Artist's Residencies: 2008-09

A program that makes the Wexner Center unique.

Residencies at the Wexner Center offer support to artists and often provide opportunities for interaction with the Ohio State community and the public at large. They are an essential part of our mandate to be a creative research laboratory for all the arts.

Wexner Center Residency Awards are our most substantial and high-profile residencies. They are given annually in our main program areas--performing arts, media arts (film/video), and visual arts--with some projects extending over two or more years. Residency Award recipients for 2008-09 are choreographer William Forsythe, filmmaker Guy Maddin, and innovative theater groups Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and Improbable (formerly Improbable Theatre).

Other artists participating in exhibitions and performances also may receive commissions and often engage in residency activities--workshops, master classes, and discussion sessions with students or the community--during their time at the center. In addition, about 20 visiting filmmakers and video artists from around the world are invited to use the facilities of our Art & Technology studio and editing suite each year.

Visual Arts: The Forsythe Company

American-born choreographer William Forsythe, recipient of the Wexner Prize in 2002, is one of the most innovative choreographers working today. During this residency, Forsythe and a team from his German-based company worked to realize a series of gallery-based installation works that complement Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced, a new web project (launched April 1, 2009) that Forsythe developed at Ohio State in collaboration with Ohio State’s Department of Dance and Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). The gallery exhibition Wiiliam Forsyth: Transfigurations at the Wexner Center (on view April 2 to July 26) and the web project demonstrate Forsythe’s deep investment in developing new work in new forms in recent years—work that Forsythe sees as an extension of his choreographic thinking. The exhibition features Forsythe’s performance installation hybrid Monster Partitur, as well as several video works, and is the first significant presentation of Forsythe’s videos and installation-based work in this country. The U.S. premiere performances of Monster Partitur were presented in the gallery April 1-5 in conjuction with opening of the exhibition; the evocative "set" for the work, which was built by students from Ohio State's Department of Dance in conjunction with staff from The Forsythe Company, remains on view throughout the show as an installation. Computer stations in the exhibition display the interactive web project and materials from it. A symposium on April 1 (timed to coincide with the launch of the web site, the Monster Partitur performances, and the opening party for the exhibition) illuminated the creative problem-solving concepts and cross-disciplinary impact encompassed in the new directions in Forsythe's work. The symposium was attended by a capacity audience in the center's Film/Video Theater and also streamed live on our web site to a virtual audience that included viewers in Sweden and Britain as well as the United States.

Media Arts: Guy Maddin

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, a cult favorite among cinephiles, is known for his dreamlike, offbeat features and short films, including The Heart of the World and Careful. The Wexner Center has developed a close and supportive relationship with the director since presenting a 12-film retrospective of his work in 2002. Maddin has paid four visits to the center in past years, participating in an on-stage discussion as part of the 2002 retrospective, introducing screenings of his Cowards Bend the Knee in 2004 and of My Father is 100 Years Old (written by Isabella Rossellini about her father, Roberto) in 2006, and most recently hosting a program billed as “The Mind of Maddin,” which featured a pair of films by other directors that have influenced his work. In addition, My Winnipeg (2007) screened at the center in the summer of 2008.

This residency award, which provides production support for a feature-length film shot in Winnipeg in winter 2008-09, continues that connection. It represents the most significant level of financial support the media arts program has ever offered to a single artist. Typically we offer smaller awards to two or more film/video artists each year. This year, we're choosing to support this new Maddin work exclusively, at a time when fundraising for independent films is particularly difficult. The working title for the film is KEYHOLE, and Maddin describes it as "a modern film noir retelling--and mash-up run amok"--of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea and Penthesilea, a play from 1808 by German author Heinrich von Kleist about the love/hate relationship between an Amazon warrior and the Greek hero Achilles. Maddin also reports that "some episodes were written by John Ashbery," the noted poet. Once the film is complete, the center plans to invite Maddin to screen and introduce it here. Watch for information during the 2009-2010 season.

Performing Arts: Young Jean Lee and Improbable

British theater company Improbable’s residency to develop and premiere a new production titled Panic spanned two seasons at the Wexner Center. The group began work on the project in November 2007 and debuted Panic here with performances March 4-7, 2009. The show highlights Improbable's trademark inventive stagecraft and balance of wit and keen insight while examining relations between men and women—and dramatic intercessions from the Great God Pan. Panic, which is touring in Britain and elsewhere later in 2009 and beyond, marks the group’s return to intimate-scale work. Improbable previously developed The Hanging Man with the support of Wexner Center Residency Awards in 2002–03 and 2003–04 and have performed several other pieces at the center.

Improbable Artistic Directors Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch are perhaps best known for their work on the international hit Shockheaded Peter, which made its U.S. debut at the Wexner Center in 1999 before two critically acclaimed runs off-Broadway. They served as director and designer for a new staging of the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera in April 2008, and designed the Met’s highly acclaimed 125th anniversary gala, which took place on March 16, 2009. (In fact, the two headed to New York for the gala immediately after Panic's premiere at the Wexner Center.) In addition, they are directing and designing a new musical based on the Addams Family for Broadway.

Korean-American playwright and actor Young Jean Lee and her company completed work on her newest theater production, THE SHIPMENT, and presented its premiere performances here from October 30 to November 1. In this work, Lee addresses African American identity politics in a shown developed in conjunction with its African American cast. Since Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Lee’s acclaimed breakthrough work (which was performed at the Wexner Center in the winter of 2007), the artist has earned a reputation as one of the most provocative young American theater writers and directors on today's scene. THE SHIPMENT has toured internationally since its premiere in Columbus. Church, another company production currently on tour, was also co-commissioned by the Wexner Center.

More about Artist's Residencies

Wexner Center Residency Award Recipients (.PDF)

Art & Technology Studio

Maya Lin's Groundswell
This site-specific installation was created as a Wexner Center Residency Award project.

Groundswell QT

2008-09 Wexner Center Residency Award Recipients