Djassi DaCosta Johnson
Still image from dance & fashion film: "The Thought of You", NYU Student Film 2017, Co-Director, Choreographer, Costume designer: djassi daCosta johnson, Director, Sarra A. Alshehhi, Cinematographer: Kristen Kouke, Dancers: Matteo Manoel Vergara, Jaqueline Calle Hernandez,
Djassi DaCosta Johnson is a native New Yorker, dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, photographer, writer, designer and anthropologist. Djassi's background as a dancer, physically and “ethnographically” is what forms her choreographic vocabulary... from breakdancing and house dancing, to Capoeira, African, tap, jazz, and, eventually Ballet, and modern dance training in Graham, Horton, Simonson and Taylor. The pedestrian and human qualities that social and street dance elicit when fused with theatrical dance is apparent in her storytelling whether on stage or screen. Her philosophy that all movement is performative is rooted in the improvisational skills acquired through the social culture as a black woman growing up in New York -- having to switch physical and verbal “code” from one neighborhood to the next. A product of dance scholarship programs across the city; (Ballet, Hispanico, Harlem School of The Arts & Clark Center), Djassi received her BA in Anthropology and English from Barnard College, Columbia University, while on scholarship at Alvin Ailey. Djassi has performed and toured with, Dance Brazil, Earl Mosley, Hernando Cortez, Urban Bush Women, and was a featured soloist with MOMIX for 8 years, among others. After touring for 12 years, working independently and living abroad in Brazil and then Italy (on film and television, AMICI, FIORELLO, I RACOMANDATTI) for 7 years, Djassi returned to NYC to work in front of the lens as an actor and dancer (The Get Down, The Knick, “THE INTERN” and “BOLDEN!” (2018), while independently experimenting with her choreography from behind the lens. Her choreography has been showcased in several Essence Fashion shows, for Nike fashion and trade shows, in fashion films and in her own film work. She has choreographed for film and and television in Italy (I Racomandatti, “CREW 2 CREW”, Lionsgate) and began developing a series of solos which she performed throughout Italy. As a dancer and performance artist, Djassi continues to expand the reach and perception of dance as a creative tool that extends beyond the confines of the stage or the theater whether in collaborations with artists, musicians and in her own solo performance pieces. She collaborates internationally visual artists, including Eddie Peak’s PERFORMA 13, Brendan Fernandes’ DISGUISE for the Brooklyn Museum, and Lia Chavez's LIGHT BODY at Isabella Rossellini’s farm, as well as jazz musicians (Vision Fest, Arts for Art, Shapeshifter Lounge), and in 2017 was the Creative Director/ Choreographer for Museum of Sex’s VR exhibit featuring DIPLO. Djassi has designed costumes since her first days touring and founded her line, dja. in 2002 and continues to incorporate fashion into her performances and films. She has collaborated on several fashion dance films including “Revelation” by director Kaliyahh Warren withdesignerr Anna Kathleen, and her own film, “The Thought of You”, co-directed by Sarra Alshehhi, with dja. costume design. Djassi is part-owner of the boutique Radical Women based in Brooklyn where she currently sells Canvas and leather bags, earrings and accessories from her Zen Elegance line, dja.1974. Djassi is a published writer, and, currently the dance writer for Copenhagen based lifestyle & fashion magazine, KINFOLK for which she has written a historical profile on Dance Theater of Harlem, and published pieces on ballerina Michaela dePrince, and visual/ performance artist Brendan Fernandes. Djassi will complete her MFA in Dance & New Media/ Technology from NYU Tisch in 2018 as a Dean’s Fellow. For her graduate thesis work, Djassi is the first graduate in her department to travel abroad for thesis research work. In January, 2018 Djassi traveled to Cuba to profile several dancers from the company and will present a photo exhibit, a mini-documentary and a dance film in conjunction with her thesis. She is currently working on several dance films and mini-documentaries in order to extend the reach of dance as transformative social art and a cultural agent for change.
