(C) F Newsmagine This story was originally published by F Newsmagine and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . SAIC’s Impact Performance Festival 2024 [1] ['Mya Jones', 'Sidne K. Gard'] Date: 2024-04-27 13:39:40+00:00 Photos and quotes from students and faculty By Arts & Culture, Multimedia, SAIC The School of the Art Institute of Chicago held its annual Performance Festival “Impact” on Saturday, April 6th and Sunday, April 7th. The event totaled seven hours and showcased various performances by SAIC’s students graduating with MFA and BFA degrees. The performances were intimate, experimental, powerful, used ​​multimedia and resonated with many students and audience members. Madison Mae Parker’s IN/TO in(to), 3.5 hours: This durational performance took place the entire evening on Saturday, in the Base Space at 280 S.Columbus Dr., with interactive stations and ritual analyzing the feeling of belonging. Parker extended credits to: Mateo Badil, Elise Butterfield, Liz Flood, Caressa Franklin, Erin Hawkins, Claire Lobenfeld, Justine Neves, Sierra Severon, Dia Walker, and Denissa Young. “I thought a lot about, I guess, this communal kind of space. And also all the different aspects of love and how it emerges in different people. And what it means to gather people together to try and — sort of verbalize it and call it out,” said Blaire St George, Gene Siskel Screener and a part-time SAIC student. Kyriakos Apostolidis’ Stillness, 50 minutes: “Stillness” put viewers in the intimate presence of a human body as the performer wore a brainwave sensor while standing on a resonant plate. Sound waves from the performer’s brain were played and projected, affecting the plate and simultaneously the performer’s body. Viewers enter the final 50 minutes of Apostolidis’ nine hour performance. Apostolidis extended credits to: Yezhou Zheng for the shown video and Juan Eduardo Flores for the sound piece. “…the envy of control that I felt and also the intensity of watching muscles quiver after an extended period of time. It was ravishing. I felt very close to him at that moment, especially at the fall,” said Anabelle Lee Dehm, SAIC student in Performance, and also a friend of Apostolidis. Mads Reardon’s DOG SHOW FANCY, 20 minutes: A drag performance using prop, music, and a pair of performers interacting. Reardon listed collaborators: Ari Karafiol and Eros Backus. “…this felt different than it usually feels to perform because I have started performing a lot more. And so I’ve gotten to the space where I can enter into a performance without blacking out, essentially, so I can sit there and every moment I’m actively making decisions. And that’s, I don’t know, it felt really good,” said Mads Reardon (BFA 2024). Marco Guagnelli’s Welcome Home, 20 minutes: An interview-performance of citizenship utilizing live recording, projection, props, set, music, and movement. Guagnelli listed collaborators: Alejandra Ramos for the video shown, Jeremy Thal for the sound, and Akim Farrow for installation. “I really like the humor in it. I think this topic is good, and there’s not a lot of artists, even us foreign artists, we’re not really focused on the immigration topic. But for us, that’s a huge problem. It’s kind of a brutal process — I think the reality is the worst of those,” said Xinyang Xiao, a SAIC student in Painting and Performance. Sophia Tarducci’s Outside, 15 minutes: This puppetry performance took a playful look at sexuality and domesticity. Tarducci listed collaborator: Antonio Capone. “We were talking about how, as children, we used to play with dolls. How that kind of way of storytelling was very freeing and able to kind of go through some thoughts and feelings that maybe even as a child you’re not able to speak yourself, but through these kinds of objects and iconography, you’re able to play out your kind of thoughts and feelings,” Tyler Wynne, SAIC MFA student in ceramics said, responding to the performance. Chelsea Swanson and Cecelie Lopez’s Iacune, 20 minutes: Two performers moved in a sound, video, and fiber installation attached by rope tangling into lengths of fabric. Swanson and Lopez credited Charlie Thornton for costuming. “I was interested in their interactions with each other. And when they kind of became enmeshed. So there were moments when I couldn’t really understand their configuration. And I saw a mass,” said Raine Young, SAIC student in Film Video and New Media Animation. EmmyShell Barnes’ Pageantry, 30 minutes: The narrative performance showed a southern Beauty Queen who robs a bank after missing out on the grand prize after she’s named as a runner up. The performance used paint, cardboard props, music, and dance. “I was just drawing a lot of inspiration from pageant culture and southern culture as well, and also the kind of hip hop scene of music,” said EmmyShell Barnes (BFA 2024). Tilcara Webb’s It draws you in and mends the part of you that has a hole, 15 minutes: This performance drew from interviews conducted with strippers in the Chicago area and showcased pole dancing, stripping, and specific sound that mimicked moaning. “As a gay person — Oh, I loved it. I just found it amusing, in a good way. I think it was like teasing sex — performing sex, but in an asexual way,” said Havi Millar, SAIC student in Painting. Makayla Lindsay’s Equipment Uses, 3 hours: This performance took place the entire evening on Sunday in the Base Space. Various performers interacted with the space in multiple acts. The performance included ceramic, glass, fiber, and video installation. yiyisogreen’s Spring Dream, 20 minutes: A video game server played live. Yiyisogreen listed collaborator: G0rb. Natanael Rivera Vargas’ this territory is isolation / este territorio es aislamiento, 12 minutes: The poetry reading of one poem in multiple languages —English & Spanish— utilized an audio looping system to add layers and distortion to the voice reciting the poetry. Lizzie Strongson’s Gravedigger, 8 minutes: A confrontation with grief and death using dirt and spoken word. The performance began inside the performance space then moved into the garden as Strongson was laid in the dirt. Strongson listed collaborators Eros C. Backus and Mary Elizabeth Rocha. Mary Elizabeth’s WERDERANGED, 30 minutes: This two performer movement piece took place inside an installation of sound, video, and ceramic. A figure representing mother earth slowly began to undress the other performer, gradually covering her with dirt and trash burying her or returning her to earth. Elizabeth listed collaborator Vinny Haberman. Charlie Thorton, Vanishing Point, 20 minutes: Charlie Thorton (BFA 2024) looked at dissolution and integration in their performance asking: “What does it mean to create something intricate and then let it go?” With the use of sound, water, steel, and embroidery stabilizer, Charlie investigated this question. They asked that no photographs be taken. “I thought it was beautiful. It was something else — like cicadan,” said Felix Severino, SAIC student in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation. After the last performance on the final day, a couple of the organizers of “Impact” 2024 shared their thoughts on the importance of this annual festival. “The kind of interdisciplinary nature of our students at SAIC means that we have a combination of artists in the show that bring in all the disciplines through performance, I think it is absolutely magical. I think that the festival is a perfect example of the way in which performance exists within the school,” said Vanessa Damilola Macaulay, Assistant Professor in the Performance department, and one of the organizers of Impact 2024. “It’s pedagogy in motion pedagogy, performing pedagogy I would say, but a lot of it is — the whole festival, in many ways, is a laboratory, an extension of the studio, an opportunity to get ideas on their feet, so to speak, in front of an audience. And that’s the real learning moment,” said Trevor Martin, Senior Lecturer at SAIC in the Performance department and one of the organizers of “Impact” 2024. 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