AIR at MoHA An artist residency program at The Museum of Human Achievement

Accommodations

List of past resident artists

1. Poncili Creacion — Ballenarca

2. Terror Pigeon & Tyler Walker — MoHA / Terror Pigeon Company Spectacular

3. Cole Wilson — H Thunderbolt

4. Macon Reed — Witchual Objects

5. Robby Kraft — Origami

6. Dominic Rabalais / Little Ruckus — Wrong Did

7. Raquel Bell — Pain Balls

8. Cordey Lopez, Danni Tsuboi — Plasma Pool VII: Altar Edition

9. Julia Sinelkinova — Sentinel: Temple Of Self-Awareness

10. Wade Schaming — Texas Towers

11. Anna Mikhailova — Space, created by word

Poncili Creacion: Ballenarca

Poncili Creacion is an established surreal puppetry collective from Puerto

Rico traveling on their 5th USA tour. T hey arrived in Texas to partner with

four Austin based artists and welder s and take part as the first resident

artists at The Museum of Human Achievement.

Together they invented Ballenarca - The Whale Ark: a life size, glowing

whale puppet that tour ed as a mobile stage and giant interactive sculp-

ture from Austin to Miami.

The 11’ tall and 36’ long, life-size, female sperm whale was built out of

metal, wood, fiberglass and foam. In a nonstop parade, Ballenarca trave

d on a salvaged trailer, bringing art to the public as a giant puppet show,

a musical sculpture and a living museum, where the audience was invited

to step inside the belly of the beast.

Traveling to Art Basel in December, the artists behind Ballenarca will cre-

ated free interactive street performances, passing through Austin, Hous-

ton, New Orleans, Tallahassee, Jacksonville and arriving in Miami. Poncili

Creacion design ed one of a kind transformational outdoor puppet show

s to be performed specifically with Ballenarca for free at schools, parks

and other public places.

Tyler Walker & Neil Fridd: The Terror Pigeon / MoHA Company Christmas Spectacular

14 Austin performers were transformed into a character of Christmas

folklore, performing a micro-set of music as that character. 2014 fea-

tured robots, puppets and brass bands inside a giant winter wonderland

constructed by Terror Pigeon. Each band performs back to back as the

audience tours the fully immersive 7000 sq foot holiday environment.

Cole Wilson: H. Thunderbolt

Cole Bee Wilson is an installation, performance and sound artist based in

Austin, TX and Santa Fe, NM.

His most current work, H. Thunderbolt, is a recorded composition that

elucidates the epic histories of the Second Punic War between Carthage

and Rome, focusing primarily on the life of the General Hannibal Barca. This

effort includes the collaboration of over 100 musicians, countless recording

sessions that have spanned the breadth of America, subterranean field re-

cording in the catacombs underneath the city of Austin and even the dem-

olition of a piano with a sledge hammer recorded with home made contact

microphones. The record is a blend of lush drones, walls of noise, aching

melodies and earnest lyrics about what it is to fail and the victory theirin.

The project is scheduled for release in the spring of 2015.

His previous works include managing and composing for the 30 piece

folk orchestra the Apple Miner Colony from 2006-2010 and developing

the sound design for the Santa Fe based artist collective Meow Wolf

from 2012 to the present. His work has been reviewed in the Chicago

Tribune, Hyper Allergic and the Guardian, UK.

Macon Reed:Witchual Objects

Macon Reed is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose works probe the notion

of optimism through queer and feminist lens, examining the lines be-

tween transformation and failure, trauma and healing, playfulness and

escapism. Drawing on rituals of normative enculturation with regard to

team socialization and competition, her work interrogates the limits of

optimism and the point(s) at which cheerfulness becomes self-destruc-

tive, with a specific interest in physical performance and sculpture.

Robby Kraft: Origami

At a union of technology and art, Robby Kraft has been folding origami

since he was 6. He has taught origami-prototyping software at the

convention in New York, folded load-bearing expandable furniture, and

discovered one of the few truly infinitely repeating origami fractals. Also

a mathematician, physicist, and computer scientist, his research includes

rigid-body folding, parametric design, nanoscale self-assembling DNA

origami, and designs for outer space satellite panel packing and unfolding.

During 2015, he’s folding one origami figure each day, highlighting

some of the best and most challenging pieces in the world.

Dominic Rabalais / Little Ruckus: Wrong Did

Dom Rabalais is a musician and filmmaker, He performs and tour in his “band” /

motivational speech psuedo-spiritual dance crew called Little Ruckus.

Dom has performed music in most states in the USA as well as in Europe

and Canada. In 2014 Dom made 40 music videos for 40 new songs. In the

process of making the 40 music videos, he also made a short film which

was 10 music videos with a narrative that flowed between all of them.

