The Artist-in-Residence program at Otion Front is a month-long intensive, intended as a short productive period to allow artists to explore ways of activating life. We are interested in artists who explore movement through contemporary means of processing information - to be interpreted poetically, artists who are bold and generous with their emotional and corporeal experience. We are interested in new models of performing and new modes of living. The program is currently nomination-based, please reach out to otionfront@gmail.com with any questions.
Our 2024 Residency Team is Jack Meriwether, Reed Rushes, Viva Soudan, and Kate Williams.
2024
June - July Artist-in-Residence:
Samantha Sea Sea
Samantha Sea Sea is a Brooklyn based and Brooklyn born artist working in performance, video, sound and poetry. Her work deals with themes such as ancestor veneration, inter generational trauma/hopes/joy/dreams/fears/anxieties, Black femme embodiment, mythology and more. She has performed at spaces such as Trans Pecos, Wild Project, Roulette, Essex Flowers, The West Chelsea Art Festival and many more. In winter and Spring of 2023 Samantha created a pop up performance space in her home called irrelevent art. The intention of this space was to be an environment where parents could enjoy far out art experiences with their young children in tow. That project is on hiatus and currently seeking a new home. Samantha cut her teeth as a performance artist in ensemble works from Monica Mirabile, often rehearsing at Otion Front Studio. She is very excited to birth new work in a space that has been both a womb and a midwife to her art practice.
May - June Artist-in-Residence:
Francesca D’Uva
Francesca D'Uva is an experimental comedian living in Brooklyn. She performs regularly in New York and her work has been showcased at MoMA PS1, MOCA and Ars Nova. Francesca was the 2022 Performance AIRspace Resident at Abrons Arts Center, culminating in her solo show, This Is My Favorite Song.
April - May Artist-in-Residence:
Noah Crandell
Noah Crandell is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary theater maker and performer from Minneapolis. His work explores the body’s relationship with time and violence. Noah likes exploring memories, lies, repetition, sound, images, and wigs. His solo show memory boys premiered at Dixon Place in 2017. He was accepted into the International Director’s Symposium with La MaMa in Spoleto, Italy in 2018, working alongside The Talking Band and Stefanie Batten Bland. On screen, Noah has performed in the short film Toe Tag with David Pittu as well as episodes of Law & Order and Poker Face. Noah’s most recent work, My Name Is Jennifer, an 18-hour endurance theater-installation, premiered February 2023 at TheaterLab. Noah holds a BFA in acting from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He is a current student in the Performance & Interactive Media Arts MFA program at Brooklyn College.
March - April Artist-in-Residence:
Amanda Wallace
Amanda Wallace is a Brooklyn-based performer and artist. She embraces a tender and tactile continuum of movement, voice and body sculpture to explore the strange loop of perception, identity and desire.
February - March Artist-in-Residence:
Riven Ratanavanh
Riven Ratanavanh (b. 1996 in Bangkok, Thailand) is a multidisciplinary artist who reaches into the body to imagine trans diasporic futures.
Based in New York, they have performed at The Poetry Project, Performance Space, Amant Foundation, and the Center for Performance Research. Their work has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, Seattle Trans Film Festival, and the London Short Film Festival.
They have also performed with Young Boy Dancing Group, Cassils, Kinlaw, and Raven Chacon, and have been featured by Dazed Magazine, CIRCA, and on the Piccadilly Lights in London.
2023
March Artist-in-Residence:
Joni
Joni is an electronic and experimental musician and performer based in New York, and founder of Intima, “The rave leading Brooklyn’s nightlife renaissance” (Document Journal). She is leading the underground music and nightlife scene in Brooklyn - her live performances blend experimental club, intense vocals and glitch to create a new boundary pushing mixture of lush and confrontational sounds. Joni searches for and questions the limits and agency of her body with her demanding live performances. Also, Joni love you. For real.
