by
koosil-ja
in collaboration with
Geoff Matters
Benton-C Bainbridge
Liminal Projects

mech[a] and OUTPUT is created by koosil-ja in collaboration with Benton-C Bainbridge (live video), Geoff Matters (music), and Liminal Projects, Omar Khan & Laura Garofalo (environmental design). The project explores the relationship between resistance and creativity. mech[a] is a dance of restraint, based on koosil-ja's study of the dances of the Noh-play DOJOJI. Through rigid adherence to the original choreography of DOJOJI, she treats the form itself as the subject, rather than as a medium. Simultaneously, the group transposes the work into their own aesthetic context. In contrast, OUTPUT is a dance of expression as koosil-ja responds to and interprets over 100 video clips she has sequenced, selected from different movies thematically related to the story of DOJOJI. Her collaborators play the sequenced footage from a video pendulum set in the center of the stage, 20 ft by 20 ft in a 3,000 sq. ft. raw space, and seats the audience around. In the end, the two approaches merge as the struggles between female anger and righteousness, between physical restraint and emotional expression. Developing both pieces together over a long period in her own space elan, koosil-ja seeks a way of creating and presenting work that is congenial to its mixed media nature, in the process revisiting the premises of theater and refining it to its essence.

mech[a] was created with generous funds from Altria Group, Inc., the Japan Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, with support from Material for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and generous contributions from friends and peers. OUTPUT was created with generous funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

elan is a part of the residency program designed by NEST in DUMBO Brooklyn, NYC.