BEING WORK is a collection of essays by dance and theater artists that offer access to varied experiences of performing in live exhibitions. The authors capture a spectrum of mundane and profound moments that arise within performance gig work in visual arts contexts such as museums, galleries and art fairs, detailing the day-to-day practice of inhabiting art work as well as reflecting on broader questions of how they got there and the impact it has had on their outside lives. While providing very personal, human perspectives on what it feels like to perform in visual arts spaces, BEING WORK asks its audience how a performer's labor is perceived and valued in these spaces, and what new possibilities might unfurl within the, at times fraught, coexistence of the two mediums.
Contributors include: Mireya Lucio writing on being the work of Marina Abramovic, Casey Brown being the work of Maria Hassabi, Jessica Emmanuel being the work of Xu Zhen, Kestrel Leah being the work of Julien Previeux, Allie Hankins being the work of Gordon Hall, effie bowen being the work of Narcissister, Dorothy Dubrule being the work of Tino Sehgal and Paul Hamilton being the work of Bruce Nauman. Illustrations by Eileen Echikson accompany each essay to draw out the many thoughts, interactions, sensations and associations that encompass the experiences described.
Author Biography:
Dorothy Dubrule is a choreographer and performer based in Los Angeles. Her choreography is often made in collaboration with people who do not identify as dancers and has been performed in theaters as well as bars, clubs, galleries, sound stages and sports arenas. The content of her choreography draws inspiration from film and community theater. Prior to moving to LA, she danced with DIY performance art collective Club Lyfestile and comedic fly girl crew Body Dreamz in Philadelphia. She has worked with visual artists, musicians, comedians, choreographers and directors such as Emily Mast, Jon Daly, Kate Watson-Wallace, Lea Anderson, Lisel, Melinda Ring, Milka Djordjevich, Narcissister, Tino Sehgal, Trulee Hall and Zoe Aja Moore, among others. Dorothy received a BA from New College of Florida in 2009, with a concentration in literature and philosophy, and an MFA in choreography and performance from University of California Los Angeles's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance in 2016. Her writing has been featured in performance journal Riting.org and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's digital platform, Open Space.Dorothy was the Executive Director of Pieter Performance Space, a non-profit platform for movement artists, healers and activists based in LA from 2017 to 2022. From arts non-profit leadership she transitioned to organizational operations with a focus on the care and resourcing of humans in the workplace.Dorothy has served on the board of Grex, the West Coast Affiliate of the AK Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems since 2018. As chair of the Education and Events Planning Committee, she explores issues of access and application to promote group relations learning. effie bowen is an artist making performative, printed, and sculptural works which materialize out of gestures of repetition and endurance. effie has performed for Deville Cohen, Ryan McNamara, Jen Rosenblit and Narcissister and has shown work at ICA Richmond (VA), Baby Company (NY), Pieter (LA), Danspace Project (NY), and Ponderosa (DE). effie holds a BFA in Dance from Hollins University and an MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. Casey Brown is a movement artist and writer. As a choreographer, dancer, and teacher, her work centers on the body as a site of transcendence as well as connection-to our bodies, environments, and one another. As a writer, Casey creates vivid, truthful recollections of her personal experience through poetry and creative non-fiction. She holds an MFA in Dance from UCLA and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton with a BA in English and concentrations in dance and creative writing. She has presented her choreographies at The Tank, UCLA's Kaufman Theater, the Electric Lodge, the McCarter Theater, and Highways Performance Space, and as a dancer, she has performed professionally with Chantal Cherry, Cuerva Urban Folkl�rico, Maria Hassabi, and Vic Marks.
