'NAKED' at the Howard Yezerski Gallery

www.howardyezerskigallery.com

June 17 - August 19, 2011 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 18th, 3 - 5pm

Featuring work by: Robert Colescott, John Coplans, Robert Cumming, Stephen DiRado, Emily Eveleth, Robert Feintuch, John Goodman, Peter Hujar, Neeta Madahar, Denise Marika, Barbara Norfleet, John O'Reilly, Rona Pondick and Gary Schneider

Leg  2005

Denise Marika, video

duration = variable

A leg is stretched along the length of exposed tree root. The downed tree trunk and leg are both coated in grey clay, matched in shape, color and form. Slowly the leg moves along the trunk caressing its length.

EFFACED1 AT THE HOWARD YEZERSKI GALLERY

January 7th – February 8th,  2011 www.howardyezerskigallery.com
Opening : January 7th at 6:00pm - 8:00pm.
Artist Talk : January 29th at 2:00pm

EFFACED1 2010

Through actions familiar and volatile my art confronts our passivity as voyeurs and awakens our responsibility as witnesses and participants. It is difficult to fully comprehend the cumulative impact of voices silenced each day due to urban, domestic, and political violence. The struggle for human rights and threat to freedom of speech continue to be at the center of conflicts around the world.  Effaced1 gathers first person narratives and abstract projected imagery to position the viewer as an engaged witness to this struggle.

Initial research for Effaced involved gathering voices from news stories and led me to shift out of a studio based practice in order to interview witnesses and survivors and to live in their communities. The fully developed video project hopes to give voice to issues surrounding migration, development and the humanitarian aid crisis in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

Effaced1 uses video, sound, and photo installation to shape a landscape in which concrete actions, sociopolitical issues and abstract elements are exchanged and layered. The performed gestures in my current video installation explore the act and metaphor of erasure, searching and drowning as it relates to body, voice and text. The editing is primarily sound driven and consequently the sequencing of images is shaped by the dynamics of rhythm and pitch. The performed gestures and stills are contrasted by the abstract and fluid overlay of audio, visuals, and text.

My work operates through a tight personal focus on detail, gesture and circumstance and looks at how we respond to violence, conflict and loss. Effaced 1, positions the viewer as an intimate witness and participant to these events exploring how memory and cultural history are shaped by our actions and experiences.

Conversations  2010

Denise Marika, video and John Holland, music

duration = 7:24

In Conversations, her new collaboration with composer John Holland, Marika places herself in the flow of events. The video predominantly shot in Cambodia reflects upon the labor, fragility, humor and pain of the human condition and it’s history. 

MODULATIONS

Friday, Nov 12 7:30pm at Massachusetts College of Art and Design: Pozen Center for Interrelated Media, Boston, MA

TRACKING 2009DM - Denise Marika & Dana Moser duration = unlimited

This video installation, largely influenced by the city of Berlin, reflects on the international condition at the borders separating people from places and events, the threshold where layers of impediments and barriers multiply.The projection in "Tracking" is constructed through the algorithmic interactions of a dynamic system. Sound and HD video are programmed to mix (edit) together in real time according to software-defined interactions.

CONVERSATIONS 2010,John Holland music and Denise Marika videoduration =  7  minutes 5.1 surround sound and HD video

The music consists of recorded segments from throat-singers of Asia and Canada *, throat patients 'speaking' through implanted electronic larynx devices **, digital and processed human voices, and voices of animals.  This composition is an electronic choral work, founded on the tradition of the unaccompanied motet.  The video predominantly shot in Cambodia reflects upon the labor, fragility, humor and pain of the human condition.  Each track was separated into short musical/video segments, naturally bounded by silences and darkness. The segments were then recombined independently of one another, and separated by varied durations of silence and darkness.The recordings of throat-singing are from northern Asian and Canadian tribes, and include Tuvan, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Canadian Inuit Katajjaq songs. Recorded animal sounds were sampled from animals around the world in their various habitats, including a bison, camel, chimpanzee, dolphin, elephant, jungle frog, hyena, leopard, monkey, moose, panda bear, polar bear, prairie dog, whale, zebra. Recordings of throat patients with an artificial voice box often sound similar to modern computer voices, and at other times are nearly indistinguishable from certain animal voices. * by permission of Robert Beahrs (throatsinging.blogspot.com ** from recording of unknown origin (c. 1960's)

