Transmissions
Curated by Terra Goolsby & Tammie Rubin
Exhibition Dates: December 4th - January 3rd, 2021
There is disruption. We cannot physically interact, connect, or share experiences, so where does that leave the act of performance? Transmissions is a platform of investigation: What’s performance without the expectations of the traditional “live” shared experiences? How to create intimacy and connection mediated through limited audiences, projected, and virtual transmissions? Is it possible to trigger an emotive response through distance? By removing the audience from making, what will artists explore? Artists Terra Goolsby & Tammie Rubin posed the questions and the following artists answered the call; Urethra Burns, Veronica Ceci, Antonio Cueto, Chloe Curiel, Michael Anthony García, Jay Roff-Garcia, Ryan Hollaway, Delilah Rose Knuckley, Yuliya Lanina, Brendan Lay, Andrea Muñoz Martinez, Pamela Martinez, Gesel Mason Performance Projects, Teresa Moralez, Jessamyn Leigh Plotts, Alexandra Robinson, LaRissa Rogers, Ivy Roots, and St Celfer. Transmissions is an exhibition of diverse concepts and responses that encompass “performance.”
Transmissions performances are a mix of no contact, socially distanced, virtual, projected, & in-person by appointment. Please note the date, time, format, and project description. Certain performances are outside our normal gallery hours. Any performances taking place in the ICOSA Window do not require an appointment but masks and social distancing is required. All performances taking place in the main ICOSA space require an appointment, masks, social distancing, and are limited to four people. Some performances are both in-person and virtual.
Performances
WEEKEND 1: FRIDAY, DEC 4 | 6:30AM - 9:30AM
Artist: Veronica Ceci
About
The FUtility series of performances posits the act of cleaning as a manifestation of attempts to implement social change. Accumulated individual actions create filth. Cleaning removes the filth from view. This frees the individual from the guilt of their single action and allows the public to be comfortable and feel safe in shared spaces. Cleaning, however, is a temporary fix, and must be repeated regularly in order to maintain the illusion that one person's actions are disengaged from the aggregate negative results. Each iteration of cleaning is inherently futile, it does not stop the actions which result in dirt but only briefly erases their effect. The workers who clean are mostly unseen and under compensated as the need for their existence is considered shameful, and it is to this particular aspect of social structure that the capital FU is aimed.
FUtility 2 is a direct response to the world pandemic in which whether or not things are properly cleaned is essential but the persons doing the work are still treated as expendable. In transforming a window from a space that one looks through to a space that one looks at artist Veronica Ceci emphasizes the special power over our collective
WEEKEND 1: FRIDAY, DEC 4 | 7PM - 7:25PM & 7:40PM-8:05PM
Artist: Yuliya Lanina
Performance: My Dear Skeleton
About
“It’s been a so-so kind of a year and it’s about time to take skeletons out of the closet and take a good look at them. So…. I took mine out and here we are”- begins Lanina’s character. In a virtual performance created by Lanina, her character’s dissociated personality recounts her turbulent past that caused her to run away. At the end, she leads the viewer into the fantastical world inside the Big Wise Cat she calls her mother. This piece came as a result of dealing with recent loss, ongoing physical pain, and reimagining performance in a time of the pandemic.
*This artist's project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.*
WEEKEND 1: FRIDAY, DEC 4 | 24 / 7
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Artist: Yuliya Lanina
Performance: Always and Forever
About
When the pandemic hit, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Separated by 1000 miles and unable to visit him, I kept myself sane by painting small pieces which I would mail to health care workers. Always and Forever grew out of these paintings. In animated form, they give testimony to my subconscious mind's effort to process his impending death, the distance between us, and feeling powerless. As the characters in a masked ball of Life flash across the screen, my furry black alter ego must decide if it's safe to follow the high-heeled spider into another dimension – will it hurt or heal? Sound design for the animation by Nina Young. In addition, “Always and Forever,” the window installation will consist of paintings, and animatronic sculptures.
