Chris Filippone

Artist Statement

My films immersively explore social issues and themes around the survival economy, marginalized perspectives, and liminal spaces. And I aspire to tell these stories by moving beyond mere observation, giving viewers the opportunity to feel, even for a glimpse, the lived experiences of others on-screen. This practice is a guiding ethic towards building a relationship across the film screen, monitor, or television – breaking down the distance between viewer and subject. Simply, it as a more radical attempt at creating a space for empathy.

Chris Filippone_ Huntsville Station_Film_2020 / Premiere: Berlinale

BIO

Chris Filippone is a documentary filmmaker whose works have consistently screened at leading international film festivals including Berlinale, Visions du Réel, SXSW, Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, and Sheffield Doc/Fest as well as online in The New York Times Op-Docs, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Short of the Week, and Vimeo Staff Picks. In 2021, his film Huntsville Station was nominated for both Best Short at the IDA Awards and Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking at the Cinema Eye Honors. He has received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AmDoc, Mountainfilm, Iowa Arts Council, and Bread and Roses Fund; fellowships from the Telluride Student Symposium and UFVA; and residencies at the KHN Art Center and Points North Institute. Chris is a graduate of Stanford University’s M.F.A. Documentary Film and Video program and has previously taught at San Francisco Art Institute, Santa Clara University, and most recently as a Visiting Assistant Professor at The University of Iowa. 

http://www.chrisfilippone.com/ 

Emmett Ramstad

Artist Statement

My sculptures explore body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space. In my work, familiar care products —toothbrushes, tissues, toilets, towel dispensers— are exhibited in repetition and exaggerated scale, becoming communal domestic sites. I am interested in making visible bodily need fulfillment (cleansing, voiding, masturbating, crying) and the labor of tending to ourselves and others. In my installations, visitors are offered places to reflect on their own histories of touch, care, and survival. This work is shaped by the history of queer archival practices where what is deemed “important” or “archival” is interrogated and ordinariness is celebrated.

Emmett Ramstad, someone's in here, bathroom stall door, peephole, fence posts, ladder, worn tennis shoes, 2022, 6'x2'x3'

Bio

Emmett Ramstad’s sculpture investigates the intimate ordinary. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has exhibited artworks widely, including solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Rochester Art Center. He is a recipient of numerous awards including a McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, an Onassis Eureka Commissions Grant, a Jerome Foundation Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship, a Forecast Public Art Research and Development Grant, and a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant. He has performed in productions with collaborator Maxe Crandall and with The BodyCartography Project, in addition to making costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions. His work is in collections at The Minnesota Museum of American Art, The Weisman Art Museum, Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Second State Press. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.

www.emmettramstad.com

Katharine Whitcomb

Artist Statement

My writing plays with sound and form whether I am working with poetry or prose. My work is not confessional--my speaker/narrator allows access to the interiority of thoughts, the mind, grief, hope. I am interested in writing that is strange, full of character, wise. My forthcoming book, Habitats, is a meditation upon the search for a place of belonging—the poems explore the speaker moving through habitats, literal and figurative, (forest, hotels, dreams); she experiences environments as a seeker and a visitor. Habitats wrestles with the complexities of this journey—what does it mean to witness oneself but still crave witness from the world? This collection explores how we change and grow in our search for our own “habitat.”

Katharine Whitcomb The Daughter's Almanac: Poems Published 2015 by The Backwaters Press/Univ. of Nebraska Press Winner of the Backwaters Prize "With unflinching stanzas threaded through with grief's relentless lyric, The Daughter's Almanac is a masterwork, a deftly crafted illustration of the myriad ways beauty collides with pain." --Patricia Smith, 2014 Backwaters Prize Judge

Bio

Short Bio: Katharine Whitcomb is the author of five collections of poems: Habitats is forthcoming in September 2023 in the Possession Sound Series from Poetry Northwest Editions. Previous collections are The Daughter’s Almanac (University of Nebraska Press/The Backwaters Press, chosen by Patricia Smith as the winner of the 2014 Backwaters Prize), Lamp of Letters (Floating Bridge Press, winner of the 2009 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award), Saints of South Dakota & Other Poems (Bluestem Press, chosen by Lucia Perillo as the winner of the 2000 Bluestem Award), and Hosannas (Parallel Press, 1999). She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and was awarded fellowships to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Recent poems appear in Bennington Review, The Gettysburg Review, On the Seawall, Tupelo Quarterly and Guesthouse. She teaches at Central Washington University and lives in Ellensburg, Washington.

www.katharinewhitcomb.com

Frida Foberg

Artist Statement

I believe in people. I believe we are complex beings with individual collections of filters, accumulated from societal structures and norms, through which we experience the world. My art practice is rooted in my own journey of unlearning and bias. I’ve seen what imposed fear does to individuals and communities, and I’ve experienced how fear and pain can be transformed instead of being transmitted. My response is to create installations/stages to provoke awareness around how we interact with ourselves, with others and with our context - works that speaks to the simple complexity of being human, of gathering around food, to have a moment to just be an authentic self. Would you sit down have a conversation with someone you never met before? Would you share a meal with them? Simply put - I think people should meet - meet others and themselves.

