The 2019 Australian Arts Council artist in residence, Camila Galaz will be at EMPAC to continue the post-production on her installation Vecino Vecino (Neighbour Neighbour). The video work is based on a 1986 French TV documentary about the MAPU-Lautaro, a Chilean student resistance group who fought against the Pinochet dictatorship, that included the the artist’s father.

Using archival footage, re-performance and (mis)interpretations of this footage, and documentary footage of my own, Vecino Vecino stitches together multiple historical moments and viewpoints to highlight the gap between generations caused by political violence. By reading historical movements, sounds, gestures, and speech as languages that can be transposed and translated into present day, Vecino Vecino both draws awareness to, and actively participates in what Judith Butler calls “the tasks that follow political violence.”

International residencies organized by Australia Council for the Arts provide a unique opportunity for Australian artists to immerse themselves in a new international arts context, community and culture. The experience enables artists to articulate their practice within a global context and build knowledge, networks and partnerships that support future international arts activity.

A.K. Burns will be in residence to film collaborator Savannah Knoop among the line-sets and technical infrastructure in the Theater’s fly tower. This will be the final production in a series of residencies, which has included a shoot with performer Shannon Funchess in the catwalks above the Concert Hall and experiments with light, haze, sound, rigging, and video.

The scenes produced at EMPAC over the past two years will be incorporated into a long-form, multichannel image work for exhibition, which is premiering at the Julia Stoschek Collection in Dusseldorf in Fall 2019.

Spring 2023

Artist Ana Navas and composer Mirtru Escalona-Mijares are back in residence in the concert hall with percussionists Taylor Long, Robert Cosgrove, and Clara Warnaar to rehearse for the premiere of Cuando las nubes eran las olas (When the clouds were the waves).

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Cuando las nubes eran las olas is a forthcoming artwork by Venezuelan-Ecuadorian artist Ana Navas (b. 1984, Quito) and Venezuelan composer Mirtru Escalona-Mijares (b. 1972, San Felix). The two artists are in residence in EMPAC's Concert Hall with percussionists Taylor Long, Robert Cosgrove, and Clara Warnaar to workshop Escalona-Mijares' electro-acoustic score composed for Navas' recently fabricated sculpture-instruments. 

Cuando las nubes eran las olas is an expansive work inspired by the Aula Magna, the Central University of Venezuela’s main auditorium. The building was designed by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva in 1953 and lies at the heart of his University City campus in Caracas. The Aula Magna houses Alexander Calder’s sculptural Acoustic Ceiling, completed in 1953 and known locally as “Nubes” (clouds) or “Platillos voladores” (flying saucers). The work was commissioned by Villanueva to be suspended above the audience in order to correct the acoustics of the hall. Although designed in consultation with pioneering American acoustic engineering firm Bolt Beranek & Newman, the ceiling was fabricated in Caracas by local artists, artisans, and technicians. Some of those involved in its fabrication included skilled boat builders who migrated from Portugal to Venezuela, attracted to the country’s oil-fueled mid-twentieth century construction boom, while the current economic collapse of the country has produced a marked reversal of migration. 

Deeply embedded in the afterlives of iconic modernist artworks, Navas’ sculptures, installations, and performances often trace the use and misuse of such works over time as they are circulated as reproductions and appropriated, away from the site and context of their original making. For Cuando las nubes eran las olas, Navas’ research focuses attention on the production history of the Aula Magna and its Acoustic Ceiling, interweaving analysis of its material and architectural properties with its social and sonic history in an exploration of the psychoacoustic potential of sculpture. 

Berlin-based artist James Richards is in residence to develop his EMPAC-commissioned work for the Theater. 

James Richards’ artworks reveal connections between people, practices, and private, hidden, or suppressed histories through archival and online research. Working with a vast array of media materials, often generated during long-term exchanges with other artists, such as American media artist Steve Reinke and filmmaker Leslie Thornton, Richards produces sound and video installations that invite the audience into an intimate encounter with private worlds and queer communities. 

Turkish composer Cenk Ergün will be in residence with the JACK Quartet (Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, John Pickford Richards, Jay Campbell) to record a pair of string quartets—Sonare and Celare—for future release on the label New Focus Recordings.

Multidisciplinary artist Justin Shoulder will be in residence with support from the Australia Council for the Arts. Working with animation/virtual reality collaborators Sam and Andy Rolfes, the project Carrion aims to develop green-screen video content that the artist will manipulate live with a body sensor system.

International residencies organized by Australia Council for the Arts provide a unique opportunity for Australian artists to immerse themselves in a new international arts context, community and culture. The experience enables artists to articulate their practice within a global context and build knowledge, networks and partnerships that support future international arts activity.

Hudson Valley–based filmmaker Ephraim Asili was in residence between 2018 and 2020 for the production of his EMPAC-commissioned feature film The Inheritance. Based on real events, the film’s protagonist inherits a house in West Philadelphia that becomes home to an urban collective for activists of color. The increasingly claustrophobic drama unfolds as the group attempts to live together and find consensus through Black political discourse and social philosophy. 

The Inheritance, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in early September 2020 and headlined Currents at New York Film Festival later in the month. The film is subsequently touring to festivals world-wide and will be presented at EMPAC once the Center is able to reopen to the public. 

Special preview screenings of the film in EMPAC’s theater are available for Rensselaer faculty and students during the current fall semester. For more information on campus protocols and to book a screening for your class, please contact the box office.

UK-based composer and playwright Klein is in residence at EMPAC developing a new performance to be presented at MoMA PS1’s VW dome. With references ranging from mythology to Pavarotti to defunct UK young-adult TV network Trouble, Klein uses collagist techniques to assemble recordings of her own vocals and instrumentation.

Mariam Ghani was in residence to work on the post-production audio and video for her film What We Left Unfinished, based on the history of the Afghan Film Archive, the state film institute based in Kabul, Afghanistan. The film gestures toward the possibility of reconstructing hidden and parallel narratives from both images of state propaganda and the day-to-day lived experience of the Afghan Film Archive’s management, film directors, and governmental players during the period of Afghan Communism.

Spring 2019

Artists jumatatu m. poe and Jermone “Donte” Beacham are in residence at EMPAC to develop the next phase of the work, Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation, designed as a three-part performance that will travel across historically Black neighborhoods, queer night clubs, and institutional art spaces and theaters. The artists will be joined by a team of collaborators, including seven dancers, lighting, audio, and visual media designers, as well as two ethical and artistic consultants, to expand the theatrical and technological elements of the work. The team will also conduct a series of workshops with Rensselaer students as part of the development of the piece.