RAPID PULSE TOUR | 2017

Images of Performance Art from Rapid Pulse at Rosekill, Hudson River Valley, New York, June 17, 2017

This post is about images from Rapid Pulse at Rosekill that we don’t have for one reason or another... We want to highlight works by Máiréad Delaney, Clara Diamond, Uchenna Agwuncha, | \|/ | | | | ∆ /|\ ∆ /|\ ∆ Y ∆ ‡ () r r 3 s, and Andrew Barco. We also want to acknowledge the  amazing food prepared with love by Mor Pipman, and an After-Dinner Discussion lead by Preach R Sun questioning, ”What is Fire?” on Friday night.

On Saturday…Mairead played with fire, Clara wrestled demons, Uchenna crawled out of the darkness, William serenaded us, and Andrew created a contraption that could change the weather...

The tour is over and the artists are waiting for a Greyhound bus from Detroit home to Chicago. We are all so grateful to Jill and Hoke at Rosekill and Thomas Bell at Spread Art for this monumental and unforgettable artistic adventure.

Below, the artists are at the Greyhound Station in Detroit - on the way home to Chicago! Left to right: Carlos Salazar Lermont, Maryam Taghavi, Andrew Barco, Holly Arsenault, Amanda Staples, William Torres, and Uchenna Agwuncha.

RAPID PULSE at ROSEKILL >>> SCHEDULE!!!

a note from joseph ravens ::

Tomorrow [Sat 17 June] we will show our work at the Performance Art paradise known as Rosekill. The group on tour has morphed and transformed in the past week. Last Sunday we said goodbye to a few folks who had to return to Chicago: dyoskuri (Michael Lee Bridges + Jake Eveker) and Máiréad Delaney. Máiréad, however, is reconnecting with us at Rosekill today, along with Thomas Bell and Jessica Lynn Schlobohm. While in Detroit we enjoyed spending time with Upended Teacups [Corey Gearhart and Stefanie Cohen] and visiting their outstanding performance venue, Light Box. We then welcomed Maryam Taghavi who joined us for the second leg of our tour. We rented a large van in Detroit and nine of us piled in at 10:30PM Sunday to drive through the night to the Hudson Valley: Angeliki Tsoli, Uchenna Agwuncha, William Torres, Holly Arsenault, Andrew Barco, Maryam Taghavi, Carlos Salazar Lermont, and our valiant and vigilant driver, Amanda Staples - who did the entire 12 hours on her own!

We were welcomed warmly by Jill and Hoke and set out to explore the stunning landscape and, of course, we immediately jumped into the lake! It was so hot when we arrived! Now it’s very cool.The first few days were about acclimating to our surroundings and dealing with nature and, basically, camping. Ticks, insects, snakes...we had some fears to confront. Amidst all this we starting devising performances, scouting locations and materials, and brainstorming. 

Wednesday we said goodbye to Angeliki Tsoli who had to return to Chicago. On her bus into New York City, she received word that her flight was cancelled and she couldn’t leave until Friday - two days away! EstheR Neff and Brian McCorkle of performance venue Panoply Lab came to the rescue and swept up our stranded tour member and took amazing care of her. It blows my mind how the Performance Art community takes care of their own. We’re so very grateful.

Before leaving, Angeliki presented two projects. The first was a light photography collaboration with Holly Arsenault (the images above!). She also made a performance with a tire on a hill in a meadow. Andrew Barco has been fishing every day and has occasionally amplified his fishing rod with contact microphones - creating strange and wonderful sounds - as if he is playing the lake like a musical instrument. Images of these works are above. 

Today is the final day before performances begin tomorrow so everyone is in creation mode. Thomas and Jessica [Detroit] are re-connecing with us today, as is Máiréad. We met the wonderful Melissa Lockwood when we arrived (her giant dress can be seen on the barn in the background of Holly and Angeliki’s light photo!) and she will also share a performance tomorrow along with NY additions, Clara Diamond and Hector Canonge. Tonight at 5PM we connect to discuss our locations, durations, and time of day. Performances will begin at 11AM and go until 11PM. Tonight we will have a dinner made by Mor Pipman followed by a talk, ”What is Fire?” by Preach R Sun.

