Ghanaian artist Jojo Abot has staged her interdisciplinary performance piece, The Power to the God Within, across countries and continents, and tomorrow, at last, it comes to the internet. A live recording of Abot's 2018 National Sawdust residency will be posted on the Brooklyn art space's website July 1.
This is the ninth weekly installment of National Sawdust's "Digital Discovery Festival," which combines new, live performances with those curated from National Sawdust's archives. This week is centered on the theme of "audio visual art," which they defined in a press release thusly:
Audio Visual art combines kinetic or “moving” art, such as digital projections and abstract images, with music or sound. Our live performances and archives showcase artists who are experienced practitioners in the Audio Visual space and who are expanding its possibilities in the new digital concert format.
Abot's Power piece sits at the intersection of dance, carefully chosen costuming, fashion and music, and its rumination on questions of identity would seem to fit right alongside the other pieces from the archive going up this week. Beyond Butterfly and the Don, with countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim and baritone Lucia Lucas challenges opera's adherence to traditional gender roles. Abot's use of color and outre imagery with her musical composition seems complementary to Liquidverse: Apollo 11, a psychedelic audiovisual performance that mixes live chamber and electronic music with a liquid light show to celebrate the first moon landing.
The live performances are on Tuesday and Thursday at 6 p.m. and Friday at 1 p.m., with more details available on National Sawdust's site.
