Open Studios: Vincent Chong + Justin Wong, Symara Johnson, and Jacob Walse-Dominguez
Benjamin Akio Kimitch curates Open Studios, which offers artists a platform to experiment with new work in an informal setting. For this evening, Benjamin has invited contemporary artists who are good company and deeply curious.
Vincent Chong will share a collaboration with Justin Wong exploring movement, gay shit, sound and calligraphy, titled the shards of our psyches washed to the bottom of the sea after what historians theorize was a grand spectacle of bukkake following some form of a dodgeball game.
Symara Johnson will share a new work that will be a spontaneous performance practice moving through ideas quickly, generating on the spot, and moving with full abandon. This is a time for ultimate play, diving into the unknown together.
Jacob Walse-Dominguez, a descendant of the colonized Tagalogs, begins the possibility of a neo-tradition of spiritual and communal dance. In a post-colonial society such as the Philippines, glimmers of Indigenous practices remain within Catholicized folk practices and now, through the embryo of this neo-traditional ritual.
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Biographies
I, Vincent Chong, am a Queer, mixed-race, Chinese American painter, Chinese calligrapher, seal carver, and performance artist. I have been described by my dear friend, sorority sister, convent sister, and frequent collaborator Wo Chan aka The Illustrious Pearl as a multidisciplinary prop queen, and I find this title to be quite fitting. My practice draws from many different and interconnected interests, but the one which is currently drawing much of my focus is about lineage—how it is that we pass skills, knowledge, emotional understanding, intuition etc. between people throughout time.
Symara Johnson’s movement practice is multifaceted and draws from a variety of sources. Her foundations in dance began with trainings at the Beijing Dance Academy and SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance, as well as time studying Caribbean dance techniques in Trinidad and Tobago. At present, she is particularly interested in combining the methodologies of folk, improvisation, and modern dance to explore her American and West Indian heritage and merging these movement practices with rigorous archival research.
Jacob Walse-Dominguez is a dedicated folk-arts performer and cultural worker mentored by traditional and contemporary culture-bearers from both the Philippine and Indonesian homelands and diaspora. Known and focused on embodying ethno-choreographical and ethnomusical practice to resist colonial indoctrination.
Justin Wong is a NY-based artist, educator, researcher, and arts worker. He has collaborated on choral and orchestral compositions and performances by artists including Holly Herndon, Lyra Pramuk, and Colin Self that have been performed at the Wiener Festwoche in Vienna, with the Rundfunkchor and Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and MoMA PS1. His performance practices span voice, movement, electronic and cello performance.
Benjamin Akio Kimitch (curator) is an artist and producer living in Brooklyn, NY. He recently was a visiting artist at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University and a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. His choreography has been presented by The Noguchi Museum, and commissioned by Danspace Project, The Kitchen Dance and Process and The Shed as part of Open Call 2022. Alongside his artistic practice, Kimitch is a producer for Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) at the World Trade Center.
Photo: Jacob Walse-Dominguez by Rocco S Cetera