2023 marks EMPAC’s (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)15th year of commissions, artist residencies, and public programs at the Center for Arts and Technology. The renowned institute commissions resident artists to create ambitious works, bridging artistic disciplines and the realms of art and technology. From September to December, the curatorial team and resident artists present a diverse program including exhibitions, concerts, dance, film, and talks.
This year, EMPAC’s pioneering 220,000 sq. ft. building, offering artists access to state-of-the-art technology, marks its 15th anniversary. Pre-dating the 2008 opening, this year marks fifteen years of uniting artists, researchers, and audiences to push boundaries at EMPAC. Additionally, for the first time in over a decade, EMPAC turns its concert hall, stages, and studios into a series of exhibition spaces for Shifting Center (October 2023). Finally, EMPAC announces the appointment of Katherine C.M. Adams as Assistant Curator.
Exhibitions
Salon Mondialité (September 22) is Miho Hatori’s artistic exploration of memory, identity, and colonization, influenced by philosopher Edouard Glissant’s ideas. Presented as an experimental talk-show, the work blends sound stories, composed and improvised music, and guest performances within a video installation.
Hatori, a Japanese-born vocalist and electronic musician based in NYC, gained fame in the 1990s with Cibo Matto. Most recently, she released her album Between Isekai and Slice of Life. She recorded music as New Optimism and Miss Information, and collaborated on the first Gorillaz album and Beastie Boys’ songs. She has performed at Kitchen NYC, AGO museum, The Broad, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Pioneer Works, Canal 47, and other venues.
Evidence of Labor: State of the Kitchen (September 29) is an EMPAC-commissioned dance work by artists Michelle Ellsworth and Satchel Spencer that considers different forms of labor. The work features three dancers interacting with wooden kitchens and a choreographic Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) on stage. It aims to replicate ChatGPT’s labor, delving into the ethics of outsourcing writing and meaning-making. It serves as a Reverse Turing Test, an After-AI (AA) prototype, and a metaphorical birth canal. Inspired by a water slide accident in the 80s involving two boys, the work focuses on what T.S. Elliot described as “birth and copulation and death.” It goes on to premiere at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City in November.
Plasmatic Music (October 6) is a concert in two parts, with pieces by the late iconoclastic Romanian-French composer Horațiu Rădulescu. Rădulescu, a “spectral music” pioneer, creates unexpected, provocative, and visceral experiences through the exploration of sound’s volatility and mysticism. The program features performer/composers Sam Dunscombe (clarinet and electronics), James Rushford (organ), and Rebecca Lane (flute).
This concert is presented in collaboration with Blank Forms, a NYC-based organization. Blank Forms supports emerging and significant artists across disciplines, rooted in traditions of experimental and creative music. While Rădulescu’s music is rarely performed in the U.S., the composer enjoys a dedicated following within the experimental music scene.
Elemental View (October 24) is a work in six movements by composer Ellen Fullman for her Long String Instrument and The Living Earth Show.The instrument installation, consisting of 136 precisely tuned and configured strings, maximizes EMPAC’s Concert Hall acoustics. It envelops the space in a shimmering atmosphere, immersing the audience in its expansive and resonant sound. This performance continues The Living Earth Show’s multi-season residency at EMPAC.
TLES, an electroacoustic duo, stretches technical and artistic boundaries while amplifying excluded voices, perspectives, and bodies in classical music. The organization employs experimental and contemporary chamber music as tools to highlight BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists. It enables the realization of their ambitious musical visions and promotes work that reflects and responds to our world.
The Shifting Center exhibition, spanning offsite (October 28-29) and onsite (November 3-18), represents the culmination of EMPAC’s multi-year curatorial project. Focused on architecture, acoustics, and the politics of sound, it opens to the public in Fall.
In a decade-long first, EMPAC’s concert halls, stages, and studios, designed for unique acoustic experiences, transform into exhibition spaces. Within and beyond its walls, visitors encounter a diverse mix of sculpture, moving-image, and sound works, including new commissions. Artists include Tania Candiani, Padmini Chettur and Maarten Visser, Beatriz Cortez, Guillermo Escalón and Igor de Gandarias, Hugo Esquinca, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Micah Silver, and Clarissa Tossin among others.
The exhibition commences with artist Beatriz Cortez’s monumental sculpture, Ilopango, the Volcano that Left (October 28-29). The sculpture embarks on a captivating journey up the Hudson River to EMPAC, accompanied by late October foliage, aboard an open-air boat. The volcano sculpture sets sail at the end of Cortez’s exhibition at Storm King Art Center and makes stops along the Hudson in Kingston and Troy. Visitors are able to get on board to view the artwork, to arrive at EMPAC before Shifting Center’s opening day event (November 3).
Cortez’s sculpture, presented in partnership with Storm King and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, captures our focus. It prompts contemplation of the enduring geological and ecological consequences of a previous eruption. Cortez describes “the volcano that left” as an act of migration and considers what it would mean for it to return.
EMPAC’s fall 2023 season also includes public tours, screenings, and conversations with future artists in residence. This includes composers/performers Jesse Marino and Antonia McIntosh-Barnett; choreographer Alexis Blake; and artist and preeminent scholar on disability studies Petra Kuppers. The season closes with a film screening In Pursuit: Short Films curated by EMPAC’s newly appointed assistant curator Katherine Adams. The series of short films centers on forms of furtive mobility–chase, exilic evasion, urgent travel, and outlawed movement–such as Miko Revereza’s Distancing.
Katherine C.M. Adams
EMPAC announces that Katherine C.M. Adams has been appointed to the role of Assistant Curator. Adams is a curator and writer working with artists across moving image, performance, and the visual arts to realize projects spanning commissions, exhibitions, and event-based programs. Before EMPAC, she curated and wrote independently while studying at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Yale University. She has curated programs and events at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), Hessel Museum of Art (New York), Miriam Gallery (New York), and other venues.
At EMPAC, Katherine Adams will lead and support curatorial projects across the time-based arts. She is supporting the curatorial team of Shifting Center. Upcoming projects include a Spring 2024 collaboration with filmmaker Shen Xin, a screening of Miko Revereza’s work, and a conversation with choreographer Alexis Blake. Adams will also initiate talks, screenings, podcasts, and publications, and build out other aspects of EMPAC’s programming.
Ticketing and event info will be available at empac.rpi.edu in August. More details and event info for the Shifting Center exhibition to be released in summer 2023. Additionally, learn more about Katherine Adams and her appointment here.
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