PROTODISPATCH

PROTODISPATCH

Protodispatch is a monthly digital publication featuring artists' perspectives on contemporary life and transcontinental political, social, cultural, environmental, and economic issues.

ARTISTS



BASEL ABBAS & RUANNE ABOU-RAHME

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme work together across a range of sound, image, text, installation and performance practices. Their practice is engaged in the intersections between performativity, political imaginaries, the body and virtuality. Across their works they probe a contemporary landscape marked by seemingly perpetual crisis and an endless ‘present’, one that is shaped by a politics of desire and disaster.

They have been developing a body of work that questions this suspension of the present and searches for ways in which an altogether different imaginary and language can emerge that is not bound within colonial/capitalist narrative and discourse. In their projects, they find themselves excavating, activating and inventing incidental narratives, figures, gestures and sites as material for re-imagining the possibilities of the present. Often reflecting on ideas of non-linearity in the form of returns, amnesia and deja vu, and in the process unfolding the slippages between actuality and projection (fiction, myth, wish), what is and what could be. Largely their approach has been one of sampling materials both existing and self-authored in the form of sound, image, text, objects and recasting them into altogether new ‘scripts’. The result is a practice that investigates the political, visceral, material possibilities of sound, image, text and site, taking on the form of multi-media installations and live sound/image performances.




HOMA AND SABA

Homa and Saba are pseudonyms to preserve the writers’ identities.






ALPER TURAN

Alper Turan is a curator and researcher based in Istanbul and Berlin. His current research and curatorial practice focus on queer strategies, methodologies, and languages, which include but are not limited to abstraction, collective speculation, appropriation, and anonymity. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HFBK) and works as an assistant curator at Protocinema.





KOLİ ART SPACE (YASEMIN KALAYCI & ELÇIN ACUN)

KOLİ Art Space, located in Kadıköy / Istanbul, is a non-profit, independent project, production, and exhibition space founded by Yasemin Kalaycı and Elçin Acun. Moves around the axis of artistic experience and collaboration, KOLI exists with the support of the dialogue between feminist and queer artists. Nurtured by the power of inclusiveness and variety, it is an art field born from the need for change by focusing on the fluidity of identity and gender.




ANGELA BROWN

Angela Brown is a writer and art historian. They are a PhD candidate in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art.




RASHIDA BUMBRAY

Rashida Bumbray is a curator and choreographer. She has collaborated with Simone Leigh on many projects including organizing Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a transnational gathering focused on Black women’s intellectual and creative labor as part of Leigh’s exhibition Sovereignty at the American Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale. She also organized Leigh’s critically acclaimed solo exhibition at The Kitchen, “You Don’t Know Where Her Mouth Has Been,” 2012, and Funk, God Jazz and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn with Creative Time & Weeksville Heritage Center in 2014.

As Director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations, Bumbray spearheaded the development of the foundations’ first global program dedicated to advancing diverse artistic practices and strengthening locally led cultural spaces around the world. Under her leadership, Open Society Foundations became one of the leading arts funders focused on the Global South and supporting socially engaged artists and cultural producers in diverse disciplines.

Bumbray is also a Bessie-nominated choreographer whose practice draws from traditional African American vernacular and folk forms. She is a 2019 United States Artist Fellow and an Inaugural Civic Practice Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A graduate of Oberlin College, Bumbray also has an MA in Africana Studies from New York University. Her writing on contemporary art, cultural studies, and comparative literature is published in journals and exhibition catalogues




MEL CHIN

Mel Chin was born in Houston, Texas and is known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works that enlist science as an aesthetic component to developing complex ideas. He created and implemented Revival Field (1990), a pioneer in the field of "green remediation," the use of plants to remove toxic, heavy metals from the soil. From 1995-1998 he formed the collective the GALA Committee that produced In the Name of the Place a public art project conducted on American prime-time television.

