This series, a brainchild of Erick Montes, is a pedagogical iteration of generosity as a praxis. It’s about capturing, flirting, finding, placing, glimpsing, and laboring something new from something real and static. It’s a form of change and acknowledgment that seeks encounters and relationality. It brings to the forefront random themes and places, including the subjectivity of the body as a social space. It continues historical coercions that imply transcendence, where shapes, textures, and materials vibrate in confluence, giving sense to hidden storytelling beyond the tangible world.

Cuerpo Esoterico is an installation divided into two sections. The first features a traditional setting of 2-dimensional photography, collage, and video series. The second section is a space dedicated to an immersive video installation, inviting gallery visitors to participate in a one-of-a-kind experience. Here, they can interact with generative AI and video feedback in real-time, exploring and playing with elements displayed throughout the exhibition.

Bauhaus Time Traveler
Bauhaus Time Traveler | Duet in Latent Space is an application developed by Marlon Barrios Solano, showcasing a blend of concept, programming, generative AI, sound design, and performance. It was brought to life during an artistic and research residency at Lake Studios Berlin in February 2024.

Composition
The project is an amalgamation of various elements including software development, a real-time text to image generative AI space for performance as a live app that runs in the browser, a sound space crafted with Musicgen, and a drawing tool. Additionally, users/performers can immerse themselves in the experience by playing the soundtrack created specifically for the app.

Latent space refers to a conceptual and mathematical space generated by algorithms, particularly those used in machine learning and generative models. This space is characterized by a high-dimensional representation of data where similar data points are mapped closely together and dissimilar points are further apart. In essence, latent spaces serve as the underlying structure that models use to understand and generate new data instances based on learned patterns without being explicitly programmed with specific rules for every possible outcome.

Marlon’s website:
https://github.com/marlonbarrios/bauhaus-time-traveler

Installation Statement
About “Bauhaus Traveler” Generative AI software, Installation by Marlon Barrios Solano,

This immersive installation speaks about the endless possibilities hidden by the physical body we are conformed to in our actual reality. The things we can touch, hear, smell, but, in this case, ultimately see.

For several years now, I have continued observing my body as a place of confluences and meeting points where energy and vibrations extend themselves and manifest through me with me and alongside my existence, permeating my living experience. What else is there?

Peggy Lee will sing, “Is that all there is?” if that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing. Let’s break out a booze and have a ball,”

For me, Bauhaus Traveler is a manifestation of that Ball Peggy Lee sang to us about through the years, a sort of Jazzy manifestation of ideas and beings, languages and thoughts as legacies of the many things we can be if we were a little more open to care and love. These two great loaded words, as in listening and holding space for one another to grow and play, the more playful, the more knowledge we can gain. Isn’t that what love and care are all about? Going back to Peggy’s lyrics, if this is my body, all there is? It is the one I manifest when I see myself in the mirror, with my legs, face, hands, and chest. Then, let me shift, change myself a little, and play with it just like a Picasso, a Mondrian, or a Kara Walker will do when creating a masterpiece. If what I see is all there is, let me do my work, play with my manifestation, and have a ball—attending and navigating my demons as I go, transforming, placing, and becoming another self, essentially from love. This is where the installation suggests movement or dance related to the exhibition. For me, dance is that love, that intrinsic wavering that allows us to balance life with the world, always making us stumble, shake, or fail to appear more purely or closer to who we are.

In one conversation with Barrios, he mentioned love as a foundational source that inspired his research for the traveler’s software. In this idea, we clicked with each other in the sense of looking at our work as the manifestation of love; we dreamed of ourselves as better, as a more forgiving version of ourselves, trying to resonate more clearly with the universe as a way of healing to continue running with it. Ultimately, the installation is this: a playful window for the public to manifest in real time, inquiring about their reality, whatever this may be.

You could start with inner prompts like: Am I this one person? Can I be different? How would I feel wearing a pair of different arms or a skirt instead of pants? What if I was a Picasso painting?

We believe that dancing starts in the muscles, but my invitation to the room is for us to think that maybe dance begins somewhere else, in a rather intimate place. Perhaps the software is within me to manifest all kinds of realities at any given time to break out the booze and keep dancing.

Erick Montes
Danceable Projects
Artistic Director
Curator & Artist in the exhibit for Cuerpo Esoterico

Special Thanks to the Sponsor
fal.ai
for the Bauhaus Traveler, installation program

Esta serie, ideada por Erick Montes, es una iteración pedagógica de la generosidad como praxis. Se trata de capturar, coquetear, encontrar, ubicar, vislumbrar y elaborar algo nuevo a partir de algo real y estático. Es una forma de cambio y reconocimiento que busca el encuentro y la relacionalidad. Pone en primer plano temas y lugares aleatorios, incluida la subjetividad del cuerpo como espacio social. Continúa coerciones históricas que implican trascendencia, donde formas, texturas y materiales vibran en confluencia, dando sentido a narraciones ocultas más allá del mundo tangible.

