Buzz Slutzky (they/them)
Photo: Sarah Tricker
Buzz Slutzky (they/them) is a non-binary/transgender and Jewish multidisciplinary artist, educator, writer, filmmaker, and performer based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work uses intimacy and humor to bring juiciness into historical research and autobiographical narrative. Buzz’s practice juxtaposes text and image through video, drawing, performance, pyrography (woodburning) and other mediums.
Slutzky has exhibited work at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Assembly Room, Cooper Union, MIX Film Festival, and Dixon Place, all New York, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and Haverford College, both PA; Boston Center for the Arts, MA; Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); and Columbia College, Chicago, IL. Slutzky was an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center and NARS Foundation and participated in the Triple Canopy Publication Intensive and the Creative Capital Summer Intensive. They currently teach at The New School and SUNY Purchase. Slutzky received their BA from Sarah Lawrence College and their MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design.
BRIClab Project: The Grandmother Hypothesis, 2022 | Full length film, 15:28 min
The Grandmother Hypothesis is an essay film by Buzz Slutzky that explores the artist’s relationship to their Jewish Texan family history, inherited trauma, and artistic practice. Using voiceover narration, family interviews, archival footage, images from instructional manuals and family scrapbooks, and drawings, Slutzky tells the story of their grandmother Sylvia, or “Syb,” and her life as an artist, educator, and parent with a lifelong injury resulting from possible child abuse. The film draws together witches, intuition, hands, paper, and what our ancestors leave behind.
Buzz Slutzky, Clothes Feelings
Buzz Slutzky, My Surgery Story
Buzz Slutzky, Religious Beliebs
Danny Greenberg (he/they)
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Danny Greenberg (they/them) has participated in The Drawing Center Viewing Program, The Art & Law Program, The Interdisciplinary Art and Critical Theory Program, Marble House Project, Anchor Graphics, and was an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Greenberg is a Part-Time Lecturer at Parsons School of Design. Greenberg received their BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis, their MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Professionally, Danny is Director of Programs at The Honey Pump, Co-founder of PACT (Personalized Art Collecting Together) with Troy Hoffman.
BRIClab Project: The Choreography of Breath, 2022 | Full length film, 30:27 min
The Choreography of Breath is a cantorial probing into the mind of an artworker during the height of the pandemic. The Rothko Chapel provides a portal into introspection, gossip, and questioning systems of the art world.
Danny Greenberg, still from La Porte de l’Enfer – Desktop Performance
Danny Greenberg, still from La Porte de l’Enfer – Desktop Performance
Danny Greenberg, still from La Porte de l’Enfer – Desktop Performance
Kat Geng (she/her)
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Kat Geng’s (she/her) work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA; 826 Valencia, Black & White Projects, Guerrero Gallery, Incline Gallery, and State Space, all San Francisco, CA; Royal Nonesuch Gallery and ProArts Gallery, both Oakland, CA; and Superchief Gallery NFT and Field Projects, both New York, NY. Geng’s recent solo shows include those at The Royal Nonesuch Gallery and NIAD Art Center, both CA. Geng was a 2021 AIM Fellow at The Bronx Museum of the Arts and an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Vermont Studio Center. Geng received her BA in Art History from Bard College.
BRIClab Project: Kat Geng, A Puppet Guide to Human Self-Care, 2022 | Full length film, 9:20 min
Geng’s single-channel video pairs her hand-sewn fabric puppets with the insights and narrations of family and friends, to offer a visual meditation on self-care. Using the loose structure of a maintenance manual and a steadily rising and falling breath as a reoccurring backdrop, the video explores the symbiotic relationship between human and puppet as caregivers, companions, and mirrors to one another. Sprinkled throughout the film, multi-generational voices from the artist’s close communities – fellow adoptees, artists, family and friends – offer their own approaches and struggles with this topic to create a warm collective narration. Puppet Guide to Human Self-Care doesn’t purport to offer all the answers but instead suggests that the question of care is one that we can all benefit from ruminating on.
Kat Geng, still from Nieve Falls
Macon Reed (she/her)
Photo: Lee Budahn
Macon Reed’s (she/they) immersive sculptural environments house extensive public programs and rituals within. Her work is structured through queer and feminist models of participation and centers engagement around a question or research discovery central to the project. The artist’s unapologetically bright colors and DIY aesthetic encourage joy and celebration and invite the public to experience difficult and complex matters in a new way.
