CounterPulse Presents ARC Combustible 2023

[Custom Object] lip-sync//dance by Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr &

Digital Milk: Metaphase 0 by Driven Arts Collective.

September 7-9 & 14-16, 2023 // 80 Turk St, SF

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — CounterPulse’s 2023 ARC Combustible program presents [Custom Object] lip-sync//dance by Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr and Digital Milk: Metaphase 0 by Driven Arts Collective. [Custom Object] lip-sync//dance puts drag performance in conversation with virtual reality to explore the expansive possibilities of the [trans]gender body. Digital Milk: Metaphase 0 prompts audiences to consider the implications of data privacy and the relationship between personal and collective protection.

Counterpulse’s Artist Residency & Commissioning (ARC) Combustible Program is a lab for intersecting art practices from dance and technology. Artists are given real, raw Space and Time, to collaborate on the creation of innovative live performance projects using state-of-the-art lighting, sound tools, and emerging technologies.

Each night of the first weekend will feature live performances by BARRACUDA in [Custom Object] Lip-sync//Dance and Kim Nucci in Digital Milk: Metaphase 0, with a small reception after the Saturday, September 9th matinée.

The second weekend will have Skirt Cocaine appear in [Custom Object] Lip-sync//Dance. Audio Description by Gravity Access Services will be available on Friday, September 15th. And the final performance of the residency on September 16th will include a talkback, moderated by Tiare Ribeaux, and a VR rave!

For blind and visually impaired audience members, CounterPulse partners with Gravity Access Services to offer live audio description and haptic access tours for selected performances on Friday September 15. Audio description is a live audio track spoken by a professional audio describer to audience members with visual impairments through a wireless headset system. It provides clear and engaging descriptions of the meaningful visual details of a performance. Haptic access tours (20-30 minutes) are a live pre-show tour that allows patrons to experience—through touch and their own movement— the space, performers, costumes and objects in addition to key movement elements in the performance.

For more information, to book a spot in a Haptic Access Tour or to reserve a headset please email info@counterpulse.org or call 415-626-2060.

Learn more and get tickets at counterpulse.org

[Custom Object] lip-sync//dance

by Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr

[Custom Object] lip-sync//dance is a performance by Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr that explores the transmission of knowledge and mutability of form between humans and their virtual avatars taking place on stage and simultaneously within virtual reality spaces. Two performers embodying virtual avatars will explore the expansive possibilities of the [trans]gender body through custom made avatars, intuitive movement, choreographed dance, and playful club banter. This work is made through the collaboration of Drag artists, as Drag evokes the Avatar in real life, further integrating the real and the fantastic in a liminal theatrical space.

Using experimental virtual reality hardware to track real time body movements through an online social platform called VRChat, performers play with and test the boundaries of technological bodies and expression in virtual worlds. By intertwining the realms of physical embodiment and virtual avatars, [Custom Object] lip-sync//dance is an exploration of the fluidity of form and the evolving relationship between humans and their digital personas.

The first weekend (Sep 7-9) DestroyHerr will perform with BARRACUDA and the second weekend (Sep 14-16) they will perform with Skirt Cocaine.

About the Artists

Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr (he/they) is a trans conceptual artist and Drag performer based in the Bay Area. Through sculpture, installation, and performance he gives form to semiotic and social boundaries meant to govern our identity, sense of worth, and communal relations. Their performance work lives in a contemporary and almost ready-made aesthetic, uniting the artist’s hand with the robot’s manufactured one. His practice is an amalgamation of influences ancient and new, from Greek ruins to TikTok dance trends. They make work that holds space to witness and experience both dissonant and harmonious meetings of materials, concepts, and forms. ambrosetrataris.com

Salimatu Amabebe aka Barracuda (they/he) is a Nigerian-American chef, performer and multimedia artist based in the East Bay Area. Amabebe performs under the stage name, Barracuda – a multi-gender avatar who draws its inspiration from the overwhelm it gets through scrolling on its mobile device. Barracuda views itself as a manifestation of collective digital fantasy aka a “crowd-sourced slut.”

Skirt Cocaine (he/they) is a mixed Filipino drag king and show producer in LA’s queer punk scene. With an aesthetic ranging from Kpop to rococo, he explores the wide range of masculinity and identity outside the bounds of toxic whiteness. He is also a videographer and content creator for a number of drag shows in LA.

Hannah Ayasse aka Hands (she/they) Hannah builds community through collaborative creative process and resolutely believes in the body as a source of knowledge. Hannah is interested in Relationship as a “third thing,” its own mutable and powerful entity, existing in and of itself.

Patrick Santos aka Cash Monet (he/they) is a performer, maker, and dry humor aficionado. Cash Monet’s style is kitschy, glitchy, and a little sticky, inspired by asian culture, video games, and nerd culture.

Killian Thelonious Church aka Urheinous (they/them) is a queer multidisciplinary artist, producer and performer. They have been making work both independently and collaboratively in the Bay Area since 2011 in various mediums such as music, video, and drag. Their work often deals with the reckoning of their own queer identity through the intersections of trauma and mental health, resulting in a horrific and comical mix of abjection and absurdity.

Special thanks to Peter Wu+ (he/him) for being a conceptual advisor and supporter of the work. In 2020, he founded and created EPOCH, an artist-run virtual experiment that functions as an inclusive community building platform inviting established and emerging artists working in both digital and analog mediums to participate.

Digital Milk: Metaphase 0

By Driven Arts Collective

Driven Arts Collective builds an immersive performance environment in which multi-sensory alternate realities are realized using a biosensing network and emotion-recognition technologies. Digital Milk: Metaphase 0 prompts perceivers to consider the implications of data privacy and the relationship between personal and collective protection.

