« S.W.E.A.T. » (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics): Eryka Dellenbach #6

performing the body, artistic collaboration, art and survival

Eryka Dellenbach (b. Chicago) is an experimental filmmaker, dancer and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Tucson, Arizona. They approach film as a devotional practice, and use body-based performance and dance collaboration as a method of research, connection and mutual evolution. Their works mine relationships to power and erotics, and explore fluid consent as a generative source of form and narrative. They earned their bachelor degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and their masters in Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their movement practice has been heavily impacted through studies in the dances of resistance Butoh, flamenco and capoeira, and especially by their teachers Atsushi Takenouchi, Wendy Clinard and Contramestre Besouro Preto Manganga.

Collaboration plays a central role in their process and they have worked with artists of many mediums and lineages including Hanna Elliott (HOGG), Martin Toloku, Yunuen Rhi, Nola Sporn Smith, Sonya Belaya, Matty Davis and Christopher-Rasheem McMilan. Their work has been presented at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Communitism (GR), Alliance Française Kumasi (GHANA), crazinisT artisT studio (GHANA), Roulette Intermedium, Cucalorus, Gene Siskel Film Center, Green River Cemetery (NY), Coaxial Arts (LA), Casa Moloch (MX) and Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church. They have been an artist-in-residence at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art (Russia), perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Ghana), eX…it! international butoh dance exchange and performance festival (Germany), Earthdance (MA), Echo Luna (Ukraine) and Cucalorus (NC). They have been a legal advocate and correspondent with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, a celluloid film instructor with MONO NO AWARE (NY) and are a collaborator of the transnational collective HEKLER. They work as a freelance filmmaker, performance documentarian, interviewer and performing body.

We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

Track List

Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending feat. Lori Baldwin Angel Haze – Ministry Dumama + Kechou, Siya Makuzeni - Wessi Walking Mama HOGG - Mucus Mourning [A] BLKstar - If I Can If I May Yugen Blakrok + Kanif the Jhatmaster - Obsidian Night Ampersan - El Compromiso