MIAMI PERFORMANCE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL ’16

June 23-26

 
 

Participating Performance Artists to M/P ’16 - Co-Curated Charo Oquet/Janese Weingarten

Charo Oquet is a Miami artist, and curator. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of EDGE ZONES, a Miami based inter-disciplinary and experimental organization where for 11-years she has directed a program of large scale cutting edge and socially engaged programs that have combined art,  installation, music, performance, new technologies and site-specificity.

Her recent live works Arrayanos, (2014 - ) draws its form and content from Gaga, a Dominican folk tradition that came to the DR from Haiti, where it is called rara, via the migration of sugar cane plantation workers. Incorporating elements of ritual, folklore, fertility rites, music, dance, colorful costumes, Gaga interrogates of the roles of gender, class, and authority against the backdrop of the pre-Lenten rites of dominantly Catholic countries.  Often working collaboratively with non-artists Oquet is interested in creating impossible propositions and fulfilling them.

Janese Weingarten and Dave Kudzma aka “Jan & Dave” grew up in Miami and now reside in Miami Beach after many years in Los Angeles making films and artworks. “Jan & Dave’s” newest work concerns the nature of originality versus copyright in our modern cultural mill eau. In the past 5 years in Miami, the performance duo “Jan & Dave” have addressed and readdressed the idea of the conflict/battle which blossoms internally from the ideas of the performance. This battle becomes a versus, or a point of contention from which the actions can either bounce off of or become a counterpoint from which to aim at the other performer/opponent. This “false fight” fuels the passion and artistic energy, an integral part of the performance’s plight/direction.