Author: FD 13

Viewable from the public sidewalk in the window vitrines of Second Shift Studio Space, Body Sequencing Solidarity features two celebrated performance works by FD13 resident artists Moe Satt and Chaw Ei Thein.

Created independently of one another, the performances share in common the centering of the artist’s bodies through sequential choreography as a technology of solidarity in the aftermath of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, an uprising with strong ties to the 1988 and the 2021 calls for democratic reforms specific to Burma. While both performances are considered iconic to Burma’s art histories, they also alert us to the power of art and artists today during the unprecedented multi-ethnic civil disobedience movement across the country and its diasporas since the military junta took power on February 1, 2021.

In excerpts of WEs:10,184 Bodies to Body (2010 -), Chaw Ei Thein performs a body sequence based on a torture manual used in junta-controlled prisons. Self-inflicting a choreography intended to violently strain the body, mind, and spirit, she foregrounds strength and perseverance to honor those who remained in prison for years after her detainment. Moe Satt’s F‘n’F (Face and Fingers) (2009) documents the artist striking and transitioning between 108 poses that focus on his head and hands. This secularization of mudras, or hand gestures sacred to Dharmic religions’ deities, rebels against coopting practices in militarized Myanmar. F‘n’F is equally a document of Moe Satt’s early exploration of conceptual artistic languages’ relation to censorship, inscribing through the body a language of the people – everyday deities striving to commune and communicate free from military rule.

Body Sequencing Solidarity celebrates differential artistic vocabularies of resistance related to the political rendering of bodies and personhoods – Moe Satt in-country and Chaw Ei Thein in-exile. The exhibition site in St. Paul thus also becomes poignant as home to the largest Karen refugee community in the United States who, alongside many of Minnesota’s Karenni and Mon, are active in liberation movements across Burma.

The exhibition is curated by Erin Gleeson, Director, FD13. With special thanks to Second Shift Studio Space.

This performance and discussion event hosted by FD13 and East Side Freedom Library begins with live performances by Burmese artists Moe Satt and Chaw Ei Thein, followed by a discussion moderated by Tun Myint, political scientist and co-founder of Mutual Aid Myanmar.

Moe Satt (b. 1983, Yangon, Burma / lives and works Yangon) explores self, identity, embodiment and political resistance in a practice spanning performance, photography, sculpture, video and sound installations. Moe Satt has held numerous residencies including at Para Site, Hong Kong (2013), Asian Cultural Council (2017), Delphina Foundation, London (2019), and was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Asian Art Prize (2015). Widely exhibited, group presentations include Busan Biennale (2012), A Journal of the Plaque Year, Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2015), and Political Acts: Pioneers of performance art in Southeast Asia, Art Center Melbourne (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include If I Say It’s True Seven Times, Myanm/art, Yangon (2018) and Art Basel Hong Kong (Nova Contemporary) (2019). He founded Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Yangon, Burma in 2008.

Chaw Ei Thein (b. 1969, Yangon, Burma / lives and works Santa Fe, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist especially known for her performance practice and immersive installations that think with the contradictions of her socio-political environment, most notably the struggle for freedom of speech and the impact of social transformations in Burma. She holds a degree in law from Rangoon University (1994), and was mentored in art from a young age by her father, artist Maung Muang Thein (Pathein). She began participating in exhibitions and performance festivals in Burma and Southeast Asia in the mid-1990s. Chaw Ei Thein is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including Asian Cultural Council (ACC) and The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) (both New York City), and has exhibited her work at Asia House London (with Htein Lin), Singapore Biennale (with Rich Steitmatter-Tran), and most recently, After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Her artwork and voice can be found in numerous publications including Asian Art Now, Asian Art Archive, Artforum, Art Asia Pacific, Yishu, C-Arts, and The New York Times.

