FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: KST Presents Fail-Safe
EAST LIBERTY, PA (October 21, 2022) — Fail-Safe is a recurring variety performance show bringing together artists exploring and expanding the performance genre. On November 11th and 12th, Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) will present the fourth edition of Fail-Safe, creating a dialogue between Los Angeles and Pittsburgh with two evenings of new and in-progress performance works by interdisciplinary performers from both cities.
Fail-Safe was created by artists Angela Washko, Scott Andrew, and Jesse Stiles with the intention to become a safe space for failure — a safe space to perform works across fields that may not be fully figured out yet. Created in 2019, Fail-Safe is now a National Endowment for the Arts-funded project that invites artists to present new work that is experimental, in-progress, improvisational, or open-ended. The resulting projects span the fields of digitally mediated performance, cabaret, experimental sound art, interdisciplinary theater, readings, dance, music, body art and more.
“After a long pandemic (and a lot of fundraising), we’re back and partnering with Kelly Strayhorn Theater to have celebrated Los Angeles-based artists Young Joon Kwak, Kim Ye, and Xina Xurner join nine Pittsburgh-based artists, musicians, and performers for two evenings of daring new work presented for the first time at Kelly Strayhorn Theater. We were drawn to the collaborative, experimental, aesthetically and conceptually maximalist, complex, challenging, and expansive approaches to body art, music, and performance presented by Kwak, Ye, and Xina Xurner (a music project by Young Joon Kwak and Marvin Astorga). The Pittsburgh-based artists joining the roster share many affinities with the LA cohort including explorations of the body, queer aesthetics, mediated performance, deconstruction of gender/race power structures, sex work, and beyond.” —Angela Washko, Fail-Safe Co-Founder
On Friday, November 11th, after a lineup of local performance artists exploring hybrid identities, queer futurities, and bodily liberation, Fail-Safe welcome Los Angeles-based artists Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye as they present a new, experimental performance work, Matrilineal Ambivalences. The performance challenges limitations around cultural stereotypes surrounding womanhood, femininity, sexuality, and motherhood through a complex and interactive set of exchanges with each-other, the space, and the audience. We can’t wait to see what they say will be “a journey of failure and discovery of new selves and new bodies, and new forms of love and kinship.” Featured Pittsburgh-based artists include Caroline Yoo, Goofy Toof, London Williams, Davine Byon, and MICHIYAYA Dance featuring Anya Clark.
“I’m most interested in working in and with the local Pittsburgh performance art scene to offer opportunities for performers to experiment, be celebrated, and create meaningful exchanges with other local artists and visiting performers from across the country. Some Fail-Safe performers are community members we wanted to feature who we respect and have encountered professionally and performatively within the Pittsburgh performance landscape like Michiyaya Dance, Swampwalk and Formosa. Other local performers are also past or present students who we have developed long-lasting collaborative relationships with and whom we want to offer continued support. I’ve known Goofy Toof for over a decade, as a past pre-college student and performer in classes I’ve offered at CMU. Samira and Davine are also past students that we have worked with in various capacities and who we are excited to continue a professional relationship with outside of the institution. For me it is about both offering new performance opportunities to community members and to, in a small way, contribute to Pittsburgh being a city that can retain young artists and performers to grown and enliven the performance scene.” —Scott Andrew, Fail-Safe Co-Founder
On Saturday, November 12th, after a lineup of local musicians exploring experimental storytelling, embodiment, and power dynamics through sound, visiting Los Angeles-based artist duo Xina Xurner (Young Joon Kwak and Marvin Astorga) will present their cathartic experimental music set. Combining DIY and power electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag, the artists expand ideas around queer and trans bodies. Xina Xurner melds a variety of genres, including happy hardcore, industrial, drone metal, and techno in order to create sadical and sexperimental noise-diva-dance anthems that evoke a sense of transformation, rebirth, and renewal. Local features include Swampwalk, Samira Mendoza, and Davine Byon. Both nights will feature ASL interpreters.
“Acknowledging and appreciating Young Joon’s commitment to collaboration and intentional community-building within performance, we invited Young Joon to bring collaborators along for their performances in Pittsburgh. We were thrilled that they chose Kim Ye and Xina Xurner to join them at Kelly Strayhorn Theater. We were so excited by Kim’s work exploring power dynamics – bringing together social practice, sex work, feminist performance, and institutional critique in brilliant new ways. We decided to add a second music-themed night to Fail-Safe in order to highlight Xina Xurner, whose drag and body art performance-infused electronic music promise to get us up and dancing and end the series on an exhilarating note.” — Angela Washko, Fail-Safe Co-Founder
Saturday nights performances will be followed by a dance party in the KST Lobby with Formosa a.k.a. Steph Tsong of Jellyfish keeping the vibes bumping.
Please be advised: performances during Fail-Safe: Los Angeles x Pittsburgh will explore the topic of sexuality and some may include nudity.
