatFile program of works on paper by an international mix of artists. The new space will also be utilized by this summer’s Siren Arts deepwater artists-in-residence, as they create new works to be presented in public performance art events Thursday evenings July 11 through August 15 on Asbury Park’s 2nd Avenue Beach.
Each summer, the participating Siren Arts artists explore oceanic inspired themes that celebrate the ocean and build awareness on the intersectional implications of climate change. Artists are selected via recommendations from Siren Arts alumni artists and in collaboration with peer art spaces, including Brooklyn Arts Exchange (Brooklyn, NY), Art in Odd Places (New York), and Asian Art Alliance (Philadelphia, PA), among others.
PRESS
Siren Arts Celebrates 8th Year: Transformer Unveils New Exhibition Space in Asbury Park - Martin CID
Transformer Announces Siren Arts 2024 Artists-In-Residence And Public Performances In Asbury Park - Broadway World
Asbury’s Siren Arts Gets Ground-floor Space in Asbury Ocean Club
- Tri City NewsA Deep Dive into History with Tasha Dougé - The Asbury Park Reporter
Father/Parent, Mother/Father: Imaging the Possibility of Both in Kelindah Bee Schuster’s “seapony” -Culturebot
Siren arts deepwater Exhibition
JUNE 13 - SEPTEMBER 15, 2024
Taking place at Siren Arts' new summer space within the
Asbury Ocean Club
(corner of 4th Ave & Kingsley St, Asbury Park, NJ)
Featuring an exhibition of photography by Sara Stadtmiller & paintings by Zach Storm with additional artworks from Transformer's FlatFile program!
Artist Residency schedule
July 8 - 12 - Tina / Tai Tai (New York, Chicago, LA)
July 15 - 19 - Tasha Douge (Bronx, NY)
July 22 - 26 - Jordan Deal (Philadelphia, PA)
July 29 - Aug 2 - Erin Ellen Kelly (New York, NY)
Aug 5 - 9 - Laura Bernstein (Brooklyn, NY)
Aug 12 - 16 - Kelindah Schuster (New York, NY)
Performances will last approximately 30-45 minutes and are open to all audiences free of charge. Audiences are encouraged to gather on the 2nd Ave beach at 6:45pm, bringing beach towels or chairs for seating. In case of rain, please visit @sirenartsap on Instagram for rain location details.
Exhibition Hours: Saturday’s, 12 - 6 PM / Asbury Ocean Club / Corner of 4th Ave & Kingsley St, Asbury Park, NJ
Launched in 2017, Siren Arts is a summertime micro-residency program taking place in Asbury Park, NJ that supports emerging visual artists working within evolving performance art disciplines. Created and curated by Victoria Reis, Transformer’s Executive & Artistic Director, 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 with new & best contemporary arts practices.
With support from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Presenting & Multidisciplinary Arts grant program, Siren Arts: deepwater will explore themes of movement and transition within the continued lens of celebrating the ocean, while building awareness on the intersectional implications of climate change. Working in collaboration with peer art spaces throughout the mid-atlantic US in the nomination of participating artists, Siren Arts is building synergy within the field, and expanding Transformer’s mission.
about siren arts
Participating Artist residency artists
Tai Tai
a cooking machine to melt your heart
RESIDENCY DATES: July 8 - 12, 2024
ARTIST TALK: July 10, 2024
PERFORMANCE: July 11, 2024
Image credit: Graham Foundation
In this performance series a cooking machine to melt your heart, a storage cart is the centerpiece. Within its multiple tiers, interactions between organic materials and the skin of the body occur, preparing the body to be changed by its contact with fragrant oils that trickle down the apparatus. What and how is the preparation meant for? Dinosaurs and humans will tell its tales.
Tina Wang’s artist name Tai Tai taps into the colloquial Mandarin reference of a socialite who finds survival in hosting killer parties, managing the household, and maybe raising offspring. Historically, artist Tai Tai reconsiders and breaks down social conventions that prevent an individual's path to self actualization through her performances and installations in St. Louis, New York, Oakland, Chicago, and Los Angeles. She studied dance and psychology at Washington University, dance performance at Peridance Center, translation studies at New York University, powerlifting at Crossfit Dutchkills, Iyengar yoga at Adeline Yoga, and visual arts at the University of Chicago.
Performance Video by Bart Lentini
Photos by Sara Stadtmiller of SRS Photography
Tasha Dougé
Wade-In These Waters
RESIDENCY DATES: July 15 - 19, 2024
ARTIST TALK: July 17, 2024
PERFORMANCE: July 18, 2024
Wade-In These Waters
Acknowledgment of Ancestors
Tribute to Trials and Triumphs
Emerging Bodies of Exultation
Ritual of REMEMBRANCE
Image Credit: tasha dougé
Using breath and movement, we will dive deep into these waters to excavate the story of wade-ins, the predecessor of sit-ins and other narratives of resilience. This is a love letter of gratitude to Reverend James Frances Robinson, the Black people that fought to be with the water, and to the ocean that held them.
tasha dougé (she/her) is a Bronx-bred & based, Haitian-infused conceptual visual and performance artist, activist, and cultural vigilante. Her practice leans on experimentation with different mediums that excavate and examine the nuances of the human experience. dougé centers her Blackness and womanhood as a starting point to challenge notions and ideologies around identity, history, iconography, and the political. Her work is shifting to also explore connections with memory, time, and nature. dougé’s practice is devoted to women's empowerment, illuminating the contributions of Black people, and using her "voice as the first tool within my art arsenal.”
