Martin O'Brien is an artist whose performance work draws upon his experience of suffering from cystic fibrosis. His work is concerned with physical endurance, disgust, long durations and pain based practices in order to address a politics of the sick queer body and examine what it means to be born with a life threatening disease, politically and philosophically. He has performed throughout the UK, the US, Canada and Europe, both solo and in collaboration with the pioneering performance artist Sheree Rose.

Martin O'Brien will create a new work for NYC.

link to Venice, 2017: www.veniceperformanceart.org/index.php?page=303&lang=en

Beginning in Shanghai, where his photography works expressed the universal theme of urban angst, Miao then immigrated to New York, expanding his view of urban streets towards a more conceptual public stage. Among his performative practices across different media, Miao has blended his naked body into the bleak streets of a midnight New York City, traveled inside a suitcase hauled by his mother through urban crowds, made live-feed erotic performances on an interactive pornographic broadcasting website, and dressed as a Chinese businessman for an entire year when working towards his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More lately, he converted his New York studio into a jail and charged $1 per night as accommodation on Airbnb and Facebook. Miao's works often express the ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic tension that always exists between the individual and governing or cultural authorities, questioning assumptions about power in relation to identity politics. He posits the artist's nature as one who transgresses boundaries, challenges consensus, and stays distance from authorities.

www.miaojiaxin.com

My work is about creating a liminal participatory space using ritual components (film, story-telling, glossolalia vocals and movement) in order to produce an alchemical unity between myself and witnesses in the audience. I am influenced by afro-futurist tropes, black feminist thought and speech act theory. I acknowledge my teachers in ritual practice: Kali Maie, White Star, Astrea Aurora, Jane Carleton, Vickie Dodd, Jonathan Goldman and Tom Kenyon. I acknowledge the teachers who influence my thought: All of the above plus, Malidoma Some, Audre Lorde, Tracie Morris, Fred Moten and others.

www.kaliartproject.com

Esther Neff is the founder of Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL), a performance collective, thinktank, organizational entity and laboratory site. Neff's work situates forms of gathering, ideation, and habitus, dealing with movement of ideology and belief into and through action. Her solo and collaborative projects have been realized as part of Rapid Pulse (Chicago), Tempting Failure (London), MPA-B (Berlin), INVERSE (Arkansas), New Genres (Tulsa), PAF (Pittsburgh) and elsewhere across the USA and around the world.

www.panoplylab.org

Oya Damla is an interdisciplinary artist based in brooklyn, ny. Her work explores the intersection of performance, sculpture and sound art. Her conceptual foundations are influenced by themes of psychoanalytical theory, yogic philosophy, holistic medicine, phenomenology, gender, body dysmorphia and first generation identity studies. Damla's performances explore the body in relation to thought formation, the experiential components of sound making, and the process of art /identity making as a first generation Turkish American. Founder of The Ear, a DIY community arts and performance venue, Damla continually works towards creating neutral communal spaces for women of diverse backgrounds/disciplines and non-binary artists working in sound, performance & interdisciplinary arts to show, experiment and collaborate with new or ongoing work.

www.instagram.com/oyadamla/?hl=en