Cynthia Bond

ART ADVISOR/STUDIO MANAGER

Brittney Leeanne Williams is an LA-based visual artist. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2017), and the School of the Art Institute (2008-2009). Her work has exhibited with Alexander Berggruen (NYC), The Hole (NYC/LA), Mamoth (London), Carl Kostyál (Stockholm/Milan), Galerie Droste (Paris), Para Site (Hong Kong), Newchild (Antwerp), Miami (Untitled Art), San Francisco, and Chicago (Monique Meloche). Williams has held residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, Fores Project (London); Arts + Public Life (Chicago) and McColl Center for Art + Innovation, among others. She is a 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant recipient and a Luminarts fellow. Williams work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Domus Collection (NYC/Beijing), and the Columbus Museum of Art (Georgia), among others.

DRAMATURG/WRITER

The Pocho Project is an evening-length performance that brings together choreography, auto-ethnographic texts, and video to explore how cultural identity, immigration, assimilation, and cultural “gatekeeping” are embedded in the ways we move, talk, and write. Choreographed by James Moreno with video and projections by Morganne Wakefield and lighting design by Rana Esfandiary.

The Pocho Project is partially funded by an ArtPlace America grant (LAC) and a KU Research Excellence Fund grant.

CURATOR/PRODUCER

Performing Home is a performance project engaging the multivalent meanings, spaces, and movement that construct what we call home. Home is at once intensely personal and abstractly social; structured both through individual experience and legal decree. Spanning a range of movement practices and positionalities, the work in Performing Home was created with dramaturgical support from scholars, a lay historian, and a housing activist.

Performing Home is a partner program of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and premiered at Links Hall Oct. 13-15, 2017.

Press:

Performing Home at Links Hall: What Does Chicago Mean to You?, Chicago Tribune

Everyday Framework: A Preview of Performing Home at Links Hall, NewCity

Five Best Bets for Fall Dance, Chicago Reader

Fall Dance Preview, Windy City Times

Works Presented

Movement Makers and Dramaturgs

Developed with the institutional support of High Concept Labs.

ART ADVISOR
Unyimeabasi Udoh is a London-based artist, graphic designer, and co-founder of Plates: an experimental journal of art and culture. Udoh has an MFA from School of the Art Institute, and a BA in architecture from Columbia University. Udoh’s work has most recently been exhibited at Piccalilli (London) and Kip (London). Udoh has been an artist-in-residence with Driehaus Museum, and the Chicago Artists Coalition, among others. Udoh is a recipient of the Coney Family Fund award and the Starr Fellowship (London).

CURATOR/PRODUCER

Writers, singers, composers, performance artists, filmmakers and comedians share their work and how they’re preparing for the new administration in a cabaret setting.

Participating artists include: Jeanette Andrews; Alexa Græ; Joshua Kent; The Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Material; Derek McPhatter; Elaine Phillips; Mitsu Salmon; with films by Ginger Krebs/Sara Zalek/Eugene Sun Park; Benjamin Rosenthal.

January 20, 2017 at High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary Chicago

PRESS

Performances, Marches and Protests to Mark Inauguration Week in Chicago, Time Out Chicago 1/13/17

CURATOR/PRODUCER

An evening of performance constructed within a post-digital context, presented at High Concept Labs. body ± New Works in Dance and Technology featured 3 dance works by visual artists and choreographers interrogating technology as it both supplements and supplants the moving body. (Spring 2016)

Press Preview: "Trio of Works Integrate Movement and Technology at HCL," Lauren Warnecke

DRAMATURG

human, next is a performance piece for dancers, video monitors, and projections. Choreographed by James Moreno with video and sound design by Benjamin Rosenthal, human, next has been presented in NYC and Chicago.

A companion video adaptation project has screened at galleries and film festivals in NYC, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Colombia, Mexico, and Italy, among others.

TEXT CONTRIBUTOR/DRAMATURG

The Sun King is a one-act ballet choreographed by Elements Contemporary Ballet Resident Choreographer Joseph Caruana, based on the life of French monarch Louis XIV and his relationship with his official court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully. The Sun King tells the story of ballet’s beginnings at Louis XIV’s court and features live music, including compositions by Lully, performed by a period instrument orchestra The Sun King premiered in 2014 at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and was remounted in 2016.

CO-PRODUCER

A short film written and directed by AAIFF 2014 Screenplay Award winner Eugene Sun Park.  An allegory about American identity, racial narratives, and xenophobia, Self-Deportation is shot in an experimental style, employing highly theatrical set design and choreography. 
The film is recipient of an Illinois Arts Council grant and was an official selection of the 2015 Korea Indie & Expat Film Festival (Seoul),  15th annual Asian Pacific American Film Festival (D.C.), the Ithaca Pan-Asian Film Festival, CineBodega, the Speechless Film Festival, and Absinthe Pop Art Festival. 

PRODUCER/ASS'T. DIRECTOR

One of the original Chicago punk bands from the 1970's, Silver Abuse stars in this music video based on a poem band member Robert Porché wrote when he was 11. It's German Expressionism meets the Monkees as our fearless Punks struggle through a neo-Depression, singing all the way. Written and photographed by artist Gretchen Hasse,  MOJO HOBO: THE VIDEO had its Chicago premiere in October 2014 and was an official selection of the North Portland Unknown Film Festival, in the Unknown Television division (2015).

WRITER/PRODUCER

Book of Hours is a text-based performance piece which draws on a 12 poem series of the same name. (In development)