AIR at MoHA - The Museum of Human Achievement

AIR at MoHA
An artist residency program at The Museum of Human Achievement
Accommodations
List of past resident artists
1. Poncili Creacion — Ballenarca
2. Terror Pigeon & Tyler Walker — MoHA / Terror Pigeon Company Spectacular
3. Cole Wilson — H Thunderbolt
4. Macon Reed — Witchual Objects
5. Robby Kraft — Origami
6. Dominic Rabalais / Little Ruckus — Wrong Did
7. Raquel Bell — Pain Balls
8. Cordey Lopez, Danni Tsuboi — Plasma Pool VII: Altar Edition
9. Julia Sinelkinova — Sentinel: Temple Of Self-Awareness
10. Wade Schaming — Texas Towers
11. Anna Mikhailova — Space, created by word
Poncili Creacion:
Ballenarca
Poncili Creacion is an established surreal puppetry collective from Puerto
Rico traveling on their 5th USA tour. ​T​hey arrived in Texas to partner with
four Austin based artists and welder​s and take part as the first resident
artists at The Museum of Human Achievement.
Together they ​invented​Ballenarca - The Whale Ark: a life size, glowing
whale puppet that tour​ed​as a mobile stage and giant interactive sculpture from Austin to Miami.
The 11’ tall and 36’ long, life-size, female sperm whale ​was built out of
metal, wood, fiberglass and foam. In a nonstop parade, Ballenarca trave​
d​on a salvaged trailer, bringing​​art to the public as a giant puppet show,
a musical sculpture and a living museum, where the audience ​was invited
to step inside the belly of the beast.
​Traveling to Art Basel in December, the artists behind Ballenarca will ​created free interactive street performances, passing through Austin, Houston, New Orleans, Tallahassee, Jacksonville and arriving in Miami. Poncili
Creacion design​ed​one of a kind transformational outdoor puppet show​
s​to be performed specifically with Ballenarca for free at schools, parks
and other public places.
Tyler Walker & Neil Fridd:
The Terror Pigeon / MoHA Company
Christmas Spectacular​
14 Austin performers were transformed into a character of Christmas
folklore, performing a micro-set of music as that character. 2014 featured robots, puppets and brass bands inside a giant winter wonderland
constructed by Terror Pigeon. Each band performs back to back as the
audience tours the fully immersive 7000 sq foot holiday environment.
Cole Wilson:
H. Thunderbolt
Cole Bee Wilson is an installation, performance and sound artist based in
Austin, TX and Santa Fe, NM.
His most current work, H. Thunderbolt, is a recorded composition that
elucidates the epic histories of the Second Punic War between Carthage
and Rome, focusing primarily on the life of the General Hannibal Barca. This
effort includes the collaboration of over 100 musicians, countless recording
sessions that have spanned the breadth of America, subterranean field recording in the catacombs underneath the city of Austin and even the demolition of a piano with a sledge hammer recorded with home made contact
microphones. The record is a blend of lush drones, walls of noise, aching
melodies and earnest lyrics about what it is to fail and the victory theirin.
The project is scheduled for release in the spring of 2015.
His previous works include managing and composing for the 30 piece
folk orchestra the Apple Miner Colony from 2006-2010 and developing
the sound design for the Santa Fe based artist collective Meow Wolf
from 2012 to the present. His work has been reviewed in the Chicago
Tribune, Hyper Allergic and the Guardian, UK.
Macon Reed:
Witchual Objects
Macon Reed is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose works probe the notion
of optimism through queer and feminist lens, examining the lines between transformation and failure, trauma and healing, playfulness and
escapism. Drawing on rituals of normative enculturation with regard to
team socialization and competition, her work interrogates the limits of
optimism and the point(s) at which cheerfulness becomes self-destructive, with a specific interest in physical performance and sculpture.
Robby Kraft:
Origami
At a union of technology and art, Robby Kraft has been folding origami
since he was 6. He has taught origami-prototyping software at the
convention in New York, folded load-bearing expandable furniture, and
discovered one of the few truly infinitely repeating origami fractals. Also
a mathematician, physicist, and computer scientist, his research includes
rigid-body folding, parametric design, nanoscale self-assembling DNA
origami, and designs for outer space satellite panel packing and unfolding.
During 2015, he’s folding one origami figure each day, highlighting
some of the best and most challenging pieces in the world.
Dominic Rabalais / Little Ruckus:
Wrong Did
Dom Rabalais is a musician and filmmaker, He performs and tour in his “band” /
motivational speech psuedo-spiritual dance crew called Little Ruckus.
Dom has performed music in most states in the USA as well as in Europe
and Canada. In 2014 Dom made 40 music videos for 40 new songs. In the
process of making the 40 music videos, he also made a short film which
was 10 music videos with a narrative that flowed between all of them.