Tun Myint Ph.D. is an associate professor of Political Science at Carleton College, Minnesota. He was a student leader of the 1988 democracy movement in Burma and is a widely respected expert on the politics and society of the country. He served as a member of the Technical Advisory Team of the Federal Constitution Drafting Coordinating Committee. He is a co-founder of Mutual Aid Myanmar, founder and member of the editorial board of the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, director of the Public Memory of Myanmar digital archive, and has contributed expert analysis on Burmese politics for media outlets, including PBS, Minnesota Public Radio, Radio Free Asia, CNN, and the BBC.

East Side Freedom Library (ESFL) has its home in the former Arlington Hills Library, one of St. Paul’s historic Carnegie library buildings in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood. ESLF’s mission is to incite solidarity, advocate for justice and work toward equity for all. The library houses non-circulating research collections that appeal to interested general learners as well as scholars, with innovative databases and finding aids that make suing the collections fun and vital. Story is a major these of the ESFL, and the telling and gathering of stories, through formal interviews, workshops, and small-scale public performances, will allow local residents and interested publics to learn more about the work and residential histories of the East Side. https://eastsidefreedomlibrary.org/

Sunday, September 12th, 1-3 pm
Peavey Plaza
1100 S Marquette Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55403

FD13 is back! Join us for a late summer afternoon of music and dance by local performers Margaret Ogas (dance), Douglas R. Ewart (percussion), Babatunde Lea (percussion), Davu Seru (percussion), and Lara Mimosa Montes (french horn).

Performances will take place in and around the shallow reflecting pool at Peavey Plaza in Downtown Minneapolis. You’re welcome to kick your shoes off or bring your most stylish waterproof footwear and explore the water feature yourself!

In the event of rain, we will send out a cancellation email, complete with a rain date. Scroll down for event guidelines, accessibility, and parking information.

About the Performers

Margaret Ogas (she/her) is a dance artist based in Minneapolis. Her work has been presented at the Walker Art Center, the Cedar Cultural Center, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. She is currently a 2021 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House + Theatre. Margaret holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.

Douglas R. Ewart (he/him) is a  composer, improviser, sculptor and maker of masks and instruments who’s collaborators include Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Myers, Anthony Braxton, Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, Joseph Jarman, Yusef Lateef, Dee Alexander, George E. Lewis, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum and Henry Threadgill. More info at www.douglasewart.com. 

Veteran master percussionist Babatunde Lea (he/him) has worked with legendary figures such as Pharaoh Sanders, Van Morrison, McCoy Tyner, Leon Thomas, Joe Henderson, John Tchicai, and Bobby Hutcherson. 

Davu Seru (he/him) is an improvising drummer, composer and native of North Minneapolis. His collaborators include Anthony Cox, Milo Fine, George Cartwright, Nirmala Rajasekar, Michelle Kinney, Dean Magraw, Evan Parker, J. Otis Powell ‽, Didier Petit, Rafael Toral, Donald Washington and Nicole Mitchell. More info at www.davuseru.com. 

Lara Mimosa Montes (she/her) is the recipient of artist residencies from Marble House Project, Storm King: Shandaken, and Headlands Center for the Arts. She studied literature and french horn at Purchase College. She will perform an original work, “How to Say BYE (Without the Letter Y)” at Peavey Plaza. Read more about her work: https://opencuny.org/lararossana/

EVENT GUIDELINES, ACCESSIBILITY AND PARKING

Mask wearing is encouraged for visitors not fully vaccinated against Covid-19.  

Ramp access to the plaza can be found on the Nicolette Mall side. To request accommodations for this program or for more information about accessibility please call 612-272-1448 or email info@fd13residency.org. 

There are two public restroom units, located on the S. 12th street side of Peavey Plaza. Both units are ADA accessible.

Paid, on-street parking is available on the S. 12th Street, S. Marquette Ave, and S. 11th Street sides. The closest paid parking garage is located at 168S S 11th St, Minneapolis, MN 55403, underneath the Hilton Hotel. Convenient bike parking is available along Nicolette.

