Silas Borgstrom Ruesler

Touch Tank

An Ecosystem of Aqua-Genitalia

We all deserved a better sex-ed when we were in school… especially Queer folks. How can we call it education when it makes curiosity a sign of depravity? So many of us grew up scared of our own bodies and what we might find in between its folds and orifices. Scared of pleasure. Of exploration. There must have been a better way.

Silas Borgstrom Ruesler answers our call with an alternative: the Touch Tank. Populated by a myriad collection of silicone creatures modeled on human anatomy, it provides a safe (adn weird) space to explore an ecosystem of aqua-genitalia creatures. These creatures are ready to engage with visitors and show them a way to interact with them based on play, curiosity and respect. With Silas along as the resident genitocryptozoologist, leading hands-on tours for those who want some guidance as they plunge into this new world, Touch Tank will be a strange and wonderful addition to our warehouse installations.

More about the artists:

Silas Borgstrom Ruesler (they/he) is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring identity, vulnerability, and the body with a satirical and surreal approach. Raised by a high-school biology teacher in Los Angeles, CA, they are heavily influenced by natural forms and human anatomy. Silas received their BFA in studio art from Cal Poly SLO in 2020 and participated in the Inverse Performance Art residency in 2019 and 2020. They continue their work with interactive, visual, and sculptural arts as a means of communication, commentary, and catharsis. He has recently exhibited pieces at Umpqua Valley Arts and Maude Kerns Art Center in Oregon. Silas currently lives in Portland, OR, where he works in deathcare to support his artistic practice.

This installation will be in operation in the warehouse through-out the Festival, with regular tours between 6p and 7p each night.

Sarah Vitak

Body Doubling

The shape of anxiety, made visible

There are few things more exciting than the moment of recognition that passes through a story shared; an axon making contact with the next neuron; a bridge stretching over a divide. Sarah Vitak’s (they/she) work finds points of connection in stories that others might miss. Their experience in journalism, installation and audiovisual art, and science allows them to lead us into new and exciting worlds like an immersive balloon-neuron brain, a micro-organism petting zoo, or a medical storytelling podcast.

Body Doubling is a project that has been brewing for more than seven years. Through an interactive audio installation, Sarah explores the relationship between our physical bodies (along with the reactions that happen inside of it) and storytelling. It explores anxiety and dysregulation in a way we had not seen before. This year’s Festival of New Performance will be the first time they can gauge the way that a live audience interacts and responds to the piece, which, hopefully, will give them tools to develop and further polish the experience to then be shared with podcast/audio maker/media festivals.

More about the artists:

Sarah’s audio work has won a Webby and a Signal Award. In 2023, they were selected as an Audio Tune Up Mentee at RESONATE.

They were an Art-Science resident with Guerilla Science in 2018 and were shortlisted for the Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Residency in 2020. They have received two Awesome Foundation Grants and were shortlisted for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Off-Center Residency in 2021. That same year, they participated in Odyssey Works’ Experience Design Incubator.

This installation will be in operation in the warehouse through-out the Festival.

kelly langeslay

[an]archive

history as it should be made

Objects can conjure ghosts and invite them to walk among us. Memories, songs, flavors, games… ways to interact with them; make them dance. kelly langesley invites our ghosts to Risk/Reward’s Festival of New Performance through their installation piece [an]archive. The installation collects both objects commonly associated with academic archival work (journal articles, texts, historical dance films) and ones that exist outside of the regular sense of what “deserves” to be preserved (pop music, video games, personal narrative).

[an]archive is haunted by a lineage of dead queer artists – writers and dancers and filmmakers and musicians and loved ones. It is built around a history of queer performance that has been pushed to the side in favor of dominant (white, cis, and heteronormative) cultural narratives. They serve as a medium, walking us through the veil that weaves our pasts with our queer ancestors; kelly brings ghosts into the present to imagine potential for alternative futures.

More about the artists:

kelly langesley is currently choreographing a work for Velocity Dance Center’s Bridge Project, which will be presented February 2025. kelly is in the process of researching, building, and producing their first solo evening-length work, which is supported by 4Culture and Northwest Film Forum and will be performed in Spring of 2025. They have also danced in Alice Gosti’s company MALACARNE.

https://www.instagram.com/kelly.langeslay/

The performer will be present in this installation from 6p to 7p each night of the Festival, in the hour before the Mainstage performances, as well as 9p to 10p on Saturday the 21st (before our LateR/R Night presentation).

Claire Rigsby and India Roper-Moyes

stitch by stitch

a continuous cycle of making and unmaking

An installation exploring the continuous cycle of making and unmaking through yarn. Taking over a corner of our warehouse space with hanging yarn curtains, crocheted blankets, and yarn-bombed furniture, Claire Rigsby and India Roper-Moyes are ready to carve out a zone of comfort in the middle of Risk/Reward’s festival. Inside, visitors to stitch by stitch will find the pair working both together and in opposition, continually knitting and unknitting the same stretch of an infinite loop.

Claire Rigsby was previously seen at our 2023 Festival of New Performance, where she ensconced herself in a plexiglass box and invited audience members to pop balloons filled with paint on her.

More about the artists:

Claire and India are performers and fiber enthusiasts who connected over a love of yarn in theatre spaces. They are both graduates of PETE’s year-long Institute for Contemporary Performance. As fiber artists, they’re both interested in exploring the metaphors inherent in making something one stitch at a time. The flow of pattern. The undoing to make “perfect”, or the decision to move forward with a “mistake” immortalized in the work.

The performers will be present in this installation from 6p to 7p each night of the Festival, in the hour before the Mainstage performances.