Featured: Dean Moss / Gametophyte Inc. (Brooklyn, USA)

ABOUT:

GAMETOPHYTE INC.
Gametophyte (ga•me´to•phyt´) the company name is from the greek meaning to marry and to grow. The word refers to the sexual generation of small pioneering plants found world wide that produce in true form neither flowers, fruits nor seeds. A plant commonly called “moss”.

A hybrid production, performance and consulting company, founded in 2002 by Dean Moss, Gametophyte Inc. is the support structure through which he organizes his various creative endeavors. It supports performances, video projects, multidisciplinary collaborations, and composition workshops. It also seeks to share, in a holistic manner, creative experience with artists, art professionals and the public, internationally. Gametophyte Inc. is based in Brooklyn.

Board of Directors: Dean Moss, President; Marya Warshaw, Secretary; Charlotte Mendelaar, Treasurer.

As an artist working in both dance and video, I use the irrational logic of the body to articulate personal, cultural, and socioeconomic, forces that impact our perception of self and environment. Physically demanding, dense and visual, the resulting works reflect not only a desire to participate rigorously in the world of ideas, but also an interest in twinning a variety of forms and metaphors into visceral immersive performance experience.

In recent years I have developed a practice of conceiving multidisciplinary, and often transcultural collaborative projects. These works include: “figures on a field” (2005, with painter, Laylah Ali), “States & Resemblance” (2007, with actor/photographer, Ryutaro Mishima and Indonesian traditional dance artist Restu Kusumaningrum), “Kisaeng becomes you” (2008-09, with traditional Korean dance choreographer Yoon Jin Kim) and “Nameless forest” (2011, with sculptor, Sungmyung Chun). This collaborative process also extends into teaching. In 2002, I conceived a choreographers composition workshop focused on separating the dance artist from the dance work, now called “Performance Praxis”, it has been co-directed and is co-facilitated with choreographer and Critical Correspondence editor, Levi Gonzalez.

Another central element of my practice is to examine the role and experience of the audience. In “figures on a field”, this was manifested through a docent lead group tour of the work during the performance, which allowed it to shift subtly between its’ personal, political and aesthetic meanings; in “Kisaeng becomes you”, audience members were invited to embody and speak the poems of the Kisaeng – artist/courtesans of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty – making visceral the experience of the “other”, and in the current work, “Nameless forest”, performance artists immersive relationship to community will be investigated. The pattern of my practice seems to run parallel to my life as a curator, a traveller, and as an artist now looking to deepen both the articulation and impact of his work.

These performance and video works have been presented and exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; Gallery Factory in Seoul Korea; Ksirarnawa Art Center, Denpasar, Indonesia; New Visions Art Festival, Hong Kong; The FNB Vita Dance Festival in Johannesburg South Africa; Seoul International Dance Festival, Smack Mellon Studios; The Brooklyn Arts Exchange; The Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen.

They are the recipient of grants, residencies and awards including: The Multi-Arts Production Fund, Asian Cultural Council Fellowships, Arts International, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, Urban Artists Initiative, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Baxten Award, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Arizona State University and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. I received a New York Dance and Performance BESSIE Award for the 1999 work, “Spooky action at a distance”.

I have enjoyed a ten-year relationship with The Kitchen, serving as the Curator of Dance and Performance from 1999-2004, then as a Curatorial Advisor through 2009. During that time I conceived and organized programs such as “Talking Dance“ hosted by Dancenoise and featuring performances by Bill T. Jones, Ann Carlson, Foofwa d’Imobilité and works by Yvonne Rainer, David Gordon and Elevator Repair Service. Additionally I had the honor of showcasing rigorously innovative artists very early in their careers including: Miranda July, Sarah Michelson, Xavier LeRoy, Miguel Gutierrez, Yasmeen Godder, and Akram Khan. I spent a year as Guest Professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music from 2003-2004. From 2007 to 2009 I was a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, which was acknowledged with a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Spring semester 2011, I begin teaching in the Department of Theater Studies at Yale University. (from the artist’s website)

WORKS:

2011
The Kitchen, NYC: performance: Nameless forest

2010
Soho Rep, NYC: collaboration: LEAR (Young Jean Lee, director)

2009
Dance Theater Workshop, NYC: performance: Kisaeng becomes you

2008
University of Toronto, Canada: performance: Untitled
Seoul International Dance Festival, Korea: performance: Kisaeng becomes you
New Vision Art Festival, Hong Kong, China: performance: Kisaeng becomes you

2007
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN: video/collaboration: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven
(Young Jean Lee, director)
Chez Bushwick, Brooklyn NY: performance: States and Resemblance
Factory, Seoul, Korea: solo video exhibition: Spooky action at a distance
Bard College, Annendale-on-Hudson, NY: performance: States and Resemblance

2006
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art: performance: figures on a field
Ksirarnawa Art Center, Denpasar Indonesia: collaboration: Hello (Cok Sawitri, co-director)
Here Art Center, NYC: video/collaboration: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (Young Jean Lee, director)
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA: video/collaboration: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven
(Young Jean Lee, director)

2005
The Kitchen, NYC: performance: figures on a field
Galapagos Art Space: exhibition video from Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven
Noguchi Museum/Topaz Arts: group exhibition

2003
Performance Space 122: performance: Shuffle (Yasuko Yokoshi, director)

2002
The Danspace Project, NYC: performance: supplement
FNB Vita Dance Festival, Johannesburg, SA: performance american deluxe
Goliath Visual Space: group exhibition

2001
Smack Mellon Studios, Brooklyn: performance: american deluxe
P. S. 1, Queens: performance: american deluxe

2000
The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC: performance: american deluxe & Spooky action at a distance
Paris University/The Sorbonne: exhibition: Spooky action at a distance
Duke University, Durham: performance: Spooky action at a distance
Performance Space122 video exhibition

1999
The Kitchen, NYC: performance: Spooky action at a distance

1997
Brooklyn Museum of Art: exhibition: Navel, my navel
The Danspace Project, NYC: performance and screening: Navel, my navel
Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht, The Netherlands: video/collaboration: Tendencies and Strategies
(Yasuko Yokoshi, director)

1995
Dance Theater Workshop, NYC: performance: Commodites Identities and Sychronized Swimming

1994
Danse Visions Festival International de Cin´e-Video-Danse, Nantes France: exhibition: Adventures in Assimilation
Anthology Film Archives, NYC: video installation

1993
The Danspace Project, NYC: performance: Aventures in Assimilation: landscape & tapestry

1992
The Danspace Project, NYC: performance: Dirt
New York Expo of Short Film & Video,NYC: exhibition: Adventures in Assimilation

VIDEO:

Kisaeng becomes you

Find more videos like this on Contemporary Performance Network
Single channel video document thanking guests from Kby’s 2008 Seoul and Hong Kong performances.

Nameless forest (in production)

Find more videos like this on Contemporary Performance Network

A slideshow of performers in location shots mixed with Mike Kamber’s photography and narrative, plus Chun’s sculptures, all set to music by Stephen Vitiello.

Link www.gametophyte.org