Tony Whitfield is a multimedia artist, designer and educator whose practice draws upon collaborative relationships to present and interpret urban experience to illuminate social change, particularly in the lives of underrepresented populations, engendering greater understanding of the histories that underpin current cultural phenomena.



During his residency at Camargo, he will be focused on the development of the narrative and textual content of the video and audio- visual components of Over Deep Water, a multimedia theatrical meditation on the experience of caregiving; and Garden Under Bluer Skies, an installation inspired by the palliative potential of herbal naturopathic practices from which HIV/AIDS drug therapies were derived. These two projects will be presented as part of This Dancerie, a cycle of work that explores a century of gay male queer life in Paris and New York. These works recognize the 25th anniversary in 2021 of the implementation of three drug therapies, transforming AIDS/HIV from a terminal illness to a manageable chronic condition.

Photo by Tony Whitfield.

A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Caroline Monnet, Martha Colburn, and Loren Connors. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, and keyboards, often sings through a megaphone, and is a producer of capacious field recordings.



She has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast. Ortman is the recipient of the 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, the 2016 Art Matters Grant, the 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, the 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency and the 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency. She is also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Ortman lives in Brooklyn, New York.



As she embarks on the creation of a new work at Camargo, she plans to do ambient field recordings at the Calanques National Park and in Cassis to gather new compositional textures.

Photo by Nanobah Becker and Blackhorse Lowe.