PROCESS/YES/PROCESS

A performance series based on the creative process hosted by Edwin Torres. Poets, musicians and other artists. Feb 15, March 15, April 19, May 17, June 21. 7:00 PM. Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, NYC. Free. Tag: #pypbowery

PYP_05/June 21: alchemic-ochlea/process

Part five of this five-part series presents a process / to enter poetry as alchemy is to see what happens beyond elemental listening / how to allow language its space for the listener's travel / where motion is embodied by sensory openings / with movement as a catalyst for sound / ear canals can embody the passage of time / once offered a voice / how incredibly inviting the structure of the human cochlea / to experience vibrational delicacy with string-language-thought-makers / a group improvisation will close each evening.

Clarinda Mac Low was brought up in the avant-garde arts scene that flourished in NYC during the 1960s and ‘70s. She began performing with her father Jackson Mac Low and with Meredith Monk at the age of 5. Mac Low started out working in dance and molecular biology in the late 1980s and now works in performance and installation, creating participatory installations and events that investigate social constructs and corporeal experience. Mac Low is co-founder and Executive Director of Culture Push, an experimental organization that links artistic practice and civic engagement. Her other works have appeared at the EFA Project Space, P.S. 122, the Kitchen, and many other places and spaces around New York City and elsewhere in the world. She received a BAX Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, and a Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. Ongoing projects include: “Incredible Witness,” a series of game-based participatory events looking at the sensory origins of empathy; "TRYST," performance interventions in urban space, and “Salvage/Salvation,” a collaborative installation and performance project that explores the philosophical, emotional and material implications of re-use, discard, decay and abundance. clarindamaclow.com

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a writer and sound artist, and the author of TwERK (Belladonna) and most recently Village (Coffee House Press). She has performed at many venues and festivals worldwide, including; the 2015 Venice Biennale, International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Ocean Space, Venice; International Poetry Festival of Romania, Poesiefestival Berlin, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received grants and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), among others.

Sita Chay is a violinist, composer, and a music director who won a 2017 Latin Grammy Award for Best Mariachi Album, as violinist of the Flor de Toloache. She is an awardee of NYFA Women's Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund, LMCC Grant, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and was invited for residencies at the Stone, Joe’s Pub, and the Cell Theatre for various projects she is envisioning. Ms. Chay is the director and a founder of the Korean Shaman Music Ritual, SaaWee, which was received by international critics as a “delicate powerhouse”. SaaWee's Return of Songbirds debuted at the Lincoln Center as part of #Retartstage project in 2021 and was invited to Ars Electronica Festival 2021. SaaWee won the California Music Video Awards 2022 in Best World Music category. Her most recent project “Multidimensionally Human” is an interdisciplinary series collaborating with Dr. Nikolai Chapochnikov, neuroscientist and IFS practitioner. Through this project, she is exploring psychotherapy modality through narrative, dance, visual art, and music. sitachay.com

Yuqing Liang created Encrypted Dialogue, the detector she wears. She is a multi-media designer and creative technologist working at the intersection of multi-sensorial experiences and tangible interaction.

Dariusz Szymon Nowak was created recently as a {multi-, inter-}  × {disciplinary, media} artificer.

Dan Taeyoung made the waves detectable.

This performance is the first experiment as the very beginning of larger project about how we live with new technologies and how that affects us existentially.

PYP_04/May 17: ekphrastic-glitch/process

Part four of this five-part series presents a process / to enter poetry as the ekphrasis everyday is to see what happens beyond the glitch we capture / subtracture defines subhuman under the sounds of a lived life / as the ekphrasis of a lived world enters language / can the attraction of many centers announce process as a glitched embodiment / as voice stringed into gesture / sound into mark-making / another realm towards a reactive now / pulse-making as reactor-core / a group improvisation will close each evening.

