Virtually There | Marilyn Arsem
Virtually There takes you into the homes, studios, and lives of artists from around the world.
Internationally acclaimed performance artist Marilyn Arsem will provide an in depth look at her practice, in conversation with equally acclaimed artist colleagues Sinéad O’Donnell, Paola Paz Yee, and Melati Suryodarmo. From their respective locations around the world (Boston, Belfast, Mexico City, and Surakarta), the four will give us a global perspective on durational and time based art.
Featured artists span across performance art mediums including dance, theater, performance art and music. Audiences will learn more about these artists, experience some of their work, and have the opportunity to engage in conversation with them – all virtually!
Free, tune into the Momentary’s Facebook or YouTube page to join.
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ABOUT MARILYN ARSEM
Marilyn Arsem has been creating and performing live events for more than forty years, presenting her work in thirty countries around the globe. Based in Boston, she teaches international performance art workshops.
Many of her works are durational in nature, minimal in actions and materials, and often created in response to specific sites, engaging with the immediate landscape and materiality of the location, its history, use or politics. Sites have included a former Cold War missile base in the US, a 15th century Turkish bath in North Macedonia, an aluminum factory in Argentina, the grounds of an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium in Poland, the site of the Spanish landing in the Philippines, and a deserted Russian mining outpost in the Arctic Circle.
In 1975 she founded an interdisciplinary collaborative of artists, incorporating in 1980 as Mobius, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt, artist-run organization, with the mission to support the creation of new experimental art. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 40+ years.
A book on her work, Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem, edited by Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless, was just published by Intellect Books of the UK.
ABOUT MELATI SURYODARMO
Melati Suryodarmo graduated from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunscheweig, Germany. Her practice is informed by Butoh, dance, and history, among others. Her work is the result of ongoing research in the movements of the body and its relationship to the self and the world. These are enshrined in photography, translated into choreographed dances, enacted in video, or executed in live performances. Suryodarmo has presented her work in many locations and exhibitions internationally. Since 2007, she has been organizing PALA, a performance art laboratory project, and Undisclosed Territory, an annual performance art festival, in Solo, Indonesia. Suryodarmo founded “Studio Plesungan,” an independent space for performance art (2012), and served as Artistic Director for the 17th Jakarta Biennale (2017).
ABOUT PAOLA PAZ YEE
Paola Paz Yee is a multidisciplinary visual artist focused on performance art, photography, and social artistry. Her work addresses issues such as identity, gender violence, questions about production, and time. Through her actions, Yee determines a political position in her own context as a Latin American woman. Yee has exhibited internationally. In recent years she has worked with her Project called PAS, through collective murals and activation of vulnerable communities, naming herself as an action device. Since 2012, Yee has worked national and international curatorships for the Art Space Gallery, Ex Teresa Arte Actual Museum in Mexico, the platform of Latin American artists PERFOLINK in Chile, and the Transart Communication Festival in Eastern Europe, among others.
ABOUT SINÉAD O’DONNELL
Sinéad O’Donnell works in performance, installation, site, and time-based art. Based in Belfast, O’Donnell studied sculpture at the University of Ulster, textiles in Dublin, and visual performance and time-based practices at Dartington College of Arts. She was lead artist and curator for an ‘Unlimited’ commission entitled CAUTION as part of the London 2012 Festival. O’Donnell is currently a Flax Arts Studios artist, and received the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Major award in 2017. Her work explores identity, borders, and barriers through encounters with territory and the territorial. She sets up actions or situations that demonstrate complexities, contradictions, or commonality between medium and discipline, timing and spontaneity, intuition and methodology, artist and audience. She uses photography, video, text, and collage to record her performances. O’Donnell’s practice is nomadic and travel has broadened her cultural perceptions and influenced her artistic sensibilities regarding time and space. She is active on the Belfast performance art scene working with local organizations to foster performance art activity and supporting emerging artists in her community.