*This artist's project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.*
WEEKEND 1: SATURDAY, DEC 5 | 12PM - 2PM
Artist: Antonio Cueto
Performance: La Jaula del Ajolote
About
My performative practice is born from poetry translated to an action, understanding that art as a totality, and not as both practices being separated from one another. This performance piece derives from both poems “¿Qué Es El Cuerpo en Cuarentena?” and “Tender Connections”, both of which were produced during quarantine. The first one tells the story of the decomposition of the body through isolation. The latter about the longing for affection as a human need. Two strangers attempt to find themselves through isolation without success. A person meets themselves within four walls, their known space. Suddenly, that known space resembles a cage where they feel secure, but there is nothing beyond that, just a never-ending feed of images reflecting through a unique apparatus of sociability that can be accessed: a screen. There is no interaction or tact, nor any proximity with the outer world that isn’t filtered. Suddenly, this “everything” and “all” that is known becomes something that isn’t palpable, the subject really subjects itself to the isolation. The subject, however, is conscious, and therefore they have nothing left other than anxiety and the saturation of information filtered through the screen. The subject then loses itself and all the humanity within them, becoming an empty shell.
WEEKEND 1: SATURDAY, DEC 5 | 2PM - 4PM
Artist: Urethra Burns
Performance: Autophilia
About
Is it really taboo to find sensual pleasure in oneself? Is there a line between masturbation and taboo fetish and if so, why does it exist? In a truly socially isolated environment, how does one find pleasure beyond simple masturbation? Autophilia is a performance art film that will explore these questions. Created by non-binary drag performer Urethra Burns the performance is an intimate look into "self-love". Autophilia is a one-shot unedited film that will give the experience of a live performance in a socially distanced/digital format.
*This film contains sexually suggestive imagery*
*Urethra Burns is a non-binary drag artist in Houston, Tx. If you would like to support them you can donate directly via Venmo or Cashapp @urethraburns. You can also support them by following their work on Instagram @urethra_burns.
WEEKEND 1: SATURDAY, DEC 5 | 4PM - 6PM
Artist: Jay Roff-Garcia.
Performance: de luto
About
For this performance I will be sampling from a well known song of the genre known as Musica Llanera in Venezuela, or Joropo in the regional north of the South American continent. It’s title is ‘La Muerte del Rucio Moro’ or ‘The Death of the Grey Moor’ and it is performed by Reynaldo Armas. This song concerns mourning, death, and loss. I, like countless others, have lost someone very close to me. My friend Keegan Palmatary passed away in July and it still feels incredibly surreal and raw. With no funeral, no gathering or group mourning, and a lack of connection to my own home, family, and culture leaves me with no room to truly mourn. In this performance I would like to try and step out of that for a moment to truly let myself, and others, mourn. Just for a moment, until the waiting is over and there can be gathering and mourning, hellos and goodbyes.
Through the chaotic feedback system created with projection, a live feed camera, and a visual synthesizer along with the improvised manipulation of these sample sources I hope to transmit those emotions denied, maybe it’ll reach those we lost as it touches those who listen.
WEEKEND 2: FRIDAY, DEC 11 | 12PM - 6PM
Artist: LaRissa Rogers
Performance: Ode to Soil
About
Ode to Soil explores landscapes and activates the soil in Charlottesville, Va where black life and histories have been seemingly erased. As I continue to explore ideas of amnesia and what it means to be surviving, I turn to the soil as a method of black resistance and breath.
For this performance, I activate two spaces. Pen Park, a former antebellum plantation turned recreation park and golf course, and Farmington country club, where a hanging tree sits in front of the entrance. Within Pen Park’s golf course lies a cemetery for the former families that owned the plantation, and surrounding the cemetery are unmarked slave graves. Through the process of planting resurrection lilies, yucca plants, and perennials from my great grandmother’s garden within these spaces, I explore the ways in which our ancestors remain through land, particle, and soil. These resilient plants were commonly used in older African American and slave cemeteries to mark the graves of their loved ones due to the expense of headstones. As the act of planting has been passed down from my great grandmother to grandfather, mother and now to me, in this work, plants are used as a mechanism to speak about ideas of black resilience, living memorials, and the ways in which culture and memory are preserved through intergenerational technologies. The plants simultaneously create life and beauty while serving as a metaphor for the tendency of our nation to forget that it was built on the institution of slavery and free black labor (emotional and physical), and could never be what it is today without it.
