MEET THE MAKERS
OF THE ETLE UNIVERSE

When the A.O. Movement Collective began work on the ETLE Universe in 2012, they enlisted 30 collaborators to join them in the creation of 10 works. Over the course of the last three years, the team of collaborators has more than doubled in size, expanding to include researchers, event planners, installation artists, new performers, and more. Each of these artists has been invited to join the project with equal agency, bringing their own ideas, aesthetics, narrative decision making, and interpretations to the ever-branching and ever-intersecting ETLE Universe.

+ ETLE Universe Collaborators

Anna Adams Stark (AOMC corps performer) is a performer, dance-maker, and arts administrator.  Anna has performed works by Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Alexandra Beller, Laura Peterson Choreography, Alex Springer & Xan Burley/the median movement, Jennifer Kayle & Company, Ellie Goudie-Averill/Stone Depot Dance Lab and Meg Hebert Dance.  Currently Anna is working with Sarah A.O. Rosner/A.O. Movement Collective, Megan Sprenger/MVworks, Tara Aisha Willis, and Kendra Portier/BANDPortier.  Anna’s own work has been shown at THROW, AUNTS, Dance New Amsterdam, the Tank, and Triskelion Arts.  Anna is one of the founding producers of RoofTop Dance, www.rooftopdance.com.  She received her B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Iowa.

AORTA films (pornographer) makes queer/feminist porn for our impending post-human future. Lusty, heartfelt, and radical. https://www.facebook.com/AORTAfilms

Parts Authority (porn performer) is a newcomer to the world of porn. They are thrilled to be a member of the ETLE Universe and to show off for the adventurous Drifters that find their way to the OH Files.

Andre Azevedo (video installation artist) is an interactive multimedia artist. He worked as a designer and curator of art installations and performances for MIX NYC, and has been in a number of collaborations with reallyamazing artists. Currently he is a video playback operator for TV and films and lives in Brooklyn with his sweetie, Caitlin Rose, and their dog Disco

Maria Baranova (photographer) is a Russian-Finnish, Fashion and Theatre photographer with a background in painting. Her work is inspired by the 17th century Dutch palette and Renaissance symbolism. Her photography mainly focuses on the theatrical side of the fashion world and working behind-the-scenes during rehearsals and performances.   Her photography’s style is dark and mysterious, with minimal use to color to create a heavy feel. They convey a mood of erotism combined with sadness. At the theatrical part of her photography Maria try to capture the essential of moment in play and a feeling of it, same time trying to be invisible and see everything. From 2011 and by this day Maria shot rehearsals, performances and photo calls for US based and international Theatre and Dance Artist’s and company’s such as: Mikhail Baryshikov, Laboratory of Dmitry Krymov, Double Edge Theatre, 600 Highwaymen, David Neumann, Ken Mai and more. As well as worked with young Fashion Designer’s and Model’s in New York and Helsinki, for editorial assignments. Her photos wore published in various international news paper’s and magazine’s such as: New York Times, American Theatre Magazine, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Le Figaro, Hufvudstadsbladet, Vanity Magazine and REVS Magazine.  During last 10 years, Maria’s Photo and Painting exhibition has been presented in several venues in Russia, Italy, Finland and US. Maria is the owner of the Sepia Photography & Design Studio specializing in photography, graphic and web design for a wide range of clients in Europe and the US. www.mariabaranova.com

Sydney Alison Batten joined Occurrent Arts as a writer and performer to fulfill a desire to escape the limits of traditionally defined media, and explore the transitory intersection between creator and audience.  She believes in creation's ability to blur life, art, and wonder and instill oneness amidst isolation. Building the bridge to engagement beyond the fourth wall is the core of her work. Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, she now resides in Brooklyn. 

Sam Baumel (filmmaker) is an image-maker, sound-sculptor and interaction designer.  He collects converging lines in foreign landscapes, repurposes New York’s urban detritus and remixes these poachings for the eyes, the ears and the street. Sometimes smells are involved and tastes will be coming soon. If it’s tangible, let’s feel it.

Lily Bo Shapiro (AOMC researcher) is a New York City based dance artist. She graduated Cum Laude from Bowdoin College (ME) in 2012 with a self-designed degree titled Aesthetics of Performance. Additionally, she trained at the Moscow Art Theatre/MXAT (Moscow, Russia) and with the Vertigo Dance Company (Jerusalem, Israel). Her work has appeared at Center for Performance Research, Open Performance at Movement Research, 5×7 Space at HyLo Labs, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, and HOUSEFEST. She is a 2015 Chez Bushwick Artist in Residence. She has performed with Xavier Le Roy, Netta Yerushalmy, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Emily Wexler, Vanessa Voskuil, Alex Romania, Megan Kendzior, and the A.O. Movement Collective. She is also an educator and an administrative, production, and rehearsal assistant to many.

