MeMoSa

MeMoSa or Media Movement Salon references back to the old European tradition of intellectuals and friends coming together to exchange ideas and eat in a salon gathering. ‘Held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation’; Our monthly salons provide an opportunity for students, artists, hackers, and scientists to share their work (in progress or otherwise) and receive creative and engaged feedback.

Line Up for Fall '21

Salons are on Thursday once a month starting at 5:30pm. Reception with food & drink held beforehand from 5:00-5:30!
Salons will be held in person but will be accessible virtually through either a live stream or recording posted on the event page.

Poetry Slam with Ramya Ramana

Thursday, October 14th 5:30-7:pm (refreshments at 5pm)

Youth Poet Laureate of New York City, Ramya Ramana, will lead this poetry slam featuring both her work and that of Barnard/Columbia students.

More information to come!

Untethered 21 with Nona Hendryx

Thursday, November 4th 5:30-7:00pm (refreshments at 5pm)

Introducing a work in progress by Movement Lab Artist-in-Residence, Nona Hendryx, training her avatar ‘Cyboracle,’ interpreting and translating sounds of the soul with visuals. Integrating Nona’s ‘audio tutu,’ with the Mi.mu Gloves and using Motion Capture sensors, to effect and amplify the souls’ voice, trigger and project images and light. Sound and motion, darkness and light, untethered, creating improvised SoundPlays. More info

"Babyface" by Kate Ladenheim x The RAD Lab

Thursday, November 11th 5:30-7:00pm (refreshments at 5pm)

"Babyface" is an interactive machine-augmented solo responding to feminized tropes around innocence, servitude, cuteness and spectacle. The “cyborg” performer is outfitted with a pair of robotic angel wings that simultaneously create an effect of grandeur and awe, and a rigid, limiting characterization that becomes eerily burdensome over the course of the performance. This tension between aspiration and limitation fuels this work, and directly parallels the ways that women and machines are talked about, treated, and — in the case of machines — designed to look and behave.

Kate and RAD Lab director, Amy LaViers, will perform and welcome feedback on Babyface and on the experiences of anyone who has tried out the interactive robotic wings during their week-long installation, so make sure to stop by! More info and artist bios

CoLab’s Fall 2021 Showcase

Saturday, December 4th at 1pm and 7pm and Sunday, December 5th at 1pm

Come see movers and shakers perform in CoLab's fall 2021 show! We have three showtimes: 1 pm and 7 pm on Saturday, December 4th and 1 pm on Sunday December 5th. The show will be in the Movement Lab in LL020 of the Milstein Center, Barnard College. Tickets are free but seating is limited so make sure to RSVP!

Line Up for Spring '21

Salons are held virtually once a month.

Laraaji: Deep Listening Live Music Performance (RSVP)

Thursday, February 18th, 5:30-7:00pm

LARAAJI will channel a multi-instrumental sound Baptism featuring celestial Zither/ Harp for deep meditation and peaceful introspection. Listeners are invited to listen while wearing a blindfold. RSVP Required

Bio: LARAAJI is a Multi-instrumental Musician/recording artist and Laughter release Meditation guide. He has recorded and toured the globe with amazing ambient music performances and therapeutic Laughter meditation workshops since the 1980's.

Disappearing Acts @ 50 with LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (RSVP)

Thursday March 18th, 5:30-7:00pm

For this Media Movement Salon, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs continues Disappearing Acts @ 50, first presented at The 8th Floor Gallery in 2018, this is a multi-media performance which comments on feminism and misogyny - in the time of COVID - through a meditation composed of text, song lyrics, and movement. This performance will feature Algerian dancer and North African dance educator Esraa Warda. In her poetry, Diggs ruminates on the erasure that black and brown female bodies (of advanced years) encounter within society, the temporal nature of identity, and what it means to be a woman of color entering her 50s. RSVP Required

Bio: A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Ocean Space, Venice; International Poetry Festival of Romania; Question of Will, Slovakia; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.

Student Artists-in-Residence & Post-Bacc Process Showing (RSVP)

Thursday, April 15th, 5:30-7:00pm

Come see our Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Allison Costa and Student Artists-in-Residence Nkima Stephenson and Elise Logan present their work! See how these emerging artists have utilized the Movement Lab to explore in their different individual long-term projects and offer feedback as they move to new places in their experimentations. RSVP Required

Line Up for Fall '20

Salons are held virtually once a month.

Marianela Boán

Thursday October 1st, 5:30-7:00pm

Marianela Boán, an internationally recognized and award winning choreographer, currently living in the Dominican Republic and one of the most important artists of the Cuban and Latin American dance vanguard, shares insights into her practice, and her continuous drive to create and push boundaries. Her revolutionary style "Contaminated Dance" radically mixes all the arts associated with dance, producing an expressive and original scenic result.

As a choreographer, dancer, and teacher, Boán has worked in more than 40 countries presenting her works and giving workshops in numerous venues and festivals in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She has created nearly 70 choreographic works for dance, theatre, TV and film companies. She was a member of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba from 1973-1988, the founding director of the companies DanzAbierta Cuba (1988-2003), BoanDanz Action USA (2005-2010), and the Compañía Nacional de Danza Contemporánea of the Dominican Republic (2010-present).

Angela's Pulse: A'we deh ya

Saturday November 21st, 4:00-5:30pm

Get a peek into the research and development of A'we deh ya ("All of us are here"), a new work by Paloma McGregor, artistic director of Movement Lab's Company-in-Residence Angela's Pulse. A'we is a multi-disciplinary call-and-response between colony and mainland, being created in alignment with local efforts to thwart disaster capitalism in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, in the wake of the destruction caused during the 2017 hurricane season.

In mid-November, Paloma will gather Virgin Islanders and Stateside collaborators for a week of virtual creative process as part of her 3-year residency at The Movement Lab at Barnard, supported by the Soros Arts Fellowship, MAP Fund, Movement Research and The Public. This event will function as a process share at the end of that week. Please RSVP here to join.

Image Making in the Digital World: Movement Lab & University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK) Collaboration -- POSTPONED

Thursday December 3rd, 5:30-7:00pm

The Movement Lab and collaborative partner HFBK (the University of Fine Arts) in Hamburg, Germany share sections of their collaborative investigation. Consisting of a creative cross-continental exploration into socially conscious practices in motion capture, avatar creation, and animation, the collaboration begins with Movement Lab Artist-in-Residence LaJuné McMillian and works to draw in a diverse range of artists, students, creative technologists and creators from both institutions.

Other collaborators besides primary partners, the Movement Lab and Digtale Grafik (HFBK), include the Goethe Institute Paris and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.