janessa clark

EVERGREEN/EVERGREEN 2.0 (2023-present)

 Still in early development, EVERGREEN builds on Clark’s decade-long process of collaborating with unknown creative agents. Originally organized via The Tiny Dances Project, which invited anonymous authors to contribute letters disclosing memories, secrets, and confessions for activation and inclusion in a series of digital and physical artifacts preserving one’s presence, the process now turns to a new unknown: Artificial Intelligence. Examining the ways in which cultures are constructed, and the roles that storytelling, trace, decay, respectful appropriation, and agency play in co-authoring new futures, EVERGREEN engages a human performer in dialogue and co-authorship with AI to bring to life new narratives and stories forged from the archives or our collective unconscious. Can the ultimate non-human hold space for us to submerge ourselves in an encounter tasked with knocking at the door of those vital, non-transferable characteristics that make us human?

Direction, Choreography, and Prompt Crafting by Janessa Clark

Technology Consultant Marlon Barrios Solano

This project phase is supported with research funds from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An earlier non-AI version of this research was supported by Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) during a Parent Artist Space Grant in 2023. It featured performers/collaborators Bree Breeden and Kathleen Kelley.