Xposed Brick - coming soon!

Keith Carlon/KV (illustrator, technologist) is an illustrator and game designer living in the furrows of the Brooklyn scape. From an early age he was fascinated by the sci fi and fantasy art that he would find on movie posters and book covers, and thusly set about drawing furiously his visions of those far off lands. Graduating from a pen to a wacom tablet, KV continued dreaming up designs for space ships, alien races, warrior goddesses, and insectoid enemies all the while playing more video games than is probably acceptable for a grown man.

Tony Carlson (AOMC researcher, AOMC performer) was born and raised in Rochester, Minnesota, attending high school at the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Minneapolis before relocating to New York City. He graduated with a B.A in dance performance from Eugene Lang College in 2015, where he studied under Neil Greenberg, Miguel Gutierrez, John Jasperse, Eiko Otake, Yvonne Meier, Sarah Michelson, and others. Professionally, he has appeared in the works of Ming Wong, Lance Gries, and Yanira Castro; presenting his own work as part of the Rooftop/GroundFloor Introducing Series, a joint-curation between the Roger Smith Hotel and Rooftop Dance, as well as through Movement Research at the Judson Church. Tony is a fiscally sponsored artist through New York Live Arts' Associate Artist Program. He loves the AOMC xo

Lillie De (AOMC corps performer and Company Manager) lives in Brooklyn and works as a performer, technician and production/stage manager.  De has done production work for Yvonne Rainer, Cori Olinghouse, Faye Driscoll, Larissa Velez-Jackson, niv Acosta, Marissa Perel, Jen Rosenblit and others via Performa.  Since 2007 De has danced for Sarah Rosner and acted as company manager for the A.O. Movement Collective. The ETLE Universe is De's 4th project with the AOMC.

Idgy Dean (composer, musician) is the solo music project of Brooklynite Lindsay Sanwald.  Experimenting with accumulative sound, percussion and choral arrangement, Idgy Dean builds haunted rhythm-driven songs, recorded and produced alone at home and looped live on stage.  After touring in early 2012, she released her first music video (for the song "Onion's Milk"), and later collaborated with the A.O. Movement Collective for the Adobe ad campaign, "Why I Create."  She is currently writing and recording "Ominous Harminus," a new record due in 2014 to follow-up her debut EP, "Heart & Lung."

Massima Selene Desire (AOMC performer) is a movement-based artist who examines the ways that their body and other queer bodies are generated and gendered performatively, through projects like this and through their own work, called efemmera. they write for Culturebot and recently graduated summa cum laude from macaulay honors college. they identify as a race traitor to whiteness. efemmera.net

Sawyer Devuyst (AOMC performer) is a New York based model & actor, visual artist and furniture maker. His work includes Bruce Weber's Barneys SS14 campaign, Brothers, Sisters, Sons and Daughters, featuring seventeen transgender models and Candy Magazine's 8th issue: Role Models, as well as runways shows for Sir New York and NYFW. He is currently working on a daily fine art self portrait collection, "Mine," which reclaims transgender storytelling, shares a different trans narrative and adds to transmale visibility by capturing and publishing his daily life in photographs. It is showing fully on Instagram at @sawyermine and with select photographs on his website, www.sawyerdevuyst.com. 

Walter Dundervill (costume designer) Walter Dundervill is a dance artist living in New York City. His dance Dear Emissary,… was presented at the Chocolate Factory in March of 2010. Two previous works were presented at Dance Theater Workshop – You Wrote the Book, 2008 (on a shared bill with Heather Olsen) and Would You Read My Poetry? 2007 (as part of the Nothing Festival curated by Tere O’Connor). He created a three- hour installation/ performance entitled Room at Fred Torres Collaborations as part of the Movement Research Spring Festival 2009. Dundervill has danced for many choreographers including Keely Garfield and RoseAnne Spradlin. In 2003, he won a Bessie award for his performance in Spradlin’s under/world. He has also worked with visual/performance artists including Bruce Nauman, Pat Olezsko, and David Wojnarowicz. In 2009, Dundervill collaborated with Tere O’Connor on the set design of O’Connor’s Wrought Iron Fog at DTW. In 2010, he designed the costumes for Luciana Achugar’s Pureo Deseo at the Kitchen. He was a co-curator of Hardcorps the Movement Research Spring Festival 2010. He has taught and performed as a guest artist at The University of Wisconsin, Madison, Frostburg State Univeristy, MD, the Staadtstheater in Magdeburg, Germany, and for ClassClassClass in NYC. Dundervill received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Georgia.

