Acclaimed choreographer Reggie Wilson was an Artist-in-Residence at UC Berkeley in March and April 2006. Wilson is the artistic director of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, a Brooklyn-based company founded in 1989.  His movement idiom brings contemporary technique and post-modern structure to the rhythmic folk traditions of Africa and the African Diaspora to create what he sometimes calls “post-African/Neo-Hoodoo dances.”  He uses body percussion and voiced breath rhythms that enslaved Africans utilized when denied the drum: so-called “fist and heel worshipping.”Critics have written of Wilson’s work: “Brilliant wit and seriousness” (The New York Times)…. “The sacred and the secular inform each other, and dance and music become a single art based on pulse and breath” (The Village Voice)…. “African tradition meets postmodern artist with a bang” (Dance Magazine).

Wilson's work has been presented nationally and internationally. He travels and teaches frequently across the US and in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. A graduate of NYU, he has received numerous grants and awards including a Bessie and a Guggenheim.

During his residency, Wilson participated in panels, led workshops, and created a new work performed by UCB dance students that received its world premiere at Berkeley Dance Project, presented by the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. The residency was also cosponsored by African American Studies.

The panel discussion The Old World in the New: Performing Diaspora is available online and is viewable in Streaming RealPlayer: http://webcast.ucsd.edu:8080/ramgen/UCSD_TV/11708.rm

Artist Ignacio Rábago

Ignacio Rábago was the Consortium for the Arts/Arts Research Center Artist-in-Residence at UC Berkeley in Spring 2005. Born in Spain and now based in Denmark, Rábago draws on his training in sculpture and painting to create large-scale, site-specific public art installations. His award-winning work has been exhibited widely at museums and galleries throughout Europe. He is particularly known for his "Babel towers," monumental works made entirely out of books that he has installed in libraries in Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and elsewhere. In conjunction with the residency, an exhibit of Rábago's sketches are on exhibit in the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the artist participated in a number of public programs about his work.

During his residency, Rábago worked with an interdisciplinary team of students to create a public art installations on the Berkeley campus. Two installations were completed during this time: Round Room (on display in the Hearst Mining Building Main Lobby through July 2005) and Babel Library IX (on display in Doe Library Gardner Stacks through April 2006)

For more information on the Doe installation see: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/04/11_artinstallations.shtml. Images of both Babel Library IX and Round Room are available in the Gallery section of Rábago's website (http://www.rabagoarte.com/)

This residency was co-sponsored by the Division of Arts & Humanities in the College of Letters & Science, the College of Environmental Design, the Department of Architecture, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Artist Helen Mirra

Helen Mirra was an Artist-in-Residence with the Consortium for the Arts/Arts Research Center in Fall 2003, and created a new project for exhibit in the Berkeley Art Museum's Matrix series in Spring 2004. Mirra is emerging as an important figure on the international contemporary art scene. She had a solo exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art this past fall, and other recent one-woman shows in galleries and museums in Chicago, London, Milan, and Vienna. A highly interdisciplinary artist, she creates sculptural installations as well as sound recordings, film video works, and poetry. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996, and is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago.

While in residence at Berkeley, she taught the studio course Drawing Sentences: Equivalents and Analogues. Working with W.G. Sebald's book The Rings of Saturn (New Directions, 1998), students made an extended set of concept-driven "drawings." As within Sebald's own complex practice, new works were generated through examined response, memory, and research. The student work was featured in an exhibit at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery in Spring 2004.

Visual artist Fred Wilson

New York artist Fred Wilson, internationally renowned for "intervening" in traditional museum exhibitions to expose their underlying cultural assumptions--particularly in regards to race and ethnicity--was in residence at UC Berkeley during the Fall 2002 semester.

A team of Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students from Art Practice, Art History, and Anthropology joined him in researching the collections of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM). Based on these investigations, Wilson created a new installation, "Aftermath," that had its world premier at BAM. "Aftermath" received extensive attention in the media and remained on exhibit long after the traveling retrospective that accompanied it had closed. The student researchers got an opportunity to create their own installation, "Cabinet of Curiosities," which was also exhibited at BAM. In addition, the students served as docents to the exhibit and participated in a public panel on Wilson's work.

Sculptor David Rabinowitch

In Fall 2002, internationally prominent sculptor David Rabinowitch completed a major new work on the Sonoma estate of Stephen Oliver, one of California's leading art collectors.

History of Art Professor Whitney Davis lead a special seminar examining all aspects of the conception, design, financing, execution, interpretation, and publication of this remarkable project. Students were able to interact with the artist, the collector, contributing artisans, and other project participants, as they studied and documented the work's development. Rabinowitch participated in the seminar, led site tours for student groups, and participated in a public program at the Berkeley Art Musuem with Professor Davis and Harrison Fraeker, Dean of the College of Environmental Design.

In conjunction with an exhibit of their Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project at the Berkeley Art Museum in Spring 2002, ARC sponsored a three-month residency by Komar & Melamid, the New York-based, Russian-born conceptual artists. Komar & Melamid, who work as a collaborative team, taught a ten-week workshop in which students from Art Practice, History of Art, and Theater wrote biographies of fictional artists as a way of exploring myth-making in the art world. The students hope to publish the resulting anthology. In addition to teaching, Komar & Melamid presented and discussed their work with faculty and students from Art Practice, History of Art, Slavic Studies, and even Animal Psychology. They also gave public talks at the Berkeley Art Museum and off-campus. As highly interdisciplinary artists, they particularly enjoyed the diversity of scholarship available to them at Berkeley--in pursuing their own work they made contacts in areas from biological science to theology.

Musician Henry Threadgill

In Spring 2002, ARC was honored to sponsor a rare residency by pioneering New York musician/composer Henry Threadgill. Threadgill led intensive workshops in composition and improvisational performance, culminating in a reading of the student composers' works-in-progress by members of the University Symphony Orchestra and a concert of student musicians performing Threadgill's compositions under his direction. Threadgill enjoyed interacting with Berkeley students, whom he felt were particularly open to new ideas and experimentation, and being part of a community of faculty composers whose interests range from classical to computer music. He sat in on several seminars, gave guest lectures, and gave a public talk on his work. Threadgill's presence provided the impetus for a two-day conference on improvisation, which included presentations by musician/composer Anthony Davis and members of the Rova Saxophone Quartet.

Performance artist Tim Miller

A "pilot" ARC residency was held in Spring 2001, when Los Angeles-based performance artist/activist Tim Miller spent three weeks working intensively with graduate students in Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies as they prepared original works for the annual Lab Run showcase.In addition, Miller participated in a faculty seminar on his work, and delivered a public lecture about identity, performance, the culture wars, and queer strategies for the future.

A highlight of the residency was Miller's performance of his acclaimed one-man show, Glory Box, which explores the themes of same-sex marriage and binational gay/lesbian immigration rights. The piece has been described as "funny, intense and sexy." Glory Box challenges the lack of marriage and immigration rights for same-sex couples in America.