Frida Foberg_Constitution_Installation Performance_2017_Arts Letters and Numbers_photo Zelé Angelides

Bio

Frida Foberg is a Swedish community-oriented artist, architect and educator based in New York. She holds an MA in Architecture from Aarhus School of Architecture. Her work unfolds the space that floats between individuals, their habits, cultures and conditions. She’s driven by a deep curiosity in human interactions, how we build spaces of connection and separation. By working with temporality and spatial elements encouraging interaction and reflection, she poses questions that explore the notion of self and others. Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy), Liljevalchs (Stockholm, Sweden), Arko Art Museum (Seoul, South Korea) Wilmer Jennings Gallery (NYC), Invisible Dog (Brooklyn, NY), Turn Park Art Space (West Stockbridge, MA), Base 31 (Picton, Canada), Albany Center Gallery (Albany, NY), Opalka Gallery (Albany, NY) and Arts Letters & Numbers (Averill Park, NY).

fridafoberg.com

Kimberly Bartosik

Artist Statement

As an artist, educator, performer, and writer, I create viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate performance projects built upon the belief that artistic practice can deepen our understanding of the world around us. Through my work, I carve out a space for criticism and compassion while tenderly and violently etching away at some deeply distressing threads of our society. Embracing the physical and emotional extremes of the performers, their bodies become vessels through which the audience is invited to think, feel, and reflect on their own place within their complicated existence. Recent projects have been built with communities of diverse ages and abilities, often with a focus on young, untrained performers. Through their participation, we are creating a cross-geographic conversation about the ferocious power of the body as a form of communication and the potency of dance as a connective language.

Kimberly Bartosik, The Encounter, World Premiere as part of French Institute/Alliance Francaise/FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, October 2022.

Bio

Bessie Award winning and Guggenheim Fellow Kimberly Bartosik’s work has been commissioned and presented by BAM Next Wave Festival, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, ADF, Torn Space Theater, New York Live Arts, LUMBERYARD, American Realness, and others. She has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Australia), Bratislava in Movement (Slovakia), Wexner Arts Center, Dance Place, ADF, The Yard, MASS MoCA/Jacob’s Pillow, FlynnSpace, Bates Dance Festival, Columbia College, CCN de Franche-Comté à Belfort, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Artdanthe Festival, and others. Bartosik is a recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund in the New York Community Trust and the Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellowship at Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Other awards include NEFA’s National Dance Project Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund; MAP Fund; Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance); USArtists International; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; American Dance Abroad; and others. Bartosik is a 2020 Bessie Award Honoree for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performer (Burr Johnson) for through the mirror of their eyes. She also received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry for her 9 years of dancing in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

www.daela.org

Andrea Clearfield

Artist Statement

I am passionate about writing music that speaks to what is possible in humanity. Communication, connection and collaboration manifest throughout my life and work. During the past forty years I have composed over 160 pieces ranging from opera orchestral, choral, concerti and chamber music to collaborations with dance, visual arts and film. I aspire to synthesize disparate elements into a musical whole. I care about color, texture, structure and form. Drawn to creating large-scale works, I have composed sixteen cantatas on sociocultural themes that speak to freedom from oppression, robots and AI, identity, environmental sustainability, healing from sexual abuse, health, home, migration and diaspora, LGBTQ+ families, transgender youth, banning conversion therapy, mythology, personal transformation, ancient cultures and rituals and cycles of life.

Bio

Creating deep emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges, the music of Andrea Clearfield is performed widely in the U.S. and abroad. She has written 160+ works for opera, chorus, orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance and multimedia collaborations. Recent compositions, including her opera, MILA, Great Sorcerer to libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden, are inspired by Tibetan music fieldwork that she conducted in the Nepalese Himalaya. Among her works are sixteen cantatas including one for The Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been awarded a Pew Center International Residency Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, two Independence Foundation Fellowships and Fellowships at the Rockefeller's Bellagio Center, American Academy in Rome, Yaddo, MacDowell, Copland House, Ucross, Marble House Project and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts among others. Passionate about creating community around the arts, she is also founder of the Philadelphia Salon featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance and world music, now celebrating its 36th Year. More at www.andreaclearfield.com

http://www.andreaclearfield.com/

Carlos Zerpa

Artist Statement

As people who grew mobilized by the promise of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, my creative work tends to explore the challenges and contradictions of finding meaning in a world that is falling apart. My narrative style aims to portray insightful and critical social commentary from an engaged point of view within an irreverent, relatable, and innovative storytelling framework. Coming from a critical and politically active point of view, I try to highlight underrepresented themes and characters that explore some of the social, historical, and political issues behind the class and race divide in South America and the Caribbean.

FILO is animated action series for adults, in Development. Co-written with Katherine Castrillo.

Born and based in Venezuela, Carlos is a Writer, Creative Producer, and Director interested in empowering underrepresented characters through irreverent and transgressive stories. Over the last ten years, he has co-created several award-winning street arts, editorial, and animation projects. Co-founder of MECHA (www.mecha.pro) a creative cooperative focused on the development and production of socially conscious storytelling projects. Co-founder of RIMA (www.rima.network), and digital platform aiming to connect Global South's emerging artists with opportunities for international mobility and financing. Co-founder and teacher in ENGRAPO, an independent public education project that introduces youth to visual communication as a tool to understand and transform their reality. Recently, he has participated in various international artist residencies such as Koneen Saatio (2022), ProHelvetia (2022), La Maison des Auteurs (2022) and Sacatar Institute (2021). Alumni of Berlinale Talents (2022), the Global Cultural Relationships Platform (2021), the Global Cultural Relationships Platform (2021), IsLab (2020), Sundance Collab (2020), Bridging the Gap (2019) and winner of ApaLab Pitch competition (2019).