Lightning Stalkers, the Finale Matchbox

Xandra Ibarra and Marpi

Over the past year CODAME has been partnering with CounterPulse to present a series of Matchbox Salons. Each event has paired up two artists to discover exciting angles on their craft and work. The prompt for interaction has been open and the resulting shows have ranged from formal slide shows to performances of new collaborative works.

One of the more playful takes on the Matchbox assignment was a cyber stalking exercise conducted by Mica Sigourney and Jordan Gray touching on themes of identity and security. Having never met, they dug into each other’s online personas to gather a body of facts and interpretations.

The resulting presentations were such a hit that we decided to formalize the format and invite 6 more artists from each of our communities to cyber stalk each other for this season’s Matchbox Finale.

Join us on Thursday, June 20th to witness lightning talk antics from the following artists!

Clement Hil Goldberg

Clement Hil Goldberg is a multidisciplinary artist primarily working in film, sculpture and stop motion animation to create a fabulous extinction aesthetic. Their visual art and live performance project Our Future Ends will premiere at CounterPulse in October 2017.

Alex Glow

Alex Glow plays with robots, music, language, EEG, and wearable tech. Former boardmember at the AHA and Noisebridge hackerspaces, and later an Artist in Residence at Autodesk’s Pier 9, she is currently the Hacker Advocate at Hackster — the community for hardware makers to learn and share electronics.

Jeffrey Yip

Jeffrey Yip is a new media artist in Oakland California. Highly interested in the intersection of art and technology, he creates environments, often utilizing digital media to enhance the overall experience by integrating visualizations in unison with sound. One area of focus currently in his practice is projection mapping. This technique allows Jeffrey to combine the digital world with the physical through light, sound and sculpture. Animation is layered on top of his geometric sculptures, and then joined with organic and synthesized sound to create a symbiosis of the various mediums.

Javier Fresquez

Since his first Mexican folkloric dance class at age 5, dance has always been a major part of Javier’s education and mental/emotional/spiritual growth. Across his life, he has garnered experience in multiple genres, including Flamenco, ballet, contemporary, social partner dance (salsa, cumbia, swing, blues), vogue, and danza azteca. His a part of The House of Prolific, a San Francisco vogue house led by several of the SF Bay Area’s most seasoned and ovah Vogue performers, including, Soul Nubian (father) and Jocquese Whitfield (prince).

Yanling He

Yanling He is a computer engineer and experience designer by day, and a photographer and computer graphics artist by night. She discovered her love of art while exploring computer graphics, and feels fascinated about how our real world is being constructed and rendered. Her work is always trying to connect between the virtual and the real. She currently works at Adobe Design Lab.

Evan Johnson

EVAN JOHNSON is a theatre artist living in San Francisco. He has collaborated locally with Hope Mohr (Ride the Rhythm), Jesse Hewitt (FREEDOM), Liz Tenuto (The Two Legits) and Xandra Ibarra/La Chica BOOM (FML) on performance works. He’s the writer/performer of two solo plays, Pansy and Don’t Feel: The Death of Dahmer.

Raegan Truax

An artist and scholar, Raegan Truax’s durational performances have been included within The Marina Abramovic Institute’s Immaterial archive and presented at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZKU) in Berlin, SOMarts in San Francisco, grüntaler9 in Berlin, Berlin Art Week, and Performance Studies International. She has additionally performed at Centro Negra with AADK in Blanca Spain, Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City, the Performance Arts Institute in San Francisco, and The New Museum in New York City. Her most recent work, Sloughing, occurred across 19 different locations in the Bay Area over 28-days. In September 2017, Truax will partner with CounterPulse to mount a 37-hour durational performance titled Citation.

Kawandeep Virdee

Kawandeep Virdee uses technology and art to explore ways we can create meaning and joy collectively. He co-founded New American Public Art to build interactive art that makes public spaces more communal and welcoming. Similarly, his internet art strives to encourage collaboration, play, and creativity.

Yagmur Uyanik

Yagmur Uyanik creates new media artworks and installations. She explores engagements with technology that unfold unexpectedly and pushes the viewer to find new ways to perceive processes. She is interested in gradual changes which happen in the moment of viewing. Having a background in architecture and music, she creates unique areas for the audience to experience comprehensive limits of perception and deal with sonic architecture somewhere between the sonic reality of the space and the subjective imagination of the listener.

Randy Reyes

Randy is a queer Latinx choreographer-dance artist-curanderx with roots connecting the geographies of Guatemala, Massachusetts, NYC, Germany, Chile, Ecuador, & Nicaragua. During their time in NYC, Randy worked closely with choreographer/master teacher, Daria Faïn, studying Chinese Energetics & Systems of Improvisation as an ensemble member of her collective The Commons Choir, co-facilitated with Robert Kocik. In NYC, Randy developed the ritual-accion Never Arriving as a selected emerging choreographer for the Work Up 2.0 series at Gibney Dance Center, was a cohort member in the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics EMERGENYC program, and interned with Movement Research, all between Aug. 2015 — July 2016. Currently, Randy will be excavating a new piece this summer as part of the Performing Diaspora ARC program at CounterPulse and will relocate to Los Angeles to begin an MFA in Dance program at UCLA this fall with the intention to continue weaving together the places-mentors-magick that has inspired them.

Maryam Rostami

Maryam Farnaz Rostami has made performance-based work in San Francisco for the last 8 years, both solo and ensemble. She is a co-founder of Nicole Kidman is Fucking Gorgeous and founder of MFR Productions. Her latest one-woman show, Late Stage San Francisco, played at the ACT Costume Shop in August 2015. In addition to writing and creating movement, she works in the world of architecture as a designer, and has been a maker for as long as she can remember.

Gary Boodhoo

Gary Boodhoo combines videogames, machine learning and interface design to rediscover ancient images — spirit animals. Born in Jamaica, his relocation to the United States provided a crash course in how to construct mythology out of the 1980’s. Then computers happened and then Dungeons and Dragons happened. Today he designs and bleeds user interfaces for videogames including The Sims and The Elder Scrolls Online. His work examines roleplaying and transformation in digital environments. He lives in San Francisco and develops humane experiences with game studios and other creative clients.

RSVP now to be sure you don’t miss this extra special July 20th Matchbox Salon!