Ephemeral Organ

Ephemeral Organ is a series of residencies, performances, and talks by artists whose work explores choreography and bodily motion as technologies for transmitting memory, history, and Black lived experience. Each artist simultaneously navigates the ever-shifting nature of live performance and the urge to retain, return to, and generate traces of the past.

The word ephemeral suggests short-lived objects, activity that leaves residual evidence, and brief but intense durations. Archival materials not designed to be preserved but which are still potently present are often called ephemera. The word organ hints at the body and its parts, a series of interior vessels and chambers which intimately order—or organize—our modes of living. In dance and performance, bodies are often understood as having inherent archiving functions. Archives are spaces of public record, systems which give purpose to what we want to keep; our bodies hold experience, gain knowledge, recall behaviors, track gestures, and mediate infinite possible actions each time they move.

Interpreting archival materials, mining family memories, recording movement through technology—each Ephemeral Organ project holds past and present side by side, inseparably. Each of the artists has developed distinct choreographic devices through which performers can compose history through their bodies and which allows them to generate, keep, and even at times lovingly lose, a bodily record of their actions.

The series begins with residencies and talks in November 2024, including with artists SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY and collaborative duo Katherine Simóne Reynolds and A.J. McClenon, as well as series curator Tara Aisha Willis.

In April 2025, using EMPAC’s spaces simultaneously like a series of chambers, the Ephemeral Organ series culminates in a weekend of performance, installation, and artist talks, including with Leslie Cuyjet and Steffani Jemison.