WERK

On September 18th Penn State's Zoller Gallery hosted Get Bodied, a collaborative exhibition by Ciara Newton, Alvaro Jordan, Xalli Zuniga, and Kristina Davis. The four artists united to create a visual constellation grappling with their relationship to race, oppression, supremacy, and community. Central to the exhibition is a questioning of culturally embedded power structures, visual matter, and social issues. The artists, through individually curated collections of media and performance, worked toward an evolving installation rather than a static exhibition. Each day an artist entered the space to conduct workshops, perform, and engage. As the exhibition progressed, a concurrent collection of new material occurred and was projected or installed in the space. All visitors became a part of the final performance throughout the documentation of their engagement. Get Bodied, an experiential event was held on the 29th of September, 2017. The evening’s affairs featured a varied selection of performances ranging from a drag show, slam poetry, and electronic and hip-hop performances from Philadelphia.

The week-long convergence of Get Bodied began with finding a cohesive theme to which we could all contribute. As a gesture of connectivity amongst ourselves and any potential viewers, we settled on the internet platform YouTube to present personally curated playlists. Drawing from DIY cultural ethos, we were all able to share a slice of our interior selves. Each artist collected ten music videos and compiled them into a playlist. These video collections were then projected on 24-hour loop in the gallery. Each video ran simultaneously and every day of the week a different artist’s playlist would be audible.