Caden will discuss the history of Big Art Group, their works, and their framework for building and executing their performances. In the realization of the work, the company developed several strategies and techniques for performance training. Among these are Real-Time Film; Movement-based training in awareness of the video camera and its frame; and strategies for mediated presence. Caden will also discuss the company’s tactics of Queering Character: creating a character that exists only as an assemblage of the effort of several actors working as a group, negotiating representation from moment to moment, and existing as a cyborg.

Caden Manson is a performance and media artist, co-founder of the performance/media ensemble Big Art Group, editor at Contemporary Performance, and curates the annual Special Effects Festival in NYC. Caden has co-created, directed, media and set designed 22 Big Art Group productions; shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; and performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore, and Vietnam. Big Art Group has toured throughout Europe and North North America and has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Manson is a Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, Pew Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. and has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, Theater der Zeit, and Theater Journal. Caden is the Director of The Theatre Program at Sarah Lawrence College BA, MFA