La exhibición de Cuerpo Esotérico cuenta con dos secciones. La primera presenta obras en formato tradicional de fotografía bidimensional, collage, y video. La segunda sección es un espacio dedicado a una instalación de video inmersiva, que invita a los visitantes de la galería a participar en una experiencia única. Aquí, el publico puede interactuar con un video de inteligencia artificial generativa y retroalimentación de video en tiempo real, explorando y jugando con las ideas que se muestran a lo largo de la exposición.

Erick Montes/Danceable Projects
Cuerpo Esoterico
Featuring collaborations by Karla Carballar & Marlon Barrios Solano
June 29 – Aug 3, 2024
Opening Reception Sat, June 29, 4-7pm

About Exhibition
This series, a brainchild of Erick Montes, is a pedagogical iteration of generosity as a praxis. It’s about capturing, flirting, finding, placing, glimpsing, and laboring something anew from something real and static. It’s a form of change and acknowledgment that seeks encounters and relationality. It brings to the forefront random themes and places, including the subjectivity of the body as a social space. It continues historical coercions that imply transcendence, where shapes, textures, and materials vibrate in confluence, giving sense to hidden storytelling beyond the tangible world.

About the Installation
Cuerpo Esoterico is an installation divided into two sections. The first features a traditional setting of 2-dimensional photography, collage, and video series. The second section is a space dedicated to an immersive video installation, inviting gallery visitors to participate in a one-of-a-kind experience. Here, they can interact with generative AI and video feedback in real-time, exploring and playing with elements displayed throughout the exhibition.

About Danceable Projects
Danceable Projects is an interdisciplinary artistic initiative to further peer-to-peer support, creative feedback, networking, and the presentation of their work.

This platform gives agency to performance artists and choreographers interested in collaborations; as a strategy for social awareness towards inclusivity by disrupting traditional dance and art spaces emerging from the community. I collaborate with organizations to create space for dance performance installations featuring independent artistic voices that bring authentic, compelling, and exciting ideas through research, whatever state their investigations find at. I believe movement is the threshold to ancestral wisdom manifested through ideas, physicality, or art.

My latest installation, “Moving Landscapes,” was presented at Montpellier’s National Centre of Choreography and Dance in France as part of my research residency with the University of the Arts. In the spring of 2022, I partnered with Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn to curate the research-as-action performance program by distinguished artists Arantxa Araujo, Mirian Parker, and choreographer Geraldine Cardiel.

I have also partnered with Jane St. Art Center to present the film installation project “Mexendo Horizontes,” created in collaboration with photographer Bernardo Gasparini, to regenerate public spaces in the Village of Saugerties, NY. Other collaborations include works by Twin Shadow, Daniel Zero Waste, Connor Sale, and Guillermo Brown.

My work has been recognized and supported by esteemed institutions and organizations, including the Fund for New Work at Harlem Stage, The National Endowment for the Arts in México, and The New York Foundation for the Arts. I hold an MFA in Dance from The University of the Arts and a BA from The National School of Contemporary Dance in Mexico City. I am a former Bill.T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member and hold a Dance Fellowship & Life Experience Award for the University of the Arts.

EVENTS RELATED TO THIS EXHIBITION

SAT, June 29, 4-7pm
Opening Reception

SAT, June 29, 5:30pm
Offering/Dance Performance by Erick Montes. (at gallery space)

In his unique style, Erick Montes will guide us on a site-specific journey accompanied by timeless preludes by classical composers Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Holts, and Jean Sibelius. His performance blends storytelling and dance improvisation to manifest the humorous instances of emotional states that individuals mostly experience in solitude, such as nostalgia, boredom, or longing. The work is considered a divertimento to uplifting the power of transformation as evolution.

Fri, July 5, 4pm
WKZE Radio Interview with MK

Sat, July 20, 5:30pm
Site Specific, Dance Performance

In his unique style, Erick Montes will guide us on a site-specific journey accompanied by timeless preludes by classical composers Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Holts, and Jean Sibelius. His performance blends storytelling and dance improvisation to manifest the humorous instances of emotional states that individuals mostly experience in solitude, such as nostalgia, boredom, or longing. The work is considered a divertimento to uplifting the power of transformation as evolution.

*This event is designed to be inclusive and will run from the Main entrance of the Newberry Artisan Market on Main St. through the Market shops and to the Jane St. Art Center’s gallery space. We look forward to welcoming you to this unique experience.

Sat, July 20, 6:30pm
Q&A with Erick Montes

Erick Montes/Danceable Projects
Cuerpo Esoterico
Colaboraciones por Karla Carballar y Marlon Barrios Solano
Junio 29 – Agosto 3, 2024
Recepción de Apertura, Sábado, Junio 29, 4-7pm

Declaración del artista
Esta serie, ideada por Erick Montes, es una iteración pedagógica de la generosidad como praxis. Se trata de capturar, coquetear, encontrar, ubicar, vislumbrar y elaborar algo nuevo a partir de algo real y estático. Es una forma de cambio y reconocimiento que busca el encuentro y la relacionalidad. Pone en primer plano temas y lugares aleatorios, incluida la subjetividad del cuerpo como espacio social. Continúa coerciones históricas que implican trascendencia, donde formas, texturas y materiales vibran en confluencia, dando sentido a narraciones ocultas más allá del mundo tangible.

