The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a performing arts center and research and production facility that provides an environment to support the realization of complex artworks and research projects at any stage, from inception to completion. EMPAC will present three special commissions of time-based work by Latinx, Caribbean, and Latin American visual artists. Taking advantage of EMPAC’s expert team of video, audio, and production engineers and technicians, these artists will explore the potential of time-based media to excavate and re-contextualize cultural lineages and reveal ways in which they can shape contemporary society. Puerto Rican artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz will install a moving-image work that imagines a post-patriarchal civilization; emerging Venezuelan artist Ana Navas will reflect on the art history of the current political crisis in her home country; and Latinx artist Clarissa Tossin will advocate for the preservation of indigenous Mayan voices through performances on 3D-printed replicas of pre-Columbian instruments.
Latinx, Caribbean, and Latin American artists support
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Dicen que cabalga sobre un tigre. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Mick Bello
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Dicen que cabalga sobre un tigre. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Sara Griffith
Clarissa Tossin, Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los Volcanos Canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Sara Griffith
Clarissa Tossin, Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los Volcanos Canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Sara Griffith
Ana Navas, Cuando las nubes eran las olas. Production still, Alexander Calder’s Acoustic Ceiling at Aula Magna, Central University of Venezuela, Caracas. Photo: Ana Navas
Ana Navas, Cuando las nubes eran las olas. Production still at Central University of Venezuela, Caracas. Photo: Ana Navas
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”