Courtney Mackedanz

Description

COURTNEY MACKEDANZ is an transdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. Her movement-based performances explore themes of embodied resistance and demonstrations of care within the context of "˜received and embedded choreographic conditions' (such as, algorithmic surveillance, nervous system architectures, or extractive wage labor). Mackedanz's practice incorporates critical research, creative writing, collaborative dancemaking, and visual art experimentations to explore how expanded notions of the choreographic might structure, steer, catalyze, and constrain potentials in movement. Mackedanz earned her BFA in Performance and Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013.

Work Sample

Rebecome the Animal is a performed response to the exhibition Surplus Tension by Hannah Levy. Hannah Levy's exhibition in The Arts Club of Chicago's gallery, Surplus Tension, both invites and rejects corporeal engagement. Levy's sculptural forms allure a viewer with skin-textured materials and references to furniture while simultaneously (even flirtatiously) distancing spectators with cold metal, peaked talons, and a juxtaposition of references that are both playful and unsettling. Responding to the exhibition's sharp edges and soft insinuations, dancemaker Courtney Mackedanz embodies an inquisitive movement interaction with the exhibition, joining Levy's works in an artistic exploration of the relationship between the skin as a surface and the armatures of structure that lay beneath.

Can deliberate movement disable a limited gaze? What does it mean to capture ourselves? How to be invisible in the age of automated surveillance data? How can we capture ourselves in more subversive ways? Is there a way of looking into the seeing eye that commands to be seen, in return, differently?

LIKE A STONE THOUGH UNSTABLE

3m/20m excerpt

Links Hall, 2017

A work in progress dance that parallels the object status of a sculpture with the object status of a dancer to consider the artistic wager made when using the body as medium: when asking to be seen in order to be heard.

These work samples reflect the overall multi-disciplinary and conceptual nature of my movement based performance practice.

History

Courtney Mackedanz (b. 1989) is an experimental choreographer and movement based performance artist living in Chicago. Her dance making examines themes of " received choreographic conditions' (such as algorithmic surveillance, the nervous system, or labor) and how these conditions might structure, steer, catalyze, or constrain an individual'spotential to move. Recent projects (REBECOME THE ANIMAL 2022, CHAFE THE

SWALLOW BACK 2021, AND CLUSTERFUQ 2019) infuse critical research, creative writing, and both conceptual and collaborative approaches to generating choreography, sound, and installations for live and virtual performance.

Over the past decade, Mackedanz has presented work throughout Chicago (Steppenwolf Theater, Arts Club of Chicago, Links Hall, ACRE Projects, Defibrillator Gallery, and HighConcept Labs), as well as New York City (Gibney Dance Center, Knockdown Center),Montreal ( Darling Foundry), and Shanghai (Basement6).

Mackedanz has attended residencies in support of her work including ImPacT at Impulstanz (Vienna, Austria), Nave Proyecto (Quito, Ecuador), Lijiang Studio Residency (Lijiang,China), Summer Forum for Inquiry and Exchange (Kaneohe, Hawaii), Landing 3.0 (New York City), along with CoMISSION, ACRE, Ragdale, and High Concept Labs

Residencies (Chicago).

Mackedanz earned her BFA in Performance and Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute in 2013.

Artistic Vision

I am a movement-based performance artist with a practice founded in conceptual dance, critical writing, and the creation of visual art objects. My choreography utilizes momentum, rigidity, and highly structured line, as a sort of conceptual container. Over the course of being performed, these embodied containers erode from the force, speed, and exertion of embodiment. If the primary question of my movement is "what can a body contain", I create containers that explore their own spillover.