Art Seed at Marble House Project
Lyle Kash
Lyle Kash_gloves off // T4T_HDVideoStill_2017
Lyle lives with his little red dog in Los Angeles. He is an MFA Film/Video student at the California Institute of the Arts. He is the writer/director of X: Death & Bowling in Los Angeles, a narrative feature with an almost entirely trans cast, which enters production in September 2018. In addition to his filmmaking work, he is a cocktail wizard, long-distance runner, avid reader, and passionate friend.
Donna Kaz
Cover of "UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour"
Donna Kaz is a multi-genre writer and the author of “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour.” Her plays and musicals have been produced around the world at Harlem Stage, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Trinity College/Dublin, The Spit Lit Festival/London, International Women’s Arts Festival/UK, Women Playwrights International Conference/Sweden, City of Women Festival/Slovenia, Kultury w Poznaniu/Poland, Lincoln Center and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has received the Venus Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award and as a member of the Guerrilla Girls, the Yoko Ono Courage Award for the Arts and the Skowhegan Medal. In 2017 “UN/MASKED,” was named best nonfiction prose book of the year by the Devils Kitchen Literary Festival. donnakaz.com
Sung Kim
Chef Sung is a New Yorker from Seoul, South Korea, that cooks globally influenced comfort food. She has been re-inventing classic dishes inspired by the city, and her travels. As a self-claimed “retired visual artist”, she fell into painting, but cooking chose her. She thinks cooking is the only form of craft that satisfies all of our senses, providing physical and emotional experience. Graduate of The French Culinary Institute (now International Culinary Center), she’s spent years training at some of the most acclaimed restaurant kitchens in NYC, including Michelin starred Gilt, and The Spotted Pig, Danny Meyer’s trattoria Maialino, and a RAW authority Pure Food and Wine. Her philosophy on cooking reflects these trainings. Since 2012, Chef Sung and her team have been building Food by Sung LLC, a chef driven private dining and catering company, focusing on hospitality, professionalism, and craftsmanship. Enjoyed by thousands, some of the happy clients and guests include Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, General Colin Powell, George Stephanopoulos, Wes Anderson, and Bill Murray.
http://www.foodbysung.com
Dana Klitzberg
Rigatoni alla Norma: a classic Sicilian pasta dish
Dana Klitzberg has been educated in Italian cuisine over the course of 28 years spent visiting and living in Italy -- as a student, traveler, resident, and professional chef. She is, to date, the first (and possibly remains the only) female American chef ever to serve as Executive Chef of a restaurant in Italy...twice. Her depth of knowledge and understanding of cooking technique, Italian and Mediterranean cuisine and its flavors and history, and restaurants and the service industry in general, have been honed over the course of countless hours spent in professional restaurant kitchens, catering, serving clients as a private chef, teaching, traveling, writing, reading and studying food in all its forms. Chef Dana loves her work and views it as a pleasure, from which both she and her clients reap delicious rewards. Ms. Klitzberg's passion for great food was ignited at a young age, as her sweet tooth drew her to her mother's side in the kitchen, preparing desserts for dinner parties and family gatherings. Growing up in central New Jersey, she traveled frequently to her grandparents' farm in Pennsylvania, where she developed a taste for fresh, seasonal ingredients, working alongside her family to harvest fruits and vegetables. Visiting her other set of grandparents in NYC, she'd enjoy the distinct flavors of fried calamari in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and the classic New York deli in which her family would indulge, as well as trips to Chinatown and Little Italy for family dinners. Summer vacations in New England meant pushing out to sea on a boat to catch fresh lobster, or plucking the famously sweet wild blueberries in Maine. Years later, on an eye-opening high school trip to Italy, Dana forged a lasting bond with the cuisine, people, and culture of the Bel Paese. While at the University of Virginia, she spent a semester studying in Florence, where she took a series of private cooking classes that made an indelible impact on her, and would plant the seeds for her future career. Ms. Klitzberg also studied ballet, jazz, and modern dance for 25 years, and performed as a member of the Princeton Ballet II Company -- which taught her about timing and theatricality, things she would find helpful in the "theater" of the restaurant kitchen. Ms. Klitzberg began her cooking career at the renowned Italian restaurant San Domenico NY, and later moved to Rome, Italy. She spent 8 years in the Eternal