She has been featured in Sugarcane Magazine, Essence, and The New York Times. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at The Andrew Freedman Home, Bronx, NY; The Apollo Theater, Harlem, NY; Rush Arts Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; BronxArtSpace, Bronx, NY; The Shed, New York, NY; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Hygiene Museum, Dresden, Germany; and other notable institutions and galleries. dougé is an alum of the Laundromat Project's Create Change Fellowship, The Studio Museum of Harlem's Museum Education Program, Haiti Cultural Exchange’s Lakou Nou residency, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy Program and their inaugural Digital Emerging Artist Retreat. She also serves as PT faculty at Parsons of The New School and second faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
Performance Video by Bart Lentini
Photos by Sara Stadtmiller of SRS Photography
Jordan Deal
salty/breath
RESIDENCY DATES: July 22 - 26, 2024
ARTIST TALK: July 24, 2024
PERFORMANCE: July 25, 2024
Image Credit: Cat Gold
salty/breath is a multisensory improvisational performance exploring the ways water—from urban channels to the ocean—carries the remains of necropolitics, memories, and technologies of black, indigenous, queer, trans experiences from past to future. The performance is a dance with the dead, a song between the living, sex with the ocean, and witnessing the wake of shorelines, borders, crossings, and departures. It is an amorphous conscious swallowing black eruption inducing love poem.
Jordan Deal (they/them) is a Philadelphia based multidisciplinary practitioner and alchemist. Their investigative practice uses performance, sound, film, and their body as a conduit between unseen forces and the materializations of socio-political structures and mythologies. Deal has presented performance work internationally such as at Cafe OTO London, Performing Arts Forum France, Judson Memorial Church NYC, the Center for Performance Research BK, NY, and Icebox Project Space Philadelphia. They have exhibited sculptural and sonic installations at Fleisher-Ollman gallery (Phila, PA), Vox Populi (Phila, PA), Grizzly Grizzly (Phila,PA), Fleisher Art Memorial, amongst others. They have recently been selected as a 2023-2024 Artistic Fellow at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, invited to be a 2024 recipient of the BASC residency and performer in the Performance Mix Festival #38, and was a Fall 2022 research fellow at Amant Foundation in Brooklyn, New York, where they continued their investigations of chaos force. Deal’s films have been part of selections in Blackstar Film Festival, Icebox Project Space, Vox Populi, Center of Performance Research, LA Indie Fest, and Paris Film Festival.
Performance Video by Bart Lentini
Photos by Sara Stadtmiller of SRS Photography
Saltwater Psyche
Erin Ellen Kelly
RESIDENCY DATES: July 29 - August 2, 2024
ARTIST TALK: July 31, 2024
PERFORMANCE: August 1, 2024
Image Credit: Kelly, Self Portrait, Emerge Practice Brooklyn
Emerging from the deep water, the Siren’s psychic imprint. A small altar of found objects and nature’s relics constructed, an offering an honoring. Evolving in nonlinear sequencing, channeling the power of the feminine, and the desire to be heard, a dance will map the forms and shapes the Siren has historically taken where the water meets the shore. The dance leaves traces, imprints and paths of the body in the sand; washed by water, blown by the wind and covered over by the beach goers and cleaning crews.
Erin’s (she/her) work is constructed for on-site presentation, the stage, installations, video and photographs and presented in locations as varied as gardens, galleries, warehouses, gutted stores, boats, theaters, in windows and by the side of the road. She has been an Artist In Residence at Banff,Camargo Foundation, Movement Research, LMCC and PARSE NOLA. Her work has been featured in exhibitions and venues such as: The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Serpintine Slacker Gallery, The Speed Museum, The Bass Museum: Temporary / Contemporary Series, Rogaland Kunstsenter, Kusthaus Tacheles Nacht&Nebel Festival, Sharjah Biennial9, Indianapolis Museum of Art, LPR at the Knockdown Center, Danspace, and Queens Museum.
“My work is driven by the body, its movements, its actions, its intelligence, and its relationship to its surroundings, the constructed, natural and social environment in which it is placed within. I often work site-specifically, where listening is a part of the shaping process. Places and people inspire me as well as the space where research intersects, physical experience and creative imagininging. My process is informed by theories and training in Butoh, improvisation and Qi Gong, in which elements correspond to body parts, organs, temperaments, life stages, sounds, and tastes; putting the body in direct relationship to nature’s directional, elemental, and seasonal cosmologies. The relationships between the tangible and intangible, history and myth, natural and constructed environments.