The root philosophy that guides everything that he creates, and informs
every decision as a person, is a concept which he calls Sweat Power. The
concept of Sweat Power is that perfect transcendence, that one can feel
at any moment in their lives, athletes in “the zone” or artists when they
feel they are being guided by some sort of greater creative force, or even
the transcendentalist poets. The idea of Sweat Power is one where the
performer is no longer a person in their sense of specific personhood, when
they enter a state or pure humanness, and yet are additionally eternal in a
more than human way. When he performs and experiees a state of Sweat
Power, he is no longer the performer, and the audience is no longer the
audience, but they are together creating a moment that is one hundred
percent presence, every person is in the exact place they need to be,
contributing equally the perfection of the collective Sweat Power.
Raquel Bell:
Pain Balls
The Museum of Human Achievement’s artist in residence for the month of May,
Raquel Bell, will present the culmination of her work: handmade polycarbonate
records with singles from her upcoming solo record. Each record will be
covered in original artwork.
For this event Bell will perform a LIVE MEDITATION MED titled: PAIN BALLS, in
which she will play her processed 1960’s analog rock organ and lead audience
on a wild adventure of pain.
Raquel Bell is a composer, artist and touring musician.
Cordey Lopez, Danni Tsuboi,
and Olivia Warner:
Plasma Pool VII — Altar Edition
PLASMA POOL VII: ALTAR EDITION is a trans-media non-opera psycholecture that tells, or rather demonstrates, the experiments of estranged ex-choir
director Cordey Lopez and his relationship to the baffling, organic hypercomputer inhabiting his subterranean studio apartment.
In this immersive experience of hi-sci-fi meets lo-art, sculpture, dance,
interactive electronics, video, puppetry, breaks into song, and blah-blahwhatever are crammed into a particle accelerator (clank-crackle-swoosh-pop!),
yielding an orgiastic, primordial ballet.
The audience is invited to become part of this absurdist gezamtkumstverk and
take an acid bath in the core processor’s voltaic cell (which looks a lot like a relaxing
swimming pool). BRING A SWIMSUIT, A FLASHLIGHT, AND A TOWEL.
“Plasma Pool VII” is a collaboration between Cordey Lopez, Danni Tsuboi,
Olivia Warner, and friends.
Julia Sinelkinova:
Sentinel — Temple Of Self-Awareness
An interdisciplinary action of sculptural installation, video art, and interactive
feedback, The Temple of Self-Awareness invites the audience into a reflective
environment of self-surveillance, wherein a projection-mapped lightscape
serves as a setting for observation and meditation. This environment of
refractive light effects serves as a metaphor for the elusive, fragmented quality
of modern communication, grounded at the center by the “BLARNEY”prism
structure (named after the clandestine program which collects peer to peer
metadata for the US government) which redirects laser beams in a reflective
enclosure. Projected video features internet personas browsing, as well as a live
feed of the audience-participants. A performance by the artist as THE ORACLE
will activate the light work through a coordinated interaction and ritual.
Julia Sinelnikova is a Russian multimedia artist, born in Jerusalem, Israel and
raised in Texas. She had her first solo exhibition in Houston at age 16, and has
since exhibited internationally, as well as curated a variety of exhibitions. She
has exhibited at prominent institutions such as the Contemporary Art Museum
of Houston, The Oulu Museum of Art, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, and
Dumbo Art Center in Brooklyn. Sinelnikova has also presented site-specific
installations during Miami Art Week (Art Basel) annually since 2011. Passionate
about bringing communities together around creative events, she co-organized
Bushwick Open Studios for over five years. In 2012 she helped organize GO, the
first Brooklyn-wide open studio festival. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Wade Schaming:
Texas Towers
Wade Schaming’s sculptures are painstakingly assembled through stacking
alone. The materials remain unchanged (they are used as is) and unbound
to each other, delicate juxtapositions perilously balanced, like thought given
concrete form. From discarded and forgotten objects that memorialize
hope, the assembled forms aspire to return dignity to the bearer, and inspire
empathy in the viewer. Schaming’s process is confined to the present moment.
Because he only works with found and discarded materials (nothing he uses is
purchased), his pieces become indicative of the site while reinforcing his desire
to create impermanence.
Anna Mikhailova:
Space, created by word
Anna Mikhailova graduated Rotterdam University of Arts (Codarts) as a
theater director (2013), Den Haag Royal Conservatory composition and
sonology department (2011), Chicago Columbia University film music (2008,
special program), Moscow conservatory (2007) as a composer, organ player
and koto player, working with improv, jazz, pop, rock musician, dancers,
collecting the folk songs in the folk expeditions, writing music for movies,
animations, theater, performances, computer games, moving from one place to
another,
Space, created by word
by Anna Mikhailova
Listen to the words your language is speaking through you
It is already turned loose
It is off in the distance
It is already coming
It can’t be called back