︎ CONTACT:
erykadellenbach@gmail.com
CONTENTS-
PBS
photos by Jono Melamed (2023)
photos by Whitney Browne (2023)
E r y k a D e l l e n b a c h (they)
is a genderfluid filmmaker, performance artist and educator based in the Sonoran Southwest (Turtle Island/US). Their embodied films and performances are rites of passage for themselves and collaborators driven by consent practices, inquisitive hedonisms, corporeal excavation and a belief in the capacity for mutual transformation through collaboration and art-as-life process. Their works mine relationships to power, the malleability of consciousness and psychophysical thresholds.
Their process and technique have been informed by studies in dances of resistance including Butoh, flamenco and martial arts. They are grateful to the teachers who have offered potent dances and knowledges influencing their path: Wendy Clinard & Sonia Sanchez (flamenco), Atsushi Takenouchi, Yumiko Yoshioka and Vangeline (Butoh), Chen Huixian (Chen Taiji) & Yunuen Rhi (Baguazhang), and Mestre Besouro Preto Manganga (capoeira). They have worked with artists across mediums including Yunuen Rhi, Martin Toloku, Atsushi Takenouchi, Tino Sehgal, Amanda Gutierrez, Tori Wrånes, Éva Mag, Matty Davis, Nola Sporn Smith, Amelia de Rudder/La Casa de Satanas and the band HOGG.
Eryka has presented work at venues such as Alliance Française Kumasi (Ghana), crazinisT artisT studio (Ghana), Communitism (Greece), Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church, Coaxial Arts (LA), Casa Moloch (MX), Lausanne Underground Music & Film Festival (Switzerland), Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Roulette Intermedium, Green River Cemetery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Intuit Outsider Art Museum, Links Hall, No Nation Gallery, and at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art (Russia). They have been a resident artist at perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Ghana), eX...it! international butoh dance exchange and performance festival (Germany), Earthdance (MA), Echo Luna (Ukraine) and Cucalorus (NC).
They earned a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University 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.
They are a Senior Videographer and Editor at Arizona Public Media, and continue to work independently as a freelance filmmaker, performance artist, choreographer, educator and interviewer. They are a celluloid filmmaking instructor at MONO NO AWARE, a collaborator of the transnational group HEKLER and an advocate with California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). They are a board member of Movement Culture, LLC (Tucson, AZ).
︎ ︎
image by Raven JacksonHome
NEWS
NEWS
2022
![]()
Nola, Apt. (2020) has been selected to screen at TEASR Short Film Festival. The festival is organized by Tucson Erotica and will take place at The Screening Room on Saturday, March 19 at 7:30 pm. 
2021
Honored to share new ritual film made in collaboration with Yunuen Rhi K’i’ik I’inaj: Blood Seeds for the Next Planting in the context of Ron Athey’s and Hermes Spittako’s world premiere of their new film Pasiphäe, Witch Queen of Crete: A Gloryhole Origin Story along with other incredible artists working in performance and film and discussion with Suzy Halajian + Maria F Dolores at Communitism in Athens, Greece.
PANEL DISCUSSION
Suzy Halajian (USA)
Maria F Dolores (Greece)
Ron Athey (USA)
PERFORMANCE by
Niko Rupllem (BERLIN)
Grigoria Vryttia (Greece)
NERISISTY (Greece)
Carnival Queen (Greece)
VIDEO SCREENINGS by
Anh Vo (USA)
Al/ice/ex with Fung Neo,Mis Saigo & Vit Trojanovsky (London)
Angelos Charalambous (Cyprus)
Angel Torticollis (Greece)
Avi Krispin + Peter Vandrie
Bianca Lyla Clifford (Australia)
Nicole Oike (Italy)
Dylan Meade (Greece)
Federica Dauri (Italy)
Hermes Pittakos (Cyprus)
ReveRso (Berlin)
Eggs and Legs (Greece)
Yunuen Rhi y Eryka Dellenbach (Mexico USA)
Vasiliki Lazaridou (Greece)
Lechedevirgen Trimegisto (Mexico)
INSTALLATION by Saint Profanus (USA)
Click for facebook event
New ritual film in collaboration with Yunuen Rhi premieres at Coaxial Arts in LA with simultaneous in-the-flesh screening and Q&A with Yunuen at Casa Moloch in YucatánK’i’ik I’inaj:
Blood Seeds for the Next Planting
Sunday October 24th, 7PM PST
This event will be live-streamed on Coaxial Arts website
Curated by Yunuen Rhi
The night of video performance streaming will feature ‘Cuir’ performance videos from Xicanx, Mexican, Colombian, Chilean and Bolivian artists.