Declaración de instalación
La exhibición de Cuerpo Esotérico cuenta con dos secciones. La primera presenta obras en formato tradicional de fotografía bidimensional, collage, y video. La segunda sección es un espacio dedicado a una instalación de video inmersiva, que invita a los visitantes de la galería a participar en una experiencia única. Aquí, el publico puede interactuar con un video de inteligencia artificial generativa y retroalimentación de video en tiempo real, explorando y jugando con las ideas que se muestran a lo largo de la exposición.

Acerca de Danceable Projects
Danceable Projects es una iniciativa artística interdisciplinaria que busca fomentar la retroalimentación creativa entre artistas, la creación de redes y la presentación de trabajos de arte escénico y de instalación.

La plataforma brinda capacidad a los artistas de performance y coreógrafos interesados ​​en colaborar como una estrategia cultural para alterar los espacios tradicionales de danza y arte que surgen de la comunidad como forma de resistencia social. Colaboro con organizaciones para realizar instalaciones de performance y danza que presentan voces independientes que aportan ideas auténticas, contundentes y emocionantes a través de la investigación, sustentando sus exploraciones en cualquier estado en el que se encuentren para reactivar formas vitales del proceso intimo entre artista y su quehacer como creador. Asumo la idea de movimiento como umbral de la sabiduría ancestral que se manifiesta a través de las ideas, la fisicalidad o el arte.

Mi última instalación, “Moving Landscapes”, se presentó en el Centro Nacional de Coreografía y Danza de Montpellier en Francia como parte de mi residencia de investigación con la Universidad de las Artes. En la primavera de 2022, me asocié con Triskelion Arts en Brooklyn para realizar el programa de Performance en Acción como Investigación.” Presentando a les distinguides artistes Arantxa Araujo, la artista Mirian Parker y la coreógrafa Geraldine Cardiel.

También me he asociado con Jane St. Art Center en ocasiones pasadas para presentar el proyecto de instalación cinematográfica “MexendoHorizontes” (Horizontes Móviles), creado en colaboración con el fotógrafo Bernardo Gasparini, (Brazil), para regenerar espacios públicos en el poblado de Saugerties, Nueva York. Otras colaboraciones incluyen obras con Twin Shadow, Daniel Zero Waste, Connor Sale y Guillermo Brown.

Mi trabajo ha sido apoyado y reconocido por instituciones y organizaciones prestigiosas, entre ellas el Fund for New Work en Harlem Stage, The National Endowment for the Arts en México y The New York Foundation for the Arts. Cuento con una Maestría en Danza de la Universidad de las Artes y un Bachillerato en Danza de la Escuela Nacional de Danza Contemporánea de la Ciudad de México. Colaboré como bailarín con la aclamada compañía de danza Bill.T Jones/Arnie Zane y obtuve por mi trayectoria escénica, la beca y el reconocimiento “Life Experience” de la Universidad de las Artes en los años 2021-2022.

EVENTS RELATED TO THIS EXHIBITION

Sábado, Junio 29, 4-7pm
Recepción de Apertura

Sábado, Junio 29, 5:30pm
Ofrenda y Danza Performance por Erick Montes (en la galería del Centro de Arte Jane St)

En su estilo único, el bailarín Erick Montes ofrecerá una serie de danzas acompañadas por preludios de los compositores clásicos Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Holts y Jean Sibelius. Su actuación combina el movimiento lúdico y la improvisación para manifestar momentos humorísticos de aquellos estados emocionales como la nostalgia, el aburrimiento o el anhelo, que experimentamos todas, todas y todos principalmente en soledad y que nos ayudan esencialmente a crecer espiritualmente. Erick considera este trabajo como un divertimento en oda al poder de la transformación como estado evolutivo.

Viernes, Julio 5, 4pm
Entrevista de radio WKZE con MK

Sábado, Julio 20, 5:30pm
Danza Performance por Erick Montes

En su estilo único, el bailarín Erick Montes ofrecerá una serie de danzas acompañadas por preludios de los compositores clásicos Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Holts y Jean Sibelius. Su actuación combina el movimiento lúdico y la improvisación para manifestar momentos humorísticos de aquellos estados emocionales como la nostalgia, el aburrimiento o el anhelo, que experimentamos todas, todas y todos principalmente en soledad y que nos ayudan esencialmente a crecer espiritualmente. Erick considera este trabajo como un divertimento en oda al poder de la transformación como estado evolutivo.

*Este evento está es penado en la inclusividad. Con acceso de sillas de ruedas y se desarrollará desde la entrada principal del Newberry Artisan Market en Main St. En Saugerties, a través de las tiendas del mercado y hasta el espacio de la galería del Centro de Arte Jane St. Esperamos darte la bienvenida a esta experiencia única.

Sábado, Julio 20, 6:30pm
Q&A por Erick Montes