Theo Cuthand offers a Be The Media! participatory radio workshop workshop at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, to focus on Indigiqueer and ecological issues.

Using improvisational documentary techniques, the Be The Media! workshop participants will create a short radio play with Theo Jean Cuthand, loosely inspired by Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast but based on the colonization of what is now Troy by European Settlers. This workshop will begin with a brief presentation of Cuthand’s work.

Cuthand’s Sanctuary appearance is sponsored by iEAR Presents, the RPI School of Humanities, and the NEA Our Town creative placemaking project Sanctuary Eco-Art Trail, which connects Indigenous legacy with environmental justice (in partnership with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians).

At EMPAC, Cuthand presents an artist talk and screening that explores his work and process through an Indigiqueer lens. Cuthand makes short experimental videos and films about sexuality, madness, Queer identity, love, and Indigeneity.

An intimate and playful storyteller and performer, the artist often foregrounds autobiographical experience and his home territory of Saskatchewan, where he is a member of Little Pine First Nation, to explore the resonating effects of the ongoing processes of colonization on land and climate, his communities, and the body.

His rangy and irreverent moving image works span experimental documentary and fiction, archival footage and hand-drawn animation, and DIY aesthetics.

EMPAC building tours take visitors behind the scenes to experience the center’s infrastructure as few do. Each one is hosted by EMPAC staff with a different area of expertise–so whether you attend one or all this season, there’s always something new to learn and discover.

BUILDING TOUR WITH JONAS BRAASCH
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 at 11AM

Join Jonas Braasch, associate director for research, for a tour highlighting the center’s architectural acoustics and learn how the EMPAC panorama screen system led to the development of the Rensselaer CRAIVE-Lab (Collaborative Research Augmented Immersive Virtual Environment).

BUILDING TOUR WITH TODD VOS
SATURDAY, APRIL 27 AT 11AM

Join Todd Vos, lead audio engineer, for this deep dive into EMPAC's acoustic design and production systems. Audiophiles and novices will explore the facility's infrastructure and have their questions answered as the tour moves through the building's production and performance spaces and evolving technologies.

BUILDING TOUR WITH AMADEUS JULIAN REGUCERA
SATURDAY, MAY 11 at 11AM

Each of EMPAC’s performance spaces were designed as a blank canvas, endlessly customizable according to the needs of its diverse productions. In this tour, Music Curator Amadeus Julian Regucera discusses the acoustic and visual potential of each venue for the making of complex artworks, with stories from recent productions with Antonia Barnett-McIntosh and Jessie Marino, Ellen Fullman, M. Lamar, and The Living Earth Show.

Please join us for a series of two events by Plains Cree and Scots artist Theo Jean Cuthand.

At EMPAC, Cuthand presents an artist talk and screening that explores his work and process through an Indigiqueer lens.

At the Sanctuary, Cuthand will offer a Be The Media workshop followed by a talk and screening with an emphasis on his methods of film and game production with a particular focus on Indigiqueer and ecological issues.

Shen Xin and Ali Van are in a remote residency, working on spatializing audio as well as improvisational approaches of engaging audiences for their presentation of a new live program as AX Archive, inspired by Shen Xin’s film Grounds of Coherence #1 / but this is the language we met in.

Onye Ozuzu, Joshua Gabriel, Ben Lamar Gay, and Simon Rouby are in residence at EMPAC to develop Ozuzu’s new dance performance Space Carcasses. The project will involve the creation of a composite digital space and sound dancer from audiovisual data of three architectural sites.

Jlin and Florence To will be in residence in Studio 1—Goodman to workshop and develop the visual language for Jlin’s upcoming tour for the new album Akoma.

Ligia Lewis and Corey Scott-Gilbert are in residence in Studio 2 for artistic research and development for future choreographic work.

Pioneering electronic musicians John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein will be in residence with Rensselaer Arts Department undergraduates from Professor Matthew Goodheart’s electronic music course to mount a new version of David Tudor’s Rainforest IV—a seminal work of transducer-based art which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. Over the period of a few weeks, Driscoll and Edelstein, who developed Rainforest IV with Tudor in the 1970s, will coach RPI students on how to prepare and mount Tudor’s work in EMPAC’s Studio 2 as part of the Reembodied Sound 2024 symposium and festival.

Rosenfeld is in residence to develop her project μ (mu) into a video installation. Building on the artist’s prior work on the video component, this residency focuses on developing presentation formats for the work’s video and sound elements, as well as extending its imagery into experimental prints.