The intention is to create a collective transnational offering to permeate the viewers’ imaginaries and call upon them to contest the gaze of hegemonic power play that results in violence and mass exodus of people especially from Latin America to the US and their subsequent detention in cages and/or disappearance.
The call to action is for accountability in our everyday actions—to breathe consciousness amidst the white washing we are complicit with and to forge radically tender ties as ways to transmute the roles we have been placed in.
Click here for the event page to learn more about the artists
We are excited for Schroon Lake to screen at the Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival in Switzerland in the company of so many powerful artists!
Click here for event page
Ghanian multimedia artist and collaborator Martin Toloku and I presented film and material relics from our performance and installation piece Hedge Subs[tan]titute made during my residency at perfocraZe at the Alliance Française in Kumasi, Ghana in the show or.ga.nis.mus
HEKLER Assembly (Fall 2021): Infrastructures of Care is an online study program that will explore the relationship between civic engagement and collectivity through art practice and pedagogy.
Over the course of 12 weeks we will critically consider the histories, ethics, and aesthetics of community-engaged art practices that emphasize collaboration, situated knowledge, and collective action. We will do this through participatory workshops, presentations, study groups, peer-to-peer work, and on-site interventions. Participants will gain knowledge and experience in collaborative and collective work methodologies, organizing tools, and resources that will be made into a printed and digital twin publication.
Infrastructures of Care has been developed by our mighty group of organizers through months of convening, collective thinking and creating the syllabus. At this time, we have the capacity for 15 participants in a cohort. The cohort will attend 12 sessions in total, 6 private and 6 public programs.
LINK TO REGISTER, DONATE & LEARN MORE
RASTRUCTURES OF CARE INFRASTRUCTURES OF CARE
PREMIERE: The Long Way Home
(now available in Embodied Filmmaker page on this website)
![]()
![]()
The Long Way Home, a film made in collaboration with Christopher-Rasheem McMillan commisioned by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will premiere on Aug 19, 7pm ***EST @bmcmuseum, link
N E W S
2020
![]()
SCHROON LAKE selected to screen at Ann Arbor academy award qualifying, experimental and avante garde film festival on March 24
![]()
Participating Artist for in Perfocraze Artist Residency for two months 2021 !!
![]()
![]()
![]()
AntiFear session zines are available for download via HEKLER. You can click on the images above to view that particular session zine.
SCHROON LAKE selected to screen at Ann Arbor academy award qualifying, experimental and avante garde film festival on March 24
You
Hekler’s ANTI FEAR series are initiated in collaboration with New York-based artist and neurologist Sonja Blum. It is an evolving collective practice aiming in this time of crisis and change for a space decidedly between cultural/theoretical dialogue and therapeutic discourse. It is envisioned as a space in which we bring privately held fears into community with others' fears to embrace vulnerability and open collective experiments in community-building, trust, and reimagining the commons. This work is explored through poetry, movement/body work, breathing exercises and meditations, readings, lectures and other practices that untie repressive knots and make us feel empowered, imaginative and hopeful.
![]()
Online screening premiere of NOLA, apt. and Q&A with filmmakers Muyassar Kurdi, Art Jones, MV Carbon and myself
RSVP here
![]()
![]()
Schroon Lake online screening premiere at Cucalorus Film Festival (NC) November 21-24
Ticket Link
Q&A (November 23, 7pm EST) RSVP link
2019
Aftermath & Intimacy will open on Feb. 20 with a private performance event on Feb. 20th at 7pm featuring readings by visceral poet and filmmaker Raven Jackson and Make the Brutal Tender with Chicago-based, embodied sound artist Hanna Elliott present and dancer Nola Sporn Smith. Inquire within, capacity is limited to 35.