Special thanks to: Daniel DeLuca, Eric Freeman, Tom Fahey, Amber Vistein and Max Azanow

ORPHEUS XTheatre for a New Audience, NYC, December 2-20, 2009. www.tfana.org/orpheus_x.htmlHong Kong International Festival, China, February 16, 2007

Edinburgh Festival, Scotland, Royal Lyceum Theatre, August 25–29, 2007. Premiered at Zero Arrow Theatre, Boston, MA, March 25 - April 23, 2006.
video by Denise Marika
music and text by Rinde Eckert
directed by Robert Woodruff

set design by David Zinn and Denise Marika
costume design by David Zinn
lighting design by Christopher Akerlind
sound design by Dave Remedios

The American Repertory Theatre's Artistic Director Robert Woodruff joins renowned composer/performer Rinde Eckert to create this music-theatre piece inspired by the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. The poet Orpheus risked death to rescue Eurydice from the underworld. They had almost reached the surface when he looked back and lost her forever.

"Orpheus X also features the work of acclaimed video artist Denise Marika. Widely considered an innovator in the field of video installation, Marika designs a video installation, which serves as an integral component of the play's environment. This marks the first time that Marika has presented her work in conjunction with a theatrical performance.

The cast of Orpheus X includes Rinde Eckert as Orpheus, Suzan Hanson as Eurydice, and John Kelly as John and Persephone. The band includes Timothy Feeney, Jeff Lieberman, Blake Newman, and Wendy Richman. Now being shown at Theatre for a New Audience, NYC, December 2-20, 2009, located at 154 Christopher St., #3D, New York, NY."The artist would like to acknowledge, cameraman James MacAllister, assistant video design and editing Leah Gelpe, photo documentation Charles Erickson and Steve Briggs.

TRACKING

AXIOM GALLERY, Boston, MA, November 13th - December 19th, 2009.

"Tracking" is a collaborative video installation by DM, Denise Marika and Dana Moser and was largely influenced by the city of Berlin where much of the sound and video imagery was recorded. Like all modern cities, it's meridians of public transportation are awash in signifiers of control and protection. But there are many things that make Berlin a special place and one of them is its preoccupation with history. In some ways it has been a requirement of the rest of the world that Berlin never forget it's role in 20th century conflagration, but even in the preceding century it was viewed in a special historical light as Marxists assumed that Berlin (not Moscow) was going to be the central starting point of an international worker's revolution. The city commemorates (memorializes) its history fanatically, with markers on streets, stations and canals; monuments against the ephemerality of human memory. The specifics of Berlin were a starting point for our collaboration and discussions on site in the Summer of 2009, but every urban setting shares in the same themes that emerged from our observations of the politics of people moving through space, a human traffic pushing through the emergent apparatus of location, observation and control. "Tracking" reflects on the international condition at the borders separating people from places and events, the threshold where layers of impediments and barriers multiply.The projection in "Tracking" is constructed through the algorithmic interactions of a dynamic system. Sound and HD video are programmed to mix (edit) together in realtime according to software-defined interactions.

Production assistance by Tom Fahey and Fred Wolflink."Tracking" is being exhibited as part of "RIDERS on the TRAIN" curated by Nancy Davies.