Elizabeth Castagna's paintings and drawings are a direct expression of her relationship to the body and the stories it carries. Physicality, movement, time and water are the base elements for this process. She's created live movement drawing performances and installations at outdoor settings and abandoned sites, incorporating chalk, charcoal, black sand, leaves, dirt, grass, wind, ocean, distant voices, sunlight, eyes mostly closed, and many disconnected sensations. Her movement videos capture her mark-making as a vital layer within her painting process. elizabethcastagnafineart.com

Thessia Machado is a visual/sound artist, instrument builder and performer whose work plumbs the materiality of sound and its effect on our shifting perceptions of space. She creates circumstances in which to mine the matter of her pieces for their innate physical properties and the sonic and visual relationships that can arise from their interactions. Electronics are usually implicated. Machado’s sculptures, drawings and sound installations have been exhibited in the US and Europe. She was awarded the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and the Artists Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among other grants and residencies. tessiamachado.com

Brandon Lopez is a New York-based composer and contrabassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. From the New York Philharmonic's David Geffen Hall to the DIY basements of Brooklyn, Lopez has worked besides many luminaries of jazz, classical, poetry, and experimental music including Fred Moten, John Zorn, Okkyung Lee, Ingrid Laubrock, Tony Malaby, Tyshawn Sorey, Bill Nace, Tom Rainey, Sun Ra Arkestra, Mette Rasmussen, and many others. Recordings include; Moten (Reading Group LLC), No Es La Playa (Intakt Records) and quoniam facta sum vilis (Astral Spirits) among many many others. Lopez has been Artist-In-Residence at ISSUE Project Room, and at Roulette, working with his trio, Gerald Cleaver and Steve Baczkowski, as well as Cecilia Lopez and Greg Kelley. brandonlopez.nyc   

Samita Sinha is an artist and composer who creates multidisciplinary performance works that investigate origins of voice. Sinha’s works have been commissioned by Asia Society, Performance Space 122, Danspace, Rubin Museum, Gibney Dance, among others, and presented by The Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, REDCAT, PICA, National Sawdust and others. Awards include; National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts and the Ucross/Alpert Residency Prize. Collaborations include; Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Ralph Lemon, Sunil Bald, Sekou Sundiata, Fiona Templeton, Robert Ashley, Daria Fain & Robert Kocik, and Aki Onda. In addition to private lessons and workshops, she has in recent years taught at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, Movement Research, Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City, and New York Asian Women's Center. samitasinha.com

PYP_03/April 19: cyber-fungible /process

Part three of this five-part series presents a process / as Artificial Intelligence permeates social consciousness, the notion of realism encounters language to enter poetry / as cyber intelligence reworks the everyday fungible of artifice, how does language attract difference / can the attraction of disparate voices, quantumly conducted towards holistic imperfection, initiate the fractured body as a new living form / if digital culture is based on exact duplication, is there a dynamics to cyber-culture that would be as alive as human improvisation / this is process as social imperfection: to conduct four poets at once, while a video is playing about the cyberfem index, while a computer-based musician reacts / all as one grand we / are / in / beyond territory, where we allow beyond its form.

Chuck Bettis was raised in the fertile harDCore soil, nourished within Baltimore's enigmatic avant garde gatherings, and currently blossoming in New York's experimental music realms. His unique blend of electronics and throat has led him into various collaborations with great musicians from around the globe. Current working groups are; Snake Union with Dave Grant, Epic Proportions with Brandon Seabrook/Marika Hughes/Eivind Opsvik/Henry Fraser/Nava Dunkelman/Sam Ospovat/John McCowen and Chatter Blip with Dafna Naphtali, as well as improvising, recording, or composing with an array of musicians from around the world. chuckbettis.com

Bob Holman has played a central role in the spoken word, slam and digital poetry movements of the last several decades, as the original Slam Master and a director at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, creator of the world's first spoken-word poetry record label, Mouth Almighty/Mercury, and founder of the Bowery Poetry Club. He has two albums on Spotify—“In With The Out Crowd” produced by Hal Willner, and “The Awesome Whatever,” live in-studio with Vito Ricci. bobholman.com. 

