Conversation with Performance Artists Esther Neff & IV Castellanos
Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode featuring Esther Neff & IV Castellanos, respondent Artists for Maria Hupfield, as the sixth installation in a series of interviews featuring participants and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.
Photo Credit: Laura Bluer
In this episode Brooklyn based performance artists Esther Neff and IV Castellanos share insight on collective organizing and their involvement in various performance hives including Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) which was founded and is co-directed by Esther Neff. We also hear about how location, collaboration, process and materials influence various actions and shape their practices. They break down ideas surrounding terms such as 'NO-WAVE' and ‘Feminist' as related to their work, and we learn a bit more about their relationship to Maria Hupfield, whom they are respondent artists to in the #callresponse project.
Here is the conversation with Esther Neff & IV Castellanos:
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Music featured in this episode by: Marcelline Mandeng , Julia Santoli, Ellen O, Anais Maviel, Valerie Kuehne (member of Feminist Art Group), & Emilie Lesbros
More about the artists:
Esther Neff:
Esther Neff is the founder and co-director of Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL), a collective making operas-of-operations and a laboratory site for performance projects. She is a collaborative and solo performance artist and independent theorist and a member of Feminist Art Group, Social Health Performance Club and Organizers Against Imperialist Culture. Her current work and research is a series of operations entitled Embarrassed of the Whole.
IV Castellanos:
Photo Credit: Laura Bluer
"Abstract performance art has been the vein for my physical memory to thrive. Simply, I create objects and destroy them. In creating this gesture I am able to articulate ideas that I shifted and bottle necked down one resonating path. All of the information is channeled but visually clear, concise and often under 15 minutes. The interest is in transforming energy and the route has been moulded over the course of performing by trimming the fat and getting the job done. Labor is a source for my work, the physical body moving through day to day direction and carrying an othered body under constant critique and observation. There is power in focused action. Timing allows the intensity to maintain saturation for the viewer to barely digest in the moment." - IV Castellanos
Photo Credit: Laura Bluer
#callresponse project details:
Strategically centering Indigenous women as vital presences across multiple platforms, #callresponse is a multifaceted project which includes a website, social media platform, touring exhibition and catalogue. The project brings together five local art commissions by Indigenous women artists from across Canada, including Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest to respond to their work, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq.
#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and produced in partnership with grunt gallery and generously supported by the {Re}conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Additional presentation partners include BUSH Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, FADO Performance Art Centre, Kamloops Art Gallery, OFFTA live art festival, the National Arts Centre, and the Native Education College.