Re–Fest NYC Recap
Presented by CultureHub
|1:55| March 6th - 9th, 2025
The theme, Re–Collect, centers recollection equally with collecting as a practice. What mark do our collections make on the world? What gaps are left by those that are missing? Where can collections be restored, created, or dismantled to create a more just future?
Re–Fest presents collections made intentionally and unintentionally, by individuals, families, institutions, and computer programs, in an exhibition that makes tangible the abundance and gaps in our cultural memory.
Catherine Chen & Georgios Cherouvim share about their collaboration, the pen plotter machine, and ideas around labor & automation.
Dennis RedMoon Darkeem shares his process of creating art that connects to land and place.
Chia Amisola introduces their CultureHub residency project, Himala, and shares the process behind her durational desktop performances.
Art Jones introduces his CultureHub residency project Transmitting Live from Virtual Babylon and what inspires him to create a new work.
SeoulArts hosts three artists-in-residence from different backgrounds, sharing diverse approaches to site-specific performance: Stephan Koplowitz (United States), Raymund ‘Rama’ Marcaida (Philippines), and Cat Mahari (United States).
A recap of performances and collaborations at Pieter Performance Space in LA, The Firehouse in Joshua Tree, The Dorothy Disney Lund Theater at CalArts, and a recording session at Coyote Run Studio in January 2024.
Creative coder Olivia Jack uses Hydra, her custom built live coding platform, to explore feedback loops created through human-computer interaction.
Collaborating forces Paul Pinto and Kameron Neal surround viewers in a white void while a chorus of floating heads muse on privilege, appropriation, and the history (or plague) of “whiteness” in the U.S.A.
Mystic, educator, and artist Mx. Oops brings seemingly disparate realms together to push the boundaries of performance and self.
Using sound, video, music, and paint, Joseph Brock plays with patterns and loops to search for freedom, survival, and escape.
Komungo virtuoso Jin Hi Kim shares her journey to create the first electronic komungo which integrates emerging technology to open new compositional and spiritual pathways.
Novelist Maxwell Neely-Cohen collaborates with writers, creative technologists, and game designers to prototype a dynamic system that responds to live literary performance.
Bailey Hikawa and Scotty Wagner discuss their project 100 Year Plan which combines livestream performance, pre-recorded videos, songs, websites, and wearables.
Italian theater directors Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande discuss the history of Motus, their collaboration with La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Company, and their immutable exploration of the unknown.
Ana Knezevic explores invisible spatial realms and their possible interactions with real space in her virtual reality project Voiding the Void.
Blair Simmons discusses her self-coded program that uses artificial intelligence to generate theatrical texts which are interpreted and performed by live actors.
Kristin McWharter combines sculpture, virtual reality, and party games to explore how physical contact within virtual spaces can manipulate social behaviors.
A durational desktop performance by Resident Artist Chia Amisola at CultureHub NYC on October 18, 2024.
La MaMa in partnership with CultureHub and the Polish Cultural Institute NY present The Books of Jacob, December 6-8 at 1pm ET. Performed by DREAM_ADOPTION_SOCIETY in the framework of Digital_Performance_Network.
A solo dance, video performance, and guided movement exploration by CultureHub Resident Artist Cayla Mae Simpson.
An immersive media performance with multichannel audio, stereographic live action video and animation, and VR by CultureHub Resident Artist Art Jones on October 4, 2024.
A work-in-progressing showing by Kensaku Shinohara at CultureHub LA on May 14, 2024.
A live collaborative rehearsal between CultureHub and Nashi ETC on February 5, 2024.
A live reading, performance, and un-launch party by CultureHub Resident Artist Jackie Liu.
Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya revisits a performance piece from 2001 adapting to communicate through conditions of sickness and disability.
A performance by elekhlekha with collaborators easterner and Luisa Mei Bressan on September 23, 2023.
A 10-hour marathon event celebrating Robert Patrick, beloved pioneer of the Off-Off Broadway movement on October 20th, 2023.
An interactive livestream experiment that travels through La MaMa’s newly renovated 74A building.
