IMPACT Performance Festival
Archive
The IMPACT Performance Festival showcases performance work by MFA and BFA students, in the SAIC class of 2021. The festival took place virtually over the weekend of Saturday, April 17 and Sunday, April 18 2021. This archive includes more information about each work presented in the festival.
Unconventional circumstances make for unconventional art
For this collaboration, TNL will screen a limited-run replay of IMPACT along with short interviews with each of the artists.
May 3 – 10, each day there will be one interview to be released.
May 10 – 19, Limited-run Replay.
May 10 – 19, Limited-run Replay.
Reflections by Takahiro Yamamoto
Connection | Coexistence | Not Knowing
-A small meditation on performance making in Spring 2021-
“We all want connection no matter what you do in life or where you live.” This ghostly echo occasionally shows up in my mind. I cannot remember who said this to me or when. I usually do not take these types of universalistic sentiments seriously; yet, this one has been sticking.
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Pareidolia, Still from live virtual performance, Jordan Knecht, 2021
Pareidolia
Jordan Knecht
Performance by: Nathan Wheeler, Chaz Prymek,
and Thomas Knecht
Coding by: Nathan Wheeler
Distinct points mapping the path around unreachable destinations.
The Convergence of Rhythms, Still from live virtual performance, Sal Moreno, 2021
The Convergence of Rhythms
Sal Moreno
Rhythmic flow of the body converses with the collective sonic and visual manifestations of the digital world and fuses the physical and virtual spaces. A form of free-drumming is enacted.
Seven Days an Hour, Still from live virtual performance, Zoë Vulgamott, 2021
Seven Days an Hour
Zoë Vulgamott
Performed by: Zoë Vulgamott, Julia Fuhler, Ben Kim Paplham, Jordan Knecht, Anna Schwartz, Sacha Kingsley and Corey Smith
Seven participants were provided with a musical recording, the score of which was created from the artist’s heartbeat over time, and with an additional prompt were asked to respond in story. The piece was then choreographed as call and response.
Etudes, Still from live virtual performance, Corey Smith, 2021
Etudes
Corey Smith
An etude is a piece of music with a pedagogical purpose, a composition concerned with virtuosity, technique, canonization. These pieces are Etudes for Zoom — studies of liveness and human perception through a webcam.
Laura Does Not Cry for the Glass Menagerie, or: PFFD (Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency), Still from live virtual performance, Benjamin Paplham, 2021
Laura Does Not Cry for the Glass Menagerie,
or: PFFD (Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency)
Ben Kim Paplham
Performed by: Alex Gruber, Ben Kim Paplham,
Cheyenne Andrus, and Sylvia Bowersox
Laura Does Not Cry… is a poetic memory, performed using details of Ben Kim Paplham’s personal experience of disability and borrowed details of Laura Wingfield from Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie.
Background on Laura Does Not Cry
Background on The Glass Menagerie
Still from Cairn for Shosh, Still from performance documentation for camera, Anna Schwartz, 2021
Cairn for Shosh
Anna Schwartz
Mourning Ritual: walk until the end of a path / build a cairn of incense and ash / tend to it while it burns / and in time bury what is left
Still from The bird thinks not of gravity, Still from live virtual performance, llio sophia, 2021
The bird thinks not of gravity
llio sophia
Lighting design by: Chris Blue
Lighting operator: Paige Alice Naylor
The bird thinks not of gravity is a love poem to the people I cherish the most. It is a work of gratitude. It is simply stories about my friends.
*footnote—”I fog up an entire glass house” is a line of poetry by Ezra Arsenault from his poem Prepare for all Possible Outcomes
Still from Access Alone, Still from live virtual performance, DJ Malinowski, 2021
Access Alone
DJ Malinowski
Participants (audience/performers) play with/in WarioWare-like truth-telling and an allegory of my neuroplasticity.
Special Thanks
The IMPACT Performance Festival is co-presented by SAIC’s Department of Exhibitions and Performance Department, in collaboration with the Department of Instructional Resources and Facilities Management. This year’s festival was produced by Assistant Director of Exhibitions Lauren Steinberg, Graduate Curatorial Assistant Sofia Gabriel Del (MA in Arts Administration and Policy 21) Technical Director Josh Hoglund, and Faculty Liaison Erica Mott.
Guest Curators: Ashley DeHoyos, Leena Kela, and Yolanda Cesta Cursach Montilla
Additional Thanks to:
Hannah Barco, Sean Desantis, Craig Downs, Mark Jeffery,Trevor Martin, Edward Muela, Jeff Panall, Christine Shallenberg, Roberto Sifuentes, Corey Smith, Hiroko Yamamura, and Takahiro Yamamoto.
No Nation, High Concept Labs, Heaven Gallery, Gallery 400, Co-Prosperity Space, MCA Chicago, CAC Bolt, Roots and Culture, TNL, LVL3, Experimental Sound Studio, Leon Gallery, Present Projects, and Elastic Arts.