201
![]()
![]()
US premiere of Mother Sparrow film with live performance of Make the Brutal Tender with Nola Sporn Smith and Eryka Dellenbach and Dacha ensemble @ Roulette Intermedium Jan. 28, 8pm (doors 7pm) Buy Tickets
B
![]()
Visible Poetry Project 2020 filmmaker, paired with first choice poet Homa Zarghamee. Film to premiere in 2020, based on Homa’s poem entitled When Falling Asleep and Dreaming the Room from her published work A Long Drawn Face
Visiting Film Artist of Grant Wood Fellow Tony Orrico alongside Matty Davis
(Above: 35mm site-specific process photograph of Tony Orrico & Matty Davis)
(35mm
ONE DAY ONLY: Feb. 21, 3-9pm
@ Caravaglia Studio, 830 Broadway NY, NY 10003, buzzer #2
Photography by Maria Baranova
Embodied Filmmaker
![Hedge Subs[tan]titute (performance film with Martin Toloku, in post)](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f2265db51eb7e32f2f5db8d16d4a213286f17fe632a4aced7044f995dcca2d0f/reflection3.jpg)
SET DESIGN & PROJECTIONIST COLLABORATION
an experimental documentary + performance film, August 2021
commissioned by Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
performance and being: Christopher-Rasheem McMillan
cinematography + editing: Eryka Dellenbach
18 mins.
“The Long Way Home,” a new experimental documentary + performance film by Christopher-Rasheem Mcmillan and Eryka Dellenbach, poses a way of contending with the Black body as a composite body, one that is connected to, affirms, and disrupts the archive and Historiography. Through solo dance performance, McMillan tracks the Merce Cunningham technique through diaspora, emphasizing that the diaspora is never the homeland: it’s never home, it’s always somehow both exile in migration and in travel; different from, yet somehow always in dialogue with, its genesis.”
-Christopher-Rasheem McMillan
Link to original event: https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/performance-christopher-rasheem-mcmillan/
Film: Eryka Dellenbach
Performance: Nola Sporn Smith
Shot in 2018
Edited in 2020
Location: Eryka’s apartment in Brooklyn
Material: 2x 100 ft. rolls of digitally transferred Color Negative 16mm film
Nola, Apt. features two segments of a solo Eryka witnessed Nola performing when they first met. Partially influenced by visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2013, the solo explores the act of private ritual put on public display, and inversely, the individualization of public ritual.
The Western Wall is the only remains of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, held to be uniquely holy by the ancient Jews and destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. There is a lasting practice of kissing the surface, placing notes, or whispering into the crevices of this wall by visitors. The wall is also strictly divided by gender - women are allotted about half of the space devoted to men - though it is easy to peer through the fencing to witness the practices of those on the other side.
‘A wall is like a projection screen for fantasy, how the further we turn away from the outside world, the deeper we go within - and also, the blinder we become to what surrounds us. ‘ (Nola, 2020)
Switching the context of Nola’s performance [back] to a private setting brings the work to a confrontation with its own vulnerability. Adding a third layer of celluloid film documentation creates a new, fragile dynamic between performer and viewer. The editing of the performance by the filmmaker emphasizes the sensual element in the performance and juxtaposes choreographic moments located at the poles of the brutal, and the more gentle, perceived through the lens of the female gaze.
S C R E E N I N G S
Outpost Artist Resources (NY), Cuts and Burns screening, Sunday November 15 7pm EST followed by Q&A: RSVP here
TEASR (Tucson, AZ), Tucson Erotica, The Screening Room, Saturday March 19, 2022 7:30pm MST
Arkansas, 2018-19
This collection of images was taken within personal interstices as well as on the field throughout the course of working on the multidisciplinary research project ‘Until it reached into our lives and destroyed the tranquility that we had‘. The project was initiated by Michael Maizels in collaboration with Matty Davis and carried us to Mena, the Ouchita National Forest, active and bygone air runways, as well as up and down a 10,000 ft. vertical pathway out of a plane.