Told through a telematic performance in tandem with the Seoul Institute of the Arts a 77 year old and a 7 year old find themselves together, suspended in a liminal space where they begin to understand each other on May 20th, 2022
Over The Horizon is a performance system that composites live actors into a 3-D game engine as a means to critically explore the colonial dimension of virtual environments and how gaming worlds often participate in the American military-entertainment complex.
Nikeloops is a 360° video that explores freedom, survival, and escape through patterns, movement, and loops.
Inspired by A Few Deep Breaths, a recent collaboration between CultureHub, La MaMa, and SeoulArts, Small Breaths, Shared Lives is a live, immersive, theatrical experience occurring in-person at the Namsan Drama Center and via livestream that connects the CultureHub community through puppetry, telematics, and a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Music Director, drummer, composer, producer, and founding member of The Blue Man Group, Ian Pai, gives a lecture taking place at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Vocalist Candice Hoyes, percussionist and SoundChemist Val Jeanty, and bassist Mimi Jones combine their harmonious sounds and eclectic musical styles to form Nite Bjuti on September 17th, 2022
A performance by Ivana Dama that explores the idea of playing a musical instrument with your eyes—using custom pupil-tracking software to move motors that would make an acoustic sound on August 30, 2022.
An artist talk by Allison Parrish on her development of a radically small language model, trained on a low-power microcontroller, which operates only when drawing sufficient energy from solar panels on June 24, 2022.
This event features Franco Laera, the Artistic Director of Change Performing Arts and Professor of Art and Media at UILM University in Milan (Italy) moderated by Cecily Kwon, (SeoulArts).
A telematic livestream production that connects Korea and New York in a fantastical XR environment with live motion capture technology on December 22, 2021.
A multi-locational live concert featuring Jin Hi Kim, Dae Hong Kim, Eyvind Kang & Jessika Kenney combining traditional Korean music with new media practices, highlighting new expressions of Korean composition on November 5, 2021.
Through raga, polyphonic overtone singing, experimental music, improvisational flights of fancy, and spoken word, Neel Murgai creates a psychedelic universe of sight and sound on October 22, 2021.
A series of short performances devised by CultureHub Belgrade Convening Participants over the course of the convening.
Re–Fest 2025 took place throughout La MaMa’s 74a East 4th Street building. The theme for 2025 was Re-Collect, which centered artworks thematically tied to community memory.
A series of work in progress created by members from Companhia Nova de Teatro (São Paulo, Brazil).
An experimental perforance by eho animato (Belgrade, Serbia) and viah (Prague, Czech Republic).
A performance by John King (United States), Nana (France), and Mercedes Klausner (Argentina) around Alejandra Pizarnik’s poetry with Syrian-Palestinian-American artist Leyya Mona Tawil.
An interactive livestream featuring emerging Ukrainian multidisciplinary theatre companies Schmalgauzen, Vidlik Projects, Tinyova, AMÆNTES, and Dima Levytskyi perform on the virtual stage with direction by Romana Isabella Soutus.
Past Downtown Variety performers Shauna Davis, Stacy Dawson Stearns, and John Maria Gutierrez team up with creative technologists, producers, and writers to explore rituals for our time in a hybrid medium.
An online performance that brings La MaMa’s 1960’s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Bold Theatre KE. Downtown Variety: Kenya Edition showcases a tapestry of short stories derived from cross-cultural collaborations and devised performance that is rooted in vibrant Kenyan traditions but infused with modern culture and global inspiration.
An online performance that brings La MaMa’s 1960’s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB and Scarlett Kim featuring work coming out of CultureHub co-founder Seoul Institute of the Arts. Downtown Variety: SeoulArts Korea Edition captures the immense momentum of the young Korean artists as they confront current issues and phenomena in a rapidly changing world.
An online performance that brings La MaMa’s 1960’s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Ivana Ivković, Doplgenger, Björnsonova & Milica Stefanović, Jovana Ivanac & Dobrivoje Milijanović, Aleksandar Bulajić, Ana Popović, Ana Knezević, Isidora Pejović Blagojević, Maja Maksimović & Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić, Miklós Barna-Lipkovski, Markiza de Sada, Sandra Nikač, and Eho animato collective.
An online performance that brings La MaMa’s 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform guest curated by Lenerson Polonini, artists for this edition include: Wilson Sukorski, Otavio Donasci, Rui Moreira, Christina Fornaciari, Pedro Granato, Neville D’almeida, Marcus Galina, Jurandy Valença, and Gabriela Leite.
An online performance that brings La MaMa’s 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Christopher Michael at Amphibian Stage, Dane Terry, Aaron Samuel Davis, Christopher Rivas, Shauna Davis, with video art by Nao Bustamante!
An online performance that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Nuntinee Tansrisakul and Yuguang Zhang, Volumetric Performance Toolbox (Valencia James with Glowbox and Sorob Louie), and Fleshmarket Theatre Company, with video art by Stefanie Batten Bland and Malena Dayen with Sangmin Chae!
An online series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Annie-B Parson + Stacy Dawson Stearns of Big Dance Theater, Belarus Free Theatre, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, Nuum Collective, RaFia Santana, Tareke Ortiz, Basil Twist, with video art by Kameron Neal with Shayok Misha Chowdury.
An online performance that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Peter Case, Maura García, Joshua William Gelb, Shauna Davis, Aroji Otieno with DJ Bruno Versatile and Herbert Odera , Lisa Müller-Trede with Kris Limbach and Michael Ferreira, with video art by Split Britches!
An online performance that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring, Shauna Davis, Timothy White Eagle, Aaron Samuel Davis, Huntress Janos, Anna Kang, and eugene the poogene with Marta Ros Hugas directed by Zishan Ugurlu with video art by Lívia Sá!
In response to national protests, La MaMa and CultureHub pass the mic to POETIC SOCIETIES resident artists Ava Ansari, Salakastar, Ian Fink, Ahya Simone, Jonah Mixon-Webster, Halima Cassells, Rafael Leafar, and Salar Ansari who offer an ancestral healing tele-protest to extend the resilience of Detroit and Flint artists to the multiverse of the global Black movement.
In response to national protests, La MaMa and CultureHub pass the mic to past CultureHub Resident Artist Mx. Oops who offers a show focused on artistic and healing responses to systemic oppression featuring Olubode Shawn Brown, Sekou Luke, and Xavier Ryan.
An online performance series that bringing La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Alberto del Saz, LizdeLise, Jerome Ellis, Víctor Martínez and Gabriela Corleto, Jon Kinzel, Mallory Catlett with Jim Findlay and G Lucas Crane, with video art by Fabiola Ferrero, Juanita Escobar, and Arlene Mejorado!
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Laura Sofía Pérez and Chris Ryan Williams, Paul Lazar, H0t Club, Dan Safer and Abigail Browde, John Maria Gutierrez, with video art by Mengwen Cao!
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Rhiannon McGavin, Dillon Yruegas and Jess O’Rear, Joseph Brock, Nia & Ness, Nick Demopoulos, Carrie Sijia Wang and Tong Wu, with video art by Naama Zarfaty!
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Mx. Oops, Lola Giouse, Peter Mark, Maura Nguyen Donohue, eugene the poogene directed by Zishan Ugurlu, Rue Bainbridge, with video art by Yarie Vazquez.
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Lake Simons and John Dyer, Robert Patrick, Lisa Parra and Rosi Rocha, Mateo Hurtado, Krzysztof Garbaczewski and Dream Adoption Society, and Ali Santana, with video art by Raven Kwok!
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Adham Hafez, Stacey Robinson, Kristin McWharter, Mur, Matt Romein, Isolation Series #2 with John Gutierrez and Amy Gernux, with video art by Bobbi Jene Smith!
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Justin Sayre, Tareke Ortiz, John Gutierrez, Heather Litteer, Tom Lee, Bad Buka, and Kendall Cornell, with video art by Daniel Pinheiro!
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Rena Anakwe, Susana Cook, Chris Ignacio, Kim Savarino, John Kelly, Object Collection, Daniel Koren, and Starr Busby, with video art by Kameron Neal.
An online performance series that brings La MaMa's 1960s café aesthetic to a virtual platform hosted by Mattie BB featuring Perry Yung, Tiri Kananuruk, John King, Kate Rigg, Neel Murgai, Jerome Ellis, Baba Israel, and Grace Galu.