KST presents Fail-Safe on Friday and Saturday, November 11 – 12 at Kelly Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Ave. For press comps, please contact lizrudnick@kelly-strayhorn.org
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
Angela Washko is an artist who creates new forums and forms for discussions about feminism. Washko’s practice spans social practice interventions in mainstream media, performance art, video, video games, and documentary film. She is the founder of The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, a long-term intervention inside the popular online video game. A recipient of the Creative Capital Award, the Impact Award at Indiecade, and the Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Washko’s practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times, Rhizome and more. Her projects have been presented internationally at venues including the Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan Design Triennale, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), and the Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennial. Angela Washko is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
Scott Andrew is a multimedia queer-oriented video, installation, and performance artist. He creates speculative fantasies that peer into otherworldly portals and voids. He has exhibited at MoMA’s PopRally Performance Series (NYC), Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, TX), the Hammer Museum (LA), and the J. Paul Getty Museum (LA), among others. Recently, Andrew has worked as a media designer for collaborative stage performances with dance artist Jesse Factor, drag performer Veronica Bleaus, the opera, ‘Looking at You’ with the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, as well as VFX editor for the documentary film, ‘Workhorse Queen’ by Angela Washko, and the interactive music video, ‘Gestures of Devotion’, by Congregation of Drones.
Scott is an educator, advising and teaching animation, video, concept, and performance courses as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, a Visiting Lecturer in the Studio Arts program at the University of Pittsburgh, and with the CMU Pre-college program. Scott co-curates TQ Live!, a yearly LGBTQ+ variety series that has been presented at the Andy Warhol Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art, and a National Endowment for the Arts funded performance series called Fail-Safe, which seeks to provide a supportive space for the presentation and potential failure of performative works-in-progress.
Jesse Stiles is an electronic composer, performer, installation artist, and software designer. Stiles’ work has been featured at internationally recognized institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Park Avenue Armory. Stiles has appeared multiple times at Carnegie Hall, performing as a soloist with electronic instruments. In his music and artwork, Stiles creates immersive sonic and visual environments that encourage new methods of listening and looking. His musical output ranges from highly experimental, using texture and spatialization to create abstract clouds of sound, to borderline danceable, exploring the sounds of electronic dance and rock music to create avant-garde performances and recordings. Stiles’ installation artwork makes use of generative algorithms to control sound, video, light, and robotics – combining these mediums to create synaesthetic compositions that transform museums and galleries into evolving audiovisual environments. Stiles is currently a Professor in the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads courses on emerging music technologies.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984 in Queens, NY) is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist who primarily uses sculpture, performance, video, and community-based collaborations to reimagine new and continually evolving bodies, selves, and futures. Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. They are the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for experimental performance collaborations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers, and lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.
Kim Ye (b. 1984, Beijing, China) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates performance, video, sculpture, installation, and text. She received her MFA from UCLA (2012) and her BA from Pomona College (2007). Influenced by language and aesthetics from BDSM, drag, and other avenues for self-actualization, her work explores the inversion of power dynamics through creating situations of exchange and intimacy. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally at The Hammer Museum, Getty Center, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Material Art Fair, Human Resources, Machine Project, Morán Morán, Satellite Art Fair, and Visitor Welcome Center among others. As a visiting artist, she has taught and lectured at institutions such as California Institute of the Arts, Pomona College, University of California Los Angeles, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Loyola Marymount University.
Xina Xurner is an experimental music/performance collaboration between Marvin Astorga and Young Joon Kwak, whose cathartic performances combine DIY and power electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag to expand ideas about queer and trans bodies. Their music combines a variety of genres (including happy hardcore, industrial, drone metal, and techno), in order to create sadical and sexperimental noise-diva-dance anthems that evoke a sense of transformation, rebirth, and renewal. Xina Xurner released their debut album “DIE” in 2012 and their follow-up, “Queens of the Night,” was released in April 2018. Xina Xurner will make you sweat.
Caroline Yoo is an artist and community builder performing history. Born in Lawrence, Kansas to Korean immigrants, Yoo’s lived experiences in Anglo-suburbia as well as her time in Los Angeles surrounded by joyous Asian diasporic culture, have informed her art practice of searching for radical existence in creating safe spaces that allows her communities to dream wild, process unheard traumas, or plant grounds for new futures. Using making as a way to subvert, question and resist the silent, unseen systems of power we are ingrained, Yoo creates to imagine alternative education, unravel cultural colonialism, and pose questions on assumed narratives based on the consumption of other-ed bodies through social practice, intimate gathering space, experimental performance, and lens based installations. Yoo is additionally a member of Hwa Records, JADED PGH, and Han Diaspora Group all artist led collectives focused on producing spaces for diasporic Korean and/or AAPI narratives. Yoo has performed, exhibited, and/or culturally produced at Carnegie Museum of Art, McDonough Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, University of Southern California, LA Art Show, and more.