City, furthering her restaurant career by cooking her way up to executive chef, collaborating with top Italian Michelin-starred toques, and honing her craft and her palate through travel up and down the Italian peninsula, and around the world. Simultaneously, she launched blu aubergine in 2001, to cater events among expats and teach cooking classes to visiting foreigners in Italy. Over the years and the course of her restaurant work, the company grew into a favorite catering company for international clients in film and the arts, as well as diplomatic institutions (foreign embassies, the American Academy of Rome), and governing agencies like the Rome-based Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN. When she wasn’t behind the burners of Roman restaurants, Ms. Klitzberg was writing about them – as restaurant critic for various publications including the Time Out guide series, and 12 years as the sole Dining Editor and general contributor to Fodor’s guides to Rome and Italy. Dana now spends most of her time in New York City, and returns to Italy several times a year for extended stays, during which she continues to conduct classes and tours, cater, write about Italian food, and renew inspiration in her food-obsessed surroundings. Ms. Klitzberg enjoys the juxtaposition of the pulsating metropolis of Manhattan's diverse culinary offerings, with the perennial "pizza-and-pasta" food culture of Italy, where farm-to-table is not a trend... because it's always been a way of life. Ms. Klitzberg grew up in Princeton Jct., New Jersey, and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in English Language and Literature. She received a professional degree in Culinary Arts from New York City's Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump’s) in 1999.
Alyson Mead
French and Vanessa Stewart reading from my play The Honor System at Pasadena Playhouse
Alyson Mead studied at Yale, the Slade School of Art in London, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and with iO West, UCB and Tectonic Theatre Project. Her plays include THE FLORA AND FAUNA (Princess Grace Award finalist, Henley-Rose Award winner, Bridge Initiative New Work winner, WAM Theatre, Magnolia Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Project Playwright semi-finalist), THE PULSE PROJECT (Steppenwolf, Emerald Theatre, Stage Q), THE QUALITY OF MERCY (Urban Stages Emerging Playwright Award finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival semi-finalist, Elephant Theatre, Skylight Theatre), THE HONOR SYSTEM (Cimientos/IATI Theater finalist, Manhattan Theatre Works’ Newborn Festival semi-finalist, Pasadena Playhouse), THE FLOWER (Kenneth Branagh Award for New Dramatic Writing finalist, NEWvember New Plays Festival finalist, Rough Writers New Play Fest), and PUNK ROCK MOM (Venus Theatre), among others. Alyson was awarded residencies and fellowships through Ragdale, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, Can Serrat and the Women’s International Study Center, and her work has been developed and commissioned by Kenyon Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Center San Francisco, 360repco, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the 365 Women a Year Playwriting Project. She’s published by Original Works Publishing, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Ammunition Theatre’s Writing Workshop, the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Playwriting Unit and the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative.
T.D. Mitchell
Mitchell_QueensForAYear_Play_2016_HartfordStage
photo artwork credit: Pictured: Vanessa Butler as Molly in Queens For a Year copyright Hartford Stage Company
T.D. is an award-winning dramatist, screenwriter and speechwriter primarily based in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, but who frequently works internationally. Her playwriting has been described as "provocative", "powerful and harrowing", "thoroughly riveting" and was featured at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Estrogenius Festival, the Wet Ink Festival, and EST's Octoberfest, among others. She was recruited to write for three seasons on the television series drama "Army Wives", and recently wrote a feature article on the history of gender inequity in employment and portrayal in Hollywood for Harpers Bazaar UK.
www.byTDMitchell.com
Francisco Vazquez Murillo
Francisco Vazquez Murillo HISTORIA DEL SENTIMIENTO 2017 Installation, variable measures. 2k video color, no sound. Projection on canvas 530 x 240 cm Exhibition views Kaus Australis. Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Francisco Vazquez Murillo (born 1980 in Rosario, ARG) Holds a degree in Philosophy, from University of Rosario. He lives in Buenos Aires since 2005. Previous residencies include Kaus Australis in Rotterdam, RSDNART in Yucatan, Mexico, Nido Errante in Chaltén, Patagonia. He was part of the 2016th Artist programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and awarded with the FNA - CONTI grant in 2015, in Argentina.
