Deville Cohen
Hand to Mouth: Three Duets
Work in progress showing
Thurs | July 25 | 7:30pm
Location TBC
Free and open to the public
Hand to Mouth: Three Duets is a multi-channel sculptural video environment for a live performance with three dancers and a group of kinetic sculptures. Merging sculpture and performance, Three Duets makes links between human bodies and materials as instruments of extractive capitalism and its devastating ecological and social consequences. Each of the three duets is choreographed between a dancer and a sculpture to explore the dynamics between humans and inanimate objects through movement. These sculptures are made of sustainable and renewable materials such as mycelium, bamboo, bioplastics, and motorized designs that utilize solar energy. The project forges the links between extractive capitalism, climate change, and human rights to pose questions about the definition of “sustainability” in a world on the verge of ecocide. The term “sustainable” is vaguely understood—we often encounter it in greenwashing campaigns within disposable consumer culture whose consequences are microplastics in our bodies, entire ecosystems eroded by mining pits, and conditions of war and modern-day slavery in the regions of the planets that holds its most precious natural resources. As an alternative to these disastrous practices, our collaborative approach to human and non-human interactions will transform the stage into a delicate ecosystem in which every component is integral to its function and survival. Three Duets will redefine sustainability as a value, a necessity, and a practice in a multimedia performance utilizing low and advanced media with pre-recorded and live-feed videos to manifest a circular economy in which bodies, matter, and technology perform a hybrid form of a sculptural dance.
Three Duets will be created in collaboration with dancers Margaux Marielle-Tréhouart (France/Germany), Laura K. Nicoll (USA), and Tushrik Fredericks (South Africa/USA).
Deville Cohen is a New York City based nondisciplinary artist. He studied sculpture at the KHB Berlin from 2002-2007 and received his MFA in film/video from Bard College NY in 2010. His videos and installations were shown internationally in museums and galleries such as International Objects, MoMA PS1; SFMoMA; The CCA Tel-Aviv; PS122 Gallery; and The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik. He began creating for the stage during a residency at the Wooster Group Performance Garage in the summer of 2014. His creation underline, in collaboration with the composer Hugo Morales, was commissioned and co-produced by the Deutsche Oper Berlin and The Munich Biennale for New Music Theater in 2016. In 2018 he co-created MENAGERIE with choreographer Shamel Pitts for Gibney Dance Company in NYC. In 2019 his new creation McGuffin was commissioned and produced by The Center of The Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was an artist in residence at Recess Art; EMPAC Troy, NY; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) workspace, NYC; Fountainhead in Miami; LMCC Process-Space NYC, and Kinosaito Art Center. Deville is also a founding member of Artists Commit, an NYC based artist-run initiative invested in advocating for a climate-conscious, equitable, and resilient future. As a platform, the group has provided tools and resources to support artists catalyzing climate action, in particular through the impact of the work we make and how it travels through the art world.