Dear friends,

Until further notice, FD13 will be transitioning to online activity. We do this out of mindfulness for our community and the wellbeing of our audiences and artists. As a live arts organization, we strongly believe in the power and potential of bodies gathering in space, but at the present moment, we choose to trust the experts and activists who are advocating for social distancing. We are excited to experiment with new methodologies and see what fruitful forms of creativity might arise from this shift. Please stay tuned to our website, Instagram and Facebook channels @FD13residency, for more information.

Wishing everyone good physical and mental health, 

The team at FD13 residency for the arts

FD13 residency for the arts is pleased to welcome artist Archie Barry (B. 1990, based Melbourne, Australia) to Minneapolis and St Paul throughout the month of March. Archie Barry’s performance, music, and video works de-structure language by finding opportunities for words to be reinterpreted as somatic experience. Their interest in the human voice as a medium of belonging and becoming stems from formative experiences of singing in choirs, chanting prayers, and, as a teenager, performing in punk and pop bands. A logic underscoring their work is the stance that personhood is an unstable and complex sociological phenomenon, often reduced by language. This position is informed by their lived experiences as a transgender person and a second generation child of a small spiritual community. Please join us for a number of events throughout the month, including an artist talk, vocal workshop, and culminating performance.

Archie Barry in conversation with FD13 director Sara Cluggish
Thursday, March 12, 12 – 1 pm
Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Lecture Hall 140
2501 Stevens Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55404
All are welcome. No booking required.

Attendees will gain insight into Archie Barry’s artistic practice and well as a discussion of time-based curation, and the benefits of residency work and travel to the creative process. This is talk is presented as part of MCAD’s Liberal Arts series ‘Works in Progress’.

Somatic Singing Workshop
Saturday, March 14, 1 pm – 3 pm
Yeah Maybe, Studio
708 Vandalia St, 4th Floor, St Paul, MN 55114
Free event, RSVP here

Led by Barry, this session is for those who are interested in exploring the connections between voice, movement, and space. No prior formal singing training or other experience is necessary. Together, we will explore a sequence of vocal exercises gathered from various fields, including dramaturgical warm-up exercises, therapeutic traditions, guided meditation and sound paired with improvised movement, all of which are strategies Barry regularly employs when devising new work.

Live Performance
Saturday, March 28, 7 pm (doors open at 6 pm)
Yeah Maybe, House
2528 E 22nd St, Minneapolis, MN 55406
Free event, RSVP here

This new performance, enacted by Barry with the accompaniment of a live musician, will be developed over to course of Barry’s month-long residency. We invite you to save the date and await a reminder email with more details, as well as check the FD13 website as the project evolves.

About the artist: Archie Barry was born in 1990 in Sydney and is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in Melbourne, Australia. Their work has been included in exhibitions and performance programs at The National Gallery of Victoria (Sydney, AUS), The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne, AUS), The Museum of Contemporary Art(Sydney, AUS), Contemporary Art Tasmania, Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, Artspace Sydney, The State Library of Victoria and Buxton Contemporary (Melbourne, AUS). Barry completed a Masters of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts in 2017 where they are currently employed as a sessional lecturer.

Accessibility: For enquiries regarding event accessibility, please do not hesitate to contact info@fd13residency.com

Artist Talk: Alex Baczyński-Jenkins
Thursday, November 21, 6 – 7pm
Minnesota Orchestra, Green Room
1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Public parking available at the corner of S 11^th St and S Marquette Ave

Reserve your free spot here.

“I’ve said this before: who you want to work with is who you want to share your life with. My works often become both an occasion and a means for relations to develop. The politics of friendship, desire, love and community are as embedded within the choreographies themselves as they are in the process that brings them into being”

– Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Mousse Magazine, Issue 68, Summer 2019

FD13 residency for the arts welcomes Warsaw and London-based artist, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins (b. 1987). Baczyński-Jenkins’ choreographic work employs dance, micro-gesture and poetic language in order to celebrate and make public a queer politics of desire. This visit marks the first of two trips Baczyński-Jenkins will make to Minneapolis, returning again in September 2020 to present a newly commission performance in response to the architecture and history of Peavey Plaza, the artists’ first U.S. commission.

