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HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... BANGKOK UNDERGROUND CINEMA The Bangkok Underground Film Festival 2017 program consists of a series of events across multiple venues in Bangkok. Co-organised by Speedy Grandma , emesis , Bridge Art Space & Jam Caf é , with support from VS Service , Projectionist Asia , Panda Records and Museum Siam . MARCH 5-12, 2017

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... ACTIVATING PERCEPTION - NINA A. ISABELLE MIDTOWN ARTS DISTRICT by Debra Bresnan May 10, 2017 https://madkingston.org/2017/05/09/nina-a-isabelle/ When did you first know you were an artist? Growing up people referred to me as an artist and so I became one – an experience that made me aware of the power of language, perception, belief, and social programming, all themes in my current work. It’s possible that if I had grown up in a different environment I might have been an engineer because as an artist I’m always working with how things like concepts of memory and phenomena articulate with visual and spatial perception, language, materials, and meaning and how to build generative dialogue between these factors. Where an engineer might work with materials, data, or electricity, as an artist I use a similar approach but with different variables. Favorite medium(s) you use to make art? My favorite art medium is probably the phenomena of perception and how language builds reality. Right now my focus is on working to manipulate and bend notions surrounding the value and usefulness of art away from commodity and towards structures that represent essential and social value. Inside of this, working with painting I can still have an intention to study gesture, motion, and look for new languages that might emerge from this action and mark making or find new information in whatever emerges. I like to get my hands on chunks of materials like vats of clay, lumber, bolts of fabric, or discarded machine parts and sort of grapple with the stuff until it gives in to another form. Sometimes I might start out with an intention or give myself an assignment, but other times I let myself generate information by engaging with materials and paying close attention as I go. Since I work pretty equally with photography, video, design, performance, installation, and painting, nothing is really off limits to me. I grew up at a summer camp for kids where we had an arts and crafts department with a ceramics studio, photo lab, leather tools, batik, enamels, silk screens, and fabric dye, among others. Nine months out of the year these departments were vacant and I really made the best of it – I learned to use the kiln and glazes by haphazardly blowing up and melting a lot of stuff, mixing chemistry by taste, a lot of other experimental and dangerous learning-by-doing that has carried over to my current approach. I never read instructions as a younger person because I couldn’t really read until I went to college. I’m rarely intimidated by new things, and I think that’s one of my favorite things about my development and approach. What are the most interesting new trends in your field? Is your work changing as a result? One of the most exciting things I notice right now is a shift toward recognizing the social value of art as a tool to reframe reality through community building, open sourcing ideas and data, and through things like artist collectives and working together with other artists and community members. In the art world, there are always these superficial fads like geometric shapes or graffiti, or some new trendy material, or something everyone is doing like such-and-such, but my work doesn’t usually wind up aligning itself with those sorts of cultural flows. I don’t usually find myself in trendy circles — something that has made it difficult to find a community but also has led me to the point where I am now. I recognize that, all along, my running mission has been to challenge outmoded institutional and economic systems that have grown regulated and insular and to work to build systems to replace these. Artists are always pressing hard against hierarchal structures like gender, race, and social class: It seems like the discord generated by our new political administration is influencing a lot of art thinking these days. Talk about your creative process – where/when do you get most of your ideas and how do you know a piece is ‘finished’? My creative process is rooted pretty firmly in letting myself respond instinctively. One thing I often find myself doing is trying to destroy rosy notions that abound around creativity being “beautiful.” Being a person who has given birth to babies I recognize the mess, blood, and pain that goes along with creativity. I have a lot of ideas and mostly I choose to go with the ones that make me laugh about myself or our collective idiocy. I also like to work with themes that irk me such as fake systems of legitimization we use to determine success, such as university degrees, financial values and the gender and power imbalances that seem to perpetually skew the art world. Making art objects like paintings and sculptures, and grappling with material and concepts together, I’ve questioned the point of it beyond decoration or commodity and have come to understand my process as a personal tool that lets me understand reality in a way that I can integrate. Working with materials and visual information puts me in touch with deeper threads of meaning, and nuances of life that fortify the tapestry. I’m drawn toward this way of working and thinking because there seems to be something I can’t quite say in writing or speaking, something linear language can’t quite get at. I don’t know what it is yet and that’s what keeps me engaged. As far as recognizing when something is finished, I think it’s just a matter of paying attention to a subtle feeling of “doneness,” or arriving at a comfortable stopping point or a feeling of resolve – like I’ve figured something out or