Oíhaŋke Waníča (Infinity): Performances by Kite
As part of the exhibition ‘and we learn to keep the soil wet,’ artist Kite will be performing her work Oíhaŋke Waníča (Infinity) in conversation with friends, collaborators, and other aligned artists.
Oíhaŋke Waníča (Infinity), which is currently on view, lives and breathes while Kite sleeps in Ancram, NY. Each week, Kite creates a series of geometric designs, representing her dreams in patterns that correspond to Lakota words and traditional art forms. The patterns are then converted into textiles through an embroidery machine, which acts as kind of translator, transforming knowledge from the dream world into the visual language of designs. These cyborgian communications act as the basis for a series of subsequent activations where Kite sings, fiddles, reads her dreams from the geometric patterns, and invites friends, collaborators, and aligned artists to interpret the embroidered scores.
The next performance of Oíhaŋke Waníča (Infinity) will take place on May 13th. Kite will be joined by her partner, musician and sound artist, Robbie Wing.
Performances by Kite and friends will occur at CARA on the following Saturdays:
March 18
April 8
April 29
May 13
Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an award winning Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, composer and academic raised in Southern California, known for her sound and video performance with her Machine Learning hair-braid interface. Kite holds a BFA from CalArts in music composition, an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and has received a PHD from Concordia University. Kite’s groundbreaking scholarship and practice explore contemporary Lakȟóta ontology through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Kite often works in collaboration, especially with family and community members. Her art practice includes developing Machine Working with machine learning techniques since 2017 and developing body interfaces for performance since 2013, Kite is the first American Indian artist to utilize Machine Learning in art practice.
Kite’s artwork and performance has been included in numerous exhibitions, recently Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Plug In Contemporary, PS122 and the Vera List Center, Anthology Film Archives, Walter Phillips Gallery, Chronus Art Center, Toronto Biennial, and Experimenta Triennial. Kite was a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, a 2020 Tulsa Artist Fellow, a 2020 Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab Fellow, a 2020 “100 Women in AI Ethics”, a 2021 Common Fields Fellow, and the 2022 Creative Time Open Call artist for the Black and Indigenous Dreaming Workshops with Alisha B. Wormsley.
Oíhaŋke Waníča (Infinity) is part of the exhibition and we learn to keep the soil wet, curated by Manuela Moscoso, Executive Director.
Read more about And We Learn to Keep the Soil Wet here.
Images by Emmanuel Abreu.