Encounter Machines
Monday, March 3, 2025 at 5:00pm
The Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown
Free and open to the public
Encounter Machines is a work-in-progress manifesto that seeks to find new relevance between architecture and opera, exploring questions of scale, queerness, fragmentation, failure, and more. The text draws on Peter Zuspan’s work designing spaces for performance (including the National Sawdust and Bushwick Starr) as well as his ongoing research on the spatial limits and possibilities of new and experimental opera. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with the multidisciplinary artist Helga Davis.
This is the second event in the series AFTERWORDS: assembly.
AFTERWORDS is the Center for the Arts' public program series, asking: what happens after the encounter with the work of art? Each year, AFTERWORDS is organized around a keyword addressing different dimensions of art’s capacity to not only reflect but to transform the world. To assemble is both to come together and to make or construct. These two meanings are inextricable: to come together is to make something (like a “we”) out of nowhere; to make or construct something out of other things rests on the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. How does art take up this power of assembly? How does it call assemblies into being? And, in the wake of what art helps us assemble, what other work remains to be done?
Learn more about AFTERWORDS: assembly events.
Peter Zuspan is the founding principal of Bureau V Architecture (BVA), an award-winning interdisciplinary studio based in Brooklyn, New York. BVA’s work includes architecture for nonprofits such as National Sawdust, the Bushwick Starr, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Trained as both an architect and a musician, Zuspan's work explores the intersection of design and performance. His collaborative work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and MoMA PS1, among other venues. Zuspan was recently an artist in residence with San Francisco Opera's Instigators program, where his work explored the future of opera through the lens of architecture and design. Zuspan is the co-chair of the American Institute of Architects New York chapter’s Cultural Facilities Committee, and has taught architecture at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Syracuse University.
Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages and with firm roots in her local community. She was most principal actor in the 25th anniversary international revival of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s seminal opera Einstein on the Beach. In 2024 she was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation as part of the Cavafy Festival, and will present a new work in 2025 for the 10 year anniversary of National Sawdust. She is host of the eponymous podcast Helga on WQXR, winner of the 2019 Greenfield Prize in composition, and the 2018–21 visiting curator for the performing arts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She serves on the board of the Jerome Foundation.
Read Democracy in Action: Three Alumnae Discuss Collaboration on New Performance Work in The Wesleyan Connection.