Object Permanence
Daria Kaufman
Artists-in-Residence
June 29-July 13 2023

Daria Kaufman is an interdisciplinary performer/choreographer working at the intersection of movement, text, and action. From phone-based audio performance to domestic object scores, to performance installation, her work is rooted in the body – its mutability and capacity for (un)making meaning. Themes around feminism, language, desire, and the body in pain, permeate her work. She is especially interested in how bodies escape - the glitches, cheats, and cons they develop in response to (real and imagined) constraints.    

Daria earned her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Mills College. In 2015, she was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (the “Izzie”) for Individual Performance. Her work has been presented throughout the US and Europe, including: Transport Artspace (Netherlands), FAKI Festival (Zagreb); Armazem 22, in scope of Festival Dias de Dança (Porto); Biblioteca de Marvila (Lisbon); Zaratan (Lisbon); Pomona and Scripps Colleges (Los Angeles); ODC Theater (San Francisco); Cutting Ball Theater (SF); Mills College (Oakland); and on KQED Spark TV (SF Bay Area). Her work has been supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation, GDA (Portugal), the European Cultural Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Los Angeles Performance Practice (2022 resident artist; current ACCELERATOR member). 

Daria Kaufman is an interdisciplinary performer/choreographer working at the intersection of movement, text, and action. From phone-based audio performance to domestic object scores, to performance installation, her work is rooted in the body – its mutability and capacity for (un)making meaning. Themes around feminism, language, desire, and the body in pain, permeate her work. She is especially interested in how bodies escape - the glitches, cheats, and cons they develop in response to (real and imagined) constraints.    

Daria earned her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Mills College and performed for choreographers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Jose Navarrete Mazatl, Aura Fischbeck, and Erin Malley. In 2015, she was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (the “Izzie”) for Individual Performance. She lived and worked in Lisbon, Portugal for five years, where she studied with and gained influence from Joao Fiadeiro, Jonathan Burrows, Aitana Cordero, and the Nova Danca Portuguesa movement. Since 2013, she has been a member of StratoFyzika - a new media performance collective based in Berlin - and performed original works with them in Berlin, Mannheim, Portugal, and San Francisco.  

Daria's work has been presented throughout the US and Europe, including: Transport Artspace (Netherlands), FAKI Festival (Zagreb); Armazem 22, in scope of Festival Dias de Dança (Porto); Biblioteca de Marvila (Lisbon); Zaratan (Lisbon); Pomona and Scripps Colleges (Los Angeles); ODC Theater (San Francisco); Cutting Ball Theater (SF); Mills College (Oakland); and on KQED Spark TV (SF Bay Area). Her work has been supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation, GDA (Portugal), the European Cultural Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Los Angeles Performance Practice (2022 resident artist; current ACCELERATOR member). 

In her residency, Daria plans to continue development on Object Permanence, a live sound/performance installation that mines relics from early motherhood and language development to evoke the paradoxes of care. I’ll be experimenting with how to collide/interweave: text based on ‘mother tongue’ - the unique communication systems that a parent develops with their young child - roughly 50 yards of vintage upholstery fabric, live video feed that enhances tiny domestic worlds, and an audio looping/delay pedal hooked up to a breast pump. My aim is to create an immersive space that evokes both laboratory and domicile, at once intimate and clinical.