said what I meant to say. Sometimes a stopping point might never come because maybe I’ve gone down on a dead-end path. I have a lot of projects in limbo because they’ve become overwhelming or I’ve lost interest, things I can always get back to at any point. And, in a quantum way, things can never be finished because time isn’t linear and there’s no such thing as an end point. Do you also teach or are you strictly a creative artist? Who was your most influential mentor and why? How do you see the role of being a mentor? and why? In the past, I’ve taught art classes like photography, modern dance, and painting or movement workshops. There is always a technical entry point where students spend time learning about say, the camera machine, visual mechanics, basic movement patterns, or just becoming familiar with materials, and this can be a fun and engaging way for people to come together. But I always want to move further into dialogue about how the usefulness of these art tools and practices can be more than a fun pastime or therapeutic hobby. Art offers invaluable ways to shift perception and find new vantage points. As an artist, I collaborate with others in several capacities that seem more like mutual mentorship, where we share and build upon each other’s momentum and concepts. I’m not sure that I’ve ever fit the part of strictly a mentor to another, but I do recognize people who’ve inspired me. I had a couple high school teachers who helped me to evade attendance, something that in a typical case might not sound helpful, but I really recognize and value people who have taken risks in order to do the right thing morally. School is not a good place for all children. I can’t say that I’ve ever had a strong relationship with an individual mentor, but something that intrigued me early on was finding and building obscure relationships between seemingly unrelated artists and their work. I remember wondering about Käthe Kollwitz’s Woman With Dead Child in relationship to Henry Moore’s sculptures and sheep sketchbook, and Jim Dine’s Robes. Somehow the similar volume expressed in these works was curious to me, possibly as a subconscious desire to connect the physical form of my body to their work because I’ve always been athletic. I was also intrigued by industrial design and how humans interact with tools and objects, especially mid-century chairs like the Eames Lounger and Bertoia’s designs as a framework for simultaneously supporting physical and thought forms together. So in a way, I’ve let this sense of wonder guide me. What are you working on now? For the past year, I’ve been working on a project called The Superfund Re-Visioning Project . It’s an experimental framework that aims to transform contaminated industrial sites recognized by The United States Government as Superfund Sites. In New York State there are 117 of these sites. I’m developing a project that aims to create a platform for artists and community members who might otherwise be marginalized by political and financial systems that typically deal with these sorts of remediation. I’m also involved with an artist collective developed by IV Castellanos called The Feminist Art Group (F.A.G.) from Brooklyn, and plan to invite them to Kingston this summer for one of The Shirt Factory Open Studio events. Currently, I have a show at the new HiLo gallery space in Catskill and like to participate in local shows at The Old Glenford Church Studio . I think it’s great when things like The UNITY show curated by Sarah Carlson and Lisa Barnard Kelley between the artists at The Shirt Factory and The Lace Mill come together to fortify community connectedness. Upcoming, I have work being featured by The Unstitute in Catalunya, Spain and plan to do something fun at Paul McMahon’s Mothership Gallery this fall. Recently my focus is moving into sound and auditory perception. I’ve become interested in digitally degraded sound snippets and obscuring auditory input to the point of noise in a way to find out what’s behind and within the experience of sound. For more information about my work and listings of recent/current exhibitions, projects and collaborations, please visit www.ninaisabelle.com/cv . How has being in Kingston enhanced/inspired your work? What do you like best about living in Kingston/being involved with MAD? How long have you been here? Kingston has a lot to offer artists and community members and is building momentum as an arts-branded district. Recently we’ve seen several exciting places pop up like David Schell’s Green Kill , Rilley Johndonnell’s Optimism concept, Broadway Arts , The Art/Life Institute on Abeel Street , and Kingston High School Art teacher Lara Giordano, who is exhibiting student work at PUGG on Broadway. The surrounding landscape is diverse and inspiring conceptually because of the Hudson River waterways, The Catskill Mountains, The Ashokan Reservoir, and the surrounding forests, hiking, and rail trails. The Mid-Hudson Library system is phenomenal, and it’s easy to travel back and forth to New York City from Kingston. It’s great to have artist studio spaces like The Shirt Factory and The Lace Mill which offer affordable living spaces for artists, and especially new organizations like MAD that are forming to support this new movement.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... Nina Isabelle Opening at HiLo CATSKILL, NY MAY 2017 Nina Isabelle, with her signature gusto, will be presenting an evening of intrigue, education, and hullabaloo. Arm wrestling, The Overconfident Autodidact (performed by Erik Hokanson,) a tea party performance by Valerie Sharp, a public interview with the questioner another performance artist (Matthew Gioia,) and two documentary screenings- The Eucharist Machine and Time Travel Research Documentary.. Nina Isabelle's installation will be at HiLo from now until June 5. It can be viewed M-F 7am-2pm and Sat & Sun 9am - 4pm until May 3rd after which time the hours will be M-Tu 7-2, W-Th 7 -4, Fri 7am-12am, Sat 7-12am, Sun 9am - 10pm