Jessica Goldschmidt (writer) is a writer and theater artist living in Brooklyn. She has deep feelings about nostalgia, the former Soviet bloc, tarot cards, Joni Mitchell, Kindles, formalism, and the American musical theater tradition. Most recently, she’s created W.R. Salome (Dixon Place), The Museum of Nostalgia (AUNTS), and MUSE (Standard Toykraft). Jess studied Literary Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University. Her plays include Rose Marie: A Bright Shiny Concert in Multiple Numbers, Sitting Room, and The Death Book (developed by Arena Stage & Open Fist Theater). Her writing has also appeared in Philadelphia magazine, thephillypost.com, feministing.com, and the BAM blog.

Shantel Grant (illustrator) was born into the arms of the state of New York. Raised by Jamaican immigrants in apartments nestled in housing projects. Educated by public schools in cities with the exception of one private art school in the heart of midtown. Her personal work is based in traditional mediums exploring the idea of setting.

Topher Gross (party host) is a hairstylist, party promoter, the force behind Select All: The Queer Mixer and Confetti: The Party. He is an overscheduled man of leisure with too many small animals and yearly a membership to the Natural History Museum.

Martha Hipley (illustrator) is based in Brooklyn. Her focus is on illustration and image-making, though she also does installation and performance projects. She likes bright colors and fine lines.

Leah Ives (AOMC researcher) is a graduate of the University of Michigan.  This is Leah's second project with The AOMC.  In addition to thoroughly enjoying slipping through time with the wonderful Sarah A.O. Rosner, Leah also dances for Avodah Dance and Elizabeth Dishman.

Millie Kapp (writer) is a New York–based performance artist, teacher, writer and curator. She graduated with a Masters in Performance Studies at NYU in 2013 and received her BA in 2010 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kapp’s past performances have been presented around the US in Oakland, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. In addition to holding numerous artist residencies, Kapp’s performance practice is fed by programing, curating and writing about art. Kapp is also the Engagement Manager of Performance at the Abrons Art Center.

Abigail Lloyd (visual artist) is a welder and artist living in brooklyn. working variously with metal, words, pixels and conversation, she is interested in femme extremities, hysteria, failures and intimacies.  she is usually found in her metal shop, filthy and wearing lipstick, working, talking and drinking coffee. collaborating with the AOMC is dreamy. for metal visuals, triangles, femme sigils, and geometrics, follow @pinepinestudio on insta.   

Poppy Lyttle (illustrator) I was born on the Northern Californian coast and really gravitated to animals and computers. Art was always part of my life. My grandfather was a printmaker and my sister was a prodigy cartoonist. However, I was always obsessed with finding my own style. Just now after some time, I am beginning to flesh out my inner-neuroworkings into reality. My work is biological with viral colors and imposing temperaments. The figures morph from zombie-grotesque to visibly cybernetic. Every time.

Isabelle Lutz (illustrator) is a swiss artist born in Geneva and living in London after having spent a few years in Berlin. In 2001, she graduated with a Masters in Psychology and since 2005, playing with the codes of pop culture, which has replaced absolutist dreams with a deep relativism, she reveals through her artistic practice, her growing concern about the evolution of our post-modern world and more specifically the ambivalence to emerge, where alienation and emancipation are no more readily recognizable. She attempts however to challenge our perception of daily life by proposing questions on a series of commonly held notions. www.isabellelutz.com

Hadassah Damien Luxe (writer) is a Brooklyn-based queer femme liberationist artist, digital technologist, and community organizer who creates, produces and performs political and participatory multimedia works all over the US and Canada. Her recent major works include: Exorcize, a satirical and serious healing aerobics program for all bodies; Hot Pink Mass, a church service that invokes the deity Trisha; and Femmes Fight Back, an interactive installation honoring queer herstories while resisting the State. She is co-founder of Heels on Wheels, a working-class-led, multi-racial queer femme performance art Glitter Roadshow and monthly Opentoe Peepshow. She is currently writing a book on the history of raised fists in political art, and her sci-fi novel Polyester can be read online at: www.damienluxe.com

Brian McGaw (technologist) is a technical designer and creative developer.  He created Occurrent Arts in 2011 to facilitate the formation of experiences which transform and connect participants.  He has a passion for poetic experiences, and a belief that through radical experimentation we can discover new things about ourselves and the world.