February Artist-in-Residence:
Nicole Fuentes
Nicole Fuentes is a New York-based dancer and choreographer. Her work dissects nuanced behaviors that unify a society by ways of exploring ritual practices, ancestry, repetitive patterns, and gestural expressions. She incorporates structures of elemental significance—forming an inherent dynamic for the body and space to interact. She has performed works by Amy Gardner, Thang Dao, Dance Lawyer, Muliebris Dance Theatre, amongst others and has presented her own choreography in New York and Texas. She has done movement direction for Totokaelo X Issey Miyake, Thinx, Haoma, and musician Lola Kirke.
2022
October Artist in Residence:
Angie Veys-
Angie Veys works with performance, sound, movement, and video to capture impulsive visions of awkwardly hysterical fantasy-fueled zen-mania. Filtering most through a lens of irreverent humor, she gravitates towards topics in the realms of existentialism, unexplained phenomena, social collapse, and hope in the age of late neoliberal capitalism. Some past and current projects include the bands Leakage, Nervous Guy, Content, Assid, and Karen, as well as choreography/dance/movement direction for live shows and music videos. She is intentional about community and collaboration, but is largely leisure-driven, invested in learning how to do less and bE m0rE(?)
August Artist in Residence:
Kate Williams-
Kate Williams is a multi-media artist. Her work centers around movement improvisation and choreography as well as clothing design. She began her dance practice at Bard College, where she began her focus into narrative dialogues based on personal experiences. She creates movement and performance work centered around the discovery, re-discovery, and processing of identity in all forms.
Kate is a self-taught sewer, making her own clothing since high school. She continues to refine her craft and sewing practice, creating garments for performance as well as independent commissions.
Kate’s work is to merge her two practices at the center of expression—using clothing and wardrobe she creates as a sculptural element of her movement work.
July Artist in Residence:
Jack Meriwether -
Jack Meriwether is a poet and actor from Ohio. After studying studio art and theater in Chicago, they moved to New York City in 2016 to intern for the gallery Queer Thoughts and find freelance work as a runway model. Since then, they’ve published “The Panic Trilogy,” a series of poetry chapbooks, have acted in upcoming film projects Albedo: or Apples and Oranges dir. C Hu and Sean Dahlberg and Hold dir. Joshua Kaufman, and since 2017 have regularly hosted their performance series Bring Your Own Body, most recently at the 2022 East Village Zine Fair. Last year, they presented A Dark Corner to Scream Into, a performance piece in collaboration with their brother Matthew Meriwether, in fulfillment of a grant from NYFA. In July of 2022, Jack joined the Otion Front team and this is their first performance-based residency.
June Artist in Residence:
El Roy Red -
El Roy Red works in the space between hope & efficacy until they reach actualization. Galvanized in Black/ Brown queer liberation, Red utilizes writing, movement, ritual & performance to facilitate healing, growth, & alternative futures. Most recently, Red addresses chronic pain & its' waves in her work.
They have shared work in print w apogee journal, handjob zine, & femmescapes zine. She has performed @ the Bronx Museum, Printed Matter, Artist Space, & the Poetry Project.
Photo credit: Charlie Monlouis-Anderle
T-shirt: Stephen Ostrowski
SHOWCASE: July 8th at 8pm
May Artist in Residence:
Quinn Dixon -
Quinn Dixon is a multi-disciplinary artist and a certified ilm practitioner living in Brooklyn NY. They use dance, music, performance, clothing design, poetry, crafts and photographs to communicate their versions of life from Earth.
In addition to their independent creative work, Quinn is committed to being in process with many different friends/artists on performances, films, music videos, and other projects.
April Artist in Residence-
Isabel Eatherly Legate -
Isabel Eatherly Legate is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. She focuses within her practice on plasticity, porosity, explosion & collapse in relation to systems of desire and gender performance. Legate is a self-taught dancer whose movement practice emerged from clubbing. Her performances employ trance-like rhythms and improvisational techniques to explore narratives of metamorphosis. She is interested in abstracting the desires around objects or situations related to the performance of femininity and the act of ‘becoming’. In particular, she is interested in the ways ‘manufactured’ or ‘plastic’ desires flow through and animate the body – how they circulate through a sense of identity and congeal within the body’s physical anatomy. Legate teaches a monthly movement class called Exploding Joints that is rooted in finding pleasure in movement and un-crunching the body and the mind.
