Harvestworks

2023 Sponsored Projects

Awarded Artists:

Kat Mustatea

Kat Mustatea is an artist whose experiments with language and live arts stretch theater into the digital age. A playwright and technologist, she uses metaphors of hybridity and transformation to craft live performances that investigate absurdity, misunderstanding, and what it means to be American. Her TED talk, about algorithms and puppetry, originates a new thesis about the meaning of machines making art. She is a co-curator of EdgeCut, a live performance series that explores our complex relationship to the digital, and a member of NEW INC, the art and tech incubator at The New Museum of Art in New York City. She speaks frequently about the cutting edge of art and technology (recently: SXSW, The Pompidou Center, Ars Electronica, etc.).

Associated project: BodyMouth

BodyMouth is a bespoke computational sound/movement tool that turns the body into an instrument for speech. Wearing sensors on various body parts, a dancer sounds out full words by performing specific gestures in sequence, as if their body is turned into a mouth. The project explores the alternative modes of speech as an underground approach against totalitarian and oppression.

Alex Strada

Alex Strada is an Brooklyn-based transmedia artist and educator who explores the topics of collectivity, critical legal studies, and political transformation through installations and films. Her works have been shown at Queens Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Anthology Film Archives, UnionDocs, etc.

Associated project: House of D

House of D is an art installation and workshop series that explores the history of The Jefferson Market Library, which previously served as a jail to punish and reform women, transgendered male, and non-gender-conforming people. The artist, Alex Strada, will continuously investigate the related history and use the material she encountered to build this installation within a feminist, queer and abolitionist framework. She will bring together an array of scholars, students, and professionals to discuss House of D as a case study in parallel with the public exhibition. The project resonates with the ongoing issues related with history, abolition, LGBTQA+, women rights, and anti-racist activism, and will be available to the public by partnering with New York Public Library.