Venezuelan-Ecuadorian artist Ana Navas will be in conversation with curator Vic Brooks to introduce Navas’ work and the historical, artistic, and architectural backdrop to her forthcoming performance and moving image work Cuando las nubes eran las olas / When the clouds were waves. Featuring a new score by composer Mirtru Escalona-Mijares, Navas’ artwork is currently in its early stages of development. 

Cuando las nubes eran las olas responds to Alexander Calder’s Acoustic Ceiling (1953), which was conceived for architect Carlos Raúl Villenueva’s iconic auditorium, the Aula Magna, at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas and produced in consultation with the American acoustic engineering team Bolt Beranek & Newman.  Locally known as Calder’s “Nubes” (clouds) or “Platillos voladores” (flying saucers), the Acoustic Ceiling was the first instance of acoustic panels suspended across the ceiling of a hall of this scale. The artwork’s production history and integration into the architecture is key to tracing complex cultural exchanges unique to this period of Venezuelan modernism under military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who commissioned the Aula Magna in order to host the 10th Inter-American Conference in 1954. 

Similar in approach to the acoustic innovation of the construction of the Aula Magna six decades before it, the architects and acousticians of EMPAC’s building also designed a concert hall that combines outstanding acoustics and refined materials, but with the flexibility and technology of the twenty-first century. In particular, the EMPAC Concert Hall’s ground-breaking fabric ceiling—under which Ana Navas and Escalona-Mijares will be working in residence next year—resonates across time and space with the aesthetic and acoustical concept of the Aula Magna’s clouds. 

This introductory talk marks the first in a series of interdisciplinary online conversations with experts from acoustics, art, architecture, and music that will explore the historic and contemporary resonances of the iconic Venezuelan hall. 

Sound artist, composer, and performer Miya Masaoka will create an hour-long work for solo artist (Masaoka herself) for solo performer and electronics. Miya Masaoka is an American composer and sound artist. Her work explores bodily perception of vibration, movement and time while foregrounding complex timbre relationships. In 2018 she joined the Columbia University Visual Arts Department as an Associate Professor, where she is the director of the Sound Art Program, a joint program with the Computer Music Center. A 2019 Studio Artist for the Park Avenue Armory, Masaoka has also received the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2013, a Fulbright Fellowship to Japan in 2016, and an Alpert Award in 2003. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and the Park Avenue Armory. She has been commissioned by and collaborated with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Glasgow Choir, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Bang on a Can, Jack Quartet, Del Sol, Momenta and the S.E.M. Ensemble. She has a 2019 commission for an outdoor installation at the Caramoor, Katonah, New York.

King Britt and Saul Williams developed a short new work together for electronics and spoken word to be realized within the ambisonic dome of Studio 1. The duo gave an exclusive performance at Utrecht's Le Guess Who? Festival last year, after being specifically invited by guest curator Moor Mother.

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist making works for voice, electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles (including Kronos Quartet and Eighth Blackbird). Her awards include the Rome Prize, United States Artists, the Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Herb Alpert Award.

Through video and audio examples and a bit of live demonstration, composer/performer and interdisciplinary artist Pamela Z will share her work and her process, and will discuss the increasingly blurred lines between disciplines in her practice.  Highlighting her use of voice, processing, gesture-based MIDI controllers, video, found objects, and sampled speech sounds, she will illustrate the various directions her work has taken over the years and consider the new work she’ll create during her upcoming EMPAC residency.

Through video and audio examples and a bit of live demonstration, composer/performer and interdisciplinary artist Pamela Z will share her work and her process, and will discuss the increasingly blurred lines between disciplines in her practice.  Highlighting her use of voice, processing, gesture-based MIDI controllers, video, found objects, and sampled speech sounds, she will illustrate the various directions her work has taken over the years and consider the new work she’ll create during her upcoming EMPAC residency.

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All current EMPAC residencies are being hosted remotely with support from EMPAC curatorial, administrative, and production staff and resources. While no artists are on site in Troy, our staff is continuing to collaborate with artists toward the development of new works.

Professor and department head of Rensselaer's Science and Technology Studies program, Nancy Campbell, will hold her graduate seminar Feminist and Antiracist Science and Technology Studies in EMPAC's Studio Beta. The course is a part of the university's Art_x program, which is a teaching and learning initiative that is designed for Rensselaer students discover the connections that exist between art, science, and technology. EMPAC curators Vic Brooks and Ashley Ferro-Murray will develop a small series of workshops around course topics with artists Anaïs Duplan and Edisa Weeks. 

Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. Duplan’s recently published essay collection Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020) employs vivid descriptions of the action of artworks—or ekphrastic technique—to explore the aesthetic strategies employed by artists of color working with digital technologies. At EMPAC, Duplan will be expand Blackspace’s approach to lyric poetry, criticism, and interviews through a series of radio-events inspired by music and artworks that seek to “pursue liberatory possibility.”

Proposed book cover. Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture.

Edisa Weeks is a Brooklyn, NY based choreographer, educator and director of DELIRIOUS Dances. Weeks is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work integrates theater, dance, food, discussions, music, and visual illustrations to create interactive performance experiences. She has presented in venues ranging from Dixon Place to the Guggenheim Museum, and has also performed in swimming pools, senior centers, sidewalks, storefront windows, and various living rooms. Weeks is currently developing three interactive performance rituals titled 3 RITES: Life, Liberty, Happiness. At EMPAC, she will design an environmentally sustainable set of plastics for Life. The rite will explore various structures for the support and dismantling of life.

3 RITES: Life, 2019. IMAGE: Courtesy the artist.

Workshop Schedule

All times are EST

• The following workshops will all take place in Studio Beta and be viewable for Rensselaer students online. More info TBA. Please contact the box office and provide your RIN if you are interested.
• FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 at 5PM
• WORKSHOP / POETRY
• Anaïs Duplan
• FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4 at 5PM
• WORKSHOP / DANCE
• Edisa Weeks

An online talk with composer Caroline Shaw and choreographer Vanessa Goodman discussing their work-in-progress collaborative installation Graveyards and Gardens (working title).

Theater maker Annie Saunders collaborates with theater/pop/new music band Wild Up and composer Emma O’Halloran on a new work called Rest. The work engages an audience with simple guidance on how to interact with each other and the performance space. Overall, Rest interrogates sensory overwhelm, sensory deprivation, hallucinations and the nature of consciousness. The audience experience is inspired by the idea that our perception of reality depends on agreements and disagreements with other people. 

Light and sound are central to the staging of Rest. These elements help to sculpt a performance environment that includes moments of near-silence, music, and field recordings from a diverse set of conversations. Materials include conversations with consciousness experts, people sharing their early sense memories, and reflections on our relationships to our smartphones. The work provides a visceral opportunity to feel and consider what ‘rest’ means to us in the modern world.

The artistic collaborators are in remote residence this fall to develop an EMPAC-commissioned online iteration of Rest. The commission will provide the artists an opportunity to explore their archive of material. The outcome is unknown, but the process of building and experiencing this online work will provide a look inside immersive, multidisciplinary theatrical practices.

The commissioned work will premiere in January 2021. Join us on December 3, 2020 for a conversations with the artists who will discuss the making of the work. 

Listen now on Anchor.fm, Breaker, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Spotify, Castbox, and Tunein.

Theater maker Annie Saunders collaborates with theater/pop/new music band Wild Up and composer Emma O’Halloran on a new work called Rest. The work engages an audience with simple guidance on how to interact with each other and the performance space. Overall, Rest interrogates sensory overwhelm, sensory deprivation, hallucinations and the nature of consciousness. The audience experience is inspired by the idea that our perception of reality depends on agreements and disagreements with other people. 

Light and sound are central to the staging of Rest. These elements help to sculpt a performance environment that includes moments of near-silence, music, and field recordings from a diverse set of conversations. Materials include conversations with consciousness experts, people sharing their early sense memories, and reflections on our relationships to our smartphones. The work provides a visceral opportunity to feel and consider what ‘rest’ means to us in the modern world.

The artistic collaborators are in residence this fall to develop an EMPAC-commissioned online iteration of Rest. The commission will provide the artists an opportunity to explore their archive of material. The outcome is unknown, but the process of building and experiencing this online work will provide a look inside immersive, multidisciplinary theatrical practices.

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All current EMPAC residencies are being hosted remotely with support from EMPAC curatorial, administrative, and production staff and resources. While no artists are on site in Troy, our staff is continuing to collaborate with artists toward the development of new works.

EMPAC continues to be closed for in-person events for the general public, however, please check back here and follow us on

 Instagram for updates related to our curatorial program.

Although our fall program will look different than it has in the past as we continue to follow university policies related to the coronavirus, we are continuing work with artists on the commissioning and production of new ambitious performances and artworks across music, time-based visual art, theater and dance.

We look forward to sharing behind-the-scenes peeks into artist residencies along the way. Stay tuned!