WEEKEND 2: FRIDAY, DEC 11 | 7PM - 9PM
Artist: Jessamyn Leigh Plotts
Performance: daylight
About
Performance as experience. Specifically the experience of aloneness, which for me is not quiet at all because its the experience of my mind and my mind is not quiet.
Weekend 2: Saturday, Dec 12 | 12pm - 2pm
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Artist: Ryan Hollaway
Performance: Untitled
About
Ryan Hollaway a Californian born, Texan raised. His work is meant to be seen as unfamiliar in familiar places. Ryan’s work is inspired by his environment and emotional senses. His work is meant to create a whole experience for others visually, auditory, and olfactory. He is inspired by current affairs and what he experiences throughout his life and sometimes the lives of others.
WEEKEND 2: SATURDAY, DEC 12 | 3PM - 6PM
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Artist: St Celfer
About
St Celfer’s musical work “March of the Covids” will be performed at the ICOSA space in an unusual way – as an abstract, encoded YouTube video. The song made its original appearance at the Casagaleria art space in São Paulo, Brazil as a 16 channel audio composition “distributed” in the gallery through directional speakers. At ICOSA the work will be presented virtually in the form of video projections, in a new, collaborative incarnation. “Covids” will be “played” as one of a suite of recent compositions by St Celfer, who is currently based in Seattle, and his long-time collaborator Tom Moody, a New York artist and musician.
Eleven tracks by the two artists have been converted to video using Pitahaya, a software program created by John Romero. Pitahaya turns the audio (which can still be heard) into a stream of random pixels resembling TV snow and QR codes. Uploaded to YouTube, the 35-minute video will be played by the gallery and may be watched like a Stan Brakhage-like abstraction, with fluctuating, chaotic correspondences between picture and sound. The video has embedded content but there is nothing subliminal or mystical about it: instead, Pitahaya has been used to convert a CD-quality version of the eleven songs, which can be downloaded and decoded as explained at http://jollo.org/LNT/doc/pitahaya/.
To listen to an interview and more discussion on St Celfer’s work visit https://www.tommoody.us/archives/2020/12/04/on-breaking-the-square-a-conversation-between-john-parker-and-tom-moody/
WEEKEND 2: SATURDAY, DEC 12 | 7PM - 9PM
Artist: Michael Anthony García
Performance: HUECOS CHUECOS I: Cariño Lamentado/ Cariño Suplicado (CROOKEDSPACES I: Lamented Affection/ Begged Affection)
About
During the last eight months of quarantine of the COVID pandemic, with many of us wrapped up in the protection of isolation and our own thoughts, many of us have had to resort to becoming more insular, and in turn, more distant from our natural tendencies to both congregate and connect physically with others. As a result, some of us have had a psychological evolution as a means of coping, be it via talking to our plants, obsessively cleaning and/ arranging our belongings or spaces, or developing an aversion to witnessing actors embrace or stand “too close” in movies and shows.
In my new performance Huecos Chuecos I: Cariño Lamentado/ Cariño Suplicado (Crooked Spaces I: Lamented Affection/ Begged Attention , via an act of ceremony, I will temporally project a physical connection to my community in absentia, in ritual and practice via unfulfilled hugs. These will be projected both backwards to my quarantined self over the past 8 months as well as to a future iteration of myself to prepare for any unseen moment when I will have wished I had done so at this point in time. The ceremony will take place in ICOSA’s front window on Saturday, December 12 beginning at 7pm.
WEEKEND 3: FRIDAY, DEC 18 | 12PM - 6PM
Artist: Teresa Moralez
Performance: Visitation Station: Breaking Beta
About
Visitation Station: Breaking Beta is an exploration of energetic transmissions and bodily sounds through digital medical technology. Teresa has always had an affinity to wellness and health. Through meditation, ritual and research, her attempt is to connect the audience to themselves as parts to a greater whole. How do we attempt to authentically connect and become more “present” within every moment in our lives? How do we choose and not choose to exist within systemic, and often oppressive societal structures? Please join me for a safe and socially-distanced art performance. I invite you to meet me in the middle. The visitations will be for a duration of 10 minutes.
