New Works Initiative
The New Works Initiative is a structure for the MCA to fund and support the development of new artworks, placing the creative process at the heart of the museum’s relationship with Chicago. This three-part approach supports the development of new performances and creative projects that foster connection between artists, audiences, and communities.
The initiative includes three programs: a Chicago Performance Commission, a National Performance Engagement, and the In Progress series.
About the Program
The Chicago Performance Commission fosters the artistic and professional growth of Chicago artists, providing consistent and comprehensive support for these local artists' development. This commission also connects their work with the national and international performance scene.
The National Performance Engagement centers Chicago in the creative processes of national or international artists, connecting them with the Chicago community as they develop a new work or new models of engagement in advance of its final presentation at the MCA.
In Progress is an ongoing series designed to give Chicago artists, thinkers, and curators a platform for developing new works in dialogue with audiences. Artists present their thinking, share inspirations, and answer questions, giving patrons a glimpse into the creative process.
The Artists
Shawné Michaelain Holloway
Shawné Michaelain Holloway is a Chicago-based new media artist and poet.
Known for her noisy experimental electronic and performance practice, Holloway shapes the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally since 2012 in spaces like Performance Space New York, The New Museum, The Kitchen, The Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), The Knckdown Center, and the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. Holloway is currently assistant professor of video/new media in the Kinetic Imaging department at Virginia Commonwealth University and is the digital developer and technology manager with Black Lunch Table’s archives team. In addition to her fine arts practice she is a dedicated open source software advocate and a powerlifter.
7NMS | Marjani Forté-Saunders & Everett Saunders
7NMS is the public emergence of Marjani Forté-Saunders and Everett Saunders’s work as a collaborative team.
Operating in CA and NY, 7NMS radically engages art as a medium of elevation, healing, and futurity. With 7 award-winning projects in 10 years, 7NMS tote a revolutionary commitment to the Black radical imagination. Their latest work, PROFIT, is an awardee of the 2020 MAP Fund and 2020 New Music USA Award, and the National Dance Project Production and Touring grant 2021. Marjani is a 2019 FCA Fellowship awardee, a three-time Bessie award–winner, and an inaugural recipient of the Jerome Hill, Dance USA, and Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellowships. Everett is the composer and thought partner behind the award-winning and internationally touring production, Memoirs of a Unicorn, and a two-time New Music USA Awardee. His recent work can be found as composer/sound designer on Jaamil Kosoko's Chameleon, mayfield Brooks's Whale Fall, and Urban Bush Women's Hair & Other Stories (2018). While incubating PROPHET through fall 2020 and winter 2021 Satellite Residencies, in 7NMS's newly erected home studios, the duo has worked in close collaboration with co-visionaries d. Sabela grimes (movement composer and sound archivist), Meena Murugesan (filmmaker and media designer), and Marc Winston (photographer), producing PROPHET's latest filmic iteration, commissioned by Jacob's Pillow.
Calendar
Funding
Lead support for the New Works Initiative is provided by Elizabeth A. Liebman.