Artist-in-residence September 1-15, 2020

GABRIELLE CIVIL
Artist-in-residence

This summer, AUTOMATA is hosting a series of individual artist’s residencies—a program we launched to serve creative process and new work development in the field of puppetry and object performance, while we are unable to gather for events. Each Resident Artist has 24 hour access to the full space, allowing for uninterrupted work-time and focus.
 
GABRIELLE CIVIL the fourth artist in the series, is currently in residence at Automata. During her September residency, Civil has been exploring the nature of black living objects for her work in performance art and object performance. What does it mean to activate objects  as a black artist when you have long been objectified? Drawing on creative research in Black Atlantic archeology and Black material culture, she has been reading, moving, writing and sifting through family archives. She has created installations in the windows and in Automata's interior space. She has also spent time reflecting and gathering resources from her time on the advisory committee of the 2019 Living Objects African-American Puppetry exhibit, festival, and symposium at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.
 
At Living Objects, Civil met accomplished puppeteer Tarish Pipkins aka Jeghetto. As a part of her residency, Civil interviewed Jeghetto on Zoom, continuing her Black Motion Pictures project, talking to radical Black creatives about race, representation and performance.

Their conversation will be live-streamed on the Automata FaceBook page on Sept. 14 at 6 PM PST. 

More information about Civil's residency can be found in the special Automata issue of her newsletter Civilities.You can read that HERE.

Send an email to experimentsinjoy@gmail.com, if you'd like to be added to Gabrielle's list.

The 2020 Automata Residency Project is made possible with generous support from The Jim Henson Foundation and the LA Arts Covid-19 Relief Fund, funded by the J.Paul Getty Trust in partnership with the California Community Foundation. Our Residency Projects are also funded, in part, through the ongoing support of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the LA County Arts Commission.

September 1–15, 2020

GABRIELLE CIVIL
Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has activated objects in performance art works around the world, most recently with Wild Beauty at Velocity in Seattle (2020). Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019) and the forthcoming (ghost gestures) performance writing (2020), which won the 2019 Gold Line Nonfiction Chapbook contest. A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches creative writing and critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.

Website :: www.gabriellecivilartist.com
Instagram :: @gabrielle_civil

Tarish Pipkins a.k.a. Jeghetto, was born in a small steel mill town called Clairton, PA located south of Pittsburgh, PA. He is a self taught artist and has been creating art from a very young age. As a teenager, he moved to the East Side of Pittsburgh and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School. In the late 90’s Tarish joined the BridgeSpotters Collective and became known for his Live paintings and Poetry. He was also a Barber for over 20 years. He moved to North Carolina in 2005 where he launched his career in Puppetry. There, he fine tuned his skills by doing street performances with his puppets. In 2008 he started working with Paperhand Puppet Intervention. He has built puppets and performed in several Paperhand productions.

Most recently, Jeghetto had the pleasure to work with national recording artist, Missy Elliott on her music video, WTF ( Where They From) controlling the Pharell puppet and doing some puppet building. He also worked on the Amazon Echo commercial featuring Missy Elliott and Alec Baldwin as puppets. Tarish is a former teacher at Just Right Academy, a private alternative school for children with special needs. Tarish is married and a proud father of five children. Jeghetto’s passion is promoting Oneness through the magic of Puppetry. He can be reached on instagram at JEGHETTO'S ENTERTAINMENT LLC (@jeghettos_puppets) https://www.jeghetto.com/