JESSE PHILLIPS-FEIN

JESSE PHILLIPS-FEINJESSE PHILLIPS-FEINJESSE PHILLIPS-FEIN

JESSE PHILLIPS-FEIN

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Current Projects: Collaborations with nia love

UNDERcurrents

g1(host):lostatsea

UNDERcurrents

Choreography & Direction by nia love

Marcus Garvey Park, June 2024


UNDERcurrents is a multimedia performance and community engagement platform that explores links between the catastrophic history of the Middle Passage, ongoing histories of forced displacement, and the collective memory and knowledges born of such brutally propelled mass movements. Through research drawn from Atlantic dives and lured by the element of water as a guiding motif, UNDERcurrents conjures multiple registers, tangible and intangible, of our living in continual rupture, moving across elements, landmasses and waterscapes, ships and ports, gestures and flesh. This iteration is performed in collaboration with Jerome Haferd's "Sankofa" installation in Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem.

UNDERcurrents

g1(host):lostatsea

UNDERcurrents

Choreography & Direction by nia love

Harlem Stage, May 2023


UNDERcurrents invites audiences to probe the seam between catastrophic history and quotidian memory and tend the textures of generational care. These processes are explored through two primary thematic elements: water and doors. The point of departure for captive Africans into the Middle Passage is described as “the door of no return.” Conjuring the continual resonance of this world-making and breaking threshold, UNDERcurrents is an immersive installation that is activated by performance and responsive to each performance site and community.  By taking the audience out to sea, or bringing the sea forth, our aim is an experience of submersion and dis/re-orientation, through which the gestural and elemental traces of transatlantic slavery are made palpable and felt.

g1(host):lostatsea

g1(host):lostatsea

g1(host):lostatsea

Choreography by nia love

Gibney Dance, November 2019


g1(host)–an unfolding of the term “ghost”–grapples with what it means to live within conditions shaped by the “afterlife” of slavery. As a serial, multi-media performance and site of study, I pursue questions regarding my body's status as it pivots on this fundamental query: what remains of the Middle Passage as force, gesture, and affect? Exploring themes of loss, alchemy, geological debris, and generational accretions, we trace a dense, energetic nothingness. Here, “wake work” is asserted as a mode of suspension, a sensory field of historical being, an oceanic black thing that we’re all drenched by and in.



Previous Works & Projects

end at the of me attend (2018-19)

with Gyrchel Moore, Veleda Roehl,, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, Tunu Thom, 

and Suleka Thom-Ogugua


How do we care for each other in a world whose brutal histories and social structures fracture the ability to sustain? And how is caring itself a violent process, for at its most intense it undoes us and the notion of a self? 

The Work of Imagining: Art in the Age of Apocalypse (2017)

The Work of Imagining: Art in the Age of Apocalypse (2017)

The Work of Imagining: Art in the Age of Apocalypse (2017)

Co-curated with Shanté Paradigm Smalls at JACK Theater as part of their Reparations365 series.  With works by Waquia Abdul-Kareem & Robin Marquis, Angela Arrocha, Avram Finkelstein & Ashley Marinaccio 


From the the demonization of "impractical" third parties and candidates, the mainstreaming of Donald Trump's white supremacy, and the celebration of centrist Hillary Clinton as a "solution," the 2016 US presidential campaign and election demonstrate a death of creative
discourse about democratic politics and dissent.  But this death exists within a larger context and set of preoccupations about the  “end of the world.” How do we live, create, and think about the world in the middle of an apocalypse? How might we imagine the end of the world as a possibility and an opening, rather than as the destruction of the Earth?

studies in living otherwise (2017)

The Work of Imagining: Art in the Age of Apocalypse (2017)

The Work of Imagining: Art in the Age of Apocalypse (2017)

with Katrina De Wees, Nia Love, Gyrchel Moore, Alex Pitre, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes & Veleda Roehl


studies in living otherwise is the gestation of five dance/performance works that move through collective practices of presence, memory, storytelling and abstraction.  We ask how can we center the Other and other the center?  We answer by digging underground pathways to alternative ways of (not) being, remembering, un/doing and dancing. 

###notititledblur (2015)

The Work of Imagining: Art in the Age of Apocalypse (2017)

z o n e (2012-13)

with John Gutierrez, Gyrchel Moore, Refilwe Nkomo, Dasha Chapman, Veleda Roehl & EmmaGrace Skove-Epes


#blur (thisisnotthetitle) traverses the corporeal and technological matrix, excavating the correlation of sight and power through the terms of the choreographer/dancer relationship. By controlled disruptions of visuality, we enter states of connection and disassociation with quiet urgency and subtle danger.  The piece challenges us to consider what happens to the acts of witnessing and connection, when we can see everything but much remains obscured.

Watch Video

z o n e (2012-13)

From Obama to Occupy: Works of Outrage from 2008-2012

z o n e (2012-13)

with Dasha Chapman, A. Nia Austin-Edwards, John Gutierrez, Benjamin Lundberg, Gyrchel Moore, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, Veleda Roehl, Efeya Sampson, & santiago venegas


This piece details mental and physical strategies for living in a “post-crisis” era, where catastrophe is normal and killing is clean.  Based in research on drone warfare, positive thinking, and adidas commercials, the movement creates bodies that are dead and deadly, but ultimately cannot escape their tenderness.