Chin is one of the artists featured in the first year of the ongoing PBS Series Art of the 21st Century. In 2017 his film, 9-11/9-11, won the Pedro Sienna Award for Animation in Chile. His ongoing Fundred Project addresses childhood lead-poisoning through art- making. In 2018 he presented Unmoored and Wake in Times Square, New York City, creating a visual portal into a future of rising waters, and his 40-year-survey exhibition at the Queens Museum, NYC, was named the best art exhibition of 2018 by Hyperallergic. He is the recipient of many awards, grants, and honorary degrees, including the MacArthur Fellowship, 2019, and election to the The American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2021.




LEMAN SEVDA DARICIOĞLU

Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu (Berlin & Istanbul) is an artist working mostly in the field of performance art. Darıcıoğlu mainly makes long-durational live performances but also videos, installations and public interventions. In her* performances, she* investigates the physical/emotional limits, boundaries and potentials of the body.

Taking this corporal approach as a core, Darıcıoğlu is interested in chronopolitics and necropolitics from a perspective focusing and centralising on marginalised bodies' vulnerability and strength. She* works on Queer appropriation methodologies of the past and the present from a non-Western perspective and develops corporal strategies to address minority groups' histories excluded from hegemonic history.




JORDAN DEAL

Jordan Deal, also known as ROSEKILLJUPITER, is an American artist born in Philadelphia where they are currently based. Their investigative practice uses performance, sound, and image as a conduit between unseen forces and the materializations of socio-political power structures. With western dominant logics and moral *codes* circulating inherent violence, they explore their contact with the boundless timeless rupture of an adjacent entity–CHAOS FORCE, an inbetween-outside form that conjures subversive actions and disruptive building as materializations and residues of blackness, improvisation, celebration, rhythm, disorder, vernacular & colloquial speech, /dark/noise, and mythologies.

Through using streams of collected field recordings, video/film documents, mapping, and real-time mythological fabrication, Deal explores dialectics and borders, blackness as creative destruction, STATE and authoritative paradigms, ancestral/undead knowledge, and systems as they intersect with language and relation to our local communities and geographies.

Deal has shown work with Protocinema & Protodispatch (2022 & 2023), Fleisher-Ollman gallery (PHL), Brick Theater (NYC), Vox Populi (PHL), Fleisher Art Memorial (PHL), Grizzly Grizzly (PHIL), Bartram’s Gardens (PHL), & Grizzly-Grizzly (PHL), No Tomorrow underground (ATL) amongst others. This past summer, Deal toured around the United States for their debut album and performance work GOGO UNDERWORLD, performing in Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, LA; San Francisco, CA; Brooklyn, New York; and Philadelphia and was recently a 2022 fellow at Amant Foundation in New York. They have been included in published prints such as the Titled House Review Spring 2021 issue and Grizzly Grizzly: In Dialogue.




CHITRA GANESH

Chitra Ganesh is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work encompasses drawing, painting, comics, installation, video art, and animation. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India. Ganesh’s queer feminist cosmology, particularly within her exploration of comics and mythmaking, offer emancipatory narratives drawn from the same collectively held visual culture (mass mediated, vernacular, graphic) she dissects above.

Ganesh holds a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, and an MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited widely across continents, and her work is held in prominent public collections such as the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, & Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, among many others. Her work will be on view at the Whitney Museum as part of the upcoming exhibition ‘Inheritance’ curated by Rujeko Hockley, from June 28 through February 2024.




XIMENA GARRIDO-LECCA


(b.1980 Lima, Peru) lives and works between Mexico City and Lima. She studied Fine art at Universidad Católica del Perú and completed an MA at Byam Shaw School of Art, London. Her solo exhibitions include: Protomorphisms, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2022); Redes de Conversión, Galería 80m2 Livia Benavides, Lima (2021); 34th Bienal de Sao Paulo Faz escuro mas eu canto (2020); Spectres of Reference, OCMA (Orange County Museum of Arts),

