Living Female Respondent or 53 Yakshi
Commissioned to accompany the exhibition Merce Cunningham, Clouds and Screens, at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), in February 2019.
Exhaustively appropriating Merce Cunningham’s compositional use of chance, this performance took place in LACMA’s Korean Art Gallery amidst 17th–19th century Korean screen paintings, highlighting the primacy of Asian thinking and aesthetic values in the production of the western avant-garde. Along with performers Hannah Heller and devika wickremesinghe, I playfully consulted contemporary feminist oracles, as well as the ancient Chinese divination text the I Ching, to determine all structural elements of the dance, manifesting in a theatrical display of indeterminacy.
With live music by Andrew Gilbert, lighting by Chris Kuhl, and costumes by Wendy Yang.
With additional funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