Joel A. Nichols (writer) writes sf, erotica and more, including professional books for other librarians. Originally from Vermont, he now lives in Philadelphia with his boyfriend and their baby. He studied at Wesleyan, Temple and Drexel Universities, and spent a year in Berlin on a Fulbright. Recent and upcoming stories of his can be found in the weird fiction venue Phobos Magazine, the anthology With: New Gay Fiction, and the magazine Chelsea Station. queertext.tumblr.com/

Benedict Nguyen (AOMC performer) A lifelong mover and artist, Benedict's body has been exploring dance in some of its structured forms for the past several years. Outside of orderly explorations in the studio, Benedict seeks to explore possibilities for disorderly art to challenge usual ways of moving, feeling, working, and communicating to explore questions of race, gender, class, ability, and mobility. For example, how does being a gentrifier affect trajectories for sharing art and ideas in NYC?

Jacqueline Mary (porn editor) is an artist and smut-maker from Brooklyn, NY. A regular editor and creatrix for TroubleFilms, she's been applying her years of experience as a porn editor and videographer to bringing her own filthy ideas to life! heartlessproductionsxxx.tumblr.com

Erykah Ohms - coming soon!

Jeff Poulin (fashion designer, 3D-printed artifact designer), Brooklyn based artist, works in a constructivist way designing costuming, jewelry, and transformative make-ups. He considers himself a cross-dressing conspiracy theorist and mind-controlled trans-humanist.

Ashur Rayis (sound designer) is a musician, writer, and tech junkie from Atlanta, Georgia with a B.A. in music and multimedia from Hampshire College. He resides in Brooklyn where he works as a composer, video consultant, and sound designer for dance, theater, and other performance arts. Recent projects with Tyke Dance, Jessica Lang, Matt Romein, and director Mark Gallagher. He is a founding member of the Eat Drink Tell Your Friends puppetry and performance collective, whose first piece, Photo & Supply, is currently under review for a Jim Henson grant.

Matt Romein (technologist, AOMC researcher) is an interactive programming artist who works primarily in the performance/video spectrum, building digital tools and environments for both himself and other artists. His own work deals primarily with the relationship of biological sensory perception to it's digital input/output counterparts. In looking at this relationship he explores what we lose and what we gain when the organic is augmented and reconfigured by various forms of computer data. you look at them, they change. The best part of my work is that it is still evolving. I want you to be excited to watch it move into the future just as much as I am.

Caitlin Rose Sweet (visual artist) explores the intersections between craft, queerness, and pop culture to position queerness as a site for incessant transformation and possibilities. Her playful work resists assimilation and mastery through an intentional disinvestment in finished work and proper use of materials. caitlinrosesweet.com

Sarah A.O. Rosner (director, choreographer, technologist, pornographer, and creator of the ETLE Universe) Sarah A.O. Rosner is a choreographer, arts businessman, and postmodern pornographer making work out of Brooklyn, NY. She founded the A.O. Movement Collective in 2006, and has been at their helm creating Anti-Ephemeral PoMo Humanist work and ideology ever since. Rosner is also the founder of arts blog Urgent Artist and freelancer collective A.O. PRO(+ductions), and has been featured as a panelist, speaker, and educator by Dance Theater Workshop, the Field, Dance NYC, CLASSCLASSCLASS, Bard College, and New York Live Arts. She pioneers radical business, champions sustainability, and loves to yell about art.  Brooklyn-based since 2008, the AOMC has performed at the RAW festival, THROW, Open Perform, WAXworks, Green Space, AUNTS, the Center for Performance Research, Dance New Amsterdam, the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center and Dance Place, as well as stairwells, rooftops, and other non-traditional spaces in Philly, MD, DC, and NY. Their first evening length premiere, 90 ways to Wake from drowning (2010), was co-presented at Joyce SoHo to rave reviews, and their current work in process, barrish, will premiere at HERE this July 12th - 14th.  The New York Times has written that the AOMC "bring[s] a raw, vulnerable quality to their movement that’s highly arresting” and the Gay City News has said that their work "communicate[s] a profound hopelessness but also a tenderness — and queerness — that embodies the new American generation.”

Amy Schiller (writer) reads, writes, thinks, and consults at the intersection of political theory, feminism, and philanthropy. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Daily Beast, and many others. She is a Ph.D. candidate at CUNY Graduate Center in political science, and has eight years of experience as a major gifts fundraising consultant, campaign director, and political organizer. 

Toxic Shock - coming soon!

Emily Skillings (AOMC researcher) is a dancer poet poet dancer. She earned her BA from The New School in 2010. Recent poetry can be read in Bone Bouquet, Lingerpost, Stonecutter, La Fovea and Maggy. Skillings dances with Saifan Shmerer, the A.O. Movement Collective and The Commons Choir (Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik). Her choreography has been performed at Dixon Place, Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater, Dance Theater Workshop's College Partnership Program, American College Dance Festival, Triskelion Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective and event series. She is a co-curator of the Brooklyn reading series HOT TEXTS with Krystal Languell. In Fall 2013 she helped to mount the exhibition John Ashbery Collects: Poet Among Things at Loretta Howard Gallery. 