RAPID PULSE TOUR 2017 at ROSEKILL Please join us at Rosekill, Grace Exhibition Space’s outdoor performance art venue in Rosendale, NY. Meals catered by Mor Pipman + camping, lake swimming, campfires, and music in the barn. 

$40 Donation requested - pay what you can.

FRIDAY 16 JUNE | DINNER / TALK Food by Mor Pipman 7:00 After-Dinner Performance Lecture by Preach R Sun | ”What is Fire?” | www.iamfugitive.com

SATURDAY 17 JUNE | PERFORMANCES 11AM - 11 PM


Lunch 12 noon / Dinner 7 pm Catered by Amazing Food Person Mor Pipman + Performance Dinner/Meat by Erik Hokanson

Rapid Pulse at Rosekill features Performance Art by 13 artists: Uchenna Agwuncha | \|/ | | | | ∆ /|\ ∆ /|\ ∆ Y ∆ ‡ () r r 3 s  | Holly Arsenault | Andrew Barco | Máiréad Delaney | Joseph Ravens | Maryam Taghavi | Carlos Salazar Lermont | Amanda Staples | Melissa Lockwood | Hector Canonge

V E N U E S

Rosekill [www.rosekill.com/about] is an outdoor Performance Art gathering place on sixty acres of rural land in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. In this beautiful place performance artists come from around the world to attend and participate in many outdoor festivals for Performance Art.

Spread Art [www.spreadart.org]  is a “by artists, for artists”  creative incubator designed to foster new creative work through residencies and collaborations with artists, curators, and arts organizations locally, nationally and internationally.  Spread Art is a home to many Detroit based artists and serves as a place for the artistic community to experiment with new ideas, concepts and realizations and not be afraid to fail in the name of creative exploration.  

Defibrillator | Rapid Pulse Festival [www.dfbrL8r.org | www.rapidpulse.org]. Defibrillator Gallery and Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival champion performance art that looks to the body in concert and conversation with time, object, space, architecture, and society. In addition to live performance art, each day of Rapid Pulse includes a Performance Video Program and stǓ, a curated late-night post-performance soup kitchen. Rapid Pulse is co-curated by festival director, Joseph Ravens, and assistant director, Giana Gambino.

C O M P L E T E Rapid Pulse Tour Roster [Chicago>Detroit>New York] Uchenna Agwuncha | \|/ | | | | ∆ /|\ ∆ /|\ ∆ Y ∆ ‡ () r r 3 s | Holly Arsenault | Andrew Barco | dyoskuri (Michael Lee Bridges + Jake Eveker) | Máiréad Delaney | Joseph Ravens | Maryam Taghavi | Carlos Salazar Lermont | Amanda Staples | Angeliki Tsoli | Upended Teacups | Allison Baker | Thomas Bell |Jessica Lynn Schlobohm | Melissa Lockwood | Clara Diamond | Hector Canonge | Preach R Sun

B I O G R A P H I E S

Uchenna Agwuncha | https://www.facebook.com/uchenna.iwantcha

Uchenna  Agwuncha pronounced (you-chen-nah ah-gaun-cha), is the daughter of Nigerian Immigrants first, a femme woman second, and a black American third. Uchenna is a multidisciplinary artist working with film, performance art, and poetry to inform conversations around beauty, feminism  identity, mental illness, and consciousness.   Uchenna is an apprentice of DFBL8TR Gallery where she performed with Joseph Ravens for Art Aids Chicago in 2017.

Holly Arsenault | https://vimeo.com/hollyarsenault Holly Arsenault was born in October 1995 and currently resides in Chicago Illinois. They attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they are completing their BFA. In Fall 2016 they were an apprentice at Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery in Chicago. They have shown at Dollhouse, The Bridge, Comfort Station, and Video! Video! Zine with whom they are currently working on a video artist statement.