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... BEAST CONJURING at Paul McMahon's MOTHERSHIP Woodstock, NY January 16-21, 2018 On January 21, 2018 performers at Paul McMahon's Mothership in Woodstock, NY work to conjure the sea beast from the book of Revelation. Nina Isabelle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Miles Pflanz at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Linda Mary Montano The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle at The Mothership7509 The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia NAI_7452 Nina Isabelle, Ever Peacock The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Beast Conjuring KILL Paper Collage 22x30 (rubberized paint, gouache, ash, enamel, watercolor) By Nina Isabelle The Beast at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia The Beast at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle, Lorene Bouboushian The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Lorene Bouboushian at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Lorene & Nina at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Brian McCorkle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle at The Mothership The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Nina Isabelle and Lorene Bouboushian The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia Bouboushian, Isabelle, Peacock The Beast at Mothership Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Miles Pflanz, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Amelia Iaia The "Beast Conjuring" performance intended to conjure and kill the sea beast from the book of Revelation. A group of artists and performers were invited to simultaneously interweave their own processes and intentions as a way to generate energies that might be focused toward the common goal of beast conjuring. Together the group worked to build and maximizing the physical, sensory, and psychic spaces that bind the internal and external dimensions of awareness through performative modes of sound making, movement, object construction, and ceremonial-like gestures in a process that became an inquiry into how a metaphoric conjure-and-kill scenario might translate or become useful in a literal dimension where such things are less possible-seeming. "Beast Conjuring" was performed within an installation including ten hand-fabricated crowns, ten cedar root horns dug from local woods, hand painted imagery of the seven-headed ten-horned beast, a suspended hand-sewn white linen angel, a reconstructed domestic scene from the home of an ex-evangelical and a giant edible Whore of Babylon cake as bait. Lorene Bouboushian read personal text and improvised sound and movement, Linda Mary Montano performed a holy water blessing as Chicken Linda, Brian McCorkle produced sound using a Saxophone and his specially designed Beast Box, (a noise machine built with raspberry-pi based software that cast neural nets for soul retrieval,) Jennifer Zackin engaged in a task-based performance to weave a beast trapping vortex, Ever Peacock and I performed an acoustic rendition of Larry Norman's *You've been Left Behind* thirteen consecutive times all awash in Miles Pflanz's video remake of the 2014 American Christian apocalyptic thriller film *Left Behind* (based on the bestselling novels by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins) that reframes durational performance art as post-apocalyptic living. It's difficult to gauge the effectiveness of a performance conglomerate like "Beast Conjuring" due to its potential to be made to mean multiple things by participants and observers and the ripples of their combined experiences and energies. At the same time, the ability of a situation to evade meaning is exciting. No literal beast popped out of the floor, no politicians were struck dead and there weren't any recognizable or even loosely associated repercussive events of cosmic significance but the usefulness and appeal of such a process seems to unfurl over time in a circular and translucent way that generates unanswerable questions and hints at the possibilities and potential of less realistic thinking and doing.

Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... HYPERACTIVE INSTALLATION JUNE 4 2017

Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE WINDMILL WEAPON MATRON MAY 2016 The Windmill Weapon Matron was built on May 12, 2016 and exhibited on June 3, 2016 as part of The New School's Social Justice exhibition with The Bushwick Collective. Materials include s awhorse, l umber, co nstruction m aterials, s pray p aint, h ouse p aint, a fghans, w eapons, b icycle p arts, y arn, p laster, t erra c otta, c hain. She is 90h x 53w x 45d. She is a dangerous female machine expressing an active stance and aggressive posture. She no longer identifies as passive and has most recently emerged as an international threat. Based on a jumbled compilation of afghans, defunct bicycle parts, weapons, lumber, and chain her biographical narrative has been holographically reconfigured into a destructive biological machine made of woman’s time. While The Windmill Weapon Matron acknowledges her destructive approach as a natural response to her capacity for childbirth, she hesitates to dichotomize the two simply saying “Come, let me destroy you.” Utilizing a process of defiance The Windmill Weapon Matron has successfully developed a system capable of transforming eye-rolling, financial aid application trauma, stuffed animal over population, and hair pulling as well as other sensory input bull shit into a clean, renewable, and sustainable energy source for mothers. Nobody will lend her a chainsaw It is safe to breed with her She makes a mockery of science Her system is nervous Her face is spinning When she was a virgin politicians killed and ate her She is secular Her system has calcified She loves The Antichrist She birthed a female bastard She wan’t trained up the way she should go The system tries to destroy her She has nothing to depart from Rabbits fear her She has been relieved of advantage Her system is unkillable

Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT LAMP FEBRUARY 2017 Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization." SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT Hanging Light Sculpture: Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization." SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT Hanging Light Sculpture: Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization." SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT Hanging Light Sculpture: Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization." SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT Hanging Light Sculpture: Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization." SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT Hanging Light Sculpture: Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization." SALIENT MEMORY MANIPULATING PENDANT Hanging Light Sculpture: Using neon plexiglas, colored lights, and fabric, the Salient Memory Manipulating Pendant Lamp alters the psychic terrain of interior design, creating, building upon, and forcing suggested memory implants of a "magical childhood," and "parental idolization."

