{"id":5943,"date":"2014-11-19T13:24:23","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T18:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/?p=5943"},"modified":"2015-10-15T19:01:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T23:01:32","slug":"interactive-installations-reigned-at-the-27th-annual-mix-nyc-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/interactive-installations-reigned-at-the-27th-annual-mix-nyc-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Interactive Installations Reigned at the 27th Annual Mix NYC Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author | \u00a0Annie Malamet<\/span><\/p>\n

Photography by Brittany Carmichael<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured Image:\u00a0From left to right: Diego Montoya, Caitlin Rose Sweet, and Bizzy posing with their installation<\/em><\/p>\n

2<\/span>7<\/span>th<\/sup> Annual Mix NYC Festival co-venue\/site designer Diego Montoya told me that creating a space with feminine energy was the most important factor to him in designing the Mix Hive, the main festival space, which housed 14 installations this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Site designers Diego and Bizzy conceived the idea the \u201cHive.\u201d The concept: a honeycomb-like Mother Queen Bee space that would serve to showcase various mixed media art pieces, curated by installation coordinators Caitlin Rose Sweet and Andr\u00e9 Azevedo. Mix is a famously sultry, dark, often chaotic atmosphere. As a result, the installations featured in the space have, historically, been ignored in typical festival coverage. Both Diego and Caitlin stressed the importance to me of the Hive space as highlighting, not overshadowing, the art; they wanted to create a beautiful, welcoming atmosphere where the installations could flourish on their own. For anyone who went to Mix this year, it is clear that only pure love and acceptance went into the design of this magical space.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>
From the Cross Pollination Lounge at the Mix NYC Hive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Entering the Hive, I was immediately confronted by Daniel Johnson & Sparrow Miradelrio\u2019s piece, <\/span>Everyone She\u2019s Ever Been With. <\/i>In a darkened private corner, a white bed sits while various voice recordings play. The Mix catalogue describes the installation as \u201c[combining] loops of live video footage with low-fi voice recordings of queer theory, erotica and memoirs to explore the tensions between public and private, and between bodies themselves.\u201d This is an interactive piece: you sit or lay on the bed, you are recorded, and after you leave, an image of you is projected back onto the bed. It was fun to see people excited about this work, lounging about on the bed in sexy tableaus, or simply laying solo and listening to the recordings. This installation was engaging and thoughtful, and it would be interesting to see how it functions outside the Mix context.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Your<\/a>
Your favorite Visual Arts Editor, Annie Malamet, interacting with Daniel Johnson & Sparrow Miradelrio\u2019s
piece, Everyone She\u2019s Ever Been With<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Diego and Caitlin expressed that an effort this year was made to include more international artists. An installation by a group of Australian artists, <\/span>Cheap Thrills\/Sweet Dreams<\/i> shows the fruits of this effort. A 9-foot lantern in the shape of a trailer caravan houses various video pieces, collated by Anna Helme. Included in the selection is Helme\u2019s short film, <\/span>MyMy Radix <\/i>\u00a0\u201can experimental hybrid of documentary, fiction and performance art.\u201d Other videos include surreal shorts by Nina Buchanan, Justin Shoulder & Behnji Ra. But my favorite was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles porn, <\/span>Cowabunga My A$$,<\/i> by Jackson Stacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cheap<\/a>
Cheap Thrills\/Sweet Dreams showing Deep Alamat by Justin Shoulder and Behnji Ra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

S<\/span>zu Burgess\u2019 <\/span>Winged Invasion <\/i>was by far my favorite installation. It is such a quiet, simple piece; I would have easily missed it if Caitlin hadn\u2019t pointed it out to me. Tiny images are projected onto the floor. To view them, you must find them in the palm of your hand so that your body becomes the screening mechanism. The videos that play are from various B-Movies featuring wasp\/bee women, a trope that is often a metaphor for the culture\u2019s fear of female sexuality: \u201chere, there are no boundaries between horrific fantasy and lived realities; to partake in the fantasy you must also submit your own body to the poisonous perversion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Caitlin<\/a>
Caitlin interacting with Szu Burgess\u2019 Winged Invasion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Caitlin described Joe Merrell\u2019s hallucinatory video <\/span>Suspension of Disbelief <\/i>as a \u201csatanic cartoon.\u201d An homage to Kenneth Anger and Aleister Crowley, this short film uses 3D technology, pulsating music, colorful surreal images, and spiritual text to create an all encompassing atmosphere. Watching this video was it\u2019s own trip. I\u2019m not even sure what to make of it yet, but I know that it is haunting me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Still<\/a>
Still from Joe Merrell\u2019s Suspension of Disbelief<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Devyn Manibo & Riko Fluchel\u2019s installation <\/span>For the Islands I\u2019ve Lost <\/i>was described by Caitlin as Mix\u2019s most \u201ctender\u201d piece. A shrine made of diaphanous cloth, LED lights, a bed of rice, citrus, and garlic, houses an intimate three-channel projection. This is an immersive, sensory driven experience. The small projections become holy images, each worthy of special consideration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Devyn<\/a>
Devyn Manibo & Riko Fluchel\u2019s installation For the Islands I\u2019ve Lost<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was a plethora of visual stimuli at the Mix Hive this year, but the last installation I\u2019d like to highlight is Lionel Soukaz\u2019s <\/span>www.webcam<\/i>, which was featured as part of a larger installation, <\/span>4Gy Network. <\/i>This selection of videos was only viewable by putting your eye up to a peephole and watching them on computers and tablets. In Soukaz\u2019s piece, we see various men on their webcams who \u201cundress and communicate through body language, joining each other in the non-physical space of shared experiences.\u201d <\/span>www.webcam<\/i><\/a> is a chaotic meditation on the nature of privacy and human connections.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"www.webcam<\/a>
www.webcam by Lional Soukaz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author | \u00a0Annie Malamet Photography by Brittany Carmichael Featured Image:\u00a0From left to right: Diego Montoya, Caitlin Rose Sweet, and Bizzy posing with their installation 27th Annual Mix NYC Festival co-venue\/site designer Diego Montoya told me that creating a space with feminine energy was the most important factor to him in designing the Mix Hive, the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1657,379,1653,1658,61,1372,1250,1654,1649,590,1963,39,177,1652,76,82,81,1656,1643,1645,1650,79,44,73,38,1655,175,1651,62,307],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-andre-azevedo","tag-annie-malamet","tag-behnji-ra","tag-bizzy","tag-brooklyn","tag-caitlin-rose-sweet","tag-daniel-johnson","tag-devyn-manibo","tag-diego-montoya","tag-festival","tag-film","tag-gay","tag-gender","tag-justin-shoulder","tag-lesbian","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbtq","tag-lional-soukaz","tag-mix","tag-mix-nyc","tag-mix-nyc-27","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-performance","tag-queer","tag-riko-fluchel","tag-sexuality","tag-sparrow-miradelrio","tag-trans","tag-visual-art-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Mix-5.jpg?fit=2000%2C1333","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6QBV8-1xR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5961,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943\/revisions\/5961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5943"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}