WEEKEND 3: FRIDAY, DEC 18 | 7PM - 9PM
Artist: Ivy Roots
Performance: Ivy Roots
About
Love, Art, Growth is a live musical performance and art displaying the creative journey of a singer/songwriters growth.
I write, record and perform songs based on real life experience. I invite listeners to experience the full spectrum of their emotions, transmuting pain into beauty with each song. Some of my recent work includes singing bowls and frequencies that promote inner healing. I share stories to take my audience on a journey of love, art, and growth.
*If you would like to support Ivy Roots’ project make a direct donation at Cash.app/$IvyRoots
WEEKEND 3: SATURDAY, DEC 19 | 12PM - 4PM
Artist: Brendan Lay
Performance: Charged Up
About
Connected separation is an illusion. My artwork is an expression of the universe manifesting within me. I predominantly work
with paint either spray paint creating murals or automotive paint on aluminum pushing the boundaries of longevity. I'm continually
learning by adding fabrication and various tech to continually push the envelope of art. I strive to create pieces that evoke a feeling
in the viewer.
*Donations can be made at Venmo- @brendanlay or PayPal- PayPal.Me/brendangentlay
WEEKEND 4: SATURDAY, DEC 19 | 4PM - 6PM
Artist: Andrea Muñoz Martinez
Performance: Mala Cara: Un Atoretrato/A Self-Portrait
About
Mala Cara is the skeleton hero that haunts an imaginary place Martinez calls Borderlandia; A colorful and vibrant land where people negotiate their place, where people thrive and struggle, and where people resist the idea of unjust borders. In this act, Mala Cara performs the rituals of painting a self-portrait and hacienda caras. She will transform ICOSA Collective’s window into an altar and a painting studio. For generations Latinas have pushed against gender norms and expectations in their own communities and continue today. When Latinas and women of color express anger, passion, or strong emotions, they are often encouraged to smile to make others comfortable. With one glance, they harness the power to confront these calls, set boundaries, and send warnings. Theorist, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “Among Chicanas/Mexicanas, haciendo caras, ‘making faces’ means to put on a face, express feelings by distorting the face--frowning, grimacing, looking sad, glum or disapproving.” For Anzaldua, “haciendo caras” was a politically subversive gesture, “the piercing look that questions or challenges, the look that says, ‘Don’t walk all over me,’ the one that says, “‘Get out of my face.’” Martinez is a visual artist living and working in Austin, TX. Martinez is a "border artist" not only because she grew up in the borderlands of South Texas but also because her paintings and performance art take the border and boundaries as their subject.
WEEKEND 4: SATURDAY, DEC 26 | 12PM - 6PM
Artist: Chloe Curiel
Performance: Signature
About
Signature is about being the mark rather than making the mark. All I have is movement and the feeling of my own skin to prove that I am here. The marks that appear and reflect my body movements remind me that I can move uniquely within any space and be seen through the notations that my presence makes on the screen.
WEEKEND 4: SATURDAY, DEC 26 | 12PM - 6PM
Artist: Alexandra Robinson
Performance: A More Perfect Union
About
Borrowing the title of his 2008 speech from then candidate, Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union is a plea to address shared social problems. The title directly refers to the opening lines of the Preamble to the Constitution and in the context of today urges for the continual process of improvement of the country. As an artist who is seeking out her own identity and sense of place in a dynamic environment in which culture, language, race and religion are often pitted against one another, the striving for carries much weight.
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE: THURSDAY, DEC 31 | 10 PM - 3AM | FRIDAY, JAN 1
Artist: Gesel Mason Performance Projects
About
"Burst!" is a five-hour durational performance that sources the creative expertise of Black women as a transformational practice to mark the transition from 2020 into 2021.
“Burst!” is informed by Gesel Mason's performance project, Yes, And, which asks: Who would you be and what would you do if, as a Black woman, you had nothing to worry about? Who or what emerges when self-identified Black women (cis, trans, and non-binary), imagine/re-imagine new past, present, and futures? Yes, And is a process, or rather a methodology, of undoing and of freedom, the freedom “to find” and to “be found” from this recalibrated place.