Reed has shown in solo and group exhibitions at Museum of Art and Design, A.I.R. Gallery, Abrons Art Center, Recess Gallery, Knockdown Center, Wayfarers Gallery, and The Kitchen, all New York, NY; Museum of Craft and Design and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, both San Francisco, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Center for Craft, Asheville, NC; Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Amherst College, MA; University of Southern Maine; Montclair Art Museum, NJ; and the ICA Baltimore, MD. Reed has also shown internationally in cities such as Sydney, Brussels, London, Berlin, Bologna, and Aarhus. Reed has completed residencies at Stoneleaf Retreat, Aarhus Art Museum, Real Time and Space, Abrons Art Center, Flux Factory, Wassaic Project, and the Vermont Studio Center. Reed attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Reed received her BFA in Sculpture & Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
BRIClab Project: The Death Spa Experience, 2022 | Full length film, 7:37 min
The Death Spa Experience takes viewers through an imaginary cosmetic spa procedure that is equal parts mindfulness and satire. Bringing together dream sequences, death meditation, funeral parlor and cosmetic spa advertisements, this experimental video connects our fears of aging and dying to consumption and unprocessed grief. Reed draws from their conversations conducted over the course of the pandemic with practitioners in the field of grief and dying. By offering a playful and at times absurd approach to death, The Death Spa Experience approaches our relationship to dying as a portal to how we can live more fully while we are here on Earth.
Macon Reed, Gymnasts (Still)
Macon Reed, Letters to My Imagination (Work in Progress)
Macon Reed, Letters to My Imagination (Work in Progress)
Nooshin Rostami (they/them)
Photo: Katharina Poblotzki
Nooshin Rostami (they/them) has exhibited and performed internationally, including: The Center for the Holographic Arts, NY, California Museum of Photography – UCR ARTS , Jardines de Mexico, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions – LACE, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory. Since 2014, they have participated in residencies such as Tifa working studios, and NARS Foundation. Rostami received an MFA in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College CUNY in NY (2011).
BRIClab Project: Heartbeat of a Window, 2022 | Full length film, 22:30 min
Nooshin Rostami’s Heartbeat of a Window is a short film contemplating the psychological experience of the transition between life and the afterlife. By illustrating death through the lens of a dream, this film draws curiosity and compassion on this subject matter which ordinarily sits in the darkest folds of the human mind. The footage for this film was gathered over five years and the storyline expresses the emotional landscape of the artist’s fear of losing their mother and the mother’s near-death story.
An interdisciplinary artist, Nooshin Rostami often works with light and the metaphorical language of geometry. Through an abstract play of light, shadow, and reflection, Rostami compels the viewer to question what we perceive as real and illusory, truths and fictions. When light is paired with sound and music, it takes the form of performance and allows for these illusive forms to take on the immersive scale of architecture.
Nooshin Rostami, Three Bardos
Nooshin Rostami, Three Bardos
Nooshin Rostami, Three Bardos
Zachary Fabri (he/him)
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Zachary Fabri (he/him) has participated in residencies at Institute for Electronic Arts, Chelsea College of Arts, Fountainhead Residency, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, and Vermont Studio Center. Fabri has been awarded the Colene Brown Art Prize, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. Fabri studied Photography and Video at Universität der Künste in Berlin and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Fabri received his BFA in Graphic Design from New World School of the Arts in Miami and his MFA in New Genres from Hunter College.
BRIClab Project: Zachary Fabri, An Open Letter to My Sister – Part 1: Table in the Garden, 2022 |Full length film, 22 min
Table in the Garden is an essay film inspired by James Baldwin’s letter titled “An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis”. Published by Baldwin in 1970, the letter provides emotional support and political solidarity to Davis while incarcerated for 16 months. This project uses Baldwin’s letter as a spark from the past, to generate new ideas towards solutions for the future of the U.S. corrections system. The first of a three part series, this film is recorded in Saint-Paul de Vence, France where Baldwin lived his last 17 years, while writing the letter.
Zachary Fabri, still from Untitled (Canacada Creek audio recording with pants rolled up)
Zachary Fabri, still from Mourning Stutter. Still credit: Rodrigo Valenzuela
Zachary Fabri, still from Slit-scan, split-span, time displacement movement study or dodging bullets from police
Major support for BRICLab is provided by TD Bank. Additional support for BRICLab: Performing Arts is provided by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. General support for BRIC is provided by Bank of America, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Con Edison, Genesis Inspiration Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Lambent Foundation, M&T Charitable Foundation, New York Community Trust, Scherman Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), Tiger Baron Foundation, and numerous individuals.
BRIC’s Contemporary Art program also benefits from generous private funding from the Harold and Colene Brown Family Foundation, Ford Foundation, Harpo Foundation, Humanities New York, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and numerous individual supporters.