His work includes a wide range of media such as video installations, sculpture, painting and performances in order to create a mental space playing with the presences/absent of human body to somehow explore relations between landscape and nature, distance and representation, word and earth.
Sachi Nagase
Sachi Nagase burdock root with rice, grilled kimchi green onions, roasted black sesame seeds 2017 Sprouted Radish Supper Club at TechArtista
Sachi Nagase is an artist, chef, and pastry cook. She received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and has exhibited in multiple galleris including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Des Lee Gallery, and Front/Space. She received the Marsha Hertzman Blasingame Award in Printmaking (2016), the Ellen Battel Stoeckel Fellowship (2016) and the Caroline Risque Sculpture Prize (2017). She attended the Yale/Norfolk Summer School of Art (2016) and Mildred’s Lane Summer Residency (2017). Sachi’s work is influenced by her culinary practices, which include Sprouted Radish Supper Club, a collaborative dining experience she created with Katie Yun in the fall of 2016. She and Katie created an accessible fine dining experience--$12 multi-course meals that were rooted in their prospective East Asian-American backgrounds and reflected the smells and tastes they had lost from their childhoods. Sachi is currently based in Oakland, CA and works as a line cook and pastry cook at Octavia restaurant in San Francisco. She continues to run her cake business Sachi’s Cakes, and collaborates with Katie Yun to run their burgeoning artist collective, both/&.
sachinagase.com
Laura Nova
LES Citizens Parade, 2018 Premiered at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival on June 22 and June 24, 2018. Literally described as a moving company, the LES Citizens Parade is a celebration in storytelling, dance and music of the migration and settlement experiences of longtime residents of New York’s multilingual Lower East Side neighborhood.
Artist, Athlete, Activator: Long-time Lower East Side resident Laura Nova generates site-specific, action-oriented projects which invite participatory energies of neighbors and strangers alike. She uses cardio, comedy and cooking to create activ/ist audiences who, in turn, reveal and preserve stories of both people and places. Recent commissions have included multi-year, social engagement projects like "Feed Me A Story," (co-produced with Theresa Loong) an interactive video installation and documentary video cookbook of secret family recipes; "Moving Stories," a senior citizen-led, storytelling-walking tour; and The Crescendo Project which used RFID technology to create an automated praise-singing machine for disabled athletes during a road race. In tandem with Dances For A Variable Population, she transformed residents and dancers alike into a moving company for the River to River Festival’s "LES Citizens Parade." Nova's work has been shown at the New Museum, the Museum at Eldridge Street, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the Moving Image, Real Art Ways and many galleries including the Substation Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa and the National Arts Center in Tokyo, Japan. She has received grants from the MAP Fund, National Endowment of the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, PBS/POV and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been published in DNAinfo, New York Magazine, Hyperallergic and WNYC. Her residencies include SPARC (Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide), the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island National Monument, Governors Island, Vermont Studio Center and LMCC Workspace. Nova received a B.F.A. and B.A. from Cornell University and an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently an Associate Professor of Expanded Media in the Creative Art and Technology program at Bloomfield College and the 2016 recipient of the LMCC President’s Award in Visual Art.
Kean O'Brien
Kean O'Brien - Mapping A Genocide 2016
Kean O’Brien is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. His work revolves around ideas of deconstructing and reconstructing masculinity, queer strategies for survival, binary systems of oppression, and the construction of identification. Kean holds an MFA from CalArts, a BFA from SAIC and is currently the Associate Chair of Photography at The New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. He is an organizer with The Los Angeles Tenants Union, which demands truly affordable and safe housing for renters by fighting for universal rent control. He has worked with the coalition BHAAAD (Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement), where he is in solidarity with the community of Boyle Heights in fighting artwashing as a form of gentrification
www.keanobrien.com
Sheryl Oring
Sheryl Oring_Writer's Block_sculptures and works on paper_2018. Work premiered on Berlin's Bebelplabtz in 1999 and has since been shown in Budapest, the Boston Public Library, Bryant Park in New York and, most recently, at the University of Virginia.
