Live Artery provides a platform for artists to share their work with the general public and presenters from around the world, fostering new commissions, touring opportunities, and lasting professional relationships. Artists showing works-in-progress or excerpts of completed works on January 10 include Ain Gordon/Pick Up Performance Co and Brandon Kazen-Maddox.

Monday, January 12

Ain Gordon/Pick Up Performance Co.
At 3pm

Brandon Kazen-Maddox
At 6pm

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Ain Gordon/Pick Up Performance Co. | Condolence
3pm, Studio

Written, directed, and performed by Ain Gordon. Victorians made jewelry from the hair of deceased loved ones as remembrance – now sold in flea markets. My ancestral Ashkenazi’s would ‘rend’ their garments when someone died – now it’s already-cut black ribbon and a safety pin. 1907: motorized hearses erase stately procession. 1926: Chanel erases the sacrifice of widow’s weeds with the “little black dress.” Now: ashes arrive from a crematorium in a bag, in a plastic box, in a cardboard box, all squeezed into a non-compostable bag emblazoned with an eternal flame. CONDOLENCE asks how we mourn in modernity?

FUNDING
This work was supported in part by Creative Capital’s 2023 Award Commission by New York Live Arts and Simons Foundation’s Open Interval Grant Program.

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Brandon Kazen-Maddox | (FREEDOM): A Celebration of American Sign Language, Community and Belonging
6pm, Studio

Choreographer/Performer: Brandon Kazen-Maddox
Director: Kevin Newbury
ASL Interpretation supported by SignNexus

(FREEDOM) is an autobiographical performance tracing the life of Brandon Kazen-Maddox, a Black, Queer, hearing child raised in a white, Deaf world. A third-generation heritage signer of American Sign Language, Brandon tells their own story, through an interdisciplinary fusion of ASL, spoken word, Simultaneous Communication (SimCom), music, projected subtitles, aerial arts, dance and theater. Brandon is joined by a remarkable ensemble of Deaf, hearing, and ASL-fluent artists whose ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities mirror the diversity of Brandon’s own family. Together, they bring to life a story that transcends language, celebrates connection, and explores what it truly means to belong. 

FUNDING
The Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Briarcombe Institute, and ArtYard Residency.