Oriana
Following the principal filming of Oriana at EMPAC and in Puerto Rico, and the production of a score by Brazilian ensemble Rakta, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz will be back in residence in the Theater to work on the post-production of her feature-length moving image work.
Oriana entwines the linguistic structure of Monique Wittig’s iconic 1969 feminist novel Les Guérillères with the material and conceptual ground of the Caribbean. It visualizes the ecstatic potential of a near-future, non-binary world order through the struggles of its protagonists to imagine a new sort of sensorium—an autonomous language of post-colonial and post-patriarchal society.
Animated by a shifting cast of collaborators from music, performance, art, and poetry, Oriana is being produced in Puerto Rico and at EMPAC, where the center’s theatrical infrastructure forms the backdrop to an iterative and recursive moving image work.
Main Image: Production still from Oriana by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. Photo: Sara Griffith/EMPAC
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz – Oriana (Coming Fall 2021)
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz in conversation with Vic Brooks
EMPAC 2019–22
Season
Spring 2022
Oriana is commissioned for the Feminist Art Coalition series by EMPAC / Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is supported by Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Creative Capital, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
EMPAC Fall 2020 presentations, residencies, and commissions are made possible by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts; and Vlaamse Gemeenschap, department of Culture, Youth, and Media. Additional project support by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; New Music USA; CCS Bard; Creative Capital; the Graham Foundation; and the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.
