RHIZOMATIC STUDIO
Rhizomatic Studio produces creative acts rooted in collaborative exchange.
As the creative arm of Rhizomatic Arts, the Studio exists to support and cultivate artistic collaboration & community.
Recent Projects
Beach Dances: Shared Practice
@ Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica, 2019
Beach Dances: Shared Practice was a week of open rehearsal, workshops and performances from Los Angeles area choreographers Heyward Bracey & Nguyen Nguyen, Paola Escobar, Maya Gingery, Rebeca Hernandez, DaEun Jung, Shaina Lynn & Isabel Ivey, Carol McDowell, alexx shilling and Christine Suarez, plus Encounter (organized by Mariel Carranza).
Beach Dances: Shared Practice situated the practice and creation of dance in the daily life of the beach. While the artists work, visitors were invited into an open-air rehearsal room, and a new perspective on the movements of beachgoers.
Curated by Allison Wyper.
“From Butoh to Cumbia to Flamenco, choreographers use dance to practice their cultural identities and relationships to place and environment, to heal generational trauma, to practice inherited traditional ways of being in the world and to invent new ones. Dance is also frequently an occasion for coming together, breathing together, getting into rhythm, and finding moments of counterpoint. Dance practice is community practice; all are invited to view and engage.”
Club Dynasty
Writing Club
Club Dynasty Writing Club
This writing club for artists met in Chinatown, Los Angeles, and online from 2018-2020 and was organized by Marcus Kuiland-Nazario and Allison Wyper.
Encounter #43 and #44
Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, 2018
Encounters are durational, improvised, action/time/space-based performances inhabiting private studios, art venues, and public spaces across the city. For this festival, Los Angeles artists were joined by international guests from Latin America and Europe for two durational performances: one indoors, and one outdoors.
Performed by John Burtle, Mariel Carranza, Rochelle Fabb, Douglas Green, Rebeca Hernandez, Benjamin Jarrett, Carol McDowell, Lala Nomada, Paul Outlaw, Graciela Ovejero Postigo, Crystal Sepúlveda, Cecilia Stelini, Rossen Ventislavov, and Allison Wyper.
Presented by Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, these Encounters were supported by Human Resources Los Angeles and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
Production Management by Rhizomatic Arts.
Photos by by Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Tim Tsang, and Jessica Fairfax Hirst.
Shared Practice
@ The Hammer Museum
In November 2016, Rhizomatic Studio convened an interdisciplinary group of leading Los Angeles performance makers, who engaged collectively in two days of "Shared Practice" at the Hammer Museum as part of In Real Life: Studio. Invited participants (including dancers, performance artists, actors, and spoken word artists) led mini-workshops and engaged in live performance experiments on (and spilling over) the stage. Each day ended with an inclusive performance "encounter."
2016 Shared Practice artists: Elisabeth Nails, Carol McDowell, Christy Roberts Berkowitz, Alexx Shilling, Josh Berkowitz, Mariel Carranza, Phillip T. Nails, Marcos Najera, Justin Morrison, and Paul Outlaw.
Curated by Allison Wyper, produced by January Parkos Arnall.
Pieter Plays the River
@ Ed Reyes River Greenway in Los Angeles
In 2014, Pieter Performance Space was located near the confluence of the LA River and Arroyo Seco, where industrial and residential spaces meet a vibrant urban aquatic landscape. Curators Allison Wyper and James Kidd commissioned site-responsive choreographed works, improvisations, interactive happenings, and a free community yoga class, to be presented as part of an afternoon of riverside art.
Pieter Plays the River featured works by Margaret Laurena Kemp, Harriet Bailey, Maya Gingery, Sarah Leddy, Terrence Luke Johnson, Rebeca Hernandez, Alexx Shilling, and yoga led by Carson Efird.
It was a presentation of Play the LA River.
Birthing a Nation
A participatory performance ritual for an age of police violence.
Found sound of real U.S. officers, NRA members, politicians, and gun enthusiasts, activated by touch sensors, are embedded in the wombs of the performers: Our Ladies of Peace, vessels of the patriarchy, police brutality madonnas for the 21st century.
This collaboration combines performance artist Allison Wyper's work with vulnerability and participation, with media artist Erika Katrina Barbosa's interrogation of police violence through the objects officers carry.
Contact me about a project.
Banner image, above, from Pieter Plays the River. Photo by John Tain, 2014.