We are continuing our mission to empower artists to renegotiate the shifting boundaries between the self, science, and technology.
Featured Works
Have a Great Night!
By Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey
Have a Great Night! takes the form of stand-up night with a host who will engage with the audience between each performance. The comedians, invested in becoming better artists and citizens, will collaboratively tell the story of how they trained with a propaganda expert to become funnier, more persuasive, and more fluent in their politics. They are here to demonstrate their newfound skills. This does not always go well. Or at least, does not go as expected. And isn’t very funny—but it is at times very funny. The show will begin like a stand-up night at a middle-of-the-road American comedy club and end like a harrowing documentary.
Vibrating Waiting for You to Touch
By Julianna Johnston
Vibrating Waiting for You to Touch is a mixed-reality performance that explores the sensorial and emotional experience of scrolling. It is a dance of scrolling thumbs—thumbs attached to hands performed by whole people. Through movement, sound, and absurdist costuming, props, and embodied exploration, the piece investigates how our bodies are disciplined by digital systems and how the intimate act of touch becomes flattened into functionality. This work asks: how do we touch a digital body? And can touch rehumanize the dehumanized scroll?
The Syntax of Undoing
By Raymond Pinto and Team Rolfes
Join Raymond Pinto and team.rolfes as they construct a performance that critically examines and extends the historical and conceptual legacy of “Happenings.” The work will draw inspiration from a loose, interpretative reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with a particular focus on the play’s inherent themes of doubling and power dynamics.
A central element of this reinterpretation involves the dynamic roles assigned to “Team Rolfes.” Within the narrative structure of the syntax of undoing, Team Rolfes will embody a dual identity, serving as both Ariel and Caliban. This strategic doubling is not merely a symbolic gesture but a functional one; Team Rolfes will be instrumental in facilitating the multifaceted layers of doubling that permeate the performance. Furthermore, their agency will extend to the virtual dimension of the piece, where their movements and interactions will be essential to the intricate choreography of the live dancers. Their presence will thus bridge the physical and digital, influencing and responding to the unfolding narrative and movement. The presentation will be followed by a conversation between the artistic team, and you.
Venue
MITU 580
About MAXlive
Media Art Xploration (MAXlive) is a NYC-based non-profit production company that was founded in 2018 by Founding Director Kay Matschullat to support the development, production, and presentation of compelling and artistically sophisticated new work that brings important questions surrounding scientific research and emerging technology to the public in an accessible format. As accelerating climate change, technologies such as artificial intelligence chatbots and AI surveillance, and new research into animal intelligence and perception call into question our role as humans, we believe that it is imperative that artists working in live performance and immersive installation are given adequate resources to explore these developments.
From a science communication standpoint, we believe that works experienced live have a unique ability to catalyze deep emotional transformation and intellectual consideration. MAXlive aims to bring both arts and science audiences together and strengthen the production capacity of the greater arts ecosystem by providing substantive production support to artists both familiar and new to engaging with science and emerging technologies. In addition to supporting new commissions through our MAXmachina laboratory, we also present MAXlive full productions with venue partners around the country featuring new works by choreographers, playwrights, composers, and technologists that grapple with the most pressing issues of our time. We also host a live conversation series, MAXforum, where artists and scientists share their processes with the public.
¡Oye! Group is a Bushwick-based creative incubator for artists, students, and community members of all ages, both local and immigrant to New York City. Our work is grounded in the act of listening that gave us our company name: we curate art that sparks a dialogue over the political and social issues that our community tells us are critical to them. We present an eclectic mix of theater, dance, poetry, music, video installations, and film through festivals and productions. We work with emerging artists to create, play, and grow in an environment that challenges and supports them, and we engage youth and adults alike through high-quality arts education that provides them with the tools to generate forward-thinking art that compliments the work on our stages.
MAXlive and the MAXmachina laboratory program are supported in part by the Simons Foundation, the Ettinger foundation, public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, with additional support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation/EST, and the generous support of our individual donors.