The Propelled Animals are a collective of artists, dancers, scholars, musicians, and designers who embed innovative and provocative art in unconventional spaces. They are committed to creating work that interrogates, challenges, and attempts to dismantle the systemic “isms” of oppression. They collaborate and adapt to address the specific needs of the communities they engage. Their performances encourage efficacy of the body, resilience, and radical tenderness as strategies for self- and communal empowerment. Centered on art as social action and ritual as performance, they root their work in sound. From collaged and remixed news clips, hip-hop, gospel, rap, and Indigenous R&B tracks to recordings of bird calls, wind, and rain, sound fuels their immersive work—as an invitation and a provocation.
DIS/UNITY
The Propelled Animals collective was founded in 2014. They are a group of artists, dancers, scholars, musicians, and designers who embed innovative and provocative art in unconventional spaces. They are recipients of two NPN grants, a MAP Fund grant, a USAI grant, an Iowa Arts Council project grant, and a Puffin Foundation grant. They have been artists-in-residence at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City, Grinnell College, Headlong Dance Theater in Philadelphia, and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh; they are currently in residence at High Concept Labs in Chicago. Collective members are:
Heidi Wiren Bartlett (MA, MFA, University of Iowa) is an interdisciplinary artist concerned with the portrayal, oppression, and subversive existence of women in America today. Her recent awards include a nomination for the United States Artists Fellowship; selection as a roundtable scholar at the "What Can Museums Become?" symposium, where she premiered her film DOWNRIVER with the Stanley Museum of Art; in the fall of 2021 she was awarded a Max Kade Foundation Fellow at Lafayette College, Easton, PA.
Esther Baker-Tarpaga (MA, MFA, UCLA) is a dancer and interdisciplinary artist who convenes and choreographs site-responsive social actions. She co-founded Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project and teaches at Temple University. She recently performed at No New Idols Festival Lativa, BAAD Bronx, Art Yard New Jersey, the Chicago Architecture Biennale, and Inside/Out Festival Burkina Faso, and she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City.
Barber (MA, MFA, University of Iowa) uses interdisciplinary art practices to articulate various testimonies within and surrounding Black America. His most recent awards include a 2020 Biennial Artist Research fellowship at Sam Fox Island Press, Washington University, St. Louis; selection for publication in New American Painting; and the potential recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors award.
Boubacar Djiga is an internationally acclaimed recording artist born into a griot family in Burkina Faso. He is a master djeli ngoni player (a traditional two-string guitar from West Africa). He is the founder and artistic director of the acclaimed Kundé Blues. Djiga is also an acclaimed acoustic guitarist and plays the djembe, bougarabou, and tamanin.
Raquel Monroe (PhD, UCLA) is an interdisciplinary performance scholar and artist. She has written a monograph on the Black feminist choreographies of Black Power in popular culture and social movement. Monroe’s scholarship appears in several anthologies addressing Black women, queer dance, and popular culture.
Courtney D. Jones (DMA, UCLA) is exploring and defining the newest directions in 21st-century trumpet performance. Jones is an award-winning Bach-solo performing and recording artist who has also emerged as a leading figure in contemporary performance and pedagogy, conducting, and service to inner-city youth through music outreach programs.
Heidi Wiren Bartlett, Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Barber, Boubacar Djiga, Raquel Monroe, Courtney Jones: Propelled Animals; DIS/UNITY. Resonance 1 December 2021; 2 (4): 623–635. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/res.2021.2.4.623
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