Ariel René Jackson & Michael J. Love, still from The Future is a Constant Wake, 2018. Digital video, 06:12 min. Courtesy of the artists.
Ariel René Jackson & Michael J. Love
Project—
The Future Is A Constant Wake (2019) centers soil as a conduit for sustained
engagement with previous generations. Developed in collaboration with
choreographer Michael J. Love, this film proposes a somatic way of forging
connection with the past through touch and movement.
Artist Bio—
Ariel René Jackson’s multidisciplinary practice translates narratives of belonging through performative and sculptural acts that utilize repurposed imagery and objects. Her work explores themes of loss and transformation, focusing on land and landscape as sites of internal representation. Jackson grew up between New Orleans and Mamou, Louisiana, and currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. Her work has been exhibited at the SculptureCenter; CUE Art Foundation; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; DePaul Art Museum; Studio Museum in Harlem; and RISD Museum.
Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist, a choreographer, scholar, and educator whose embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theory and aesthetics with a rigorous practice to engage in thinking on the Black cultural past and Black futurity. He earned an MFA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin and a BS in Marketing Communication with an emphasis in entertainment marketing and public relations from Emerson College. Love's work has been supported and presented by Fusebox Festival, ARCOS Dance, and the Cohen New Works Festival. He has collaborated with Ariel René Jackson on a number of videos and performance pieces that have shown at CUE Art Foundation, the New Museum, SXSW, the University of Northern Colorado, PARA Foundation (Berlin), Vox Populi, and elsewhere. Love is an Austin Critics' Table Award winner and a B. Iden Payne Award nominee. He was a laboratory cast member of the Savion Glover and George C. Wolfe Broadway musical Shuffle Along.