The Arts Quarter Collective is a student-run group that supports the collaborative aspect of artmaking and embraces the interdisciplinary and multimedia possibilities afforded by today’s artistic and cultural landscape.
Artsmosis is the product of this artistic mosaic, an art festival with dance, music and video performances and installations. p>One installation, “Urban Echo,” requests the interaction of its audience with their cell phones before and during its display.
The exhibition explores and challenges contemporary notions of art and media and how they interact.
A&E asked some of the artists to explain their projects for the event. Here are their e-mailed statements.
Laura Winton
Laura Winton, a second-year theater doctorate candidate, adapts traditionally nonperformance texts into her performances. Concerning collaboration on her dance/movement piece with Annie Hanauer, a third-year dance major and member of the Artsmosis board, she says:
Annie Hanauer has contributed dance/movement to the piece, which frees me up as a performer to focus on the text. Having met through the Arts Quarter Collective, we talked about wanting to work together on a piece and went through several different works that I had in mind that I had wanted to collaborate on with a dancer. We’ve been working with the movement in a very flexible way that allows Annie some improvisational possibilities, rather than something that is completely tied to the text in a linear or narrative fashion.
Jessica Biggs
Jessica Briggs, a second-year dance major, is contributing a performance titled “Who the Hell Can See Forever?” and here talks about her inspiration:
I was inspired by poetry, personal experiences and philosophies. I was originally inspired by the song “That Man Jumped Out the Window” by Cloud Cult. (Kelsey Myron, second-year dance student) and I then took off from there, addressing many elements of suicide, near-death experiences and relationships.
Michael Duffy
Michael Duffy, a Master of Fine Arts candidate with the School of Music, will present a music/video piece titled “Ea, Is Cuimhin Liom Go Maith É (I Remember It Well).” Here are his comments on Artsmosis’ contribution to its artists:
Artsmosis provides an invaluable forum for presenting multi-disciplinary, multimedia works. Without an outlet, ideas flounder and fade, possibilities are left unexplored, and art stagnates. I humbly present my contribution to the festival in the hopes that I and others might find it satisfying or challenging in someway.
Christopher Baker
Christopher Baker, a graduate researcher with the time and interactivity department of art, answers how he views the significance of his medium of expression in relation to his project, to Artsmosis, and to art as a whole:
We were initially attracted to using the cell phones because they are everywhere. They have become an accessible form of communication that a large segment of the population understands. While cell phones are generally used for private conversations in public spaces, we are encouraging their use to foster public conversations in these same places. The “Urban Echo” installation featured at the Artsmosis festival is the first in a series of public interventions that will occur throughout the year around the country.