On November 21, join Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, and FD13 Director, Sara Cluggish, for a discussion of choreography as a relational and political practice. In addition to speaking about previous and forthcoming works, Baczyński-Jenkins will discuss KEM, an LGBTQ+ collective co-founded by the artist and his close collaborators in Warsaw. This talk will consider the urgency of such collective mobilization in Poland, the artists’ home country, where in recent years the state government and church have posed threats to LGBTQ+ and feminist and freedom of expression.

Alex Baczyński-Jenkins’ residency events are made possible with generous support from lead project donors Ellen and Jan Breyer.

Movement Workshop: Untitled (Holding Horizon)
Monday, November 18^th, 6pm – 9pm
The Cowles Center for Dance, Tek Box
528 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55403

This event is free, but capacity is limited. Reserve your free spot here. 

FD13 residency for the arts welcomes Warsaw and London-based artist Alex Baczyński-Jenkins (b. 1987). Baczyński-Jenkins’ choreographic work employs dance, micro-gesture and poetic language in order to celebrate and make public a queer politics of desire. This visit marks the first of two trips Baczyński-Jenkins will make to Minneapolis, returning again in September 2020 to present a newly commission performance in response to the architecture and history of Peavey Plaza, the artists’ first U.S. commission.

In this workshop, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins will lead participants through a series of movements and exercises set to a live mixed soundtrack. As a group, we will revisit Baczyński-Jenkins 2018 work Untitled (Holding Horizon), which draws on the box step, a basic movement used in several social dances, to explore collectivity, subjectivity, queer embodiment and intimacy.

No formal dance or movement experience is required for this workshop. All abilities are welcome. For questions regarding access, please contact info@fd13residency.org.

Alex Baczyński-Jenkins’ residency events are made possible with generous support from lead project donors Ellen and Jan Breyer.

FD13 Season Launch and 5th Birthday Celebration
With musical performance by Miriam Karraker & Cole Pulice
Saturday, September 14, 1-2 pm

Peavey Plaza
1100 S Marquette Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Public parking at the corner of S 11^th St and S Marquette Ave
In the event of heavy rain, we will meet in the Minnesota Orchestra Hall ‘Green Room’

FD13 is proud to announce we are in our fifth year of programming! Help us celebrate this Saturday at 1pm at Peavey Plaza, and learn more about the exciting upcoming residency projects. Over the next year, we will present new live commissions including movement-based workshops, choreographic performances and experimental theater work by Alex Baczynski-Jenkins (b. 1987; based Warsaw and London), Keyon Gaskin (based Portland), Archie Barry (b. 1990; based Melbourne) and Asher Hartman (based Los Angeles).

In response to the unique space of Peavey Plaza, this event will also include a 15-minute musical performance of Mote (2019) by the Minneapolis-based chamber drone duo Miriam Karraker (viola) and Cole Pulice (alto sax). Mote is an ongoing situational sound practice which has previously been performed at Lake Hiawatha and Minnehaha Creek, among other sites.

 

Architecture in Motion
Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 2pm
The former Fuller Manufacturing Building
3300 5th St NE
Minneapolis, MN 55418, USA
All FD13 events are free to attend. Reserve your free space here.

The structure, texture, and materials of clothing have continuously informed Diane Simpson’s sculptural practice over five decades. In her works, Simpson combines clothing designs with forms that reference architecture, exploring the sociological roles and styles of the clothes we wear and the buildings that surround us.

FD13 residency for the arts presents Architecture in Motion, a new performance by Chicago-based sculptor Diane Simpson developed in collaboration with Minneapolis-based choreographer Chris Schlichting. Working over an extended research period of nine months, Simpson has designed her first costumes to be animated by dancers in her very first performance work.