California (2019); Botanical readings: Erythroxylum coca, Proyecto AMIL, Lima (2019); Lines of Divergence, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2018); Native States at MALBA, Buenos Aires (2017); Botanical Insurgencies: Phaseolus Lunatus at SAPS (Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros), Mexico city (2017); Smoke Architecture at 80m2 Livia Benavides, Lima (2015); Toma de tierra at Casado Santapau, Madrid (2015); Los Suelos, MATE (Museo Mario Testino), Lima (2014); Paisaje Antrópico, Max Wigram Gallery, London (2012); a solo project at Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art (2012); El Porvenir, Mimmo Scognamiglio Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2011). Her recent group exhibitions include: Puntos y Almendras por Círculos en Ojos, Galería Nordenhake, Mexico City (2022); Rethinking Nature, Madre Museum, Naples (2021); Imaginarios Comúnes, Vol. I, Museo de Arte Lima -MALI, Lima (2021); 34th Bienal de Sao Paulo, Faz escuro mas eu canto, Sao Paulo (2021); Normal Exceptions: Contemporary Art in Mexico, Jumex Museum, Mexico City (2021); La Diosa Verde, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara (2021); Tense Conditions, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2021); Infinite Games, Capitain Petzel Gallery, Berlin (2021).




JORGE GONZÁLEZ

Jorge González Santos - Escuela de Oficios. His practice-platform researches and guides processes to re-engage with our history, using materials and techniques that extend from natural processes, with the interest to create spaces for transmission knowledge and commitment to the land within our daily lives.




B. TOPRAK KARAKAYA

B. Toprak Karakaya works as a filmmaker, photographer and editor. His first short documentary film ‘Academic Drug’ was screened and competed in several local film festivals. Along with his film works, Karakaya also edited photographs published in various media outlets such as TIME Magazine and The New York Times.

Karakaya received his bachelor of arts in Philosophy from Boğaziçi University. He is currently studying for a master's degree in Directing in Film and Drama program at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.




SIMONE LEIGH

Over the last twenty years, Simone Leigh has created a multi-faceted body of work incorporating sculpture, video, and installation, all informed by her ongoing exploration of Black female-identified subjectivity. Leigh describes her work as auto-ethnographic, and her salt-glazed ceramic and bronze sculptures often employ forms traditionally associated with African art.

Her performance-influenced installations create spaces where historical precedent and self-determination commingle. “I am charting a history of change and adaptation,” the artist has written, “through objects and gesture and the unstoppable forward movement of Black women.” Simone Leigh was born in Chicago in 1967 and first began exhibiting her work in the early-2000s. She has had one-person museum exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Hammer Museum in LosAngeles among others. In 2014 she presented “The Free People’s Medical Clinic” in theBedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, a project commissioned by CreativeTime. Her work was included in the 2012 and 2019 Biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museumof American Art, New York. Leigh is the first artist to be commissioned for the High LinePlinth; her monumental sculpture Brick House was unveiled in April 2019. Leigh represented theUnited States at the 59thInternational Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022); herexhibition, “Simone Leigh: Sovereignty,” is currently on view in the United States Pavilion.Leigh’s work is also included in the central exhibition, “The Milk of Dreams,” for which she wasawarded the Golden Lion for Best Participant.




ISHMAEL RANDAL WEEKS

Ishmael Randall Weeks graduated from Bard College in 2000 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. His work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums both in Peru and internationally, including Middlesbrough Institute of Modern of Art, England, United Kingdom; MoMA P.S.1, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lima,

Peru; Spanish Culture Center of Buenos Aires (CCBBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina; The Drawing Center, New York, United States; Museum of Art of Lima (MALI), Lima, Peru; Macro Museum | Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome, Italy; National Museum, Lima, Peru; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, United States; Museum of the Bank of the Republic, Bogotá, Colombia; The Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Bologna, Italy; The Drawing Room, London, United Kingdom; Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico City, Mexico; the Bronx Museum, New York, United States; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States. His work has also been included in the Havana Biennial, the IX and the XIV Bienials de Cuenca, the 6th edition of (S) Files Biennial in El Museo del Barrio, New York and 2010 Greater New York and MomaP.S.1, amongst others.He has received numerous residences grants and awards from various institutions, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York; NYFA, New York; Art Matters, New York; Kiosko, Santa Cruz, Bolivia; La Curtiduria art center in Oaxaca, Mexico and Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, Lima, Peru.




