ARCOS Presents: Creative Resistance - Kickoff
At a kickoff event for the CRASHBOX presentation at Hyperreal Film Club on August 30, the artists will share a preview of their work, including a premiere screening of the film portion of SalSāl, a reading by Bouboushian, a conversation with the artists, and a preview of a documentary following their processes.
ARCOS Presents: Creative Resistance, the seventh edition of the mentorship program that walks Austin-based independent dance artists through self-producing, brings a double bill of new interdisciplinary work to CRASHBOX September 4–12. Rupture: Sneak by Lichen Bouboushian is built inside an unraveling nest that evokes a disaster zone or refugee camp. SalSāl (clay that makes sound) by Venese Alcantar and Omar Mousa is a dance/film that stages a choreographic confrontation between American lawn sod and the clay beneath it.
Rupture: Sneak moves across three generations: Lichen Bouboushian’s grandfather’s childhood in occupied Armenia after the genocide, their father’s life after forced migration due to the Lebanese civil war, and Bouboushian’s own life as a first-generation American. The artist builds an unstable nest inside the set, then slowly unravels it to see what it may offer them. It acts as both home and obstacle as they transform being made small by empire into a survival tactic in Diaspora.
Bouboushian is a hybrid artist straddling the worlds of dance, theater, and performance art. While they have presented their work through festivals and residencies throughout the US and Canada, this is their first opportunity to learn the ropes of self-producing, an important step in their artistic trajectory that inspired their application to ARCOS’ program.
Alcantar and Mousa’s SalSāl (clay that makes sound) is a surrealist work combining live dance and film, casting “the American LawnTM/sod” as a symbol of silence and immobility in the face of imperial violence. The work asks what it means to be a criminalized body by default, contemplating the body in protest and celebrating collective resilience. “We hold the core understanding that we all come from the clay. We are relatives,” the artists say. “Just as a body would not ignore a hurt limb, a society shouldn’t ignore immense suffering and must move towards change.”
Alcantar and Mousa have a deep, ongoing relationship rooted in protest and activism, making SalSāl a natural creative extension of their existing work together. Bridging their worlds of site-responsive dance and film, respectively, they have embraced the challenges of self-producing work that evades categorization.
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3766897-0
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3766897-2