Videos by Nina Isabelle HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... MISC. VIDEO e845 / November 7, 2016 Candle Sounds / July 16, 2016 Domestic Loops / November 1, 2016 The Hollow Stump / November 7, 2016 At The Ashokan Reservoir / March 2016 Double Slit July 16, 2016 1:01 Referencing the magical incantation “As above, so below” from Hermetic Alchemy and Thomas Young’s original Double-Slit Experiment from 1801, Double Slit asks- does science suggest that man’s actions on earth might parallel actions within infinite multiple invisible lateral physical dimensions? The Long Sounds That Pull December 5, 2016 7:00 This is modified sensory input that has been stretched between several physical and psychic locations referencing a double decade point three cassette recorded postal anniversary edition. The original human mouth sound recording was placed in a landfill located at latitude 38.643708 / longitude -107.006703 The Story Of Terror / The Ax In The Stump March 16, 2016 3:16 The Ax in The Stump tells the story of Terror- as both a fabled horse from a North Indian Fairy Tale and the torture that can ride through family histories for generations.

Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE WOODSTOCK LIBRARY FLOATING BOUNCY CHAIR JUNE 2016 For the 85th Annual Woodstock Library Fair Hudson Valley artists were commissioned to repurpose a heap of old metal folding chairs for a silent auction to benefit the library. I made this floating bouncy chair using studio scraps and discount bungee cords from P&T Surplus in Kingston, NY. Fellow artist and Vice President of Friends of The Woodstock Library Michael Hunt says “It's the coolest motherfucking chair.”

The Video Manifestation System offers a way to build and shape reality by guiding users through a process designed to align intention with action resulting in a five minute video including individualy prescribed viewing directives. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE VIDEO MANIFESTATION SYSTEM USER ARCHIVE Download Video Manifestation System from HUMAN TRASH DUMP here: https://archive.org/details/htdc005 ALICE TEEPLE December 9, 2019 Manifesting Ethical And Sustainable Paths Best Suited To Artists' True Calling ALICE TEEPLE December 8, 2019 Video Manifestation System to Manifest A Balance of the Divine Masculine and Feminine ALICE TEEPLE January 4, 2018 Video Manifestation System to Manifest Excellent Career Opportunities NINA ISABELLE November 18, 2017 Video Manifestation System Video to Manifest a Video Manifestation System

Iqtest Melissa Lockwood and Nina A. Isabelle build the world's largest cotton double-pocketed patchwork dresses out of fabric castoffs in four hours flat. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE GIANT DRESS IQ TEST MELISSA LOCKWOOD & NINA ISABELLE The Giant Dress is the world's largest handmade all-cotton patchwork double-pocketed sleeveless up-cycled floral summer dress constructed in under four hours flat. KINGSTON, NY / MAY 2017 IQ Test Melissa Lockwood Firing tiny ceramic vessels in a fire at Rosekill with The Giant Dress. The Giant Dress The Giant Dress hanging on The South Barn at Rosekill Performance Art Farm in Rosendale, NY The Giant Dress Sewing The Giant Dress at The Shirt Factory Studio in Kingston, NY The Giant Dress Nina Isabelle with The Giant Dress at The Shirt Factory Studio in Kingston, NY

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE SHIRT FACTORY CENTENNIAL KINGSTON, NY September 16, 2017, 2018 For The Shirt Factory Centennial Celebration I tied 100 flags together and looped them through the building.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... TWO THINGS CRACK IN HALF A Griswold Cast Iron pan from 1947 that belonged to my grandmother and a 500 ml Luminarc Working Glass both cracked in half in my kitchen on the same day. On December 27, 2022, I performed a photographic study and documentation of the objects. On February 20, 2023, I interviewed ChatGPT to help me understand. View & download full-color 30 page document here:

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... Aaron Pierce February 2017 A: I am a graduate from Utah Valley University and I am writing a dissertation for the university's biannual Art History Symposium. The topic of discussion this year is Maximalism. I am particularly focusing on performance art as the contemporary medium that is reinventing museum spaces and engaging audiences by stimulating the senses more through music, dance, film, and painting combined. That is where your exhibit Animal Maximalism came to my attention. I am completely intrigued and enthralled by your performance art pieces and projects you have created. For this paper, I would love to have your view on performance art and Maximalism. I am interested in hearing some of your methods about performance art and Maximalism. It is rare in art history to be able to have contact with the artist, hence my excitement. If you do not mind sharing your opinion, I would like to know how you feel performance art engages audiences and pushes them to connect on a higher level to art? Also, why are we seeing a shift towards more performance art pieces in museums and galleries? I feel that audiences want to have a full sensory experience. How does Maximalist performance art achieve this better than other medium of art? N: I practice a process of allowance where I let myself do what I want. This approach results in maximum data and action. By letting myself engage with an array of modalities I can generate multiple outcomes and possibilities. Because I'm not limited to any single mode of involvement, I'm free to use painting, performance, photography, or video or a mixture of modalities as I find necessary depending on my agenda and instinct. This suits my athletic, resourceful, and determined nature. I approach performance art in the same way I would approach any other art modality- by paying close attention to gut instincts and psychic impressions in a process designed to override cerebral programming. The aim is always to align action with intention, and make note of the findings and outcome along the way. Performance art is a good choice when the concept I'm grappling with calls for a human body, action, or a narrative to actuate the outcome, especially literal concepts like worshiping the golden calf or using blood to cleanse things. My body can become a tool, a stand-in, or effigy of or for the viewer, creating a point of commonality to facilitate access. Aligning action with intention is also a way to re-frame ritual and an attempt to validate the effectiveness of approaches historically relegated to realms of religious structures and beliefs. I was recently invited to teach an art theory class for kids at The Hudson Valley Sudbury School. Through our discussions it emerged that the students felt most drawn to art practices and outcomes that suited the nature, mentality, and necessity of the individual artist. For instance they could relate to how Chuck Close became successful at painting faces as a result of his lifelong struggle with a facial recognition disorder. In reflecting on my personal method it occurs to me that my mode of operation is dictated by my nature, I didn't choose to function within the Maximalism approach and philosophy, it's just that the philosophy happens to align with my nature. I'm a serial over-doer of all things who relishes the opportunity to push things too far. My work is reactionary because I'm a reactionary person. For instance the first time I encountered minimalism I was ready to explode in a thousand directions. And, as an art student I couldn't help but challenge typical art professor's slogans such as "You have to know when to stop." Of course I could recognized the academically dictated stopping point but I would never in a million years stop there. I've always felt that learning how to challenge, push, or destroy something is a valid study when handled respectfully and with intention. Performance art is an another mode of operating for artists to use in order to find or generate new information, to experiment with creating new experiences, or to try to express something they otherwise couldn't. It can engage the viewer in an intimate way offering the potential to build powerful experiences as it facilitates a space that can involve and include the viewer in a novel physical or psychic way. It's possible that since performance art inhabits walking space where gallery-goers would otherwise be moving about, a psychic connection is created by sharing the same space. As viewers, we know less about what it would be like to hang motionless on a wall. Performance art offers a platform for artists to practice aligning action with intention, a way to possibly re-frame ritual and to build experimental new models for of control or power to replace outmoded religious structures and beliefs. But also, It's possible the performance art trend might be a way for artists to backhandedly confront consumerism and elitism simultaneously, or at least to create the illusion of doing so. Commercial galleries and academic environments can be market driven or exclusive, but performance art has the ability to dissolve those traditional notions and to expand viewership by engaging broader mentalities in a way that would be difficult for strictly visual work focused on heady concepts or dollar amounts. And since we live in a culture of visual bombardment, where viewer's digitally conditioned eyes and minds are increasingly savvy, and in conjunction with consumer programming, we need something that can function both inside of and outside of commercial gallery and academic paradigms. There is a literal dissolution of boundaries. Since performance art is impervious to ownership and commodification, it pushes against market-driven capitalist structures and challenges a system where finances determine success. Issues of marketability, ownership, or commodity all come into play because its difficult to financially capitalize off of performance art. So, maybe it's like most trends- timely and culturally necessity. I developed the Animal Maximalism exhibition concept as a way to bombard the human sensory input manifold with the intention of revealing cloaked information. I use the word "Animal" as an homage to instinct. For me academia operated through reversal, fueling my defiance more than refining me the way school is supposed to, so part of my mission has always been to build legitimate framework for us animals, one that is less cage-like, and Maximalism is a good framework for that agenda. I try to work within and build upon systems that already exist that might reflect and support my authentic nature, and to allow my work to reflect and be a response to the full spectrum of my body's biologic manifestation of its own history within its cultural environment. Maximalism feels like science-fiction, in that it offers the potential for system building where the inward personal landscape can travel all the way outward through the giant jumbled experience of collective household, community, country, and planetary psychic connections. Maybe performance offers an easier access point to the viewer in that we can all relate to each other as humans who are human shaped and have human form. We all share common ways of moving our human forms through space. It's possible that performance could function to create a portal, like a way out or a way in.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... MOTHER VS GOD A short creepy video by Nina Isabelle September 28, 2016 The Dead Are Not Quiet was organized by Scott Mitchell Putesky, an artist and musician best known for his work as the guitarist and co-founder of the musical group Marilyn Manson. the exhibition will run concurrently with “The Haunted Art of T. Jefferson Carey. Exhibiting Artists in The Dead Are Not Quiet include Addison Stonestreet, Alex Ingram, Alison Chen & Michael Covello, Anne Pelej, Cayce Wheelock, Clayton Llewellyn, Dakota Noot, Dan Adams, Daniel Corona, David Russell Talbott, Emily Hastings, Eric Potts, Garrett Wear, Hannah Johansen, Hugh Schock, Ivy Guild, Janice Grinsell, Jenya Armen, John Purlia, John Straub, Julia Oldham, Karim Shuquem, Kurosh Yahyai, Larry Caveney, Liza Hennessey Botkin, Lucas Novak, Maidy Morhous, Michelle Mueller + Erik Mueller, Natalie Meredith, Nathaniel Clark, Nina Isabelle, PANCA, Paul Koester, Philip Petrie, Rita Miglioli, Robin Spalding, Shahla Rose, Sheena Rae Dowling, Wick Alexander, and Yvette Jackson.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... FEMINIST ART GROUP (F.A.G) HURLEY, NY SEPTEMBER 1-4, 2017 THE OLD GLENFORD CHURCH STUDIO IV Castellanos, Amanda Hunt, Miette, Anya Liftig, Elizabeth Lamb, Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, Lorene Baboushian, Valerie Sharp, Kate Hamberger, Linda Montano, Ernest Goodmaw, Jennifer Zackin, Clara Diamond, Nina Isabelle

Inspired by Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack published in 1930, I carved a 15' wooden stake from a white pine tree removed from my property and designed a welded steel foundation to support and direct its potential in a specific way. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE GIANT WOODEN STAKE FOR DESTROYING PSYCHIC VAMPIRES Inspired by Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack published in 1930, I carved an 11' wooden stake from a white pine tree removed from my property and designed a welded steel foundation to support and direct its potential in a specific way. There was a nearly dead forty-five foot tall white pine tree on my property that I needed to remove because it was next to a home with a newborn. I was overwhelmed by its potential for destruction as well as the terror at having to take responsibility. I feared it might smash a building or kill someone but I felt frozen to take action. Normally, I figure out a way to do things myself, but in this case I knew I had no ability to take down such a tree and I was having trouble finding a tree service who was able to schedule the job during the pandemic. I was also paralyzed by the thought of the expense. I wanted to run away, but knew I had to transform my fear and helplessness. I had the idea to approach the problem as an art project as a way to reconnect with my boldness and to remember the feeling of embodying initiative. Once I realized that I could apply methods from my art practice to this life circumstance, art became my teacher, and I began to hear the tree speaking to me saying "Look at me, I'm a giant wooden stake and I want to help you!" At the same time, I was rereading Dion Fortune's book Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack published in 1930 where she discusses the literal manifestation of vampiric energies and vampires themselves as people, circumstances, experiences, and entities that deplete us for their own gain. I had read the book as a young person and was now surprised to realize how her description of this system had maintained its relevance and how it paralleled the language of healthy boundaries as discussed in contemporary psychology. Vampiric energies accumulate through life experiences and interactions with other people and entities who intentionally or not connect their psyche to us. Unhealthy past relationships, traumas, and global events like the pandemic have the potential to develop longterm harmful effects on our beings and we need to develop tools to combat this dynamic. Thinking and working this way is one way art processes can help us. I designed, built, and activated the tree into a large healing tool sculpture that can neutralize the effects of psychic vampirism and other unhealthy energetic connections that impact our wellbeing. To start, I stripped the bark off of an eleven-foot length of the white pine and my son helped me with his chainsaw to carve one end into a sharp point. The base is a prism made of two welded steel equilateral triangle structures that elevate and position the point of the sculpture directly at heart level maximizing its power to blast away the psychic and etheric connections one inadvertently accumulates throughout life. The sculpture is a giant cleansing machine. It targets etheric and energetic fields and tethers that become attached to ones outer bodies over time. It's meant to cleanse the outer bodies by obliterating unhealthy energies and connections, prohibit vampiric energies from sinking their fangs into the many dimensions of our psychic, physical, mental and emotional spheres, and to destroy the parasitic relationship dynamic vampires establish and maintain with our physical host bodies against our will and awareness. The sculpture is interactive. People were invited to stand in front of it, connect with its design, and have their own healing experience. MAY 1 - 29, 2021 ART/LIFE INSTITUTE 185 ABEEL ST. KINGSTON, NY OPENING MAY 1st 6:PM - 9:PM MID-MONTH RECEPTION - MAY 15th 6:PM - 9:PM CLOSING EVENT MAY 29th - 6:PM - 6:PM

Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... LOCATIONAL TRAUMA TRANSFORM JUNE 23, 2016 The Locational Trauma Transforming Trap was constructed by Neva & Nina Isabelle as an action to align with the intention of absorbing and transforming physical trauma such as broken bones, head injury, and the visual implant of witnessing blood as well as emotional and physical damage to the bodies and psyches of friends and family. A handwoven trauma trap was constructed using black silk. Coated with gymnastics chalk, The Trauma Trap was used to absorb and transform trauma located at 40.8987° N, 77.3561° W. The contaminated trap was then hand washed in a mountain spring in order do dislodge the traumas from multiple physical geographic and bodily locations. One participant reports that the best tricks she learned in Gymnastics was "how to not feel pain."

