Die No Die (Arkansas) | Matty Davis
Join us for the world premiere of 2022 artist-in-residence Matty Davis’s site-responsive performance work Die No Die (Arkansas).
Presented live for just three nights, Die No Die (Arkansas) features a series of outdoor dance performances by six artists, connected by a procession across the grounds of the Momentary campus.
Each night offers an opportunity to choose your own experience: await the arrival of the artists at your preferred venue like an observer awaiting a shooting star, or join the procession and see it all as the performers race through the dark from site to site. Or, have it all and catch a repeat performance of Die No Die from the other perspective—the choice is yours.
To help shape your experience and provide a tactile guide to the work, a handcrafted map of the performance—an artwork and keepsake itself—will be provided ahead of the event for you to enjoy and bring with you when you arrive.
Maps will be shipped to your door ahead of the performance. We will also have the option of picking up at the Box Office when you arrive—just in case. Just show your ticket at the Box Office to pick up your handcrafted keepsake.
Gathering for the event begins at 8:30 p.m. in the Arvest Bank Courtyard. Grab a drink at the RØDE Bar and meet your fellow travelers while you wait, then settle in for the performance itself at 9 p.m.
A one-of-a-kind work that can only be experienced at the Momentary, this is not an event to miss. See you there.
Tickets are $50 ($45/members, $25/students and repeat attendees*, free for youth ages 18 and under), reserve your spot online or with the Box Office at (479) 657-2335 today.
Ticket includes registration, a handcrafted performance map, and admission to all venues. Price includes all shipping costs. Youth tickets do not include performance map.
* Repeat attendee ticket available only for guests attending a second or third performance of Die No Die. Additional discounts available for repeat student tickets. Visit the Box Office to reserve repeat attendee tickets.
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ABOUT DIE NO DIE (ARKANSAS)
Situated outdoors at night and traversing approximately 800 meters throughout the Momentary campus, Die No Die is a performance structured in the spirit of a shooting star—bursting into view, scintillating, to be lunged after, beheld, or lost. The intensity of its arrival initiates idiosyncratic choreographies designed to “send the heart deeper,” as both performer(s) and audience negotiate the contours of meaning, connection, and control.
One after another, in linear succession, each performer comes crashing into space, initiating an embodied journey through specific challenges, demands, and freedoms. Each signals to the next through the felt beat of their hearts.
Like maps are used to familiarize a person with the terrain, routes, and possibilities of a geography or place, Die No Die involves a publication that details architectures, flora, types of ground, and qualities as they relate to the performers and the performance’s trajectory. This piece of publishing—a preparatory exchange between the artists and the audience—will be mailed in advance of the performance and is intended to initiate a relationship based on care and responsibility that is carried into the performance itself.
Die No Die features performances and contributions by Karen Castleman (AR), Matty Davis (CA), Lyle Oberman (AR/UT), Blake Worthey (AR), and Tony Orrico (IA), with a special contribution by Will Arbery (CA).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Matty Davis is an artist who uses embodied forms of risk, trust, and empathy to collaboratively explore perennial questions of mortality, desire, and how to deal with one another and survive together. His work is marked by a unique degree of responsivity, constantly churning new relationships, iconographies, methods, and materialities.
Matty was born near Pittsburgh, PA, and grew up as a multi-sport athlete, which exposed him to visceral experiences of injury, resilience, teamwork, and play that continue to influence him. While expansive in its subject matter and material outcomes—sculpture, drawing, photography, and publishing—his work predominantly manifests in performance and dance, which he values as a communal space in which to be radically present and alive.
Described as “balancing ecstatically on the edge of life and death” (Zaritt), Matty’s work has been presented throughout at the US and abroad including at the ICA Miller at Carnegie Mellon University, the Fine Arts Center at the University of Arkansas, the Art Institute of Chicago, Bozar, the Palais de Tokyo, the Max Ernst Museum, Pioneer Works, and Steppenwolf Theater, among many distinct site-specific contexts. He has been commissioned to make performances for internationally-acclaimed artists such as Hito Steyerl, but has also worked intensely with surgeons, carpenters, aviators, athletes, botanists, and activists.
He currently lives in California.
