Me(ME) (DIS)Content
aN INSTAGRAM-BASED performance art evenT
September 2 - October 13, 2019

FOLLOW @performancearthouston
on Instagram to experience the show

Individual artists take up residency in Performance Art Houston’s Instagram account and facilitate performances and gestures as their works within the show. Every week, the account passes hands to a new artist who will then begin with their performances.

FEATURING WORK BY:

David Ian Bellows/Griess 2-8 SEPT
Brittani Broussard 9 - 15 SEPT
elaine Thap 16 - 22 SEPT
DOMINIque duroseau 23 - 29 SEPT
RAKI MALHOTRA 30 sept - 6 oct
Sierra Ortega 7-13 oct

CURATED BY ESTHER NEFF

​Esther Neff (@thefenserf ) is the founder of PPL (@panoplylab) and MARSH (@marsh_stl) and works as a performance-maker, experimental philosopher, and organizer. Neff’s institutional, theatrical, and relational projects have included a lab site in Brooklyn, NY (2012-18), month-long “relational march” tours across the USA, diners, books, temporary collectives, functional foundations (#BIPAF), conferences, symposia, festivals, exhibitions, “operas of operations” (with composer Brian McCorkle), research projects, think tanks, and actions. Neff’s first two books are forthcoming in 2020, the community-contributed “Institution is a Verb” with the Operating System and “Embarrassed of the Whole” published by Ugly Duckling Presse/Emergency Playscripts.



WorDS FROM THE CURATOR: 

CORPORATE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTROLS AND DISTRIBUTES (DIS)CONTENTS, CAPITALIZING ON OUR URGES TO (RE)PRESENT OUR SELVES AND EXPRESS OUR FEELS. AS A POST-CONSENSUAL SPACE THAT SEEMS BOTH PRIVATE (INTERIOR/INTERNAL) AND PUBLIC (EXTERIOR/EXTERNAL), INSTAGRAM IN (P)ARTICULAR REDUCES OUR SELVES TO THE CONTENTS OF A STICKY, MASS-METABOLIC BELLY OF (CATA)COMBS. YET, SUCH MEDIATION DEVICES ALSO SPREAD VIRAL CONTAMINATIONS OF THE VERY MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS THAT DEMAND SUCH ASSIMILATIONS AND DIGESTIVE (RE)PRODUCTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE.  

MOREOVER, IT IS A PROMETHEAN FALLACY TO BELIEVE THAT TECHNOLOGIES REMAIN SOLELY WITHIN THE POWER OF THEIR MAKERS; MODES OF MEDIATION MAY ALSO MATERIALIZE “MINDS OF THEIR OWN;” EMERGENT “MASS MIRRORS” REFRACT AND DIFFRACT, REFLECTING MORE THAN THE FACE(S) OF ANY SINGLE USER. PERHAPS, VIA INTELLIGENT VIRAL PROCESSES AND TENDER DANCES, MEMETICS REVOLUTIONIZE PERSPECTIVES, POSITIONS, DESIRES, AND DESIGNS VIA RUPTURES+RECONFIGURATIONS.  

CAN FORMS OF MIMESIS + MNEMONICS (FROM THE GREEK “MIMĒMA” TO MIMIC, IMITATE, OR COPY) HELP “US” REMEMBER AND IDENTIFY OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER OTHER-WISE? IF WE REFUSE TO SEE SOCIAL PARASITES SUCH AS OURSELVES AS DRIVEN BY COMPETITION AND (SOCIALLY DARWINISTIC) DRIVES TO INDIVIDUALLY SURVIVE, CAN WE SEE MEMETICS INSTEAD AS A LEARNING-CAPACITY THAT ENABLES US TO CULTIVATE INTENTS THROUGH SHARING OF EXPERIENCES, PERSPECTIVES AND KNOWLEDGES? AS WITH MUCH OF THE WORLD(ING)S IN/THROUGH WHICH WE FIND OURSELVES, PARTICIPATIONS MAY EITHER NIHILISTICALLY CAPITULATE OR OPTIMISTICALLY INFILTRATE, HASHTAG: HIVEPOV. IN THE END, WHAT MATTERS IS HOW WE PER-FORM OURSELVES AND THE ALGORITHMS/BIORHYTHMS WE ACTIVATE.  
​

About The Artists

DAVID IAN BELLOWS/GRIESS

David Ian Bellows/Griess explores themes of control, labor, and sexual play through diy surveillance to relay the physicality and the resilience of the body and what might be possible/impossible for the body to sustain.

​Brittani Broussard

Brittani Broussard is a multidisciplinary artist based in Houston. She received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, a Textiles and Apparel Certificate from the Nantong University in Nantong, China, and studied Fashion Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA. Her work explores themes that alter the figure using the language of fashion, costuming, masking, and movement of the body. Brittani has exhibited work in Houston, Austin, Los Angeles, and Manhattan.  

ELAINE THAP

Elaine Thap is an interdisciplinary artist working with sound, movement, and performance. She obtained her BFA in Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Elaine Thap has shown work in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.  As a Cambodian American woman, she uses her diasporic identity to convey layers of being and relationships. Live action or performance art is the ability to fabricate situations of childhood trauma and adult responsibility while seeking alternative perspectives and possibilities. She explores expressive psychosexuality in Butoh movement while creating live sounds. 

Dominique Duroseau  ​

Dominique Duroseau is a Newark-based artist born in Chicago, raised in Haiti. Her interdisciplinary practice explores themes of racism, socio-cultural issues, and existential dehumanization. Her exhibitions, performances, and screenings include SATELLITE ART and PULSE Play in Miami; The Kitchen, The Brooklyn Museum and the New Museum (BWA for BLM), El Museo del Barrio, A.I.R. Gallery, BronxArtSpace, Rush Arts Gallery, and Smack Mellon in New York City; The Newark Museum, Index Arts, Project for Empty Space, and Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ. Her recent exhibitions and talks include: solo exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, panelist at Black Portraiture[s] at Harvard and lecturer at Vassar. She was a fellow at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, and received artist residencies from Gallery Aferro, Index Art Center, the Wassaic Project and Shine Portrait Studio. Duroseau holds a Bachelor of Architecture and a Master of Arts in Fine Arts.

Raki Malhotra

"In performance, I explore the contemporary biases that are surfacing among us; ordering the micro-society that exists right now in the space in which together we are present. Collaboration has a major role in this process, and my intention is to listen and respond. My collaborator is a participant, a group member, another artist, a space, an object, or something else?"

SIERRA ORTEGA 

Sierra Ortega is a {neuro}queer, interdisciplinary, performance artist based in New York City. Utilizing their background in performance practice, speculative philosophy, and queer and feminist politics, they have come to develop an artist/scholar practice that is deeply personal, constantly chaotic, and furiously DIY. Conceptually, their practice can be understood as research into alternative & non-normative habituation. Their work, through physical and conceptual investigations of queerness, alienation, and alterity, seeks to push the limits of human affective capacity and embodiment as to generate post-capitalist, meta-utopic futurity.