︎ CONTACT:
erykadellenbach@gmail.com
CONTENTSE r y k a D e l l e n b a c h (she/they)
is a Chicago-bred filmmaker, choreographer, performer and teaching artist based in California’s East Bay on Lisjan Ohlone territory. Her embodied films, soundscapes and evocative, multidisciplinary performances are rites of carefully designed sensation that mine psychophysical thresholds and the malleability of consciousness. Eryka regards work process as life and values close and longterm collaboration, intimacy with brutal climates, rituals of consent, conflict+resolution, fantasy and world-building.
Her process and technique have been informed by her teachers encountered within and outside of academic institutions: Wendy Clinard (flamenco), Atsushi Takenouchi (Butoh), Vangeline (Butoh), Deborah Stratman (celluloid film), and the late Dr. Waud Kracke (psychoanalytic-anthropologist). She has worked with and performed in the works of an eclectic variety of dance/performance artists including Atsushi Takenouchi, Tori Wränes, Tino Sehgal, Blair Thomas Puppet Theatre, Amanda Gutierrez, HOGG, Michael Zerang & Eva Mag.
Eryka has presented work at Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church, Anthology Film Archives, Roulette Intermedium, Green River Cemetery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Intuit Outsider Art Museum, The Art Institute Museum of Chicago, Links Hall, No Nation Gallery, and internationally at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art (Russia), Spazio Nu (Italy) and Schloss Bröllin (Germany). She has been a resident artist at Earthdance (MA), Echo Luna (Legedzyne, Ukraine), Cucalorus (NC) and will be at Perfocraze in 2021 in Ghana.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the Universiy of Illinois at Chicago, and a master’s degree in Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
She works as a choreographer, performer, artist teacher, performance documentarian, DP, camera operator, and contracted worker. She is a celluloid filmmaking instructor at MONO NO AWARE, and a collaborator of transnational group HEKLER.
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Autobiographical Fragments, 10/14/2020
photograph by Maria Baranova for Faces of Downtown Scene, Gowanus, 2020
As a child, I was inspired by my father's testimonies of hiding silently in trees to hunt deer in the forest preserves surrounding our home. Venturing out alone for hours at a time I slowly cultivated the ability to disappear. Reminiscent of a peeping tom, I would climb trees, hide in shrubs and grasses staying completely still until the animals would come out and go about their life without us. I would study the attention and body mechanics of the non-humans as they moved through the complex, sticky ecosystems beyond the trails and try to emulate them to the best of my human ability. These experiences in the forest, marshes and prairies of the midwest had a powerful impact on the way I read my surroundings and the people I encounter(ed). They also significantly shifted my focus towards the body and taught me over time about the hidden truths that become embedded throughout it and how words often contradict that. It also constituted my formative movement studies and spawned my inclinations that led me towards slow time, long process, Butoh and anthropology.
Polaroid by Raven Jackson, Brooklyn, 2020
Polaroid by Muyassar Kurdi, Ridgewood, 2019