Nicole L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her work centers on the exploration of sounds and vibrations as a construction material to delve into questions of agency, identity, collectivity, and vibrational imagination. It usually materializes as sound installations, vibrational/sonic sculptures,  performances, and compositions. She holds a Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT (2022). Her work has been recently shown in Transmediale, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Ural Industrial Biennial, Bienal de Artes Mediales Santiago, Venice Architecture Biennale, Ars Electronica. nicolelhuillier.com

Sheila Maldonado is the author of the poetry collections that's what you get (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2021) and one-bedroom solo (Fly by Night Press / A Gathering of the Tribes, 2011). She is a CantoMundo fellow and a Creative Capital awardee as part of desveladas, a visual writing collective. She teaches English for the City University of New York. She was born in Brooklyn, raised in Coney Island, the daughter of Armando and Vilma of El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras. She lives in El Alto Manhattan.

Urayoán Noel is a 2022 Letras Boricuas fellow and the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Transversal (Arizona, 2021), a New York Public Library Book of the Year. Other work includes the LASA award-winning study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (Iowa, 2014), the durational performance Wokitokiteki, and, as translator, adjacent islands by Nicole Cecilia Delgado (UDP, 2022). Noel lives in the Bronx and teaches at NYU. urayoannoel.com

Kristin Prevallet is a poet, scholar, somatic practitioner, and performer whose research and poetic work incorporates conceptual writing and trance. Everywhere Here and in Brooklyn, I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time, and Trance Poetics are among her poetic books. She teaches at the New School and hosts workshops and events through the Belladonna* Collaborative. (trancepoetics.com).

Mindy Seu is a designer and technologist based in New York City. Her expanded practice involves archival projects, techno-critical writing, performative lectures, design commissions, sharing—typically in the form of lists and spreadsheets—and close collaborations. Her latest writing surveys historical precursors of the metaverse and reveals the materiality of the internet, "Cyberfeminism Index" (Inventory Press) gathers three decades of online activism and net art, was commissioned by Rhizome and presented at the New Museum in its online form. She has lectured internationally at cultural institutions and mainstream platforms, and has been a resident at MacDowell, Sitterwerk Foundation, Pioneer Works, and Internet Archive. She is currently Assistant Professor at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts and Critic at Yale School of Art. mindyseu.com

PYP_02/Mar 15: spatial-re-nymics/process

Part two of this five-part series presents a process / as torque into one's body, into a room's body / as spatial : the capture of lost dynamics, new revelations out of layered linearity / as dynamic-re-nymics : to create or adapt, existing text inking, within breathly, out of largely, as sound's movement re'movement of sensory's etcetera. A group ensemble improvisation will close each evening.

Jessica Laser is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Drill (Futurepoem Books, 2022), winner of the Other Futures Award, and Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides (Letter Machine Editions, 2019). Her poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Yale Review, The Paris Review and The Drift. She lives in the Bay Area, where she is a PhD candidate in English at UC Berkeley, writing a dissertation on Robert Frost. 

Phoebe Osborne is an artist and choreographer living and working on the unceded lands of the Lenape people. In recent years Osborne has generated works that follow the currents of trans life and the care it generates. Osborne holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and an MA in Choreography from DAS Graduate School at the Amsterdam University of Arts. Their works have been presented at venues including Transmediale Berlin, Bar Laika by e-flux, Southern Exposure, Ortega y Gasset, and AIR Gallery, and have been commissioned by SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California, and Lenfest Center for the Arts, among others. phoebeosborne.com

Edwin Torres is a cultural nomad from the streets of the Lower E. His books of poetry include; Xoeteox: the collected word object (Wave Books), Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press), and his current book, Quanundrum: i will be your many angled thing (Roof Books), which received a 2022 American Book Award. He is the editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press) and has received fellowships from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA, and The DIA Foundation, among others. Anthologies include; New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archives, The Difference Is Spreading: 50 Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, and Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement. He has read at many festivals, venues, museums and beaches worldwide, and is grateful for the many multi-disciplinary collaborators that have contributed to the development of his bodylingo poetics. He's taught his workshop, "Brainlingo: Writing The Voice Of The Body," at many universities and will be at Naropa University this summer.

Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, producer, and scholar, exploring how social bodies can live and interact with one another in more musical ways. He has created a diverse body of works including sound installations, television operas, film and video works, exhibitions, amateur choral works, radio and film scores, and solo performances as a cellist, electronic musician and storyteller. His installation works, films and music productions have been exhibited at the ICA London, Stonescape, Vilma Gold, The Kitchen, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, the Serpentine London, White Columns, the Swiss Institute, Kunstverein Amsterdam, The Rotterdam Film Festival, The Toronto Film Festival, CAC Bretigny, the Bonnefantenmuseum, the St. Louis Museum, and the Whitney Museum. Waterman performs with New Muse 4tet and WeFree Strings, and is the Archivist at The Kitchen. alexwaterman.com

PYP_01/Feb 15: vibration-re-tracing/process

Part one of this five-part series presents a process / to re-live the unfolding edge between performer and audience / as vibration : a state of being, a periodic motion of particles, an elastic body, medium, quality, person, place, thought, or thing / as re-tracing : to go back over the same route just taken, to go over, again, with attention to the going over again. A group ensemble improvisation will close each evening.

K.J. Holmes, a Brooklyn-based dance artist/actor/singer/writer, travels nationally and internationally teaching/performing/creating and exploring improvisation as process and performance since 1981. Collaborators include extensively poets Julie Carr and Edwin Torres, dancers Simone Forti, Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson and Image Lab, Steve Paxson; musicians Roy Cambell, Jr., Jeremy Carlstedt; performer in the work of artist Matthew Barney, Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Xavier Le Roy, among many others. K.J. currently teaches at NYU/Experimental Theater Wing, Movement Research and remotely with the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought. In process: 900 Bees are Humming, a multi-disciplinary work exploring scale of human/nature. kjholmes.info

Joanna Mattrey is a violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Recent and upcoming releases include, 'Soulcaster' (Notice Recordings, 2023) 'Strider' (Dear Life Recs, 2023) 'Oracle' (Relative Pitch Records, 2022) ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs 2021). Mattrey is a current Roulette Resident, and past residencies include ISSUE Project Room, Banff's Creative Gesture for Composers and Choreographers, 14th Street Y, Wild Project, and MoMa PS1's ALLGOLD. Mattrey has performed with icons Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Billy Martin, Elliott Sharpe, Miya Masaoka, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. www.joannamattrey.com

No Land's work continues the lineage of downtown NYC artist counterculture, honoring an intuitive vow towards creation. She has been guided by spirit encounters with downtown artists, poets, elders and activists, including Steve Cannon's Tribes Gallery, and Anne Waldman's outrider poet worlds. She has performed at The Whitney Museum, the William Burroughs Bunker, Jazzfest Berlin, Crossing Borders Festival (the Hague), Enclave Festival (Mexico City), LaMaMa Galleria (NYC), among others. Musician collaborators include: Luke Stewart, Bentley Anderson, Oliver Ray, Daniel Carter. Her photojournalistic work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Disonare, The Village Voice, and publications by Bill Moyers and Levy Gorvy Gallery. Her forthcoming book publications include: The Velvet Wire with Anne Waldman & Putting On Minds, a book of poems and artworks. www.maepoe.com 

Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, artist, and writer. His book, Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence, is forthcoming from Fordham University Press (April 2023). Recent projects include Slow Dances at The Kitchen Video Viewing Room (2020) and Montez Press Radio (2022), Mutual Aid Among Animals at the Park Avenue Armory (2022), Song in an Expanding Field at The Poetry Project (2022), and Choral Marx at NYU Skirball (2018). He holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University and has taught at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, and New York University. ethanphilbrick.com

This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional support from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.