My style is detailed, but raw. It is organic, rock-n-roll, and witchy. It draws power from the erotic feminine: dark, but with sincerity and humor. I am slightly obsessed with the mystical, with the idea that dance conjures and channels, and the body as a potential agent in the ecosystem of change. I question a capitalistic hierarchical relationship to the natural world and its effects on our internal landscapes. I am interested in addressing a disconnection that we experience as an industrialized society to natural resources. I believe in the power of movement, body based art, and dance to propel embodied intelligence, transformation and affect its surrounding space, audience and performers. I search for what constitutes a sense of belonging, and how to invite people to feel into their interior spaces and the spaces they inhabit.”
Performance Video by Bart Lentini
Photos by Sara Stadtmiller of SRS Photography
Laura Bernstein
Perrin Ireland & Patty Gone
I’ll Be Your Mermaid // An Unfolding Seaside Spectacle
RESIDENCY DATES: August 5- 9, 2024
ARTIST TALK: August 7, 2024
PERFORMANCE: August 8, 2024
Image Credit: Laura Bernstein
Laura Bernstein (she/her), Patty Gone and Perrin Ireland explore the theme “deepwater” from the perspective of The Little Mermaid and the creatures who inhabit the depths, as temperatures rise at an increasingly alarming rate. Incorporating costumes, props, movement and sound, they will generate a series of interactive and unfolding surrealist tableaus respond directly to the site/seashore while questioning conventions of the fairytale form.
Laura Bernstein (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator who creates immersive installations using video, performance, sculpture, and painting. Her work plays with historical mythologies about human and animal behavior in relation to changing climates.
Perrin Ireland (she/her) explores how animals make a living- how they make noise, have sex, and try to kill each other–using language, line, and color to communicate the shocking realities of life on this planet. Her work is a collaboration with the natural world, scientists, and the viewer, whose engagement informs her visual and performance research.
Patty Gone (she/they) is a performer, poet, artist, and educator. She makes art where the queer imagination and white working-class imagination crash and fall in love. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Gone draws inspiration from the art forms popular in her hometown. By contorting romance novels, soap operas, or sit-coms into surreal essay-poems, Gone strips the familiar to reveal its zany and irrational core.
Performance Video by Bart Lentini
Photos by Sara Stadtmiller of SRS Photography
Kelindah Bee Schuster aka
theydy bedbug
seapony
RESIDENCY DATES: August 12- 16, 2024
ARTIST TALK: August 14, 2024
PERFORMANCE: August 15, 2024
seapony (they/them/theirs) is a drag puppetry poetry ritual inspired by male seahorses, who take the lead in childbirth. This piece uses the playfulness of puppets and the campiness of drag to delve into the experience of parental attachment and detachment.
It asks: if we form our identities in relation to others: son, daughter, mother, sister, father, brother, what happens when those relationships are strained? How does that loss impact our self-perception and how does that loss expand the potential for who we can become?
With the help of the ocean and its many nonhuman children, we grieve who we never became, in order to become anew: relinquishing into the water the sea pony daughter I once was, in order to become the seahorse daddy I can be.
The piece looks to the sea for examples of many ways to parent, to relate, to express, to create life, and to queer family, in a ritual held by the ocean as the original mother.
Kelindah bee Schuster (t[he]y/them) is a queer educator and a drag performance artist known as Theydy Bedbug. They've been infesting NYC nightlife since 2016 to subvert art forms and gender norms and are founder and director of the Drag Performance program at BAX.
In the past few years, they have presented work at The Signature Theatre, Lehman College, SVA, Barnard College, Triskelion Arts, Gibney Dance, The Knockdown Center, The Stone Church, The Kraine Theater, House of Yes, BAX, The Stonewall Inn, The Brick, The Flea, The Tank, Pioneer Works, Google NY, FIT, VICE Headquarters, UCB, BAM Fisher, The Hangar Theater, Chelsea Music Hall, National Sawdust, Coney Island Sideshows by the Seashore, JACK among countless other venues in New York and beyond.
Their performances combine spoken word poetry, lip sync, narrative storytelling, authentic movement, character work, costume, makeup, puppetry, and audience interaction in order to playfully ask the piercing questions: Who can we be if we approach our inherited roles as options rather than proscriptions? They believe that when we connect and create art that channels our authentic expression liberated from gender norms, we make space for more ways of being.
They are currently a Queer|Art Fellow developing their solo-show, "KeepSake," under the mentorship of trans trailblazer Kate Bornstein. Read about them in their NY Times feature or connect & collaborate: @theydy.bedbug | kelindahbee.art
Image Credits: Sidewalkkilla
Performance Video by Bart Lentini
Photos by Sara Stadtmiller of SRS Photography
