INVERSE Performance Art Festival 2023
INVERSE 2023 is a four-day performance art festival presented by the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Employing liveness, experimentation, and radical approaches to the important issues of our moment, the festival features more than 50 artists and projects who are in constant interrogation of material, form, and gesture to offer new ideas and perspectives on how we experience the world.
INVERSE 2023 kicks off with a night of film and performance with performance art legends La Pocha Nostra. Back again after an amazing performance at the Momentary in January, Balitronica, Gómez-Peña, Emma Tramposch, and EmaLee Arroyo have returned for a three-week residency culminating in the INVERSE Performance Art Festival.
What is Performance Art?
Performance is grounded in community, gathering, and the collective. At this year’s INVERSE, artists from all over the country and your own backyard invite you to celebrate being together through liveness.
You may find yourself asking:
(form) – Is this dance? Is this theatre? What makes this painting different than others I’ve experienced? Consider what you know about these forms, what your expectations are.
(participation) – What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to join? What if I just watch? Consider how you’re feeling, what the artist is doing, any cues you can take from those surrounding you. Lean in to your urge to join in, or to sit still. Embrace a moment of joy or discomfort.
(legitimacy) Is this art? I think this is stupid. Think about performance art like live cinema. Consider the environment, the actors, the dialogue, the sounds…with performance art you are also now able to consider the additional senses of smell, taste and touch. The fully immersive, live quality is what makes this work so weird, and so fun.
We hope you’ll join us in the celebration. See you there.
FESTIVAL PASS
Festival Passes include a commemorative tote bag and drop-in admission for all four days of INVERSE 2023.
$25 General Admission
$20 Member
$10 Students and Teachers
Content Note: Because performance art is elusive and free, it often relies on the unexpected. Due to the nature of the form, we cannot disclose every element of the performance before it occurs. The festival includes mature content and requires adult supervision for anyone under 18 years old.
NOT A MEMBER?
Join today to enjoy priority access to concerts and member-only events all year long.
Please allow 24 hours for new memberships purchased online to process before purchasing your member-priced ticket. To purchase your membership and tickets together today, call our member priority line at (479) 418-5728 or by emailing Memberships@CrystalBridges-theMomentary.org.
Reserve your spot online or by calling the Box Office at (479) 657-2335 today.
* Student tickets available to all guests under 17 or those with a valid student ID, presented upon entry.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
Thursday, Nov 2
6 – 10 PM Festival Launch with La Pocha Nostra | RØDE House
Friday, Nov 3
2 – 4 PM Jessica Hale & Heidee Lyn Alsdorf * | RØDE House
5 – 7 PM Chelsea A. Flowers* | RØDE House
5 – 8 PM Chung Park | Atrium
6 – 8 PM Grace DeVies | RØDE House Vestibule
8 – 9 PM swim team | Fermentation Hall
Saturday, Nov 4
10 AM – 12 PM Tereso Perfecto Contreras* | RØDE House
1 – 1:30 PM Jefferson Pinder | Crystal Bridges Main Entrance
3 – 4 PM Class Collaboration Cohort (23): MFA Theatre Grads, Dept. of Theatre, Univ. of Arkansas | RØDE House
4 – 7 PM Brooke Ti^daw^kaw Benham | Atrium
5 – 5:45 PM GeeXella* | Fermentation Hall
7 – 7:30 PM Lela Shahrzad Welch | Arvest Courtyard
8 – 8:30 PM Princess (Alexis Gideon & Michael O’Neill) | RØDE House
9 – 10 PM Emily Ward Bevins | Fermentation Hall
SUNday, Nov 5
11 AM – 1 PM Group Performance | RØDE House
* Due to limited availability, registration required. Reserve your spot during ticket checkout.
STAY IN THE KNOW ABOUT ALL THINGS INVERSE! There’s more artist and performance information on its way—sign up for eNews from the Momentary to get updates delivered straight to your inbox.
PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONS
Tereso Perfecto Contreras
Tesito con Tio Tereso
Duration: Approx. 2 hours
The Tri-state Borderplex (El Paso, Texas/ Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua/ La Union, New Mexico) based artist Tereso Perfecto Contreras (Amalia) will perform Tesito con Tio Tereso.
This round table brunch space is for conversations surrounding the queer experience.