SHOW: May 14th 7pm & 9pm
March Artist in Residence-
Maxi Hawkeye Canion -
Maxi Hawkeye Canion (they/them) is a desert raised Improviser/Movement Artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They are originally from El Paso, TX. Sifting through their innerverse, they are continuously expanding upon their interests in visual design, sound and duration. Their work is crafted through a Black Queer lens and is a communication with their subconscious and culmative histories. Community and collaboration is integral to their process.
January/ February Artist in Residence
Reed Rushes
Reed Rushes - is a performance artist from the UK living and working in Queens, NYC. Reed’s performances blur the boundaries of visual art, dance, theatre and film. Using somatic movement inquiries, video and object-based improvisation they trouble hierarchies and edges between human bodies, affect and object-hood, creating mythic and emotional landscapes that realize queer dreamings. Often working collaboratively Reed draws on folklore, pop, media, their drag personas and personal experience combined with ecological research and quantum theory to create futurist fictions described as being surreal, sassy and haunting. Their art gives voice to other ways of being in the world, reminding us of our own interdependency and capacity for collective transformation.
Making through conversation and collaboration is an important part of Reed’s practice. Reed has taught workshops in universities and schools across the UK and they were a Teaching Fellow at Al-Quds Bard College, Palestine (2021).
Reed graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts from Bard College New York and holds a Bachelor Degree in English Literature and Performance with honors from Queen Mary University London (2015).
SHOW: March 12th @ Otion Front Studio
December 2021 Artist in Residence-
River L. Ramirez-
River L. Ramirez (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based artist, comedian and writer who wrote, produced and directed the comedy special program “Pervert Everything” for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Ramirez has appeared on the HBO comedy series ‘Random Acts of Flyness’ and in the final season of Comedy Central’s ‘Broad City’. Most recently they have had a residency at Barishnykov Arts Center where they premiered their latest musical piece “GHOSTFOLK”
Ramirez has written for High Maintenance, The National Lampoon Radio Hour. Ramirez can be seen in a recurring role in the HBO comedy series Los Espookys opposite Fred Armisen and, opposite Glenn Close, in John Cameron Mitchell’s musical anthology podcast Anthem and featured as Charly in BIRDGIRL. Named one of Comedy Central’s Up Next Comedians for 2018, Ramirez was featured in the San Francisco Cluster Fest comedy festival, and performed at the Public Theater in New York as part of the January, 2019, Under the Radar Festival.
October 2021 Artist in Residence-
cy x-
cy x (they/we) is an energy worker, pleasure ceremonialist, and cyber witch based in brooklyn,ny. Their work is informed by earth-based practices, erotic knowing, ancestral reclamation, and the body. through the weaving of these collective histories, memories, and encoded data, cy moves through the mediums of sound, video art, text, installation, and performance to make way for public spell-casting, portal-openings, and communication with the here-and-beyond.
March 2020 Artist in Residence-
Bunny Lampert-
Bunny Lampert is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, performance, and sculpture. A self-proclaimed deconstructionist, delusionist, and survivalist. Bunny treads into uncharted territory during her residency at Otion Front, directing her first experimental film. Aimed to expose parts of the inner self that die off with personal growth, Bunny will be exploring tropes of pregnancy as a metaphor for universal distress, and the ever-present resistance that is born alongside transformation that is central. The film is titled ‘An Invitation,’ and everyone is invited.
She is formerly known for her wearable porcelain sculptures created under the pseudonym Bunny Elizabeth Leopard. Her short lived stint in fashion as a wardrobe and prop stylist has played a significant role in her severe distaste for products, branding, and the industires that support it. These wearable sculptures are thought to be "performative, anti-consumer culture fetishized objects.” Which ask us to be critical of the objects we adorn ourselves with.