Watch Video

From Obama to Occupy: Works of Outrage from 2008-2012

From Obama to Occupy: Works of Outrage from 2008-2012

From Obama to Occupy: Works of Outrage from 2008-2012

Hosted by Imani Henry with work by #ajmia American Justice Missing-in-Action, Aurin Squire, Betty T. Kao, Chris Tyler, Matt Sheridan, Michael Milligan,
Movement of the People Dance Company, santiago venegas, Sara Lyons & screaMachine.


Curation and production of 12 artists who responded to the political events  of Obama’s first presidential term, including ongoing war, gay marriage and  homonormativity, immigration and deportation, health care, Trayvon Martin's murder, women’s reproductive rights, and Occupy Wall Street.

own, Owned (2010-12)

From Obama to Occupy: Works of Outrage from 2008-2012

From Obama to Occupy: Works of Outrage from 2008-2012

with Dasha Chapman, A. Nia Austin-Edwards, Rachel Lane, Gyrchel Moore, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, & Nadia Tykulsker


This work engages with the twinned concepts of hope and change in the current American landscape.  It examines how these ideas become controlled desires, tied to consuming fantasies of racial harmony.

Watch Video

i actually love this (2010)

What We Can See From Here (2010)

What We Can See From Here (2010)

in collaboration with Square One
with Xavier Cha, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, Heather Hammond, Danny Johnston, Cassie Mey, Teri Hempfling & Jay Rodriguez


A rooftop dance about falling, getting dirty, birds, soft spots and decay.

What We Can See From Here (2010)

What We Can See From Here (2010)

What We Can See From Here (2010)

In collaboration with Cassie Mey

A site-specific performance in the intersection of water, sky, concrete and thought at the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge, this work contemplates the relationship of time and space in creating perspective.

NEED (2009)

What We Can See From Here (2010)

Requiem for O, Overture for O: Works of Conscience 2000-2008

NEED is an exploration of how what we need to sustain us can also destroy us.
This destructive possibility reveals the terrifying fragility of needing. This dance moves in the space between breathing and suffocation, thirst and drowning, satisfaction and insatiability, beginning life and ending it. Performed with an intergenerational cast spanning 60 years, and 500 plastic bags.

Requiem for O, Overture for O: Works of Conscience 2000-2008

Requiem for O, Overture for O: Works of Conscience 2000-2008

Requiem for O, Overture for O: Works of Conscience 2000-2008

Hosted by Shanté Paradigm Smalls and featuring Alexandra Beller, Tara Betts, Sabrina Chapadjiev, Drastic Measures, Guta Hedewig, Remi Kanazi, Rachel Lane, Sapphire, Paul Singh, Spiritchild 

& Gina Young.


Marking the end of the Bush era and nurturing our movement for social justice, this event reflected on the how artists responded to the policies of the Bush Administration and encouraged action for change.  The evening included dance, music & spoken word, on themes such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, gay marriage, Hurricanes Katrina, and consumerism.    

Pale (2009-10)

Requiem for O, Overture for O: Works of Conscience 2000-2008

Unbind it! (2007)

with Rachel Lane, Marina Libel,

 & Gillian Vinton


Pale seeks to define the omnipresent but often un-interrogated mentality and experience of being white.  In the work, three women negotiate with a fourth who represents whiteness, confronting the underbelly of their racial experience: emptiness, comfort, and fear.

Unbind it! (2007)

Requiem for O, Overture for O: Works of Conscience 2000-2008

Unbind it! (2007)

with Rachel Lane, Marina Libel, 

& Gillian Vinton


This piece is a response to the viral videos of Saddam Hussein's execution in 2006. The work questions the conscience of the American public in acts of violence committed by our government.  It draws parallels between Hussein and Bush as war criminls, dubiously elected leaders, and potential lovers. It asks how we face our own death with blood on our hands.

Root & Branch (2007)

Color Blind Theories (2006-07)

Color Blind Theories (2006-07)

A community arts project funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council, this project brought together Jewish & Arab teens in a discussion of identity through contemporary and folk movement.

Color Blind Theories (2006-07)

Color Blind Theories (2006-07)

Color Blind Theories (2006-07)

with Sarah Avery Sibley & Afi Bijou, 

Gillian Vinton & Marina Libel, 

Rachel Lane & Zoe Klein


Color Blind Theories is a series of three duets, challenging the belief that being color blind erases racism.  Exploring fear, fetishization and objectification, the work aims to unpack “why we can’t all get along”.

Wilderness (2005)

Color Blind Theories (2006-07)

Sea Stories (2005)

with Aisha Domingue, Orion Gordon, Brook Martinez, Cassie Mey, Melinda Lee


Wilderness is a study in four seasons of the effects of living in a human dominated environment, examining the boundaries between wild and tame.

Sea Stories (2005)

The Good Enemy (2004)

Sea Stories (2005)

A Community Arts Project funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Sea Stories is an inter-generational project performed by residents of Sheepshead Bay, inspired by our stories of migration and home.

The Good Enemy (2004)

The Good Enemy (2004)

The Good Enemy (2004)

with Naomi Azar, Aisha Domingue, Orion Gordon, Brook Martinez, Adam Matta, 

& Cassie Mey


The Good Enemy distills the energy of occupation and resistance into one, two, then six bodies, who are inter-dependent despite their conflict.

Flesh Box (2003-04)

The Good Enemy (2004)

The Good Enemy (2004)

with Cindy Aikman, Zoe Klein, Rachel Lane, & Kate Lieberman


Flesh Box takes on the body as a claustrophobic environment for the self, focusing on its limitations and the challenges of claiming one’s self underneath the terms ascribed to us.

Copyright © 2019 Jesse Phillips-Fein - All Rights Reserved.


Photo credit: Kathryn Butler Photography

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