News

EMPAC has been approved for a $25,000 Art Works grant from the NEA to support the commissioning and development of new time-based art works this year.

EMPAC is pleased to join a consortium of art institutions from across the United States that will mount a nationwide season of programming informed by feminist thought and practice. Beatriz Santiago Muñoz's moving-image work will premiere in 2020 as part of the nationwide season of programming.

As an interdisciplinary arts center committed to the development of cross-genre performances and research, we talk a lot about the ways that sounds, images, and movements come together in shared space. But there’s another element mixed into EMPAC artistic productions, sometimes driving the work from the very beginning, sometimes following near the very end, when the technical pieces have fallen into place and the collaborators start to understand what it’s about.

EMPAC’s curatorial program commissions and develops new works year around, many of which are premiered here during the Spring and Fall seasons that coincide with Rensselaer’s academic calendar. This summer, a diverse lineup of international artists will be working on a range of new productions, many of which will find their premiere here in the coming seasons.

EMPAC is pleased to announce the hiring of Dr. Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti as the center’s new Curator of Music. An experienced curator as well as a highly accomplished violist, composer, scholar, and educator, Lanzilotti will begin her tenure at EMPAC starting in Fall 2019. At EMPAC she will be developing the music residencies and commissions as well as performances and events in continuation of EMPAC’s artistic directions and with her own perspectives.

On October 3, 2008, Rensselaer opened a bold new chapter in its legacy as the nation’s oldest technological research university. With the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, the institute had not only designed and constructed the most technologically advanced performing arts center in the country, but had initialized a radical new program integrating the methods and mindset of art, science, and engineering, laying the foundation for a new paradigm in cross-disciplinary exploration and education.

Artist Wu Tsang has been named a 2018 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Working in residence at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 2016, the “Genius Grant” honoree will premiere a new collaborative performance work, Sudden Rise, at EMPAC 10YEARS on October 13.

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York is where the arts, sciences, and technology meet under one roof.

Over the course of three days, and across EMPAC’s four main venues and public spaces, the 10YEARS celebration will mark a decade since the building's opening in 2008 by presenting a diverse offering of cross-disciplinary performances spanning music, dance, theater, film, and many experiential spaces in between.

At EMPAC, everything we create is “time-based.” From concerts to dance performances to film screenings and theater, the artworks this season are each a carefully considered play of sight, sound, and movement: experiences that only exist in the span of time given for you to take them in but might dwell within you for hours or days after they end.

EMPAC alum / Early Morning Opera's Lars Jans and former EMPAC curator of Time-Based Arts Kathleen Forde were featured after premiering Jan's latest commission art ArtBasel in Miami this year. Jans' commissions ABACUS (2010) and HOLOCENES (2014) were developed at EMPAC.

The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute regrets to announce that the December 8 performance by Iranian hand-drummer Mohammad Reza Mortazavi has been cancelled due to visa-processing delays.

New York-based British artist Patricia L. Boyd will exhibit Operator (2017), a single-channel video, at New York University's 80wse Gallery between September 23 and November 11. The video was produced through a moving image commission from EMPAC / Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.