KENYA (ROBINSON)


Kenya (Robinson) is a community-taught artist from Gainesville, Florida. A socialite, philanthropist, producer, and international southerner, (Robinson) investigates gender, consumerism, and ability through unexpected performative actions and sculptural gestures. (Robinson) is incredibly committed to their craft, from BLIXEL: The (Re)Stock Image Project, a photographic repository featuring people of unambiguously African descent, to the #WHITEMANINMYPOCKET, in which the artist carried a small, corporate-clad, plastic figure as a talismanic reminder that “whiteness is an idea not restricted to phenotype, gender, orientation, or nationality." Similarly, (Robinson)’s work seeks to help their audience reevaluate their place in the hierarchy of gender, race, and exploitation. In 2018, (Robinson) won the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, presented by The Orlando Museum of Art and underwritten by Gail and Michael Winn. Her sculptural work has been exhibited at Pioneer Works, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Flaten Museum at St. Olaf College, and the 60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank. Her sculpture, Commemorative Headdress of Her Journey Beyond Heaven, was acquired by the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture for its permanent collection in 2014. A contributor to the Huffington Post, Modern Painters, and the Opinion section of The New York Times, (Robinson) won an Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in 2015, and a Creative Capital Award for Emerging Fields in 2016. They will also be featured in the forthcoming catalogue for the exhibition, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, at the Baltimore Museum of Art.



TIFFANY SIA

Tiffany Sia is an artist, filmmaker, and writer born in Hong Kong. Sia’s films have been screened at the New York City International Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art Doc Fortnight, The Flaherty Film Seminar, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, and Prismatic Ground, among others.

She is the author of 咸濕 Salty Wet, a chapbook published by Inpatient Press in 2019, and the artist book sequel, Too Salty Too Wet 更咸更濕, published through Speculative Place Press in 2020. Her writing has been published in Film Quarterly, October, and elsewhere. Sia’s artworks have been exhibited at Artists Space (New York), Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen (Düsseldorf), and elsewhere. She received the George C. Lin Emerging Filmmaker Award in 2021. In addition to her artistic practice, Sia is the founder of the experimental project space Speculative Place and a film producer, serving as the executive producer for Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer’s EMPTY METAL (2018), and executive producer of Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil’s forthcoming documentary AANIKOOBIJIGAN [ANCESTOR / GREAT-GRANDPARENT / GREAT-GRANDCHILD].




EMILIE SIN YI CHOI

Choi Sin-yi (Emilie) is a Hong Kong based researcher, writer and curator. She is pursuing PhD degree in School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong currently; and she has obtained a MPhil degree in Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, researching on the socio-political history of Hong Kong experimental practices of moving image art in the late 1960s.

Emilie’s research interests include Asian and Hong Kong documentary, independent and alternative cinema, moving image studies and archive, image politics, media archaeology and digital culture. Emilie started her career as a cultural journalist, her writing is now published extensively on media across Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. A firm believer in the creation of publics and knowledge-mapping via public discourse and engagement, she has participated in a wide range of roles, including as board member of Videotage, a leading Hong Kong-based institution promoting video and new media art; member of the Floating Projects Collective, an independent experimental site of collaborative-individuated art practices; editor of Cinezen, a pan-Chinese film criticism online platform. She has also curated various kinds of art and film programmes which celebrates research-based curation and offers a cross-border and insightful approaches, such as Performative Doc, Hong Kong Retrospective Documentary Film Festival: From 80s to 1997 and Docuthon.




CHAN TZE-WOON

Chan Tze-woon is a Hong Kong-based filmmaker. His debut feature-length documentary Yellowing (2016) examined the Umbrella Movement, a large-scale civil occupation in 2014. It won the Shinsuke Ogawa Prize at the 2017 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards. His recent work Blue Island (2022), blends documentary and fiction, won the Best Documentary at Hot Docs Canadian international documentary film festival.