High Concept Laboratories: Anna Martine Whitehead
Treasure
High Concept Laboratories
2233 S. Throop
2/11 at 6pm: Anna Martine Whitehead & Nicole Mauser
2/12 at 6pm: Anna Martine Whitehead & Nicole Mauser
2/13 at 6pm: Anna Martine Whitehead & Nicole Mauser
Suggested donation $10
Anna Martine is an artist, writer, choreographer, and curator. She makes solos and collaborative work interrogating race, gender, time, and loss at the limits of performance.
Anna Martine has shown work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, KUNST-STOFF, SOMArts, Southern Exposure, and CounterPULSE in San Francisco; The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; AUNTS in Brooklyn; and Pieter, homeLA, and Watts Towers Art Center in Los Angeles. In addition to her choreographic and solo work, Martine has worked collaboratively or made significant contributions to the work of Keith Hennessy, Jesse Hewit, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Julien Previeux, and Spiral Q Puppet Theater. She is a contributor to itch dance journal and writes ‘Endurance Tests,’ a recurring column in Art Practical exploring creative practices of the African Diaspora. She has co-produced VAST LANDSCAPE, an ongoing open sound- movement studio; and movement//movement, a social justice based practice space in Detroit via the Allied Media Conference.
Anna Martine holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and has lectured there as well as at Cal State East Bay. Visit annamartine.com for more.
Marie Alarcón is a multimedia and sound performance artist based in Philadelphia, Pa. She has an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and has been working in community media as an educator and producer for the past 10 years. She is currently a CFEVA Fellowship Finalist, and has shown work internationally including Franz Josephs Kai in Vienna Austria, The Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia, and the City Hall Gallery, and has performed at the ICA Philadelphia and the Print Center.
Lifelong Chicagoan Felicia Holman is Co-Founder/Communication Director of Honey Pot Performance and Marketing/Studio Manager at Links Hall. With Honey Pot, Felicia creates and presents original interdisciplinary performance which engages audience and inspires community. Credits include The Ladies Ring Shout (2011), Price Point (2013), Juke Cry Hand Clap (2014) and current work-in-progress, Masking Her (2015-2016) which debuted at Pritzker Pavilion as part of the 2nd annual REVIVAL residency & showcase, presented by DCASE (Jan. 2015).
In addition to performing, Felicia writes essays & content for online outlets including Sixty Inches From Center Magazine, The Working House Blog and This Is HCL (the High Concept Laboratories blog). She is also a freelance curator/exhibition juror/panelist/presenter and an admitted Facebook junkie. With Honey Pot in 2015,Felicia completed a five-month ‘Crossing Boundaries’ residency at the University of Chicago’s Arts Incubator in Washington Park and is currently in residence at the Propeller Fund Studio (within Mana Contemporary Chicago). Felicia sums up her dynamic artrepreneurial life in 3 words—“Creator, Connector, Conduit.
Mlondolozi ‘Mlondi’ Zondi is a multimedia artist who works mainly in dance, drama, and performance/live art. He is a second year PhD student in performance studies at Northwestern University in Illinois. He received his MFA in dance studies as a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Irvine (USA). Prior to that, he studied at the University of KwaZulu Natal (South Africa) where he obtained a BA Honours cum laude with a concentration in theatre studies, media and cultural studies. His professional performance career includes performing for theater-for-development companies such as Soundtrack4Life (Cape Town) and Arepp Theatre4Life (Johannesburg). He also worked as a full-time dancer for the Flatfoot Dance Company as well as The Playhouse Company in Durban. Before moving the US, he worked at The Market Theater in Johannesburg under the tutelage of directors Malcolm Purkey and Neil Coppen. Mlondi has created his own body of performance work that includesCrawl for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (2009). He also created Drag at the DAG (site specific Drag Performance at the Durban Art Gallery 2010); The Martyrdom of the Kitchen Saints (2010); Geography of my Umbilical Cord (Jomba Contemporary Dance Festival Fringe 2011); INMATE ( 2013);VIRTUAL VENUES, (2013); CEREMONIOUS (commissioned by the Laguna Beach Art Museum,California 2013); fix (2014); and Dead Skin (2015).
“Treasure” uses dance, projections, sound collage, and wearable sculpture to meditate on the nature of the Black body in our current moment of overwrought Black death. Taking as its starting point Claudia Rankine’s supposition that a Black body becomes an inhuman thing of value at the moment of death, and the libratory legacy of escape that is fundamental to Black culture, “Treasure” is an interdisciplinary performance of antinomies—the paradoxes of freedom and escape, presence and absence, life and death–that constitute blackness. The work is an urgent response to the overwhelming accumulation of online videos, social media feeds, and public acts projecting Black death as the defining characteristic of Black life.
