Issue Project Room and Harvestworks are pleased to stream a commissioned residency project from multidisciplinary artist Eva Davidova, featuring Naicha Diaby as Cassandra > Low Witness Objects, Mx. Oops as Prometheus Herding PigGooses, and Heather Morowitz as Narcissus and Drowning Animals. Sound by Matthew D. Gantt. XR Interactions and development by Danielle McPhatter.
Date: December 8, 2020
Time: 8 pm
Streaming on Issue Project Room and Vimeo
Global Mode > is an interactive, experimental online performance on ecological disaster, inertia, and manipulation of information. Occupying three reimagined mythological stories: Cassandra > Low Witness Objects; Prometheus Herding PigGooses; and Narcissus and Drowning Animals, the virtual space is presented as a playground, in which to find agency in uncertainty, reconfigure relationships with “others,” and invent new actions. Amidst immense immersive flowers, falling heads, cement landscapes and dirty waters, the audience is invited to collectively affect the performance, and to explore open-ended, fluid roles crisscrossing between themselves, virtual 3D Animals, and the performers from the past.
The non-linear world of Global Mode > has no ultimate “goals,” nor wins or losses. Rather, it compels an almost unconscious, immediate set of intentions and actions: a response and activity in the midst of blindness to evident horrors, predictable disasters, and baffling cruelty. Involving viewers through unscripted movements and intuitive gestures, the performance explores the instability of our actions, their unintentional outcomes, and the continuous/constant mediation these actions are subject to.
Playing with a paradox, Davidova imagines us as being built by our descendants (human or cyborg), and poses a question: “If we are the games our children will program one day, can we influence the code they are writing?”
Featuring: Naicha Diaby (as Cassandra > Low Witness Objects); Mx. Oops (as Prometheus Herding PigGooses); and Heather Morowitz (as Narcissus and Drowning Animals)
Original sound: Matthew D. Gantt
Interactions design & XR development: Danielle McPhatter
Second Camera: Daniela Kostova
Motion Capture: NYU Tandon School of Engineering Marcel Oliver-Rose Truxillo.
Photo-scanning: Lenscloud
The artist would like to thank the Harvestworks & ISSUE teams, the engagement and support of the NOKIA Bell Labs staff —including Howard Huang—and to the NYU Tandon School of Engineering staff—including R.Luke DuBois, Todd Bryant, and Kat Sullivan—to Tin Nguyen, Ivin Ballen, and all the people who have made this project possible.
This is the fifth year in an ongoing program collaboration between ISSUE Project Room and Harvestworks, two organizations that are committed to supporting the creation and presentation of experimental performance practices while sharing resources.
Following from Harvestworks Technology Immersion Program, Eva Davidova’s Global Mode > has been supported by ISSUE via an ongoing residency, in collaboration with the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Integrated Digital Media Motion Capture Lab plus mentorship with NOKIA Bells Labs engineers. ISSUE’s residence program provides New York-based emerging artists with support, offering artists access to facilities, equipment, documentation, pr/marketing, curatorial and technical expertise to develop and present significant new works, reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience.
BIOS
Eva Davidova is an interdisciplinary artist with focus on new media(s), information, and their socio-political implications. Challenging a singular narrative, she combines influences from ancient mythology and practices with the current technological moment and the impending ecological catastrophe. Davidova has exhibited at the Bronx Museum, the Everson Museum, the Albright Knox Museum, MACBA Barcelona, CAAC Sevilla, Instituto Cervantes and La Regenta among others. Recent exhibitions include “The Sound of One Computer Thinking” at the IMPAKT Festival (Netherlands), “Intentions: Who Owns Our Emotions” at EdgeCut series at the NEW INC (New York) and “Global Mode > Narcissus and Drowning Animals” at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. She was a fellow of Harvestworks’ Technology Immersion Program for Artists (TIP), and is currently a member of NEW INC, the New Museum’s Incubator program.
Naicha Diaby is a dancer with influences from traditional West African and modern hip hop dance style.
Heather Mo’Witz is a New York-based performance artist /dancer/drag king/poet/prankster/parody princess.
Matthew D. Gantt is an artist, composer and educator whose practice focuses on sound in virtual spaces, generative systems facilitated by idiosyncratic technology, and production presets as sonic readymades.
Danielle McPhatter is an interdisciplinary artist and programmer interested in exploring new forms of interactions and interconnectedness between media, machines, and mankind.
Mx. Oops is a multimedia performance artist and professor at Lehman College, focusing on ecstatic disobedience in both live and meditated spaces between us. www.mxoops.com
Interviews: