Experience a thought-provoking array of interactive art installations, performances, and films as you journey through 7 Stages to envision the future.
Are we ready to talk about it yet? The ‘F’ word we’ve all been terrified to mutter? The dazzling ‘F’ we all secretly fantasize about exploring, even as recent shifts by certain unnamed variants have forced our dreams into agonizing quarantine yet again? This word sends shivers down spines of warriors, puzzles devoted geniuses, and wipes canvases clean for creators. This is a critical time to ask what we want: How do we move forward with reflection and accountability? How do we dream cultural justice into practice, choose risk over complacency, irreverence over veneration, creation over destruction? What are our darkest nightmares or boldest dreams?
We invite you to explore all the beauty and terror of Curious Future Encounters. This four-day festival brings together artists of many disciplines, providing a platform for boundary-pushing works with a focus on interactive elements. Explore the future as envisioned in live performances and installations by D. Woods, Stephanie Kohler, Diego Serna, Jillian Mitchell and company Kit Modus, Nadya Zeitlin with Katya Kouznetsova & Dima Alekseyev, Mariposas Rebeldes, The Radical Archive of Preservation, and short films by Mark Blane, JJ Watson, James Proctor, Lauren Vick, Nina Marinov, Full Radius Dance, Celeste Miller, Embodied Social Justice, and Sean Dorsey.
If you can’t make it in person, or want to watch the film festival again at home, VIRTUAL FILM FESTIVAL tickets are available at 7Stages.org/tickets and virtual access is included with your in-person ticket!
The festival offers timed-entry tickets, during which small groups of audience members journey through the 7 Stages building. Please arrive 15 minutes before your allotted time and check in at the box office. Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test are required for entry. Masks are mandatory for audience members for the full duration of the experience. For more information on 7 Stages’ health and safety policies, visit https://www.7stages.org/covid-19-health-safety/
Map of 7 Stages during Curious Future Encounters
The Messenger
– Bautanzt Here, teachers and students of the Contemporary Art & Architecture Lab – Interactive installation and performance – Box office Lobby
“We are inviting you to encounter curious Messengers from the Future. They have landed on our planet with a goal to know more about us, humans of the 21st century, our hopes, dreams and expectations about the Future. They are gathering all this information for our successors, who will see and analyze it when their time comes. “
Ditto
– Kit Modus – Interactive Dance performance – Front Lobby
In Ditto, participants are compelled to illuminate their own way through a reflecting and refracting environment that engages a dystopian vision with movement, music, darkness, and light. Developed by Jillian Mitchell, founder of Kit Modus, featuring dancers Meg Gourley, Mary-Evelyn Kirkland, and Emma Morris.
Bosquitzpaplotl
– Mariposas Rebeldes – Installation and workshop – Throughout 7 Stages
Bosquitzpaplotl is an immersive installation by Mariposas Rebeldes, a collective of queer Latinx and Indigenous persons conducting urban agriculture on Mvskoke land in what is now known as Atlanta. Throughout 7 Stages, explore the past, present, and future of urban ecology via “relics, once waste, now transformed into a habitat for Atlanta verdure.” Discussions and workshops revolve around the perpetual impacts of colonialism on local ecology.
Visible
– Diego Serna – Gallery installation – Mainstage Voms
Visible is a two-part gallery representing a journey of transformation, from internal struggles with mental health and self-care to the trials of existing in the public eye and the politics ingrained therein. Serna invites participants to explore uncomfortable and oft-avoided topics to draw forth fresh perspectives.
My Favorite Color Vol. 2: Trouble In Paradise
– D. Woods – Performance – Mainstage
Woods’ interactive concert uses live music, dance, and projected visuals to relay her history as a performer and the tolls that Black artists and entrepreneurs pay while navigating their respective industries. Woods’ cyclical journey began on small stages, took her far and wide, then brought her back to 7 Stages with new experiences and priorities. Participants will be selected to interact from the Mainstage or seating areas. Creator/Performer: D. Woods. Ensemble: Kendre Scales, Liv Crosby. Creative Director: Shanell. Mental Health specialist audio : Raynard Robinson.
Witness Pearl
– T.R.A.P. (The Radical Archive of Preservation) – Mainstage Dressing Room*
Two original short performances pay tribute to Atlanta-based writer and activist Pearl Cleage, whose varied career has included writing and producing several plays at 7 Stages. Each piece re-imagines a slice of Cleage’s life through the lens of performance archivist Shady Radical. The Radical Archive of Preservation is inspired by archival materials including original stage plays written by Cleage (A Song for Coretta and Love and Trouble) produced at 7 Stages. This work acts as a bridge to understanding our collective and unique experiences of the past through an encounter with the present in hopes of creating a better, more compassionate future.
All Bodies Welcome
– Skyeris – Interactive installation – Blackbox hallway
Skyeris explores the natural and mystical cycles through which our bodies interact, bringing together science and mysticism to present all human bodies as part of nature, with a spirit of acceptance, appreciation, and reverence. All Bodies Welcome invites you to reflect and engage, to your degree of comfort, with ways to de-stigmatize our cultural ideas of the body.
CFE FILM FESTIVAL
– Blackbox – In person and online
Narrative Films :
Nine Grams Of Lead – JJ. Watson
When an inbound Soviet missile is detected on a new computer system, an American general finds himself in a position to launch the Atomic bomb.
Running Time – 10 m 20 s
Ghost Bike – Mark Blane
In this allegory on truth and loss, a grieving mother meets a stranger who may hold the key to solving her son’s untimely death.
Directed & Written by Mark Blane
Cast: Tamara Tunie, Mike Doyle, Carly Blane and Mark Blane
Executive Producers: Jenna Mack, Charles Tolbert
Running Time – 19 m 28 s
Experimental Films :
Accept the Poetics of Aging – Celeste Miller
A dance meditation on aging as a moving point on the thread of life.
Choreography, editing and performance by Celeste Miller. Music by Chip Epsten. Shot on location at the Home for Wayward Girls and their Dogs, Sautee Nacoochee, GA.
Running time – 2 m 39 s
Substance – Nina Marinov
SUBSTANCE is a movement experiment. Movement of body, movement of camera, movement of lights, sounds, and textures. Dance that is born from these movements to (hopefully) move your soul. Or calm ours. Filmed in St. Petersburg, Russia and Atlanta, GA. Creative Director : Irina Sergeeva
Running Time – 3 m 1 s
Future Untitled – James Proctor
A work of experimental cinema that focuses on the aesthetic of futurism, while incorporating words and imagery that tell the story of acceleration, exponential growth, and ever increasing novelty.
Running Time – 2 m 39 s
WORK IN PROGRESS – Lauren Vick
This piece examines time, birth/rebirth, youth, hunger – but most importantly it’s about transformation and it’s inevitablity. The choice to change. The choice to swim in the whirlpool of your life that’s taking you with it one way or another. The future will be the now regardless of how we live. But the future we Want, is entirely dependent on that.
Running Time – 2 m 11 s
Masked – Keana Goldsmith
Time has passed after a toxic gas had effected an entire city. A man goes through the daily motions of living in his new reality adorned in a gas mask. During his time alone, he recalls the family that he had lost due to the incident. He mourns their death and reminisces on the past and the could have been future. Masked focuses on the emotional internal struggle of one person alone discovering their own regrets after what always seemed to be there is gone.
Running Time – 8 m 37 s
Dance Films :
Lay Me Down – Diego Serna
“Lay Me Down is a glimpse into a moment in time in my near future. It is a final goodbye to my mother who is battling stage four breast cancer. As the disease continues to deteriorate her, I know the last days will be extremely difficult. This is my way of rewriting the ending in order to remember her in an artistic and beautiful way.” Director of photography: Tim Cofield. Choreographer: Bubba Carr. Aerial choreographer: Max Torandell
Running Time – 5 m 30 s
SEEK/AFTER – Sean Dorsey
Set in a dream-like rocky landscape, this dance film by transgender choreographer Sean Dorsey invites trans, gender-nonconforming and queer communities to imagine and seek expansive Futures and is part of Sean Dorsey Dance’s multi-year project THE LOST ART OF DREAMING (co-commissioned by 7 Stages!)
Running time – 3 m 12 s
Restructure – Full Radius Dance
‘Restructure’ explores the regaining of balance. Confined by our environment but using it as inspiration for movement and dance.The gestures representing earth, water, fire, wind, and the lotus blossom, based on Gorinto, a Japanese type of a Buddhist Tower. The ultimate rebirth.
Running Time – 9 m 5 s
Declaration of Belonging – Embodied Social Justice
Dancers from USA (CA, NY, IL, CO, WA, GA) and Sri Lanka investigate what justice looks and feels like in the body. A shared phrase used as inspiration for each dancer to explore in their own space and filmed individually. Leah Mann, Charne Furcron (dancer/collaborator) and Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp (dancer/film maker). Poetry by Meisaan Chan and Sound score by Saraswati Andrea Lee (Newark, NJ).
Contributing dancers include: Kimberly Bow (Boulder, CO), Amy “Catfox” Campion (Los Angeles, CA), Meisaan Chan (Chicago, IL), Marla Durden (Seattle, WA), Janice Eng (Seattle, WA), Ashley Fargnoli (Sri Lanka), Charne Furcron (Atlanta, GA), Alina Hinton (Atlanta, GA), Brianna Jones (Atlanta, GA), Leah Mann (Vashon Island, WA), Jennifer Nugent (New York, NY), Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp (Rochester, NY), Jessica Scudder (Atlanta, GA) and Jordan Scudder (Atlanta, GA)
Running Time – 8 m 37 s
*As of December 2021, all 7 Stages in-person performances and activities require audiences and staff to wear masks at all times. Food or drinks are also no longer allowed inside the theatres. In addition all artists and patrons are required to provide proof of full vaccination* against COVID-19 or a negative PCR test taken in the last 72 hours. If you are not feeling well, please stay home and do not attend any in-person events! We are happy to exchange any tickets for another time when you are feeling better. Just reach out to the box office 404-523-7647 or Jasmine@7stages.org and we will do our best to accommodate your request.
*Participants are encouraged to bring headphones for select enhanced audio experiences.
*Some encounters feature nudity, strong language, and deal with mature topics. Discretion is advised.