The root philosophy that guides everything that he creates, and informs

every decision as a person, is a concept which he calls Sweat Power. The

concept of Sweat Power is that perfect transcendence, that one can feel

at any moment in their lives, athletes in “the zone” or artists when they

feel they are being guided by some sort of greater creative force, or even

the transcendentalist poets. The idea of Sweat Power is one where the

performer is no longer a person in their sense of specific personhood, when

they enter a state or pure humanness, and yet are additionally eternal in a

more than human way. When he performs and experiees a state of Sweat

Power, he is no longer the performer, and the audience is no longer the

audience, but they are together creating a moment that is one hundred

percent presence, every person is in the exact place they need to be,

contributing equally the perfection of the collective Sweat Power.

Raquel Bell: Pain Balls

The Museum of Human Achievement’s artist in residence for the month of May,

Raquel Bell, will present the culmination of her work: handmade polycarbonate

records with singles from her upcoming solo record. Each record will be

covered in original artwork.

For this event Bell will perform a LIVE MEDITATION MED titled: PAIN BALLS, in

which she will play her processed 1960’s analog rock organ and lead audience

on a wild adventure of pain.

Raquel Bell is a composer, artist and touring musician.

Cordey Lopez, Danni Tsuboi, and Olivia Warner: Plasma Pool VII — Altar Edition

PLASMA POOL VII: ALTAR EDITION is a trans-media non-opera psycho-

lecture that tells, or rather demonstrates, the experiments of estranged ex-choir

director Cordey Lopez and his relationship to the baffling, organic hyper-

computer inhabiting his subterranean studio apartment.

In this immersive experience of hi-sci-fi meets lo-art, sculpture, dance,

interactive electronics, video, puppetry, breaks into song, and blah-blah-

whatever are crammed into a particle accelerator (clank-crackle-swoosh-pop!),

yielding an orgiastic, primordial ballet.

The audience is invited to become part of this absurdist gezamtkumstverk and

take an acid bath in the core processor’s voltaic cell (which looks a lot like a relaxing

swimming pool). BRING A SWIMSUIT, A FLASHLIGHT, AND A TOWEL.

“Plasma Pool VII” is a collaboration between Cordey Lopez, Danni Tsuboi,

Olivia Warner, and friends.

Julia Sinelkinova: Sentinel — Temple Of Self-Awareness

An interdisciplinary action of sculptural installation, video art, and interactive

feedback, The Temple of Self-Awareness invites the audience into a reflective

environment of self-surveillance, wherein a projection-mapped lightscape

serves as a setting for observation and meditation. This environment of

refractive light effects serves as a metaphor for the elusive, fragmented quality

of modern communication, grounded at the center by the “BLARNEY”prism

structure (named after the clandestine program which collects peer to peer

metadata for the US government) which redirects laser beams in a reflective

enclosure. Projected video features internet personas browsing, as well as a live

feed of the audience-participants. A performance by the artist as THE ORACLE

will activate the light work through a coordinated interaction and ritual.

Julia Sinelnikova is a Russian multimedia artist, born in Jerusalem, Israel and

raised in Texas. She had her first solo exhibition in Houston at age 16, and has

since exhibited internationally, as well as curated a variety of exhibitions. She

has exhibited at prominent institutions such as the Contemporary Art Museum

of Houston, The Oulu Museum of Art, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, and

Dumbo Art Center in Brooklyn. Sinelnikova has also presented site-specific

installations during Miami Art Week (Art Basel) annually since 2011. Passionate

about bringing communities together around creative events, she co-organized

Bushwick Open Studios for over five years. In 2012 she helped organize GO, the

first Brooklyn-wide open studio festival. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Wade Schaming: Texas Towers

Wade Schaming’s sculptures are painstakingly assembled through stacking

alone. The materials remain unchanged (they are used as is) and unbound

to each other, delicate juxtapositions perilously balanced, like thought given

concrete form. From discarded and forgotten objects that memorialize

hope, the assembled forms aspire to return dignity to the bearer, and inspire

empathy in the viewer. Schaming’s process is confined to the present moment.

Because he only works with found and discarded materials (nothing he uses is

purchased), his pieces become indicative of the site while reinforcing his desire

to create impermanence.

Anna Mikhailova: Space, created by word

Anna Mikhailova graduated Rotterdam University of Arts (Codarts) as a

theater director (2013), Den Haag Royal Conservatory composition and

sonology department (2011), Chicago Columbia University film music (2008,

special program), Moscow conservatory (2007) as a composer, organ player

and koto player, working with improv, jazz, pop, rock musician, dancers,

collecting the folk songs in the folk expeditions, writing music for movies,

animations, theater, performances, computer games, moving from one place to

another,

Space, created by word

by Anna Mikhailova

Listen to the words your language is speaking through you

It is already turned loose

It is off in the distance

It is already coming

It can’t be called back