Save the date March 31st for ‘An Invitation’
Photos by Vivian Weidmann
October 2019 Artist in Residence-
Caroline Schub-
October at Otion Front Studio
Caroline Schub is a multi-media artist [b. 1990] from the Hudson Valley, New York. Her method of image-creation has more in common with the labor of construction work than with the weaving of dreams. Schub’s understanding of her body’s capacity for degeneration forms the double-edged sword that inspires her work.
August 2019 Artist in Residence-
Aarron Ricks-
August 30th at Otion Front Studio
Aarron is a breakout improvisational movement artist who uses obscure, raw, gestural, evolutionary, and adaptive movement to create organic storytelling experiences. Drawing inspiration from their personal history and work as an art model, their work transcends genres, mediums, and technologies.
Aarron started their movement and performative journey in 2016 with Monica Mirabile and Sarah Kinlaw’s “Authority Figure” as part of Otion Front Studio.
April 2019 Artist in Residence-
Melodie Stancato-
May 2nd at Otion Front Studio
Melodie Stancato is a sound & movement artist and tarot reader in Brooklyn. Her research focuses on the symbiotic relationships between self-care and artistry; between home and world. Using her home as both performance space and ritual site, Melodie explores ways to learn and heal through the body - documenting these practices in video, writing, and performance. She uses improvised movement to process trauma related to care, intimacy, and maternal wounds. With contact mics attached to her body, Melodie creates ambient soundscapes to accompany and inform her movement. As Otion Front’s April Artist-in-Resident, Melodie will be exploring radical forms of care from the personal to the social. She will also be offering free tarot readings every Sunday throughout April to provide a container for others to explore matrilineal trauma.
March 2019 Artist in Residence-
Zia Anger-
March 28th at Otion Front Studio
Zia Anger works in moving images. Her most recent short MY LAST FILM premiered at the 53rd New York Film Festival. In 2015 her short I REMEMBER NOTHING had its world premiere at New Directors/New Films and its international premiere at Festival del film Locarno. Zia has made music videos for various artists including: Angel Olsen, Mitski, Julianna Barwick, Beach House, Maggie Rogers, and Jenny Hval; the latter of whom she also toured with - as a performer and stage director. Memorable performances include: Pitchfork Music Festival, Basilica Soundscape, Oya Festivalen. In 2018 she began touring a new solo performance that traces the last ten-years of her lost and abandoned work, titled “My First Film”.
February 2019 Artist in Residence-
YATTA (Yatta Zoker)-
March 4th at Secret Project Robot
YATTA is an interdisciplinary artist, digipoet, and musician. They use incantations born of loop pedal drones, channeled screams, and improvised poetry to explore connections between psychosis, prayer, and presence. This year, they are working on a record in conjunction with a theatrical production commissioned by The Shed.
January 2019 Artist in Residence-
Jenna Cecilia-
Sunday January 27th- 7:30 & 8:30pm
Jenna Cecilia is a multidisciplinary artist who performs and creates music under the moniker Gurl Crush. She is a native New Yorker who has recently made her return to NY after a 6-year cycle exploring different facets of America. Naturally involved in the spiritual realm, Jenna has been channeling her own form of meditation through movement since early childhood. She combines dance as a form of undoing and opening along with sound and light therapy to promote healing. Her focus is strongly centered on welcoming the influx of life and information while attempting to combat the residual toxicities past the point of service. Jenna is currently enrolled in the Fabric Styling program at The Fashion Institute of Technology and works in production.
The Otion Front residency is currently by nomination only. However, if you feel called to apply, please send 3 work samples, a brief artist statement and a brief proposal to monica@otionfront.com. We will keep your information in mind for future residency cycles.
Artists receive:
40 hours total (10 hours per week) of free rehearsal space at the Otion Front studio A halfway show critique with the members of Otion Front
A final show coordinated by Otion Front & advertised on all of our social media platforms