Come out, pun intended, and talk to your two-spirit Tio Tereso about queerness over cafe de la olla, tea, and pan dulce. If you don’t feel ready to talk about queerness, you can write your thoughts, comments, questions, concerts, stories, etc about queerness on the tea paper, and just listen to those talking.
Registration required. Reserve your spot online during ticket checkout.
Chung Park
Gimjang_김장
Duration: 3 hours
Fayetteville, Arkansas-based artist Chung Park will perform Gimjang_김장, a durational performance of making kimchi as a way to connect with personal and family history.
Gimjang is a traditional Korean practice of preparing and preserving large amounts of kimchi for the winter season. The performance locates spaces of comfort and care and carries on cultural traditions that tend to fade away when immigrant families participate in the project of assimilation.
Understanding that art is rooted in imperial and colonial histories, this performance represents one pathway to reclaim art as a site of liberation. As the INVERSE festival will be held at the beginning of November, which is usually the time when gimjang takes place, this performance will be timely in the space.
George McConnell, Molly Thomas, Lindsey Wente, Brittany Williams
swim team
Duration: 55 mins.
swim team is performed by George McConnell (Colorado), Molly Thomas (Kentucky), Lindsey Wente (Colorado), Brittany Williams (North Carolina). It was created by George McConnell, Molly Thomas, Lindsey Wente, Brittany Williams, and Rachel Walker (New York).
swim team is inspired by Miranda July’s short story The Swim Team. swim team is a non-narrative, image- and movement-based devised comedy exploring relationships between women dealing with the impact of toxic masculinity inflicted through romantic entanglements. swim team consists of short poetic vignettes, swim drills, Mitski songs, and water.
Grace DeVies
John 13:1-17
Duration: 2 hours
Chicago-based artist Grace DeVies will perform a durational iteration of John 13:1-17, a participatory queering of a Biblical event. The audience is invited to sit and receive a moment of vulnerable, unconditional love and care and to be reminded that we are all holy.
Chelsea A. Flowers
Alternative Trivia
Duration: Approx. 90 mins.
Detroit-based artist Chelsea A. Flowers will perform Alternative Trivia.
Alternative trivia is a game that tests social, cultural, and emotional knowledge, by questioning; “What day did Beyoncé turn Black?”
“Can you do the hokey pokey?”
It also wants to know if Bill and Hilary Clinton would be invited to the cookout?
The questions surrounding Alternative Trivia are not just about Black culture or pop culture, they’re about American culture and how we all fit into it.
Registration required. Reserve your spot online during ticket checkout.
Jessica Hale and Heidee Lyn Alsdorf
Motion Picture Play: inHabit
Duration: 2 hours
Motion Picture Play: inHabit is an invitation for local individuals to participate in the spontaneous production of a dance film. This two-hour event held inside the RØDE House will be co-facilitated by Jessica Hale (Bentonville, AR) and Heidee Lyn Alsdorf (Bentonville, AR).
This project is an immersive artistic endeavor that embodies the power of multiplicity and individual agency in fostering communal action and enriching social experiences within Northwest Arkansas communities. Blending elements of performance, structured gameplay, and behind-the-scenes video shoots, this project creates a tapestry celebrating the diverse voices and experiences of those who choose to play!
GeeXella
Harmony in Resonance: A Jazz-Fueled Journey through a Black Feminist Soundscape
Duration: 45 mins.
Muskogee Creek/Atlanta-based artist GeeXella invites you to experience Harmony in Resonance: A Jazz-Fueled Journey through a Black Feminist Soundscape. In this space, you’ll be guided through a meditation and soundscape that works together to create melodies of jazz with the powerful speeches of Black Feminist movement builders. As sound bowls resonate in unity, DJing guides the path to healing, weaving a harmonious tapestry of empowerment and transformation.
Registration required. Reserve your spot online during ticket checkout.
Lela Shahrzad Welch
Bread Offering
Duration: 30 mins.
Naan-e-Sangak (stone bread) is an Iranian bread eaten traditionally at breakfast, initiating the transversal state between sleeping and waking. It begins as an act of communing with elders and family as one awakens into the world. In a location near where her Native and Iranian ancestors converged, California-based artist Lela Shahrzad Welch manipulates the raw sangak dough while sharing a personal narrative in Bread Offering.
