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Experimental Action 2019 announces artists

Dean Liscum
Jan 2, 2019
2 min read

The ExA Artist selection committee is thrilled to announce the participants in Experimental Action 2019. The theme of this year's festival is Calculated Risk and the artist that we've selected take risks and push boundaries that challenge our social, political, and emotional status quo.

Marcela Torres, photo courtesy of Jesse Meredith

Our international artists include Roos Hoffman, who conducts public interventions and creates installations that invite the audience to participate in the performance. Schmitt & Schulz bring their playful productions that feature improvisations, autobiographical approaches, and alternative rule sets. Toronto-based, Turkish artist Simla Civelek explores the psyche through the senses in an attempt to discover where the mundane meets the metaphysical. Miao Jiaxin, whose work was featured in Experimental Action 2017, returns with his transgressive smash-up of cultural authority, power relations, and identity politics. Gustavo Solar's performances employ his body as a weapon against the culture within which he finds himself. Martyr or sacrifice only he can say as he draws the audience into the fray.

Performance by Jose Villalobos, Photo courtesy of Manuel Diz

Drawing from her background in dialectical theater, Esther Marveta Neff 's merges disciplines and mediums to produce her performances. Other national artists (not from Texas) participating in this years festival are Robert Ladisla Derr, Marcela E. Torres and Cynthia Post Hunt. Torres brings her powerful form of social strategy that affords "complex and transcendent views on race, gender, ableism, and socio-economics in the U.S." Post Hunt's use of simplified movements and repetitive patterns to draw the audience in and leverage common experience will be stand in contrast to Ladisla Derr's humorous criticism on culture.

Jim Pirtle, Photo Courtesy of Holy Moment Photography

The festival's main purpose has always been to nurture and highlight the local and regional performance art scene. 2019 continues that tradition showcasing the community and a large number of those artists. The Texas-centric line up includes: Colton White, Jose Villalobos, Michael Anthony Garcia, Artist collective “CLA022019”, Kellen Stanley, Doug Gast, Lukas Wade, S. Rodriguez, Sean Penalber, Sarah Sudhoff, Andrew D’Mateo, Antonius Tin-Bui, Rosalia Lucio, Julia Barbosa Landois, Jim Pirtle, Evan McCarley, Brittani Broussard , Dana Suleymanova, Cassie Mira, and Dinolion.