About the Artists

Driven Arts Collective is a Bay Area based team of makers, dancers, visual artists, musicians, engineers, and thinkers. We investigate the social implications of technological change through planned and spontaneous performance art, dance, real-time generative music and video, as well as custom-designed wearable instruments and controls. We build performances that play on our different approaches and individual histories, aiming to create works that allow audiences and participants to imagine alternate spaces and realities.

Driven Arts Collective is a member of Intersection for the Arts. Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts nonprofit that provides people working in arts and culture with fiscal sponsorship and resources to grow.

Driven Arts Collective is composed of a rotating cast of characters, and in its present form includes:

Jen Gerry (she/her) is an Oakland-based performer, choreographer/director and teaching artist in dance and mathematics (Mills College and Cal Poly Pomona, MFA, MS). Gerry is the co-founder and co-artistic director for Mechanism Dancetheater Collective and a founding member of Driven Arts Collective. Her interest is in collaborative and experimental creative processes that transcend disciplines and widen experiences among artists in various fields.

Kim Nucci (they/them) is an Oakland/Chicago-based multimedia artist, composer / improviser, and technologist. They perform on saxophones, electronics, voice, and live projection. Nucci’s research interests explore the pedestrian cybernetic body through critically examining our relationship with technology and with our instruments. Their solo performance practice is invested in the exploration of ritualism and trance states in improvisation. They hold an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media, and an M.A. in Music Composition from Mills College, and a B.A. in Visual Arts from Bennington College. They are head of A.C.R.E. Residency’s sound department. Their practice is largely collaborative. They are the Technical Director of Driven Arts Collective (DAC), which recently completed the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency with their projects CELSO: In Utero and CELSO: Digital Milk, a dance/theatre work with live music and interactive technologies. They currently work at Art Institute of Chicago doing installing media artworks as part of the Audio Visual team.

Varsha Iyengar (she/her) is an engineer, dancer and creative technologist based in San Francisco, California. She is a founding member of Driven Arts Collective. She is formally trained in Indian classical dance and was a part-time dancer for Nritarutya, a leading Indian contemporary dance company in Bangalore. Her current work as a creative technologist largely involves creating multifaceted interactive performance environments by blending movement arts and technology.

Lucca Troutman (she/they) is an electro-acoustic composer, director and performer originally from Hartford, Connecticut. She holds a BA in psychology and music from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and recently graduated with her MA in composition from Mills College, where she refined her compositional and performance techniques under the tutelage of renowned experimental artists. She currently teaches and performs throughout the Bay Area and she enjoys creating in all of its forms and spending quality time with her affable hound dog, Ama.

Christian Conaway (he/they) is first and foremost a musician. Though sometimes found sailing the ocean, programming web-bots, or cultivating his growing arboretum, those who know him understand that all of it connects to the frequencies, rhythms, and patterns that make up his day to day mind. Currently Christian is focused on music production and developing brain-interfacing instruments so keep an open ear for whats to come.

Gabriela Garza-Vazquez (she/they) is a Los Angeles based performer and mental health therapist. She studied Biology, Physiology, and Dance at Cal Poly Pomona for their undergraduate degree and Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Naropa University for their Masters degree. They specialize in Somatic Counseling and Dance/movement therapy and currently provide treatment to teens and adults struggling with Eating Disorders. Gabriela has been a member of Mechanism Dance Theater for over a decade and is a new member of Driven Arts Collective. Her interest is in the intersection of somatic practices, intergenerational trauma/lineage, and spirituality.

Anna Rebecca Harris (she/her) is a visual artist and medical research professional. With a BA from Boston University comprising training in painting, video and performance art and literature from The Burren College of Art, Ireland, and the University of Oxford, UK, and a MA in psychology from the University of Chicago, IL, Harris is intrigued by the implications of neuroprocessing on experiential reality and the ways in which technology augments and changes the living, ever-evolving human brain. Trained as an Embodied Movement Facilitator in the tradition of the Deep Body Institute, Anna’s recent work explores gesture in relation to shared space and collective consciousness, where she utilizes the body to describe scientific and poetic truths. Anna is the founder and artistic director of @Driven.Arts.Collective

About CounterPulse

CounterPulse is building a movement of risk-taking art that shatters assumptions and builds community. We provide space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators, serving as an incubator for the creation of socially relevant, community-based art and culture. CounterPulse acts as a catalyst for art and action; creating a forum for the open exchange of art and ideas, catalyzing transformation in our communities and our society. We work towards a world that celebrates diversity of race, class, cultural heritage, artistic expression, ability, gender identity, and sexual orientation. We strive to create an environment that is physically and economically accessible to everyone. Counterpulse.org

CounterPulse’s ARC Combustible residency program is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ken Hempel Fund for the Arts.

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Photo Credit:

Header Left Image: Ambrose Trataris by Lucy Black Alt text: A printed scanned image of a drag queen’s face with pink hair next to a scanned image of a leg wearing nude fishnet tights.

Header Right Image: Photo by Kishore Narendran, design by Anna Rebecca Harris Alt text: a fractal collage of people in various poses, some sitting on chairs, on a white background.

Artwork created by Ambrose Trataris. Alt text: On the left, a white man in a sporty jacket wearing a pink virtual reality headset and remote controllers in both hands is floating in a colorful triangle shape with a dark background. On the right, a drag queen in a blue outfit and with big pink hair has a digital LED mask on that says “OBJECT” and is floating in a colorful triangle shape with a dark background.

Driven Arts Collective by Kishore Narendran Alt text: A group of artists sitting on a wooden floor.