Ariel Speedwagon (AOMC Performer) Ariel "Speedwagon" Federow is a dancer, clown, bingo caller, itinerant professor, and real nice guy. Key past projects: the Ballez (company member), the Holey Army (choreographer for giant street performance), SJNN (the internet's premiere independent news network), lots else. She feels very fortunate to have a chance to help save the universe so directly. 

Eli Steffen (AOMC performer) is a writer and performer whose work focuses on the intersections of identity, community, and culture. Currently living in Brooklyn, Eli hails from Seattle, WA, where they have performed with Gender Tender at Richard Hugo House, Vanessa DeWolf at the Fremont Abbey, a Kt Shore at TMRW Party, as well as performing in numerous solo works. Last year Eli was a resident artist at Studio Current in Seattle, WA and just finished the SITI Company Conservatory. Eli is thrilled to be working with the A.O. Movement Collective.

Vincent Vigilante (lighting designer) is a SUNY New Paltz graduate with a BA in Theater Performance and Technology. He has been working in the New York Dance & Theater scene for the past nine years. Currently living in Brooklyn and running his own lighting design company, Vigilante Design Group, and is the Director of Production for New York Live Arts. Vincent counts himself lucky to have designed for such amazing artists as Dean Moss, Donna Uchizono, Andrea Miller, Melanie Maar, Pele Bauch, Jade King Carroll, Owen M. Smith, Michael Loporto, Robert Melee, Raz Mesinai, John Hollenbeck, Padma Newsome & Bryce Dessner, Mike Ladd, Caitlin Cook, Aida Ruilova, and Sidra Bell.

Aya Wilson (AOMC corps performer), originally of Normal, Illinois, received a BFA in dance from the University of Iowa, where she performed the work of Bill Young, David Dorfman, Louis Falco, Carl Flink, and José Limón, among others.  She performed nationally and internationally with the UI Dancers In Company and Charlotte Adams and Jennifer Kayle.  In NYC, Aya has worked with various choreographers including Megan Kendzior, alex|xan: the Median Movement, Amy Jacobus Dance Projects, Tara Willis, Keeley Walsh, Kensaku Shinohara, and Kendra Portier.  Currently, she is dancing with Sarah Council Dance Projects, the A.O. Movement Collective, Mariah Maloney, and Nadia Tykulsker/Spark(edIt) Arts.

Aside from being one of the non-fiction writers for the ETLE universe, Tara Aisha Willis (writer) is a dancer/dance-maker and a PhD student in Performance Studies at NYU, where she spends a lot of time thinking about blackness, feminism, and experimental dance. She is Movement Research’s Program Associate and is helping build their Artists of Color Program, as well as a freelancer for A.O. Pro(+ductions). She held a 2009 Dance Theater Workshop Van Lier Fellowship and earned her B.A. from Barnard, where she studied dance and English/creative writing and was a Centennial Scholar. Tara’s choreography has been presented at DNA, BAX, Movement Research at the Judson Church, REHEARSAL (at CAGE and the Invisible Dog Art Center), AUNTS, RoofTop Dance, Green Space, The Painting Center and, soon, THROW. She has most recently performed for Megan Byrne, Katherine Cooper, Diana Crum, Macklin Kowal, Ethan Philbrick, and Jillian Sweeney.

Ginny Woolf - (performer, the Oh Files) is full of a powerful, self-obliterating fury. New on the queer pornography scene, The OH Files is her first work as both performer and producer. She is honored to be working with AORTA Films on their first feature. As a performer, Ginny is exploring her many-faceted answer to the question, "But do you have to be in front of the camera?" She is interested in power in pornography, on and off screen. She also loves bodies and nakedness and performing pleasure. As a producer, Ginny wants to help birth queer, feminist porn. She wants to talk about porn in public, she wants to break taboo, she wants to find better models for distribution that encourage fair pay and safe, supportive work environments. She was inspired by her experience working on The OH Files - Ginny knows that making porn can be transcendent. The most trafficked websites in existence offer pornographic content; change porn and you change the world.

Yandy/Rocket is a Trans*human gender confused leather pup, poet, attorney, activist and educator about gender, sexual communication and consent, and nontraditional family law, and primary instigator of Mythical Events and Amorous Revolt. Current residence: NYC. Origin: Unknown, likely extraterrestrial.