\|/ | | | | ∆ /|\ ∆ /|\ ∆ Y ∆ ‡ () r r 3 s  “It encompasses the name backwards”

Andrew Barco [RP13 Alum] | www.andrewbarco.com Andrew Barco is an object, installation and performance maker based in Chicago, Illinois.  His work is concerned with the often strange and improbable ways ideas and habits can be transmitted across cultural landscapes and through time.   With an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Andrew’s work uses craft and industrial histories, quirky and edgy relational gestures, and philosophical inquiry to create affective and thoughtful encounters.  His work has been featured in group exhibitions in Durham NC, Baltimore MD, Hartford, CT, and Chicago, IL, New Orleans, LA.

dyoskuri [Detroit only] | https://www.facebook.com/dyoskuri/ dyoskuri (Michael Lee Bridges + Jake Eveker) is a conglomerate of Floridian heritage and Chicago sensibility. As a duo they seek to create performance work inspired by Greco-Roman mythology, Floridian hyper-capitalism, and millennial technological quirks. Their work, MANiKen, was used as reference material in a TEDxTalk in 2015 concerning performance work created in the collegiate environment. Hatched from the egg 2k13.

Máiréad Delaney I work with violences laid upon bodies by vast, invisible systems. My questions lie around how to render these violences witnessed but not re-made, how to speak to hollow spaces made by enforced silence, and how to carry the burden of what we know, once we have come to know it.

Joseph Ravens | www.josephravens.com Joseph Ravens studied audiovisuals at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie [Amsterdam, Netherlands] before earning his Masters of Fine Art in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ravens is a two-time recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship along with other grants and awards that have allowed him to build an international reputation. Ravens was included in 7a*11d (Toronto, Canada 2016), Bienal DEFORMES (Santiago, Chile 2016), Live Biennale Vancouver (Canada 2015), 20th Bienal Internacional de Curitiba (Brazil 2013), Venice International Performance Art Week (Italy 2012), and Intrude: Art and Life 366 (Zendai Museum, Shanghai, China 2008), among others.

Carlos Salazar Lermont [RP13 + RP17 Alum] http://carloszamuro.blogspot.com Carlos Salazar-Lermont is a Venezuelan artist, producer, curator and educator, currently based in Chicago, USA. He has a BFA in Sculpture from UNEARTE (2012) and a Technical Highschool degree on Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from the Escuela de Artes Visuales Cristóbal Rojas (2005). In 2013 he was distinguished with and Honourable Mention in the XVI Jóvenes con FIA Salon and in 2014 with the Salón Jóvenes con FIA 2.0/3 Prize. He also received an Honorable Mention for the curatorship of Desafío al Poder, framed in the International Contemporary Art Biennial of Los Andes. Salazar-Lermont has shown his work internationally in countries such as México, Argentina, United States, United Kingdom, Finland, Netherlands, Germany, Perú, Colombia, Dominican Republic and his home country, Venezuela. In 2014, he started P3 Plataforma Para Performance organization in Venezuela, to impulse the creation, dissemination, research and education related to Performance Art. In 2015 he created the International Performance Art Biennial of Caracas (BIPCA). He is currently studying a Dual MA program in Arts Administration & Policy and Modern and Contemporary Art History in the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) with the support of the New Artists Society scholarship.

Amanda Staples | http://theartofamanda.tumblr.com | http://www.tini-ebla.com/amanda-staples/ Amanda Staples is an installation and performance artist, currently based in Chicago. By examining the ambiguity and origination of her experiences through symbolism in her materials and presentation, Amanda strives to provoke the dynamic between audience and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations. This introspection becomes a cathartic and ritualistic exercise, thematically interrelating material for memory transference and reinterpretation. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, the results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and analysis becomes multifaceted. Amanda’s performances habitually push her body by the longevity of pieces, physicality and mental endurance, while her installations play on an exaggerated large-scale, the use of multiples, impermanence, and stimulation of the senses. A collection of her work also heavily experiments with themes of identity, femininity, maturation, and transformation.

