Wendy Woodson has an expansive portfolio that, at first glance, might seem without direction. She is a choreographer, writer, director, video artist, artistic director, and professor.

But Woodson’s expansive portfolio starts to make sense when you hear her advice for those looking to pursue a career in the arts: “Say yes to as many different kinds of projects and opportunities that come your way until you can’t keep saying yes because there’s too much on your plate,” says Woodson.

As Roger C. Holden Professor of Theater and Dance at Amherst College, Woodson knows firsthand that being an artist in academia is always a challenge. The arts are often misunderstood in a university setting, in terms of the deep research and process that they offer and require. So, it remains important to “persevere with your own creative impulses and visions in spite of the many hurdles that are part of being a practicing artist in today’s world,” Woodson says.

Image from recent choreography, Two by Two. Photo by Jim Coleman.

In addition to teaching, Woodson serves as artistic director of Wendy Woodson & Present Company Inc(luded), an organization she founded in 1980 to create and present original work in dance, theater, and video, in collaboration with other artists. Since then, Woodson has created more than 100 works for the stage, for site-specific locations, and for video exhibition. These works have been presented throughout the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, and Australia at venues that include the John. F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian, and more.

Most recently, Woodson directed Sourcing the Stream at Amherst College, an immersive video, sound, and performance event that looked to the stream as a source for inspiration, solace, reflection, and reaction. For each performance, nine dancers experimented with different ways of spontaneously creating material. The performances were followed by a talk with the dancers and audience members, allowing for unexpected reactions and interactions to influence the evolution of the project.

APE performance of Sourcing the Stream. Photo by Eric Poggenpohl.

“I like to make connections between different ways of knowing or learning, and I believe that this is one of my strongest assets as a teacher and artist,” says Woodson. “I also rely on improvisation and collaboration to develop work. I like to respond to the moment, to think on my feet, and to work with the responses and input of collaborators.”

Relying on improvisation and collaboration to develop work, Woodson encourages a sense of performance that heightens an awareness of the body as a home, a container, and an active playing field that manifests ideas, values, and memories.

Wendy Woodson –choreographer, professor of theater and dance at Amherst College
Amherst, Massachusetts
Website

Top image: Picture of ‘Transitions’ Video installation at APE. Photo by Wendy Woodson.

The post Wendy Woodson : She Will Persevere appeared first on Take Magazine.

Take turns to our own stomping ground for this edition of Showcasing the GIFted. In the spotlight is western Massachusetts’ own Sabato Visconti. Visconti is a new media artist whose work ranges from photojournalism to glitch art, which heavily influences his unique style in the GIF format.

Visconti graduated from Amherst College; his glitch photography has been featured in Time, WIRED, and AI-AP’s Latin America Fotografia Anthology; and his other work has been exhibited around the world in places such as the Tate Britain, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and NewHive.

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Take: What moniker do you use for your GIF work?
Sabato Visconti: Sabato Visconti, although I often use the handle Sabatobox for my social media pages.

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T: Where are you from?
SV: I’ve been living in Western Massachusetts since going to college in the area, but I am originally from São Paulo, Brazil and I grew up in Miami, Florida.

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T: What got you started making GIFs, and why GIFs rather than something else? 
SV: Glitch art was my starting point. I began making GIFs as a way to present my work glitching different kinds of digital media. The GIF format’s ability to loop a relatively small amount of frames makes it ideal to capture or animate glitches. Coming from a background in film and photography, I’m drawn to GIFs because it connects a variety of different mediums that were traditionally separated. A GIF can be a photograph, but it can also be thought of as a form of cinema.

As a social practice, GIFs can also be considered as an evolution of language, as people use GIFs to communicate on social media or through their devices. The GIF has a unique and ambiguous poetics that defies categorization. As a result, not every platform allows GIFs to be displayed in all their glory, which ultimately colors the culture these platforms are fostering. Regardless, the GIF has proven to be a resilient format in light of an ever-changing media landscape.

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T: What do you do when you’re not creating GIFs? (i.e. other jobs) 
SV: I am an artist who works with glitch art, post-photography, new media, and video art. My practice examines the materialities of digital media and the structures surrounding them in order to misuse, corrupt, break, and subvert them. The glitch is very much a mark of our era, as many of us feel like subjects trapped in systems designed to fail us, as subjects witnessing a slow ecological collapse, or as subjects whose identities are socially and politically excluded. While that’s my main thing, I still have to work for a living. I do freelance photography work (fashion, photojournalism, retouching) as well as video production and digital content management.

The post Showcasing the GIFted: Sabato Visconti appeared first on Take Magazine.