Eyewitness
October 14 -December 1
Axiom
141 Green Street
Boston MA, 02130
Downrush
Video & Braille Installation

Downrush explores the psychological and religious currents that define human conflict. The religious texts are uniformly presented in braille directly accessible to the blind. The image of the falling body, available to the sighted, generates a shared soundscape that permeates the space. Downrush exposes our complicity and questions our passivity as witnesses to current events, conflicts, war, genocide and the resultant loss of lives.

The Puzzle Master

This multimedia opera, a retelling of the Dedalus and Icarus myth, is set on an imaginary Caribbean island. Five singers perform in counterpoint with layers of computer-manipulated 5.0 channel surround sound and multiple video projections. 

Music by Eric Chasalow ; libretto by F.D. Reeve; video by Denise Marika. Featuring performances by Jennifer Ashe, Donald Wilkinson, Pamela Dellal, Matthew Anderson, and Paul Guttry. Eric Hewitt conducts.  Staging by Barbara Cassidy. The Puzzle Master is supported by the Poses Fund and the Theodore and Jane Norman Fund and is part of the 2007 Boston Cyberarts Festival.

Performances are Sat, May 5 and Sun, May 6, 8:00 p.m.  The Laurie Theater, Spingold Theater Center – campus of Brandeis University, Waltham

tickets are $20 general admission; $10 students and seniors

For tickets call, 781.736.3400

ARTventures
The Revolving Museum
22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852
October 7th, 2006Unearthed
Video projection

The Revolving Museum launched the ARTventures: Hamilton Mill Ruin project. This documentary film project transformed an abandoned mill complex into a public art spectacle that included a parade, sculptural and scientific installations, music, dance, and writing performances and large-scale video projections.

Photo Documentation by Meghan Moore

Common Language
Medellin, Colombia
December 21, 2006 Gallerie 10+36
Carrera 41#10-36, El Poblado
Curated by Adriana Rios Leg
One Channel Video Gnaw
One Channel Video

“The senses: Selection from the permanent collection”
January 22 - April 9, 2006
Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont , CA.

The artists in this exhibition, in myriad ways, interrogate and complicate our understanding of the distinct qualities of individual senses. Their work incorporates the haptic and the aural, recalls the corrosive action of chemicals, evokes the splintering of light, and plays with conceptions of the weighty and weightless.Denise Marika (PO’77) projects tender flesh onto steel, framed and bisected with fur. Grunting exhalations mark the effort of her repetitive movements.Bisected
Video projection

“Refraction” Spring 2006
Caprice Horn Gallery, ,Berlin, Germany.

Gnaw
Video projection

DENISE MARIKA
BODY ACTIONS

Schiltkamp Gallery
Clark University
Traina Center for the Arts
92 Downing Street
Worcester, MA September 19-November 6, 2005

Artist Talk
Thursday, October 27, 4:30 pm
Sponsored by the
Higgins School of Humanities
Reception following

Gallery Hours:
Monday-Thursday, 9 am - 7 pm
Friday, 9 am - 5 pm
Saturday, 12 - 5 pm
Sunday, 12 - 7 pm

Information: 508/793-7113

DENISE MARIKA
VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Howard Yezerski Gallery

April 22 - May 24, 2005
Opening April 22, 6:00 - 8:30 pm
In the video installation, Detritus, a figure is crouched amidst the turbulence of demolition. Within the deteriorating urban landscape, the jaws of a crane grab at the body stirring up clouds of dust and debris. The figure is occasionally obscured by haze, remaining unaware of the surrounding danger. Framed by steel channel the projected image extends downward into the floor, reflected in a mirror that runs its length. Piles of newspapers bearing the same images of destruction spill onto the floor inviting the viewer to participate by carrying the image away with them.Detritus, the newspaper edition, is a sequence of images of repeated loss and destruction imbedded as news, unexplained. Distributed to 50,000 readers within the Weekly Dig, this conceptual work is based on the free dissemination of art and of news, blurring the distinction between the two and underscoring the power of free speech and expression. This public intervention functions as a shared visual memory of loss in the hopes of peace.