Sheryl Oring’s work examines social issues through projects that incorporate old and new media to tell stories, examine public opinion and foster open exchange. Her public art commissions include major works for airports in Tampa and San Diego as well as commissioned performances for the City of Pittsburgh; Bryant Park in New York; the Jewish Museum Berlin; and the Berlin Wall Memorial. Oring’s work has been shown in festivals such as Encuentro in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Art Prospect Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her artist books are in collections including the Library of Congress, Tate Modern and the Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg. Oring, an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is currently planning a retrospective of her work for the Lois and David Stulberg Gallery at Ringling College in Sarasota.
www.sheryloring.org
John Ensor Parker
As Above – So Below is a site-specific, projection-mapped installation on the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage in Brooklyn, NY. Spanning 33,000 square feet the installation was part of the Dumbo Arts Festival in 2014.
John Ensor Parker is a New York City based inter-media artist who creates multi-sensory experiences using light, video, sound and space. Previous work includes projection-mapping the Manhattan Bridge, The New Museum, the Wyly Theatre | AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in NYC.
Amanda Rea
"Faint of Heart," fiction published in One Story issue 237, January 2018
Amanda Rea's stories and essays are published or forthcoming in Harper's, One Story, American Short Fiction, Freeman’s, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Lit Hub, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, New South and elsewhere. Her work has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Peden Prize, and has been listed among distinguished works in Best American Short Stories. She has won fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Institute of Creative Writing in Wisconsin, Jentel Artist Residency, and Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts.
Efraín Rozas
Real time improvising robot/sound sculpture
Efraín Rozas is a New York based Peruvian performer/composer and robotics/software developer specialized in the combination of experimental technologies and Latin American genres. As a researcher he has focused on the experimentalisms of the global south. He holds a PhD in composition and ethnomusicology at New York University, funded by the McCracken fellowship. He has published the book/video documentary “Fusión: a soundtrack for Peru”, and has released several LPS internationally via Names You can Trust, the Ethnomusicology Institute of Peru and the Embassy of Spain. He has performed at the Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Levitation Festival, Crazy Music Festival (Luxembourg) and played with his experimental salsa band “La Mecánica Popular” at Central Park Summerstage Fania Records 50th anniversary in New York. He has attended residencies such as Omi and Marble house, and won the 2018 call for time based installations at Knockdown center and the Harvestworks New Works Commission 2018, and the New York State Council on the Arts/Wavefarm media arts assistance fund. He has worked as a teacher in different institutions including New York University. He was a consultant for the National Institute of Culture of Peru, the Swiss embassy, the ministry of tourism of Peru, and has hosted/produced radio for 10 years, with his show “La Vuelta al día en 80 mundos”. His work has been featured at CNN, BBC, Washington post, Daily News, Wire magazine and NPR Soundcheck. More at www.efrainrozas.com
www.efrainrozas.com
Helen Betya Rubinstein
Helen Betya Rubinstein’s creative essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Okey-Panky, The Paris Review Daily, and Witness, among others, and her opinions in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Forward, The LA Review of Books, and The New York Times. Her writing has been honored in the Best American Nonrequired Reading and Best Women’s Travel Writing series. She was the Provost’s Postgraduate Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa and the R.P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and is now institutionally and geographically untethered.
http://www.helenbetya.com
Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera
AlexisRuiseco-Lombera_Untitled(silueta performance 001) Silver Gelatin Print 2017 30x40in.
B. Guines, Cuba. Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera is a Cuban born-American photographer based in Brooklyn. Their work investigates notions of identity, trauma, and displacement, responding to hyper-masculinity within Cuban culture. Determined by memory, revolution, and family (both created and inherited) their image making is prompted by the intersection between the LGBTQI+ and Cuban community and what is introjected and asserted in and between these seemingly disparate identities. As the actor and director they explore the physicality of performance, in their self-portraiture and portraiture, to examine personal and social narratives of intimacy and sexual identity. Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera received his BFA from Parsons in 2016 and has shown works at Milk Gallery NYC, Kendal Gallery in Miami, the Leslie Lohman Museum(forthcoming), has been featured in VICE, Teeth Magazine, has been awarded the EnFoco Fellowship in 2018, and has been a performer at the Museum of Modern Art.
alexisruiseco.com
Anne Sanow
"The Racers," recent fiction published in The Collagist issue 96, April 2018
