12 Minutes Max

12 Minutes Max is a curated monthly performance series featuring short works by local artists in many disciplines.

Ben Swisher will be sharing a new short visual album, entitled "A Windchime", which attempts to answer a series of questions:
What do you think of when you hear the sound of a windchime? 
What can the response be to an abundance of music and things?
What can albums look like in a moment with less room for focusing on one thing at a time?
Can something small expand the available time in a world which leaves us so little to spend?
Are windchimes a suitable metaphor for how special and brief all of life is and how before-its-time any stopping is?
Why did the sound of my neighbor's windchime make me think about all of this?
Ben is “frequently a musician and sometimes an artist” from Seattle, now based in Salt Lake. He has made work for and collaborated with Deseret Experimental Opera, Wasatch Contemporary Dance, Westben Performer-Composer Residency, Song Club Records, and local artists such as Jasmine Stack and James Talbot. In April, he will be contributing music to a performance at 801 Salon with Bly Wallentine, Roxanne Gray, and Scout Invie.

Elijah Hancock and Melissa Younker will present an excerpt from their project “Snapshots & Souvenirs''. They have combined their artistic curiosities to collaborate in a musically driven performance art work. “Snapshots & Souvenirs” is a reflection of memory. Each song/dance is a snapshot of moments in their ancestors' histories and personal pasts. Elijah and Melissa find comfort and comedy in their shared understanding about the souvenirs we carry.  A vocal artist and multi-instrumentalist, Elijah has specialties in songwriting, opera and choir. Melissa is a multi-disciplinary movement artist with experience in dance performance, choreography and costuming.

Willow Skye-Biggs will screen her film “Vapor Trails”:  - It is 1997 in a parallel universe amidst the backdrop of a not too distant war. Two displaced trans-lesbian lovers find transcendence through connection. - Willow creates emotive works drawing on interests in the human, non human, supernatural and the spiritual.  Her work is strongly informed by her personal experiences as a lesbian, transgender and autistic woman. She has spent much of her career exploring possibilities in electro-acoustic music production, creating and releasing more than 30 albums.  In 2009 she was invited to perform at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and ZBT gallery in Lisbon Portugal. In 2017, Willow presented a solo exhibition at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art entitled "Tastes Like Mandy" which combined sound, light, and sculpture into an immersive, surreal emotional environment. Willow’s films have played at numerous film festivals including Fear no Film and Davey Fest in Salt Lake City, and the Toronto Queer Film Festival and No Name Festival in Canada.  In 2022 she was the recipient of a Utah Arts and Museums Career Empowerment Grant that funded the film “Vapor Trails”.  Later that year she received a Career Advancement Grant from the Salt Lake Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts to produce her film “Dragonfly” which will screen this Spring/Summer.

This program is modeled after 12 Minutes Max, a performance laboratory originated by On the Boards in Seattle.

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