2008-‘09 Wexner Center Residency Award Recipients Announced

Columbus, OH—The Wexner Center is pleased to announce its 2008–’09 Residency Award recipients in all programming areas. An essential part of the Wexner Center’s role as a creative research laboratory for artists, the Residency Award program also helps to fulfill The Ohio State University’s mission as a leading research institution. Residency Awards are given annually in the three programming areas at the Wexner Center: performing arts, visual arts (including architecture and design), and media arts (film and video). Chosen by the center’s curators and director, residency artists receive significant financial resources, along with technical, intellectual, and professional support, as well as space, to develop new work. Many past Residency Award recipients have gone on to receive such prestigious awards in the arts as the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Guggenheim Fellowships, the Gish Prize, the Hugo Boss Award, and the Tony award. See page 3 for a complete list of past recipients.

“Our Artist Residency Award program underscores the very essence of what the Wexner Center is and does,” says Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin. “Through these Awards, we offer crucial resources to artists at pivotal points in their creative trajectory, often making possible innovative new work that might otherwise remain unrealized. At the same time, artist residencies offer opportunities for students and faculty to participate in the creative process through meaningful engagement with artists in all artistic media—in keeping with the Wexner Center’s cross-disciplinary nature.”

Notes choreographer former Residency Award recipient (and 2005 Wexner Prize recipient) Bill T. Jones, “The Wexner Center remains one of those rare museum facilities committed to new works.
Its commitment is at the service of high aesthetic values and a deeply felt social agenda.”

Next season’s recipients in the three programming areas are:

 

PERFORMING ARTS (two recipients):

Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. At the conclusion of her residency this fall, the Korean-American, New York-based playwright and actor Young Jean Lee will complete and premiere her next theater production, The Shipment—about hip-hop culture and the African-American experience—October 30–November 1 at the Wexner Center. The Shipment will tour internationally after its premiere here. Since her breakthrough with the much acclaimed Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (performed at the Wexner Center in the winter of 2007), with its pointed wit and fresh take on identity politics, Lee has earned a reputation as one of the most provocative young American playwrights and directors on today's scene. Another recent production, Church, currently on tour, was also co-commissioned by the Wexner Center. More on the company: www.youngjeanlee.org
Britain’s Improbable theater company. The London-based ensemble will be here in February and March of 2009 to complete and premiere Panic (which Improbable began developing at the Wexner Center in November 2007). This show will highlight Improbable's inventive stagecraft and trademark balance of humor and keen insight as it examines the eternal romantic struggles of men and women with dramatic intercessions by the Great God Pan. Panic, which will tour in the season after its Wexner Center debut March 4–6, marks the group’s return to intimate-scale work, and the residency marks Improbable’s third creative development session at the Wexner Center (they also completed The Hanging Man here with the support of a 2003 Residency Award and developed Coma here prior to that). In addition, Improbable has performed two other works at the Wex (70 Hill Lane in 1999 on the group’s first U.S. tour and Spirit in 2001), and members of Improbable were the creative minds behind the blockbuster hit Shockheaded Peter, which made its U.S. debut at the Wexner Center in 1999 before two critically acclaimed runs in New York City. Even while working on Panic, Improbable has other irons in the fire: Artistic Directors Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, who served as director and designer for the recent staging of the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera in April, will be overseeing the Met’s Gala immediately after Panic premieres at the Wexner Center. In addition, Improbable is working on a Broadway musical based on The Addams Family. More information on the group: www.improbable.co.uk

 

VISUAL ARTS: The Forsythe Company. This renowned dance company, based in Germany, is led by American-born choreographer and 2002 Wexner Prize recipient William Forsythe, one of the foremost innovators in the field today and widely considered on a par with George Balanchine. The artist residency will support the realization of a new multimedia exhibition, William Forsythe: Transfigurations, which will be on view at the Wexner Center April 2–July 26, 2009—marking the first significant group of Forsythe’s installations to be seen in this country. The gallery exhibition showcases Forsythe’s growing interest in extending his choreographic thinking toward creating work in new forms and new media. This exhibition features his hybrid performance installation piece Monster Partitur (drawn from his Bessie Award-winning You made me a monster), which will be performed for free several times April 1–5 in the gallery (with its sculptural elements subsequently on view as an installation for the duration of the exhibition). Visitors will also see the video work City of Abstracts; as they approach this piece, their images are projected onto a large screen, inviting interaction as their images are melded into a “dance” of stretched and spiraled bodies. Other video works include: his landmark work Solo; Antipodes 1/2, an illusionistic two-screen work whose gravity-defying action raises questions about our beliefs in physical reality; Suspense, a recent work that demonstrates the evolution in Forsythe’s videos that are based in the concepts he has generated as a dance maker and performer since the creation of Solo; and Thematic Variations on One Flat Thing, reproduced, in which William Forsythe and filmmaker Thierry de Mey reveal the classically modeled choreography of his tour-de-force work for the stage, One Flat Thing, reproduced, from multiple perspectives.

The Wexner Center exhibition will also feature the launch of a web project—Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced—that Forsythe is developing at The Ohio State University in collaboration with Ohio State’s Department of Dance and OSU’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). Forsythe’s earlier CD-ROM project Improvisation Technologies will also be included in the exhibition. A symposium will be held April 1 to further examine Forsythe’s work in new forms and media. More on Forsythe: www.theforsythecompany.de.

 

MEDIA ARTS: Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. A cult figure in the film world, Maddin 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. The collaboration continues with this Residency Award, which will provide production support for a feature-length film scheduled to begin shooting this winter in Winnipeg. Maddin has paid four visits to the center in past years, participating in an onstage discussion as part of the 2002 retrospective, as well as introducing screenings of his Cowards Bend the Knee in 2004 and My Father is 100 Years Old 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. His 2007 film My Winnipeg is screening at the center August 15–16.

 

Past Wexner Center Residency Award recipients:

Performing Arts: The Builders Association, da da kamera, Twyla Tharp, Elizabeth Streb/Ringside, Mark Morris Dance Group, The Wooster Group, Anne Bogart/SITI Company (multiple), Improbable (multiple), Bill T. Jones, Ann Carlson, Amanda Miller/Pretty Ugly Dance Company, and (collectively) Michael Curry, G.W. Mercier, Donald Holder, and Molly Anderson (all collaborators with Julie Taymor).

Visual Arts: Kerry James Marshall, Zoe Leonard, Josiah McElheny, Maya Lin, Ann Hamilton, Barbara Kruger, Lorna Simpson, Barbara Bloom, Alexis Smith, Shirin Neshat, Lee Mingwei, Greg Lynn and Fabian Marcaccio, Hussein Chalayan, Terry Allen, and Softworlds.

Media Arts: Jennifer Reeder, April Martin, Yvonne Rainer,Jennifer Reeves, Deborah Stratman, Phil Collins, Tom Kalin, Judith Barry, Todd Haynes, Julie Dash, Isaac Julien, Tacita Dean, Miranda July,
Cheryl Dunn, Rineke Dijkstra, Sadie Benning, William Wegman, Sowon Kwon, Steven Bognar,
Helen DeMichiel, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Tom Poole, Robert and Donald Kinney, Steve Fagin,
Daniel Minahan, Chris Marker, and Paper Tiger Television.