Squeaky Wheel announces Summer 2019 Workspace Residents

Contact: Ekrem Serdar (ekrem@squeaky.org)

Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center is pleased to announce its Workspace Residents for Summer 2019. This August, we will welcome three residents for a three week period during which the artists and researchers will be given time and resources to develop works-in-progress and new projects. The residency will provide Dana McKnight (Austin, TX), Dessane Lopez Cassell (Brooklyn, NY), and Jodi Lynn Maracle (Buffalo, NY) with a stipend, artist fees, travel and housing support, along with tailored access to equipment, technical consultations, and facilities at Squeaky Wheel.

During their residency, artist resident Dana McKnight will be working on an interactive projection project on speculative black markets and underground communities in our city’s east side; researcher resident Dessane Lopez Cassell will be developing a curatorial project on labor & representation as they relate to people of color, anchored in the geography of the Dominican Republic; and Silo City resident Jodi Lynn Maracle will be working on a public project to debut at Silo City which investigates past and present relationships of Haudenosaunee peoples to the land on which we have settled.

The public will have the opportunity to engage with the residents on three occasions. On August 9, 7pm all three residents will participate in a series of short artist talks at Meet our Residents; on August 10, 12pm, Jodi Lynn Maracle will present a hands-on skill based workshop and seminar titled Haudenosaunee Material Culture; finally, on August 23, 6–8pm, Jodi Lynn Maracle will open WHY HERE WHY NOW, a one-night, multimedia installation at Silo City.

Residents will connect with local art and cultural communities by participating in one-on-one critique sessions, studio visits, site visits, and activities that engage Buffalo’s local history, as well as current initiatives led by community groups around the city. Residents benefit from the opportunity to publicly share and receive feedback for their work. Our artists and researchers will be invited to a variety of site visits and activities exploring Buffalo’s unique communities and histories.

The Spring 2019 residency was juried by Carl Lee, Jasmina Tumbas, and Kevin Kline. Biographies of the residents, and of the jury can be found below.

Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is a project-based residency for artists and researchers working in media arts. Open to applicants from Buffalo and across the U.S., the residency connects artists and researchers with resources, time, and studio space to support the creation of new work or to continue ongoing projects. The residency is offered twice a year: A two-week session that takes place in the month of March, and a three-week session that takes place in August. The residency is supported by generous support by the County of Erie and County Executive Mark Poloncarz, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, individual members, businesses, and supporters. More information about the residency, and how to apply, can be found here.


Dana T McKnight is a black, queer, multimedia artist currently residing in Austin, TX. Blending formal studies in Cultural Anthropology (Long Island University, 2005) and Sculpture (Minerva Kunst Akademie, Groningen NL) her work lies in a plethora of medium splicing: speculative fiction, sculpture, installation, experimental sound and video, performance art, poetry and painting. At the core of Dana McKnight’s work lies a surrealist edge—the real world slowly picked apart through a lens tinted by magical realism and lived experience. Dana McKnight is a founder of Dreamland Art Gallery, an artist-run contemporary arts and performance space in Buffalo, NY, and a Co-Creator for RIQSE (Radical Inclusive Queer Sex Education). In 2016, she was selected as a Living Legacy Artist by the Burchfield Penney Art Center. She is hood-raised, but spent several years living in London, Kyoto, and Groningen (NL) and travels extensively.

Dessane Lopez Cassell is a curator, writer, and film programmer based in New York. She has held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum. A former US Fulbright fellow, Cassell has organized curatorial projects and screenings for Flaherty NYC, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), MoMA Film, and the Allen. Her writing has been published and is forthcoming in catalogs issued by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum, MoMA, and Experiments in Cinema. Cassell has produced podcast and radio projects for Bay FM and Creative X (both South Africa), and Roskilde Festival (Denmark), and she is a 2019 Advisory Committee member at UnionDocs, in Brooklyn. Her research interests include experimental film, contemporary practices that draw upon the archival, and investigations of race, gender, and representation.
Photo credit: Henry Murphy.

Born and raised in what is currently considered Buffalo, NY, Jodi Lynn Maracle is a Kanien’keha:ka mother, artist, teacher and language learner. Jodi utilizes Haudenosaunee material language and techniques, such as hand tanning deer hides, and corn husk twining, in conversation with sound scapes, projections, video, and performance to interrogate questions of place, power, erasure, story making, and responsibility to the land. She has shown her work throughout Dish With One Spoon Territory in site specific installation performances such as the Mush Hole Project at the defunct Mohawk Institute Residential School (home of the Woodland Cultural Centre) in Brantford, ON, as well as the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, ON, Artpark in Lewiston, NY, and Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, in Buffalo, NY. Her research as a PhD student at the University at Buffalo focuses on Haudenosaunee material culture, language, land and birth practices. Of her accomplishments, she is most proud to hear her son speak his Mohawk language each day.

 

Summer 2019 Workspace Jury Bios

Carl Lee is a media artist based in Buffalo, NY. Since the 1990s he has been making single channel films and multi-channel installations that explore the built environment and personal spaces. Most recently, he had a solo show at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center featuring new video installations exploring perception, nostalgia, and the spatialization of time.

Jasmina Tumbas (PhD, Duke University) is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History & Performance Studies in the Department of Global Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo. Tumbas has published her research in ArtMarginsCamera Obscura: FeminismCulture, and Media StudiesArt and DocumentationASAP Journal, Art in America and Art Monthly.

Kevin Kline is an artist and educator whose work has been published widely. A native of Sayre, PA, he was awarded a residency at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY, in 2003. He received his BFA from Alfred University, and his MFA in Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo. He oversees the entirety of Squeaky Wheel’s educational programs, including West Side Studios, Tech Arts for Girls, and the Buffalo Youth Media Institute.