“Burst!” represents the culmination of Mason’s Texas Performing Arts/Fusebox Festival residency for Yes, And. As a part of the inaugural residency, Mason engaged local and national artists and participants in the creative process, with a more intensive period December 11-20. For “Burst!” Mason will utilize processes developed during the residency to engage in a five-hour durational performance meditation in the ICOSA space from 10 PM CST December 31 to 3 AM CST January 1, 2021. Surrounded and inspired by the work of local Black women visual artists in the ICOSA space, Mason will embody performance states and characters as portals to other ways of being, embracing permission to exist and create from a liberated space crafted by the voices, experience, and expertise of Black women.
Gesel responds to the work of the following artists:
Brooke Burnside, https://www.brookeburnside.com/
Christina Coleman, Instagram @combsandshoelaces
Cindy Elisabeth, http://www.cindyelizabeth.com/about
Mercy Emelike, http://www.mercyemelike.com/
Ariel René Jackson, https://www.arielrenejackson.com/
Dawn Okoro, https://okorostudio.com/
WEEKEND 5: SATURDAY, JAN 2 | 12PM - 6PM
Artist: Pamela Martinez
Performance: COVID Care Package
About
COVID Care Package is a touchless healing experience where individuals learn about healing plants, pick up a small COVID self-care package and do an optional 10-minute reiki healing ritual. All activities will be touchless, socially distanced, and for mask-wearing participants only. Teletextile hopes to give people resources and ideas to help them through this intensely transformative time of stress, sickness, and loss within music-centered vibrational experiences.
*We provide this experience as an offering to your health and happiness. If you are in a position to return the exchange we suggest a donation of $10 - $20 for your COVID Care Package and mini touchless Reiki session. Please Venmo @teletextile
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE - WEEKEND 5: SUNDAY, JAN 3 | 12PM - 6PM
Artist: Delilah Rose Knuckley
Performance: Inner Space
About
"Inner Space" is an installation, sculptural, video and sound collage. With this piece, "Inner Space" Delilah Rose Knuckley invites an audience into a multisensory exploration of belonging and presence.
Curator Bios
Terra Goolsby is a Texas-based artist and curator living and working in Austin, Texas. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she acquired an MFA in Sculpture and remained a Presidential Scholar for the duration of her stay. She also conducted independent research at Brown University where she identified her obsession with de-construction of Meso American and contemporary mythologies. She also attended the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a BFA in painting and sculpture. She has been an artist in residence at West Dean College of Sussex University in Chichester, England, Vermont Studio Center, and I-Park Foundation in New Hampshire. Her work has been exhibited in Texas, England, New York, Rhode Island, Boston, and Connecticut. She continues to work out of her studio in Austin, Texas.
Tammie Rubin is an artist whose sculptural practice considers the intrinsic power of objects as signifiers, wishful contraptions, and mythic relics, while investigating the tension between the readymade and the handcrafted. Artworks explore the commingling of historical, familial, biographical, and fictional narratives paired with objects denoting time, transformation, and identity. Using intricate motifs, Rubin delves into themes involving ritual, domestic and liturgical objects, mapping, migration, magical thinking, and sensual desire. Rubin has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, and her sculptures are part of public and private collections. A recipient of grants from Cultural Arts Division Austin, Artist Trust Grants for Artist Projects Seattle, and an Artist Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Her work has received reviews in online and printed publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Glasstire, Sightlines, fields, Conflict of Interest, Arts and Culture Texas, Ceramics: Art & Perception, and Ceramics Monthly. Born and raised in Chicago, Rubin lives in Austin, Texas, where she is an Associate Professor of Ceramics & Sculpture at St. Edward’s University.
Press
Glasstire “Cleaning Out the Closet: Yuliya Lanina’s ‘My Dear Skeleton’” December 7, 2020 Review by Barabara Purcel
Sightlines “In Process: Gesel Mason on ‘Yes, And’” December 21st, 2020 Review by Fusebox Festival
