New Untitled Project
Grief. Anger. Anguish.
Specter hunting from misty shores
Straining to hear wraiths reaching back from the depth
Wailing songs from distant outcroppings become booming operas
Of lives before ligature was rotted
jellied tendons dripping down between ocean-worn forearms
Flailing to gain friction in the churning
Wearing down to marrow in the effort
Only to slip under the weight of gravity upon beaching
algae-slicked hair floating in ethereal mists
Sand flocked and pinned over faces
Cries of pity slipping down to settle in the puddles below
A wraith beaks from the pack, clawing at the quicksand moving in the tides, hoping to reach dry land.
———————————
It was the feet
My feet
That painted me as a meal
A sheep in wolf's clothing
They raised me
Humanity raided
Pillaged my comfort
I had been One
A wolf girl
A savage
Quick to maul
The hand
Needing lessons on behaving
Being my species
worms squished and expelled between toes
Juxtaposed with glitter and sharp edges
Who is the savage here
Desirable when scrubbed clean
Miserable
Grind my skin into the
Moss
And the
Roots
And the
Stone
Shine it to my liking
a glitterpunk wolf girl lives her life in the dirt, refusing to clean herself for others’ comfort
Confessions
I am in process on a piece that will use the framework of the Catholic Act of Confession to build a space that encourages vulnerability and confession in a way that feels safe and cathartic for the audience. I have always been intrigued by Catholic images and iconography and the cognitive dissonance of the spaces that are meant to be welcoming but aren’t - especially after actually experiencing true spaces of “confession” and vulnerability.
The final piece will be in a hair salon, bar, and a taxicab.
More Info about the work:
The audience enters an incense-heavy space, greeted by a towering sculpture of light-colored sheets lit from the outside. their eye catches on a patchwork priest working on a canvas full of slashes of paint, water and candle wax. the priest welcomes them to sit, and begins moving about the space and speaking/humming/chanting. the audience attends a service and is then invited to participate in an act of confession: enter the towering sculpture of sheets and share your sins, sins against you, feelings, silence.
The painting, ‘Stigmata’, is an abstract process piece and will be actively in progress during every performance of the ritual using acrylic paint, water, candle wax, and ink on canvas; using the act of painting as a physical meditation focusing on purging the ‘sins’ confessed and remembered by myself. It is a physical ‘Act of Reconciliation’.
I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school for 10 years, so my foundation for spaces of sharing and confession were strongly molded by that tradition. I have been fascinated with Catholic traditions and influences from a sociological/anthropological standpoint and am using that background as a grounding point and framework for this piece.
My work in cosmetology is a secondary inspiration for this piece, influencing my perspective for a space of vulnerability and confession that is more inviting and kind to the “confessor”. The environment, energy, level of care and empathy that go into providing services in a salon are in direct opposition to my theological experiences with confession.
As a latecomer to Catholic school, I was fascinated and horrified by my religion class, and when it came time for confession, my palms were sweating, hands shaking, breathless. To my further horror, we were not to be in an anonymizing confessional, but face to face with the priest in a spare room full of discarded desks and half-burnt out fluorescent lighting. As I stuttered through my Act of Contrition with the priest my ears were ringing, my mind was blank of anything I’d done in the past few weeks, let alone my entire little life. Finally, the floodgates opened and eyes fixed to the floor I began a stream of describing fights with siblings, disobeying parents, lies to teachers, secrets I’d been keeping. Taking my first breath in what seemed like hours, I hear a sound that makes my head snap up. The priest, about a foot away from my knees, is asleep in his chair; I wait for minutes to see if he’ll wake up, but he snores on, so I sign the cross, leave the room and quietly shut the door behind me.
This project is currently in a working relationship with Bauhaus Hair Salon in Collingswood, NJ and Trattoria Garga in Florence, IT.
Tocka
I have struggled with the symptoms and diagnosis of hypothyroidism and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. The struggles to find a diagnosis and for my pain to be recognized as real has driven me to seek catharsis through creative expression. I aim to represent the frustrating, tense cycle of illness and pain for myself and other women who experience this.
Tocka (toe-shka) is a multidisciplinary piece of performance art comprised of video projection, guided meditation, dance improvisation, and choreography. I generated the piece through improvisation, experimental noise music, and text written by myself and fellow women who suffer with chronic illnesses. The piece uses cycles of repeating choreography, breathwork, and video to slowly build tension that mirrors the stress and discomfort that comes with the cyclical nature of chronic illness.
Tocka is currently a work in progress, with each showing throughout the process being open and free for audiences and live-streamed and posted our social media channels. The process of creation for this project is still in progress and may always be, beginning with its conception in August of 2019.
With this piece, myself and my collaborators hope to answer questions for ourselves and raise questions for the audience regarding how we view women's pain, how women's pain is treated in the medical world, and how we as creators and performers create and hold experiencers of the project in the visceral feelings of tension and uncomfortability of being in the emotional space of the women who are in this situation.
Updates on the project:
2024: This project is not in the forefront for me currently, but I have hopes to return to it in a big, multi-platform, multi-media reshaping.
2020: In our current iteration of the project, I have restructured the entire performance and story to be more personal to me. It was become a duo performance — myself (Kenwyn) as the speaker and mover, with Aidan Hadley playing the role of a silent watcher, musician and technology wrangler. Once the world is safe (enough), we will be presenting a workshop series in conjunction with the performance.
Dec 2019: Presented at Rowan University. We have decided to cut most of the spoken text. We used this text to influence and create our movement, but feel as though the work has a more powerful voice without our physical voices in most of the scenes.
We are currently looking for more collaborators and artists who are passionate about the subject matter to join us for our next phase of workshops and research.
Check out the videos below for more information and the Upcoming Projects page to find our upcoming work-in-progress showings as well as performance dates as they are announced.
Tocka second working draft performed as Kenwyn’s Senior Thesis at Rowan University 12.14.19 at 7pm (HD video coming soon)
Tocka first draft presented as a part of Free Fringe Philly at pilot+projects Gallery September 22 at 4pm
Past collaborators:
Aidan Hadley (pilot+projects gallery; Rowan University)
Gina Williams (pilot+projects gallery; Rowan University)
Faith Lynn Diccion (Rowan University)
Dana Capanna (pilot+projects gallery)
Explorations of a Clown…
Quarantine sucks. Clowns could make it fun?
“Explorations of a Clown in Quarantine” is an IGTV series conceived by Aidan Hadley through a film photography project.
As a clown experiences cycles of death and rebirth, we face our own fears and uncertainties about death and what comes next. This pandemic and social justice crisis have ended countless lives a day, and for many, this has been a source of outrage and heartbreak or has desensitized them to death. The truth is, we will all die, but with that inevitable truth comes the uncertainty of what lies ahead…
With this piece, myself and my collaborators hope to answer questions for ourselves and raise questions for the audience regarding how we view death and the afterlife and attempt to reconcile with our un-knowing.
Check out the IG below for more information.
VISIBILITYtalks
As an artist and media maker with chronic illnesses and chronic pain, I want to center the stories of my community who experience chronic pain and disabilities while actively working across the live arts in dance and performance. I produced, in collaboration with the showcased artists, a monthly video piece highlighting an artist working across disability and performance in the Philadelphia area. These videos were shot, produced, edited, and fully controlled by myself and the artists at varying degrees, with thINKingDANCE, an online journal dedicated to Philadelphia-based performing arts with whom I have a working relationship, allowing me to use their social media and website to host the project, an online equivalent to a theatre or performance space an artist uses for showings or productions.
This project has received a Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant for $2,500.