The Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist program was created in 2011 by New York Live Arts to address what we perceive to be an overall lack of support for mid-career artists. The program is by-invitation only and offers a salary, health benefits, two years of residency time and a commission of a new work to premiere at New York Live Arts. Select works will then be chosen for a fully produced national and/or international tour managed by New York Live Arts.
As the sixth RCA, Faye Driscoll begins her residency after completing her lauded multi-year Thank You For Coming series of performances that reimagined the relationship between the creator and her audiences. Known for crafting an alchemy of bodies and voices, objects and live sound, Driscoll opens new intimacies that grapple with power and presence, as well as yearning and absence. In her new range of explorations — which began pre-covid — Driscoll extended these inquiries into exhibitions and audio works, moving into new realms of exchange. Her recent Guided Choreographies for the Living and the Dead are a series of guided experiences that take place in gallery spaces, theaters and at home. The new work to be premiered as part of her RCA residency will continue this foray into the possibilities and impossibilities of human connection in our time. Driscoll asks: Who or what do we allow to touch us? Lovers, parents, friends, grocery store clerks, data miners, surveillance systems, facial recognition software, and drones? How are we altered? Where is our body, and how far does it extend?
2019 – 2020 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA):
Raja Feather Kelly
Raja Feather Kelly, Image by Kate Enman
Raja Feather Kelly is the 2019 – 2020 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA). Raja has also been awarded a New York Dance Performance “Bessie” Award, a Bessie Schonberg Fellowship at The Yard, a DanceWEB Scholarship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, a HERE Arts Fellowship, 2018 Creator-in-Residence at Kickstarter, and a Choreography Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.
Since the creation of the program in 2011, Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artists have been Yasuko Yokoshi, Kyle Abraham (MacArthur Genius Fellow 2013), Okwui Okpokwasili (MacArthur Genius Fellow 2018), RoseAnne Spradlin, and Raja Feather Kelly, whose world premiere of the dance-theatre speculative documentary WEDNESDAY was postponed to Live Arts’ 2021 season.