Her costumes take inspiration from the former Women’s City Club of St Paul, designed by architect Magnus Jemne in 1931 in the Art Deco style. This building has an impressive social and performative history, growing out of a post-World War I movement which emphasized women’s independence and new social roles as workers, volunteers, and persons more fully involved in society. The Women’s City Club were avid supporters of the arts bringing opera and theater companies to the Twin Cities, and notably Gertrude Stein, who spoke there in 1934.

Taking inspiration from the building’s history, Simpson’s costumes reference key elegant details of the building – the slick, silvery sheen of the front door; the mobius curve of a brass banister; the geometric grid of a lighting fixture in the former Woman’s Lecture Hall – translating these into sculptural costumes which simultaneously amplify and restrict the body.

In advance of the performance, Simpson and Schlichting will work intimately together to set the costumes in motion exploring what possibilities their pleasurable, yet rigid, architectural forms make possible. In their respective practices, both artists share a propensity for researching and combining disparate sources into new forms, an economy of decision making, and an affinity for structural investigation, making them ideal partners.

Essay:

Read Performance Ornament and Crime, an essay responding to the project by Ross Elfline, an art historian whose research focuses on radical architecture practices in Europe, America, and Japan that exist at the intersection of design and art. He teaches at Carleton College, Minnesota.

Supporters:

Supported by Nor Hall and Roger Hale, and Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago. Special thanks to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago for their generous support, via the Foundation’s Research and Development Grants to Individuals funding strand.

Diane Simpson’s work can also be seen in the coming weeks and months as part of the 2019 Whitney Biennial in NYC.

FD13 residency for the arts welcomes Asher Hartman, an interdisciplinary artist, writer, director and intuitive practitioner whose work at the junction of visual art and theater centers on the exploration of the self in relation to Western histories and ideologies.

Artist Talk with Asher Hartman
Purple Iridescent Bone: Gawdafful National Theater and the Bitter Art of Psychic Theater
Friday, March 15, 2019 at 7pm
The White Page, 3400 Cedar Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55407

Asher Hartman is the Director of the Gawdafful National Theater, a Los Angeles based art and theater company which he describes as a loose cabal of highly trained and strongly gifted actor-artists-insects committed to making complex, poetic, crass and finely crafted theater. Drawing on his practice as an intuitive, Asher Hartman will open the talk with a non-acting theatrical exercise to strip the body to its imaginary skeletal form.

To learn more about Asher’s work read Asher Hartman’s Ritualistic Marathons, published in 2015 by Minneapolis’ own arts writer Alicia Eler or view excerpts from “Purple Electric Play!” originally presented Machine Project, LA in 2014.

Upcoming works include “The Dope Elf” at Yale Union, Portland, Oregon and The Lab, San Francisco.  Recent works include “Lost Privilege Company” in “Archive Fever: Lost Words, Buried Voices” as part of USC’s Visions and Voices series and Pieter Performance Space (2018); “Sorry, Atlantis, Or Eden’s Achin’ Organ Seeks Revenge” at Machine Project, LA (2017); “Mr. Akita,” Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, (2017) and at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, 2017); the Tang Museum, New York (2015) “The Silver, the Black, the Wicked Dance,” LACMA (2016). Other recent works include “Purple Electric Play!” at Machine Project, (2014); “Glass Bang” at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture’s RM Schindler’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House as part of Machine Project’s engagement in the Getty Museum’s “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.” (2013) and with Cannonball in Miami as “The Florida Room” and Southern Exposure in San Francisco (2013); “Annie Okay” at the Hammer Museum (2010), among other performances.

Image credit: Purple Electric Play! Machine Project, 2014. Written and directed by Asher Hartman. Left to right: Jasmine Orpilla and Philip Littell. Puppets by Patrick Ballard. Puppeteers Drew Thataussie and Chelsea Rector. Photo: Marianne Williams.