ONX Studio, NYC

January 24 - February 4, 2024

I went to the opening party of All Will Be Considered at ONX Studio on January 24th. While I had a great time viewing the art and mingling with the crowd who attended, the sheer number of people there made it difficult to get the time I wish I was able to have with each piece. I may have to go back when it is quieter. While all of the work in the exhibition was very interesting, for this assignment, I focused on YOUR URGE TO BREATHE IS A LIE by Miriam Simun and Passage_SoftRains by Kevin Peter He and Matthew Gantt.

YOUR URGE TO BREATHE IS A LIE is a 25 minute single channel video installation. At ONX, it was in the motion capture bay space with the black curtains pulled to close in the room. The curtains however did not stop the sound of all of the conversations happening in the rest of ONX’s space which made the audio a bit difficult to hear, and the video did not have closed captions (which I understand for aesthetic reasons). This forced me to really focus on the visuals, the ways the human performers were moving through human spaces but with the movement qualities one would expect from a cephalopod. The mix of human performers, both above and below water, with octopus themselves was an interesting exploration of what it means to consider and explore becoming other species, pushed by the potential effects of climate change. I would like to spend more time with this video, perhaps at a quieter time, to really absorb everything Simun is trying to say. It was very encouraging though to see the number of people enter the space and quietly watch the video in its entirety before moving on to something else.

Passage_SoftRains is an installation evolution of Kevin Peter He’s audio-visual performance Passage. The live performance is a journey through a built forest ecosystem, piloted live by He. As you venture farther in, you discover new creatures and sculptures that react to you and the environment around you. For this installation, they brought a number of elements of Passage into one space and created a feedback loop with the in-engine (Unreal 5) camera to create an ever (slightly) changing experience. The audio for this installation was being run through Ableton and a couple of speakers at the front of this room. Since I have seen a sample of the live performance, I found this installation version of Passage to be a bit disappointing. One of my favorite aspects of the live version was the sense of discovery when you would encounter a deer-creature, or a spinning sculpture. But in this version, they were ever present.

Overall, I had a great time visiting All Will Be Considered, and appreciate the work already being made in the spaces I am interested in. I have come away with new ideas for my own practice, and I look forward to seeing more from these artists. I also hope ONX decided to do more bigger exhibitions like this, I really enjoy all of their programming and think they have a lot of interesting member artists I would love to see fully installed work from.