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE VIDEO MANIFESTATION SYSTEM A METHODOLOGY FOR MANUFACTURING NEW REALITIES Released by HUMAN TRASH DUMP on ARCHIVE.ORG NOVEMBER 2017 Download Video Manifestation System from HUMAN TRASH DUMP here: https://archive.org/details/htdc005 (CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VMS USER ARCHIVE ) Free download: The VMS User Manual INTRODUCTION The Video Manifestation System offers users a radicalized system to build and shape reality. By interlacing specific VMS concepts like user approach, intention, perception, and language with the Multidimensional Human Perception Apparatus, VMS offers users a tool to build useful realities while simultaneously eliminating outmoded corporeality. VMS transforms beneficial etherial notions, wishes, dreams or ideas into tangible reality. By psychically entangling multiple abstractions extrapolated from the experimental statistics and algebraic concepts that have preceded non-locality, quantum teleportation, and superdense coding, VMS aligns intention with action to produce a compact five-minute digital video capable of manufacturing realities. Complete with prescriptive application suggestions for maximum results, users enjoy a simple ten-step interface with infinite reality building possibilities. VMS incorporates a biopsychospiritual approach to reality building which expands upon a model of human cognition developed by neuroscientist Karl Pribram and physicist David Bohm called the holonomic brain theory that describes the brain as a holographic storage network. By stretching the boundaries of the holonimic brain to include the holonomic energy bodies, VMS is able to access The Multidimensional Human Perception Apparatus (MHPA,) an invisible system capable of transducing the seen and unseen systems of the inner and outer holonomic energy bodies. Shaped like an amorphic electronic cloud, and made up of subatomic elementary particles like tau neutrinos within and surrounding the body, the MHPA remains unbound by namable physical structures and is key to rediscovering the reality manufacturing capabilities once central to human functioning. Prolonged interface with the slow and heavy dimension of physical reality has jammed up and run down the MHPA. Over time, central manifestation components of the MHPA, such as gut biomes and subquantum receptive structures within the cerebral spinal fluid surrounding the brain and brainstem, have become ineffective. VMS works to restore the MHPA functions by engaging users in a process intended to distract the conscious linear logic mind, effectively creating an intentional feedback loop. Building reality begins with perception. With the conscious linear logic mind out of the way, the inner workings of the MHPA are allowed to surface and be directed toward reality building ventures. Designed to facilitate singular and multiple aspects of both internal and external realities through its micro/macro input manifold, VMS is an effective tool for revising a broad range of issues and circumstances ranging from internal personal mental and emotional struggles like boredom, lethargy, dyscalculia, co-dependance, and heartbreak to physical conditions like high blood pressure, whip lash, sciatica, poison ivy, aphasia, temporal lobe epilepsy, and broken bones. VMS also makes it possible to address complex problems within a community or family dynamic such as authoritarianism, prolonged bitter quarrels, dishonesty, and miscommunications and is also a powerful instrument for reshaping dysfunctional pieces of corporeal reality not limited to broken waste oil burners, miscalibrated stopwatches, busted serpentine belts, misaligned zippers or stuck elevators. Larger external dangers such as injustices due to the abuse of political or economic power systems like racism, genocide, domestic violence, mass shootings, Satanic cults, and violent regimes have also proved pliant. As an interface, VMS connects humans to powerful forces of nature and offers a way to transform destructive energies resulting from disasters like tsunamis, pollution, wild fires, blight, drought, crop damage, nuclear war, sink holes and volcanos into a generative force fueled by natural and cosmic elements that can be directed into new realities or dispersed as weather phenomena. Users are encouraged to think galactic. VMS has been proven useful for wrangling cosmic energies, entities as well as astral bodies like planets, moons, black and worm holes, comets, solar storms, and supernovas.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... CITIZEN PARTICIPATION: DIAGRAMS & DIRECTIVES FEMINIST ART GROUP (IV Castellanos, Amanda Hunt, Nina Isabelle & Thea Little) ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space 292 E. 3rd St. NYC May 6, 2018 Organized by Esther Neff & Steven Englander Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group / Thea Little Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group / Thea Little Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group / Nina Isabelle Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group / Amanda Hunt Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group / IV Castellanos Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff Feminist Art Group Citizen Participation : Diagrams & Directives / ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space / photos by Esther Neff

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... FEMINIST ART GROUP (F.A.G.) doing JUST SITUATIONS June 23, 2017 Grace Exhibition Space Brooklyn, NY "Just Situations is a hybrid conference, festival, and “political science fair,” hosting artists and active citizens who are working in performative ways, moving beyond the trending commercialization of art “about” politics, into non-representational and non-reproductive modes of performance which directly construct, speculate, design. position, and posit “just” forms of political, social, and personal human being and becoming." "States of unknowing, collectivity transcending and social becoming are workshopped and parsed, particulated and presented." JUST SITUATIONS is a project of the Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (BIPAF). BIPAF is an ongoing (since 2013), communal, and demi-anonymous/open-source platform for performance of socially-constructive institutional critique. https://justsituations.wordpress.com/ IMG_E6818 Thea Little, IV Castellanos Elizabeth Lamb Quinn Dukes Elizabeth Lamb Elizabeth Lamb Elizabeth Lamb Elizabeth Lamb Elizabeth Lamb, IV Castellanos 1/1

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... SEEMRIPPER A conceptual video-performance demonstrating artist as self replicator The Elizabeth Foundation As Far As The Heart Can See Curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez October 2018 Seemripper was produced using The Self-Limiting Conceptual Video Production Process; a system that interlaces action, duration, direction, speed, sound, color, sequence, subject and object to form a linear audio and visual arrangement. The Self-Limiting Conceptual Video Production Process was designed as a system to sidestep consciousness in order to access lateral dimensions of awareness and is a continuation of The Video Manifestation System released by Human Trash Dump in January 2018. The video-performance frames the artist as a self replicator caught in a recursive loop of infinite destruction and renewal generated by the physical and quantum relationships between fire, water, air, metal and earth. This project was initiated by Linda Mary Montano as part of 'In Honor Of,' a performance series Curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful with curatorial fellow JP - Anne Giera at The Elizabeth Foundation in New York City on October 20, 2018. Performers were nominated by artists featured in 'As Far As The Heart Can See' (Nao Bustamante, Billy X. Curmano, Irina Danilova & Project 59, Beatrice Glow, Ivan Monforte, Linda Mary Montano, Praxis (Delia & Brainard Carey), Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle, and Martha Wilson & Franklin Furnace Archive) and include former mentees, current students, assistants and younger artists whose work they admire: Elena Bajo Bajo, Sindy Butz, Larissa Gilbert, Nina Isabelle and Xinan (Helen) Ran.

Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... PAINTINGS 2017 1-2017 - 43.50 x 62.25 Acrylic on Canvas 43.50 x 62.25 2017 2-2017 43.50 x 62.25 Acrylic on Canvas 43.50 x 62.25 2017 3-2017 - 43.50 x 62.25 Acrylic on Canvas 43.50 x 62.25 2017 Paintings in the studio Paintings in the studio In 2017, I made these large abstract paintings using a four-inch brush to drag six colors sequentially across each surface. With each new color came the erasure of what came before, each mark both creating and subtracting, layering presence over absence. Seven years later, I revisit these works through the lens of my history as a climber, seeing how physical instinct and embodied decision-making shape both artmaking and movement. In making these paintings, I explored the boldness required to act, to trust the body’s sense of direction apart from rational logic. The process feels akin to bouldering: reading a route, sensing where the holds might be, and moving through uncertainty with focus and commitment. Sometimes instinct leads to success; other times it fails completely. Yet in both art and climbing, these moments of failure become gifts that reveal what we know, what we don’t, and how understanding and discovery emerge through the body. Like artmaking, climbing demands presence, intuition, and courage. Both acts arise from a need for momentum and discovery, from testing the limits of embodied perception. Through these works, I consider how the body: its history, effort, and instinct, can guide creative process and generate knowledge beyond the rational or cerebral. This approach also resists the elitism and performative intellectualism that too often alienate people from art. The creative, experimental, and playful processes of both artmaking and climbing are accessible to all humans, regardless of social, educational, and economic backgrounds, offering a way of being that reconnects us with our shared humanity. I began climbing in 1990. My main stomping grounds were the boulders and trad routes of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake City. I also climbed extensively in Indian Creek, City of Rocks, Yosemite, and Zion, focusing on trad routes, bouldering, freeing aid routes, as well as scouting, exploring, and developing hidden spots around Gunnison and the Southwest as a proto–dirtbag van-life kid.

Silver gelatin prints & hand made photograms by Nina Isabelle (1989-1999) HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... SILVER GELATIN PRINTS 1989-1999 A Collection of gelatin silver prints made from photograms, handmade negatives, and experimental darkroom photographic processes. Mother Selenium toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print Selenium toned silver gelatin print 7x9 toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print Selenium toned silver gelatin print 7x9 toned silver gelatin print prismacolor on toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print sepia toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print Selenium toned silver gelatin print 7x9 1/1

Nina A. Isabelle is a process-based multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS More... THE BEDROOM 4th Iteration THE HOLLAND TUNNEL GALLERY Brooklyn, NY October 20 - November 12 The Bedroom is an international monochromatic flux installation by The Women Artist Team. The 3rd Iteration was exhibited at NA Gallery in Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea.