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A Black baby wearing white overalls and posed in a studio portrait smiling contagiously.

Chameleon (The Living Installments)

FAQS and Instructions for Participation

Choose one of the following options:

OPTION ONE: WATCH THE LIVESTREAM

  • Just head over to the Chameleon event and find the on the livestream at the beginning of the page starting at 11AM.
  • You do not need to join in the Discord conversation, it will be streamed along with all the other events.

OPTION TWO: INTERACT ON DISCORD

  • What is DISCORD?
  • Discord is an application we will be using that has both text and voice chat capabilities to create a more interactive experience. If you are familiar and comfortable with apps such as reddit or teamspeak, then you'll be right at home in Discord.
  • I want to participate with the Discord app, can i sign up now?
  • YES! You can sign up anytime. In fact, we will be available to help you learn how to use the application on April 21 at 3PM EDT.
  • How do i get started with Discord?
  • Step One: If you haven't used Discord before, create an account.
  • Step Two: You can then install the app on your device and login. We invite you to do this set up now so that you are ready to roll on April 22.
  • Step Three: Have your account created, downloaded the app, verified your email, and logged in? Then just come find us by tapping the button (and don't forget to come visit us there on April 21 to test!).
  • DISCORD SIGNUP DEADLINE: WEDNESDAY, 4/22 9AM EST

FAQS

  • Do I have to create my own server?
  • You do not have a create your own server to join Chameleon. If prompted to do so you can press “skip” and move forward in creating your login.
  • I can't hear anything and nobody can hear me!
  • If for some reason you are unable to talk or hear anyone you might want to try a different web browser or a different device.
  • What about?!?!
  • If you encounter individual obstacles sometimes a quick google search will provide troubleshooting options, or you can explore the Discord help links below.
  • I'm Lost
  • It's OK. Join us for the livestream!

DISCORD HOW TO VIDEOS

Main Image: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Personal Archive, 1983. Courtesy the artist.

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An aerial view of a dark theater with a white stage as a crew works behind the scenes.

Alexa Echoes

Amanda Turner Pohan

Amanda Turner Pohan is in residence at EMPAC with performer Katy Pinke to film Alexa Echoes

Alexa Echoes is a film in the mode of a chamber opera by visual artist Amanda Turner Pohan in collaboration with composer Charlie Looker and choreographer Dages Juvelier Keates. The first iteration in a series of three, Alexa Echoes recasts the relationship between cultural movements and commercial technologies through the history of women’s devocalization and disembodiment. It begins with mythical Greek figures, such as Echo, and leads up to Amazon’s smart speaker and digital voice-based assistant for Alexa, also named Echo. Produced after travel restrictions and social distancing measures were implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film combines footage shot in the newly empty spaces of EMPAC with recordings from the collaborators’ homes and remote studios.

In this film, EMPAC is concurrently the site of production, setting, and subject that surrounds three manifestations of the voice: candid, staged, and disembodied. As in much of Pohan’s interdisciplinary oeuvre, the film looks at the body’s complicated relationship to technology as it relates to autonomy, animation, and the melismatic sound of breath. Using choreographed movement, spoken word, and song set to an orchestral score, Alexa Echoes abstracts the gendered decisions that go into framing new media technologies, gesturing to the corporate entities which choreographed them.

This residency is organized by Muheb Esmat, Marisa Espe, Bergen Hendrickson, Ciena Leshley, Ana Lopes, Liz Lorenz, Brooke Nicolas, Elizaveta Shneyderman, and Rachel Vera Steinberg from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies class of 2020, working with EMPAC curator Vic Brooks.

Main Image: Production still from Amanda Turner Pohan's Alexa Echoes. EMPAC Theater, October 2020. Photo: Sara Griffith/EMPAC. 

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A woman wearing headphones looking at two screens held by a spider-like apparatus or sculpture in blank room with a projection of the ocean and a planet.

Sondra Perry

Sondra Perry makes videos, performances, and installations that foreground digital tools as a way to critically reflect on new technologies of representation and remobilize their potential.

Perry’s engagement with consumer image-making technologies produces artworks that reveal the calibration, protocols, and algorithms inherent in these devices. She repurposes exercise machines, video games, chroma studios, and computer graphics in multidisciplinary artworks that together form a corrective against the unreflective naturalization of technology. Her works examine how images are produced in order to reveal the way photographic representations are captured and recirculated.

Main Image: Sondra Perry, Eclogue for [In]habitability at Seattle Art Museum, Courtesy the artist.

 

300 Years of Dance

Rensselaer Orchestra

On Saturday, November 23rd, in the EMPAC Concert Hall, the Rensselaer Orchestra will present a concert of dance music, ranging from the 17th century ballets of Jean-Baptiste Lully to the raucous 20th century music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. No matter the era, this concert will keep you tapping your feet!

The complete program for the concert is:

  • Jean-Baptiste Lully (Arr. Felix Mottl), Dance Suite
  • Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Petite Suite de Concert
  • Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 7 Unfinished
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Polonaise from Eugene Onegin

This concert is free and open to the public.