Maryam Taghavi [RP15 Alum] www.maryamtaghavi.com Maryam Taghavi (Performance) is a Tehran-born artist whose work manifests in photography, installation, video, publication, and performance, and (her work) is characterized by its ephemeral nature. She aims for an interchangeable role as both observer and participant, locating a potential agency in the role of the trickster.

Angeliki Tsoli | https://vimeo.com/angelikichaidotsoli Angeliki Tsoli is an interdisciplinary visual artist and Fulbright Scholar from Athens, Greece currently based in Chicago, USA. She is pursuing an MFA in Performance Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Tsoli serves as an independent curator and is a co-founder, with Francesco Kiais, of the performance platform [MIND THE] G.A.P - Gathering Around Performance, in Athens. Together, they aim to catalyse the cultural activity of performance by building bridges and facilitating networks through the inclusion of national and international artists. They organize performances, workshops, exhibitions and lectures in the field of performance art. Tsoli has been working predominately in the field of performance art for a number of years since studying in Spain at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and with the Erasmus European Exchange Program and Bartolomé Ferrando. Angeliki graduated with distinction from the department of Fine and Applied Arts from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Tsoli is interested in radical education through the medium of performance and her work explores the political, poetic and displaced body.

Melissa Lockwood  | www.iqtest-nyc.com Melissa Lockwood was a founder of Grace Exhibition Space in 2006. She has participated a performance artist since 1989. She is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video, drawing, painting, photography and fashion design. She has worked within the groups The Yes Men and Non Grata (Estonia). In Dance Hackit, Brooklyn, NY (2011); In collaboration with Yinka Oyewole at Chelsea Art Museum, NYC (2011); Brooklyn Fashion as Film, 2011 (Brooklyn, NY); Brooklyn Fashion Weekend, Brooklyn NY (2011); In collaboration with Keiko Uneshi; Roulette Musicircus, Brooklyn, NY (2011) Balls across America; Yes Men (2009) The New York Post tells the truth: The Yes Men (2009); Home, Noemie Lafrance (2009) Maximum Perception, NYC (2008) Melissa Has traveled nationally and internationally showing her Performance, Video and Fashion Works. She has a Master of Fine Art and a Master of Art in Performance and Video from the University of Iowa, under the Direction of Mr. Hans Breder. Cofounder of Grace Exhibition Space and Co-director 2006 -2009.

Clara Diamond | www.starhousegallery.com/clara-diamond Clara Diamond is a Kingston based performance artist working with dichotomy, impermanence, identity, and transformation, seeking to challenge the notion of impermanence by presenting the body, action, experience, memory, and story as art objects. Dichotomies such as in/out, up/down, black/white, motion/stillness, life/death, and self/other form a framework of exploration for her work.

It is a day of rest for RP tour participants from Chicago visiting MOCAD: [left to right] Amanda Staples, Carlos Salazar Lermont, Andrew Barco, Uchenna Agwuncha, and Angeliki Tsoli. 

We are capturing the energy from six years of Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival and taking it on the road. First stop: DETROIT. Some of us arrived at Spread Art and a few more are on their way... Performances begin TONIGHT [09 JUNE] at 8PM and will happen again at the same time tomorrow.  

Tonight lineup [FRI 09 JUNE]  (subject to change!): Amanda Staples, Angeliki Tsoli,  Thomas Bell , Andrew Barco, Holly Arsenault, Máiréad Delaney,  \|/ | | | | ∆ /|\ ∆ /|\ ∆ Y ∆ ‡ () r r 3 s.

Tomorrow [SAT 10 JUN] (subject to change!): Uchenna Agwuncha, dyoskuri, Upended Teacups, Allison Baker, Jessica Lynn Schlobohm, Maryam Taghavi, Carlos Salazar Lermont.

Photo above taken by Thomas Bell and, left to right, includes Joseph Ravens, Amanda Staples, dyoskuri [Michael Lee Bridges + Jake Eveker], Holly Arsenault, Angeliki Tsoli and \|/ | | | | ∆ /|\ ∆ /|\ ∆ Y ∆ ‡ () r r 3 s.