A Memory Held In You

CURATED BY ALLEGRA HANGEN AND ALEX JACOBSEN
MAY 8TH - JUNE 19TH, 2020

“Memory is that of the body that passed; memory is the trace of a wave goodbye made with a slightly clenched fist.” - Robert Morris

Positioning itself between the practices of expanded cinema, performance, and meditative listening, A Memory Held in You, curated by Allegra Hangen and Alex Jacobsen is an immersive virtual installation that examines how what we see, hear, and feel is woven into the fabric of a remembered experience.

In a series of digital events staged across social media platforms and Amplify Arts’ website each week beginning May 8th - June 19th, Allegra Hangen (@allegrahangen) and Alex Jacobsen (@xelajacobsen), in collaboration with Gayle Rocz (@sparklyfrenchfry), Isabella Starkey Meier (@isabella_sm_), and Jay Kreimer collectively bring into the question the legitimacy of cognitive hierarchies by conscripting video, sound, and prerecorded performance into an audio-visual lexicon that fragments memory’s factual accuracy.

Could a “better” memory be held in our devices, in the files we share with each other, in a collective mediated experience in isolation? Maybe a “better” memory isn’t a sharper or more exact one. Maybe a “better” memory is held in impressions left behind by echoing vibration, mediation, or fleeting gestures embodied for only a second.

This exhibition is presented with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

Virtual Exhibition Space

Soundwalk

Episodes

Zine

Click image below to download

A Memory Held in You: Live

About the Artists

Allegra Hangen is a photographer, experimental video maker, and video installation artist residing in Omaha, NE. She received her BFA in Photography from the Art Institute of Boston (currently Lesley University College of Art and Design) in 2014, and her MA in 2019 from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. In 2018, she exhibited two solo shows in Mexico City and has been part of various international group exhibitions and film festivals in cities like Boston, Oaxaca City, Mexico City, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, Aguascalientes, among others. Her video work focuses mainly on memory, family archives, media representation and the dynamics between the political and the intimate.

Alex Jacobsen is a sound artist based in Omaha, NE, whose audio work focuses on the plasticity of sound and aims to connect us with environments and situations that exist outside of our current temporal-spatial experiences. He received his Bachelor of Music from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 2016. He has interned at Evergroove Studios in 2016 and with artist in residence, Marc Vilanova, in 2019 at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Within the past year, he has shown his sculptural sound pieces at Red Eye and Confluence in Lincoln, NE and at Konvent in Barcelona, Spain, where he was also on residency.

Jay Kreimer is an improvising musician, instrument inventor and sound artist. He has been creating new musical instruments for nearly thirty years. He performs internationally: throughout North America, across Europe, in China and India. In 2013 he returned to India on a Fulbright fellowship to document street wedding bands, which have been referred to as the garbagemen of Indian ritual music. In March 2011 he was a finalist in the Guthman musical instrument invention competition, with his instrument Tall Boy. He has performed with Bryan Day for over ten years and the Mighty Vitamins for fifteen, with 10+ album releases between them. Spring 2019 he participated in an eight show tour of Mexico with Bryan Day and Marco Albert, in support of the recent Albert Day Kreimer album Mutations. He has performed at the two most recent incarnations of FIME, the Festival of Extreme Music, in Queretaro, Mexico. He has created sound works, sculpture, photos and video for many installations with Wendy Weiss. As a solo artist he has performed across North America and in Europe, including a performance of his water based piece, “When it’s Gone,” at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, one of many of his appearances in the Soundwave Festival. He has a long association with the Deep Listening Institute and is certified to teach Deep Listening practice. This year he was the subject of a video segment of Nebraska Stories on NET, talking about his instrument making work. This piece has been featured on the PBS national website ArtsCanvas, and the PBS Newshour facebook page. A fairly recent obsession with the urban crocodiles of Gujarat has been stymied by the non-response of the Gujarat forestry department. Extensive video work remains in limbo.

Watch the Nebraska story about Jay here.

Gayle Rocz is a senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in both Dance and English in August 2020. She was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, where she danced at various studios before moving to Lincoln to pursue modern dance at a collegiate level. Gayle has performed in the annual Student Dance Project (2016-2019) and Evenings of Dance (2017-2020). She has also performed in the American College Dance Association’s (ACDA) Gala Performances in the Spring of 2018 and 2019. Gayle has worked with multiple esteemed dance artists while at UNL, including: Jenna Riegel, Kayvon Pourazar, Dan Schuchart, Lauren Simpson, and Jennifer Nugent. Gayle has choreographed and premiered three recent works related to concepts surrounding the representation of dance in popular culture: Siwa-nator (2018), Save Your Tears for the Pillow (2020), and Queens? (2020).

Isabella Starkey Meier is a sophomore Dance Major at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prior to dancing at the collegiate level Isabella started modern dance at age 15 and was awarded the Nebraska Young Artist Award in Dance her junior year of high school. Isabella was a part of Nebraska Contemporary Dance Theatre from 2015-2017 working with choreographers such as Jessica Miller Tomlinson, Eddy Ocampo and Noelle Bohaty. With NCDT Isabella traveled to Chicago, IL and Phoenix, AZ to attend and perform at Regional Dance America Festivals. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Isabella has worked with student, faculty and guest choreographers such as Melissa Templeton, Hye-Won Hwang and Lauren Simpson. She also has performed in Adjudicated and informal showings at American Collegiate Dance Association (2019). Isabella has performed in two and choreographed in one Student Dance Projects (2018-2019) and performed in Evenings of Dance show at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2019).