Vessel

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Vessel

VesselVesselVessel
  • Home
  • About
  • Site Specific
  • Devised
  • Installation
  • Press/Contact
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Transfix (1996-present)

Since 1996, under the direction of Rachel Bowditch, Vessel has been performing their site-specific interactive “atmospheric” performance Transfix with over 100 performers in over 30 venues. Transfix is an interactive, silent performance that transforms urban architecture into a poetic theatrical landscape. Weaving in and around urban architectural spaces and spectators, we transform the street into a stage, revealing the poetry and beauty of the mundane. Transfix is a collaborative, interactive urban intervention where the passerby, not expecting to see a performance stops in their tracks, transfixed. 

site-specific

history of transfix

Transfix began in 1996 as an exploration into the art of presence. What happens when the performers are in a constant state of discovery as they explore space and architecture with their bodies – creating what Artaud called ‘spatial poetry’? Transfix took on new meaning after 9/11. There was an iconic photograph taken by a New York Times photographer of a statue covered in white dust surrounded by debris from the towers.    While this work is not rooted in Butoh, it shares a similar aesthetic and melancholy. Like the white powder worn by Butoh dancers that represents the annihilation of life after Hiroshima/Nagasaki, the white captures this loss and absence, as well as evoking a sense of discovery and rebirth. Taking these haunting figures through different environments from urban cityscapes to desert landscapes allows us to pause to notice the world around us – whether it be chaos or stillness. Taking Transfix into the desert, we see ghostly figures carrying suitcases as they traverse the harsh conditions of the endless landscape.  As Jean Baudrillard noted in America, the desert is a metaphor for America itself,


"The American desert is an extraordinary piece of drama [...]. It is purely, geologically dramatic, bringing together the sharpest, most ductile shapes with the gentlest, most lascivious underwater forms (1988:69). [...] The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body. If humanity's language, technology, and buildings are an extension of its constructive faculties, the desert alone is an extension of its capacity for absence, the ideal schema of humanity's disappearance (68). [...] American culture is heir to the deserts [...] culture as a mirage (63). For us, the whole of America is a desert" (99).  


Baudrillard's postmodern desert is not an endpoint but a beginning space where a new narrative can begin. —Rachel Bowditch

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selected transfix press

transfix project archive

Desert Projects

Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Saltan Sea

Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Saltan Sea

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Sedona, Imperial Dunes, and Petrified Forest. 

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Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Saltan Sea

Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Saltan Sea

Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Saltan Sea

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Collaboration with photographer Chris Loomis

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Transfix: Unreal City

Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Saltan Sea

Public Art: Art Museums

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Collaboration with Logan Phillips and Adam Cooper-Teran

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Public Art: Art Museums

Public Art: Art Museums

Public Art: Art Museums

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Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Public Art, Mesa Arts Center and ASU Art Museum

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Festivals

Public Art: Art Museums

Commercial

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Spark Festival, Glitter and Flow, Fantastic Planet, and more. 

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Commercial

Public Art: Art Museums

Commercial

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Neiman Marcus, Biltmore, Hilton, Waldorf Astoria, and more. 

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Architects of Air

Transfix 10 Year Retrospective

Transfix 10 Year Retrospective

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Transfix performing in Architects of Air luminariums, Mesa art Center. 

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Transfix 10 Year Retrospective

Transfix 10 Year Retrospective

Transfix 10 Year Retrospective

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Transfix Retrospective: 1996-2010, Monorchid, 2010. 

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Where the Sidewalk Ends

Transfix 10 Year Retrospective

Where the Sidewalk Ends

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Collaboration with photographer Chris Loomis

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The Void

Burning Man 2013

Where the Sidewalk Ends

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The Void performed for the Fuse Festival, 2013.

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Burning Man 2013

Burning Man 2013

Burning Man 2013

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Collaboration with Bad Unkl Sista and Carpetbag Bridgade, Pepe Ozan's Burning Man Opera Memorial Procession from the Man to the Temple. Burning Man 2013. 

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Conferences

Burning Man 2013

Burning Man 2013

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ATHE Fairmont Princess, ATHE Las Vegas, and PSi Brown.

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Transfix in new york City and philadelphia: 1998-2006

First performances of Transfix: Skidmore College 1996

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