SESSION 5 | September 10 – October 8, 2024
Alex Romania | Choreography | Brooklyn, NY
Alex Romania is a multidisciplinary artist who has held residencies with Movement Research, MacDowell and now, Djerassi. Romania has created large stage works such as ‘JERK’, which toured internationally, ‘KLUTZ’ (Abrons Arts Center, 2018), and ‘junkhead’ (Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 2019) in addition to many performance works for galleries and performance art venues such as Grace Exhibition Space. Romania has created video installations since 2013, which gave way to several collaborations and work for the screen.
Romania has danced in the works of Kathy Westwater since 2013, and in works by Éva Mag, Eddie Peake, Simone Forti, Andy de Grout and in their early days, De Facto Dance. Romania has designed live video for and danced in stage works by Antonio Ramos, worked as a cinematographer for Christopher Unpezverde Nuñez, Martita Abril and Estado Flotante, edited works by Sarah White-Ayòn and M. Lamar, served as assistant editor for ‘My So-Called Selfish Life’ by Trixie Films and been both cinematographer and editor on works with TAAMAS, as well as director and cinematographer for music videos by Hegemonix.
Current projects include ‘Face Eaters’, premiering at the Chocolate Factory Theater (CF) May 2024, the experimental documentary ‘Patch the Sky with Five Colored Stones’ co-directed with choreographer Daria Faïn, a collaborative short film with Daniela Fabrizi and the Re Hecho community in the Lower East Side and the ten year project of creating a feature around their father Arthur Romania, entitled ‘The Philosophy of Whatever’. In stretches of time, Alex is also part of bands ‘PęRD!EM’, ‘CLT’ and ‘B!G’ / ‘worm’ / ‘Town Ghost’.
Psychic Wormhole (Stacy Lynn Smith + Alex Romania) is currently developing their feature film, RECKONING.
Carolina Escobar | Visual Arts | Phoenix, AZ
Carolina Escobar has a wish that the images she makes have the power to transcend international borders and cultures. She makes objects and she travels, both go hand in hand. In her travels, she makes a point of collecting indigenous seed pods, textiles, carved objects, small pictures, unique architectural fragments, and takes detailed photos, all of which she uses as reference material for her work. Having been raised in Caracas, Venezuela, but living as an adult in The US, she has always had a sense of not belonging. This influence on her work gives it an “otherworldly” aspect, yet familiar with recognizable materials and surfaces. Her father being a mathematician/economist, passed on his logical, precise way of thinking, while her mother, the literary, musical artist, passed on more of the creative, less structured way of seeing. This prompted her desire to study both Art and Architecture, melding the influence of both parents.
She was awarded a Sculpture degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a masters in Sculpture from Yale University before attending Architecture school. Having always being “hands-on” and a builder; after 5 years of Architecture school, she took her knowledge of Architecture and returned to making sculpture.
Her work starts with a loose idea, initially letting the form evolve where it leads her. Sometimes the piece moves along smoothly, while other times it is put aside for months. Pieces are constructed in stages and several worked on at the same time. In time they diverge and become their own distinct pieces. For inspiration, Carolina looks to nature, seed pods, scientific forms, underwater life, and human organs. From this visual information, the sculpture manifested are of organic shapes, curves, slick surfaces, seductive materials, beautiful fabrics, and most of all vibrant color.
Kate Perry | Drama | London, UK
Kate Perry from Derry is a writer/actor/sketch comedian and recent member of BAFTA connects. She started her writing/acting career in San Francisco, moved back to Ireland and is now living and working in London. She has written numerous radio plays for RTE, BBC NI and BBC Radio 4 including a series on Woman’s Hour. Olivier award winners Tamsin Greig and Conleth Hill have read her work on BBC Radio 4. She is the recipient of a John Brabourne Film/TV award, 2018 and an alumni of the London Library Emerging Writers programme 2021. Her multi-award-winning short film Ruthless has won 21 awards at national, international, BAFTA, BIFA and IFTA qualifying film festivals and was the curtain opener for the documentary about Abbey Road Studios, ‘If These Walls Could Sing’ at the Mostly British Film Festival in San Francisco, 2023. Kate graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with an MPhil in Creative Writing and holds a Master’s Degree in Screenwriting from the Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire. Kate is also an actress and sketch comedian. She has appeared on television/film and has written and toured numerous one-woman comedy shows.
Stacy Lynn Smith | Choreography | Brooklyn, NY
Stacy Lynn Smith is a neurodivergent, Black multiracial performing artist, improviser, choreographer, director, filmmaker and Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water (by and for those affected by CSA), whose practice synthesizes various lineages of improvisational forms, somatics, experimental theater and butoh. Smith collaborates within and between these roles, creating work with such talented artists as: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Thaddeus O’Neil, Vangeline Theater (2008-2017), Michael Freeman (2010-2016), Saints of an Unnamed Country, Rakia Seaborn, Salome Asega, GENG, Bradley Bailey, Donna Costello, Michele Beck, Jasmine Hearn, mayfield brooks, jill sigman, Kathy Westwater, Josephine Decker, Emily Johnson, Peter Born, Okwui Okpokwasili and more. Smith is a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2024 Djerassi Resident Artist in Choreography. Psychic Wormhole (Stacy Lynn Smith + Alex Romania) is currently developing their feature film, RECKONING, which excavates Smith’s experiences of childhood trauma and somatic memory as a means to reclaim embodiment. Psychic Wormhole confronts the devastations of trauma – embracing a multidisciplinary approach to making, filtered through genres of Horror, Afro-futurism and Arthouse Cinema.
Janina Totzauer | Media Arts | Munich, Germany
Janina Totzauer is a media artist based in Munich. Her work often combines video, textiles and ceramics. Her studies in media art at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, the UCT in South Africa and the UNAM in Mexico City nourished her interest in human rituals from all corners of the world. Over the years, she has participated in various residencies and projects in Southern Africa, Mexico, India and South Korea, and her research has focused on cross-cultural and interspecies exploration.
Totzauer’s sculptural and audiovisual works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Cinema Galleggiante film festival in Venice, at the City Museum in Gwangju, South Korea, at Karşı Sanat in Istanbul, Turkey, or at the Project Room in Windhoek, Namibia. Since 2018, Totzauer has been co-founder of the AlmResidency, an annual artist residency in the foothillsof the Bavarian Alps.
Marian Essl | Digital Arts | Vienna, Austria
MONOCOLOR alias Marian Essl is a Vienna based audiovisual artist. He explores the interrelations between sound and image in both performance-based and installation-based works. His fully generative, algorithmically created imagery oscillates between fluid, organic textures and rigid structures. He focuses on the relation between sound, image, light and space, aiming to create highly immersive audiovisual universes. His work has been shown in various contexts around the world. In 2020, he was awarded the Japan Media Arts Festival New Face Award for his audiovisual fulldome performance “Latent Space” that was created during a residency at the Société des arts technologiques (SAT) in Montréal.