London Williams is a practicing artist working in Pittsburgh, PA, and a second-year graduate candidate for a Master’s in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, Williams earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2021. Williams engages with his identity within his practice, exploring intersections of masculinity, sexuality, and Blackness. He imagines a home that cherishes his Blackness and Queerness. Identifying as an interdisciplinary painter, Williams uses multiple mediums as a response to a history of painter techniques. His paintings evolve as documentation of the domestic interior, a reproach of a past that has yet to be lived. Running parallel to how his grandmother curated her home, the influences of childhood guide his imagination of a home, familiar, but not inherited, in its uplifting of Blackness and Queerness. Recently Williams has developed a relationship with Ballroom and the art of vogue performance, utilizing the dance’s five elements—and the community that comes with it—to engage with an uncharted dimension of his identity. London is passionately collaging different themes, skills, and platforms that result in a manifestation of his Black Queer Utopia.
MICHIYAYA Dance featuring Anya Clark (they/them) Born and raised in Brooklyn, with roots hailing from Trinidad & Tobago, Anya Clarke-Verdery is a queer choreographer, dance artist, and educator. They received their BFA in Dance from Long Island University, where they began their choreographic career, choreographing for the American College Dance Association. Anya has worked with choreographers such as Matthew Rushing, Sidra Bell, Earl Mosley, Clifton Brown, Holly Blakey, among others. Anya won 1st prize for Choreographic Excellence in the 11th International REVERBDance Festival. Described as movement that “moves between lucid and fluid to downright jarring in the most effective way,” Anya’s work has spread nationally at venues such as Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol Museum, Gelsey Kirkland Theater, among others. Alongside partner Mitsuko Clarke-Verdery, they were selected as the 2019 Guest Lecturers and Resident Artists at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art & Drama, and 2018 PearlDiving Movement Resident Artists. Anya currently serves on the Junior Board and as guest faculty for Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance. With MICHIYAYA, Anya creates highly physical and visceral choreography that molds with each dance artists’ voice.
Swampwalk (they/them) is a Pittsburgh writer/composer/producer/performer/translator who weaves tales of guts and glory, fear and sadness, love and hate, pain and suffering, tapping into the sacred pool of words that rhyme to reveal congruences and connections between things and people and experiences through their voice and whatever instrument(s) they meet, in an attempt to create and/or release energy, in between save points, singing for food or money, for medicine, in its many forms, to stay safe, or simply for the love of the game.
Samira Mendoza (they/them) is an interdisciplinary performance artist, curator, and educator based in Pittsburgh, PA. Their work centers improvisation through different mediums including sound, sculpture, organizing, and movement to investigate oppressive systems, familial history, and personal experiences. Mendoza currently collaborates with Gladstone Deluxe and Lola Machine as Dendarry Bakery, The Universe Online, Ricki Weidenhof, and Johnny Zoloft as WFP, and XC-17 and Yessi as Dyspheric. You can catch Dyspheric deejaying live on their monthly radio residency on Verge FM in Columbus, Ohio every third Saturday at 9PM.
Davine Byon (she/her) is a Pittsburgh-based interdisciplinary media artist from New York City. She received her BFA in Video and Media Design at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. In addition to her background in collaborative design for performance works, Davine is developing an independent practice in new media video and installation art. This work draws from personal archives, Internet culture, popular media, and lens-based artifacts to reveal and remix narrative. She is interested in what documentation of the sacred and mundane might elucidate about intimacy, particularly in the queer community and among people of color. This fascination is informed by her own experience constructing, interrogating, and appreciating her queer Korean-American identity via media found at home and online.”
Formosa aka Stephanie Tsong is a multi-disciplinary Taiwanese-American DJ, artist, and designer who performs as “Formosa” and as one-third of monthly Pittsburgh queer party, Jellyfish. Raised on an eclectic mix of sounds that reflects a youth spent listening to global pop music and dancing in international clubs, you can expect their sets to range from international pop to disco, freestyle, leftfield, electro, boogie, and house. Jellyfish and Formosa have been featured at Honcho Campout, The Lot Radio, Nowadays, Maybeland, Haute to Death, 88.3 WRCT, and Hot Mass. You can catch Jellyfish every month at P-Town Bar (N Oakland) and Formosa every fourth Saturday at Cobra Lounge (Bloomfield).
Goofy Toof is an erotic artist and self-proclaimed big weirdo. Winner of the London Fetish Film Festival’s Best Comedy award for directing and starring in- the asexual porn parody CREAMPIE GLORYHOLE. Graphic designer and video vixen of OnlyBans, a game about the surveillance and censorship of sex workers. Animator of sexy cartoons, pole dancer, and probably the neighborhood freak. www.GoofyToof.com