Commissioned and produced by EMPAC, If It Bleeds is a moving-image work inspired by recent events in the world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Historically, MMA was promoted as something very distinct from both boxing—a sport so corrupt that the best hardly ever fight the best—and from pro wrestling, which is totally scripted and driven by mic skills, costumes, and bad acting. But in seeking to expand the audience, MMA promoters increasingly court the artifice of wrestling to privilege the showman over the sportsman. If It Bleeds follows the fighters, commissioners, reporters and a promoter as they battle through post-fight pressers, promotional tours, and disciplinary hearings. The narrative unfolds in a game of one-upmanship as the characters are seduced by their public image and driven by the fiction that everything happens “for a reason.” If It Bleeds uses the pageantry of sports-entertainment to explore the grotesque and sublime spectacle that is everyday survival.

Canadian artist Isabelle Pauwels works primarily in video and installation. Her blend of performance and documentary realism explores the fraught relationship between narrative conventions and everyday social interaction. If It Bleeds follows Pauwels’s 2014 EMPAC-commissioned multimedia performance ,000,.

Theater maker Yara Travieso was in residence to create an immersive theatrical experience designed for the EMPAC Concert Hall. Inspired by the idea of transforming the hall into a living, breathing female form, Travieso used monumental staging, experiential cinema, and sound to ignite the ceiling, side galleries, balcony, and stage. Expanding on the venue’s unique capabilities for music and opera, Travieso undertook a film shoot while in residence to create material that was later projected inside the hall, creating a rich theatrical world for the audience to explore and share in making it “breathe.” 

Yara Travieso is an American director, choreographer, and maker of worlds. She creates films, stage works, immersive installations, and live experiences centered around female protagonists. Travieso developed the work over summer 2018 along with composer and sound designer Sam Crawford and lighting designer Seth Reiser.

A work-in-progress screening of Mariam Ghani’s feature film, What We Left Unfinished, which is currently in post-production at EMPAC. Following the screening, Ghani and the film’s composer Qasim Naqvi will discuss the relationship between sound and image in the film.

Based on the history of the Afghan Film Archive (the state film institute based in Kabul, Afghanistan), What We Left Unfinished reconstructs hidden and parallel narratives of both state propaganda and the experience of the Afghan Film Archive’s management and film directors during the period of Afghan Communism. Alongside his group Dawn of Midi, Qasim Naqvi has scored and recorded soundtracks for Mariam Ghani’s moving-image works for over a decade. The two artists began collaborating (with choreographer Erin Ellen Kelly) in 2006 with Performed Places—an ongoing site-responsive video and performance series.

They Are Waiting for You was Turner Prize-winning visual artist Laure Prouvost’s first major stage performance, in collaboration with Sam Belinfante and Pierre Droulers.

Theatrical and cinematic technologies—projection, light, and haze—interacted with performers, musicians, objects, and the audience in a surreal and perceptually disorientating theatrical production. Everyday items were used to investigate language itself, its origins and its distance from the world. Words, bodies, and images gained and lost meaning throughout the performance as language broke down. And in the piece’s stunning conclusion, that loss of language revealed a new space for the beautiful.

Co-commissioned by EMPAC and the Walker Art Center, They Are Waiting For You marked French artist Laure Prouvost’s first major commission for the stage and was conceived in collaboration with London-based artist, filmmaker, and curator Sam Belinfante, as well as renowned French/Belgian choreographer Pierre Droulers.

Afrogalactica was a film-performance by Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Featuring live reading and video projection, the performance cast Kiwanga as a fictional anthropologist who synthesized fragments of poetry, mythology, pop culture, science, and scholarly discourse to challenge historical narratives regarding colonial struggle and the African diaspora. Reframing the tradition of Afrofuturism as a means to examine African subjectivity and undermine hegemonic discourse, Afrogalactica mixed fact and fiction to generate new stories out of the personal, the canonical, and the supernatural while speculating on possible futures. 

Kapwani Kiwanga was born in Hamilton, Canada and lives in Paris. She studied Anthropology and Comparative Religions at McGill University. Kiwanga was the 2016 Commissioned Artist at the Armory Show, New York and recently presented her work in solo exhibitions at Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago; The Power Plant, Toronto; La Ferme de Buisson, Noisiel; South London Gallery, London; and the Jeu de Paume, Paris.

Choreographer/performer Elena Demyanenko and filmmaker Erika Mijlin offered a work-in-progress performance of their EMPAC-commissioned collaboration, echo/archive.

echo/archive explores the notion of bodily heritage—how one’s sense and memory of their body may be felt and communicated over generations. Within dance, this is the process that carries movement invention and somatic perspectives from artist to artist. The piece also explores the role of the mediated image, live or recorded, as an intervention and a partner in the creative investigation of past and present. Incorporating lighting, audio, and video, Demyankenko and Mijlin worked with performers Dana Reitz, Eva Karczag and Jodi Melnick, as well as video designer Ray Sun. Karczag and Melnick, like Demyanenko, both worked with the late American choreographer Trisha Brown. The work-in-progress performance focused on one of the show’s three parts: Demyanenko’s duet with Melnick.

For more information, please visit http://www.hass.rpi.edu/pl/hass-events/?objectID=100004312.

Canadian artist Isabelle Pauwels was in residence with eight actors to film If It Bleeds, an experimental art video inspired by recent events in the world of Mixed Martial Arts.

Historically, MMA was promoted as something very distinct from both boxing (a sport so corrupt that the best hardly ever fight the best) and especially, from pro wrestling (which is totally scripted, and driven by mic skills, costumes and bad acting). But, in seeking to expand into the mainstream, MMA promoters increasingly court the artifice of wrestling, promoting the showman over the sportsman. As the characters battle through promotional tours, post fight pressers and disciplinary hearings, they are continually upstaged by each other, seduced by their public image, and driven by the fiction that everything happens “for a reason.” If It Bleeds uses the pageantry of sports-entertainment to explore the grotesque and sublime spectacle that is everyday survival.

FILM/VIDEO

Framed by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s Otros usos, the work from which the Other Uses film series takes its name, this screening presents moving-image works by the artist that pay characteristic attention to the geometry, composition, and cinematic potential of everyday, neglected landscapes. By training the lens on abandoned architectures, these films find counter histories and other uses for the troubled landscapes of military and political upheaval.

PROGRAM

• Other Uses (2014) Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
• Post-Military Cinema (2014) Beatriz Santiago Muñoz