Brooke Ti^daw^kaw Benham
Big Yellow Car
Duration: 3 hours
Northwest Arkansas-based artist Brooke Ti^daw^kaw Benham will perform Big Yellow Car.
Contemporary Kiowa ledger art. A moment in time. A story about a father taking his daughter to her new home and new job after her graduation from college. Departing from the only life she knew; to start her new adult life. Watch as a snapshot comes to life.
Princess (Alexis Gideon & Michael O’Neill)
@1minworld (One Minute World)
Duration: 30 mins.
Brooklyn- and Pittsburgh-based artists Princess (Alexis Gideon & Michael O’Neill) will perform @1minworld (One Minute World).
@1minworld (One Minute World) is a video song cycle that features original animations and live musical performance. The music is performed live alongside the video projection.
With intentionally brief one-minute video songs, @1minworld‘s primary-colored bubblegum visuals contrast the songs’ content which explore the discontents of our social media age: filter bubbles, surveillance capitalism, and shortened attention spans, to name a few.
Emily Ward Bivens
Survival Practice
Duration: 45 mins.
Knoxville, Tennessee-based artist Emily Ward Bivens will perform Survival Practice.
Survival Practice is a training session focused on safely navigating the improbable while critiquing attitudes and expectations of those who struggle most. Participants will be led through safety instructional videos, reenactments, and simulations with added emphasis on remaining completely unaffected in both the role of survivor and observer.
Class Collaboration Cohort (23): MFA Theatre Grads, Dept. of Theatre, Univ. of Arkansas
No one’s arK
Duration: 1 hour
What have you longed for? What quests and questions have your longing launched? How do moments of longing shape you? Using these prompts and training in “Moment Work” in an ongoing residency with the critically acclaimed Tectonic Theatre Project, the Collaboration Cohort explores individual and collective longing. Devised by the 23 members of the Collaboration Cohort, No one’s arK invites you aboard an adventure to terra incognito, where personal confessions collide with club conga lines and paper airplanes fly through turbulence over sound baths of tranquility. Grab your passport for improbable connections and climb aboard—there’s room for everyone on No one’s arK.
Jefferson Pinder
Monumental
Duration: Approx. 30 mins.
Chicago-based artist Jefferson Pinder will be performing Monumental.
In his arresting new work, Jefferson Pinder asks if the struggling body can be monumental. He struggles to maintain historically resonant poses while suspended on a harness vertically over a wooden block. By doing so, he brings to the heart of the art fair the ghosts of prior spectacles—ones that commodified, maimed, and killed particular struggling bodies. He tests his physical endurance to stay vertical and ascendant (afloat) while competing with various forces—gravity being only one of them. He compels the viewer to witness the historical layers of pain underlying what is an ongoing exertion. The risk of failure, of falling down exhausted, is omnipresent. This tenuous labor constantly threatens the possibilities of the monumental: respect, remembrance, and being seen.
La Pocha Nostra (Guillermo Gomez-Peña)
Festival Launch
Duration: Approx. 90 mins.
La Pocha Nostra (Balitronica, Gómez-Peña, Emma Tramposch, and EmaLee Arroyo) will be presenting a selection of performance texts and films to jumpstart the INVERSE Festival 2023.
The performance texts span several decades of Gómez-Peña’s work, while the films have been created in more recent years and highlight a unique filmmaking strategy in response to our times. At a time when the mainstream media is filled with demonizing stories about the US-Mexico border, La Pocha Nostra’s films present the philosophical frameworks of a group of artists with a sustained dedication to highly impactful, innovative artistic interventions on that border.
ABOUT INVERSE
The inclusive performance art platform INVERSE was co-founded by Momentary Curator of Performance Cynthia Post Hunt and Chief Curator of the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art Emma Saperstein. INVERSE strives to foster local dialogue about performance on an international scale and build a community of performance artists and supporters, providing opportunities for performance work to be cultivated in the community. The annual INVERSE Performance Art Festival began in 2016 and has been warmly received in its two host locations: Northwest Arkansas and San Luis Obispo, California.
PAST INVERSE EVENTS
SPONSORED BY
Whitney Kroenke Silverstein and Nick Silverstein | Olivia Tyson