Name: CROSSROADS: Curated by Hilary Brown-Istrefi
Start: 2021-12-09T20:00:00-05:00
End: 2021-12-09T21:30:00-05:00
Location: Judson Memorial Church

CROSSROADS:  Curated by Hilary Brown-Istrefi

Pioneers Go East Collective

CROSSROADS by Pioneers Go East Collective. ALEXA GRÆ! Yuan Liu! gorno (Glenn Potter-Takata)! Arien Wilkerson/Tnmot Aztro!

Judson Memorial Church

Pioneers Go East Collective inspires a lively exchange of queer art and pop culture by connecting people to ideas and experiences.

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Crossroads Series by Pioneers Go East Collective at Judson Church.Free event (&amp; sliding scale tickets). All are welcome!Created by Pioneers Go East Collective. Curated by Hilary Brown-Istrefi.Featured artists: ALEXA GRÆ! Yuan Liu! gorno (Glenn Potter-Takata)! Arien Wilkerson/Tnmot Aztro!Crossroads performance and video art series curated by Pioneers Go East Collective.CROSSROADS (CROSSWINDS, CROSSCURRENTS, CROSSFIRES) Performance + art + poetry + music + dance + food + community. A curated series presented by Pioneers Go East Collective. Crossroads Series features artists who explore new genres and known performance and art-making modes to share their creative practices with other artists and their audiences. Each evening we witness different generations of artists dealing with actual, day-to-day, contemporary challenges to further discussion between artists and to activate a network of exchange and inclusion with social and artistic intervention.eve’s witness. 2 soliloquies to the night by ALEXA GRÆ love//me - a self love mantra in the matrix and Sur La Nuit - an electronic opera video creates the backdrop for the poet to reflect and confess to the night. the poet constructed of - mother (crafter of the words) and child (artist) seek answers about love and loss. wonder through the lens of: gender, otherness, queerness, race, familial dynamics, and access into classical art forms. Created by ALEXA GRÆ, Jon Wes, and Matthew Ozawa. Text by Connie Edgemon “a night as beautiful as this i’ve long not seen”. ALEXA GRÆ's work is a combination of artistic disciplines informed by specialized academic training in music composition and opera. Rigorous training as an opera student challenged them to transcend the boundaries of various art forms and to understand the cultural boundaries of art in the everyday world. They bridge these chasms by focusing on how art informs identities, socialization habits, self-expression, and the ability to create, creating genre-defying performances that incorporate multiple dance styles, theatrical personas, and experimental storytelling styles. Themes of deconstructing classical forms, beliefs about the feminine and masculine, and channeling greater collective consciousness find an evolving presence in ALEXA GRÆ's work. Their mission is to identify moments of pure imagination and innocent creation, harnessing the immediate kinship it creates in order to draw us all toward something divine, something as yet to be defined.EQUATORS (Excerpt). Credits: Arien Wilkerson in collaboration with Installation Artist David Borawski and Lighting designer Jon-Paul LaRocco and artist Domenic Pellegrini. Description: EQUATORS Performance installation Is a visual exploration of the effects of climate change seen through the lens of racist social and historical practices that have displaced communities of color, such as segregation, re-zoning, gentrification, and redlining. (You can catch the full performances in Philadelphia Fri DEC 17 7:00p &amp; 9:00p &amp; Sat DEC 18 7:00p &amp; 9:00p WHERE: Philadelphia, Pa 19122 ICEBOX PROJECT SPACE (Crane Arts). Arien Wilkerson (They/she) is a queer black choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, director, producer, and installation artist. The Hartford, CT native began their dance training under the tutelage of Jolet Creary, and has been a student at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The Artists Collective, Earl Mosley Institute of the Arts, and the Batsheva Dance Company’s "Gaga Intensive" in New York, NY, along with visiting the company in Tel Aviv, Israel. In 2008, they were a scholarship recipient for travel to Cape Verde, Africa to participate in CulturArte, a youth arts residency program. There, they studied with life and performance mentor Deborah Goffe (Artistic Director of Scapegoat Garden) and Mano Preto (Artistic Director of Raiz di Polon). As a high school senior in 2009, Wilkerson traveled throughout parts of Eastern Europe on scholarship. Additionally, David Dorfman and Nicole Stanton selected Arien's work for inclusion in Wesleyan University’s Dance Masters programming, recognizing their potential as a groundbreaking choreographer in New England. In their early role as Founder and Artistic Director of TNMOT AZTRO, Arien has been commissioned by Hartford’s Town &amp; Country Club to develop their sold-out show, BLACK BOY JUNGLE, which went on to the Wadsworth Atheneum. As an Artist-in-Residence at The Garden Center for Contemporary Dance (2013-2014), Arien developed three iterations of "The Projector Series", which went on to sell out RAW (Real Art Ways) for 3 consecutive evenings. Arien served as co-facilitator for the Invisible City Project Cooperative, a space and program with the goal of supporting Greater Hartford dance artists in making their best work. Wilkerson teaches numerous workshops and gives lectures to youth, adults, non-dancers and seniors throughout the globe. Wilkerson has received funding support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts (2021) and the Sachs Program for Arts and Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania (2020). They were nominated as a Pew Fellow (2020) and were the Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Artist Fellow (2019). Other awards include: Connecticut Dance Alliance Jump Start Award (2019); Greater New Haven Arts Council and Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship (2019); Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Project Grant (2018); National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read Grant (2018); Director’s Discretionary Fund Award from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (2018); New England Foundation for the Arts’ Rebecca Blunk Fund Award (2018); New England Dance Fund Grant (2017 &amp; 2018); and the Spirit of Juneteenth Award from the Amistad Center for Art and Culture (2017).Yuan Liu is a Chinese-born filmmaker based in New York. She has a background in scientific research and production design. She supported the world-renowned contemporary artist Caiguoqiang (2008 Beijing Olympics, “I Want to Believe” Guggenheim Retrospective). She draws on her interdisciplinary background as inspiration for writing, directing, and producing. Yuan’s approach to cinema is a letter written to the subconscious self. She is interested in magnifying surrealism in visuals in a free form. Primarily music-driven, each of her film pieces is a type of mathematical contemplation on the social cachet behind one’s individuation, and especially of those embodying a quixotic way of life.Yonsei f*ck f*ck pt. 12. Credits:Composition by gorno (Glenn Potter-Takata), evan ray suzuki, Kimiko Tanabe. Performed by Kimiko Tanabe, evan ray suzuki, gorno (Glenn Potter-Takata). Sound by gorno.Description: Yonsei f*ck f*ck is an ongoing series of performances and videos. Through butoh and made-up rituals, Yonsei f*ck f*ck (yonsei meaning fourth-generation) imagines a future where the cultural erasure associated with Japanese internment camps has been misguidedly overcorrected and distorted into a value system where anime and Japanese junk food have been assimilated into the pantheon of buddhas and bodhisattvas.gorno (Glenn Potter-Takata) is a Bronx-based artist-person working in sound art and butoh. His work centers a Japanese-American experience and is preoccupied with the consumer culture runoff from the Japanese archipelago. In the diasporic mandala of all that is Nikkei, all paths lead to Pikachu. The throne is that of fishies. Sailor Moon’s tiara is the crown. gorno is a current artist-in-residence with Movement Research and has developed work through residencies at Gibney (Work Up 6.1), Amanda + James, and CUNY Dance Initiative at Lehman College. His work has been presented at Gibney, Amanda + James, Triskelion Arts, HERE Arts, Dixon Place, Arts On Site, CUNY Lehman College, and Abrons Art Center. gorno received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied multimedia performance.

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