Past
Grantees

Karen Me Kyung Muckenhirn, Minneapolis, MN, $3,000 (Encouragement). untitled. A 20-minute autobiographical video essay which will explore an adopted Korean womans struggle with the loss of family and culture and its relationship to the search for her sexuality.

Funding of $8,000 was authorized to the Minnesota Dance Alliance, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the 1995-96 seasonal activities of choreographer Chris Aiken. Aiken works both solo and with collaborators. His season includes a number of concerts, touring, teaching and the development of new work.

Jo Andres received support for That's It (TO JE TO), an experimental film based on the 1992 journals and drawings of Bosnian visual artist Izeta Gradevic. Gradevic, along with her husband and friends from the Obala Art Centar, was forced to take shelter in the basement theater of the Drama Academy to survive the siege of her hometown, Sarajevo. The film will focus on the woman's interior landscape-her hopes, fears, dreams-interwoven with daily acts of existence. Dreamlike, spectral and mysterious, Andres' work has a distinctive, nonlinear shape that appeals both to the conscious and the subconscious.

A second mid-career grant was authorized for multimedia artist Beth B, in support of two major installations taking place in 1995, the touring of those exhibitions, and the creation of a substantial retrospective catalog of B's career. Beth B has twice received support from the Jerome Foundation's New York City Media Arts Program, in the form of individual production grants.

Daniel Pierce Bergin, Minneapolis, MN, $4,000 (Production). Mixed Messages. A half-hour narrative film about a biracial man who, reflecting on family and community, realizes that although his race may be mixed, his mind cant be.

The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for composer Paul Boesing, received $6,000 to develop and produce a Gertrude Stein play, set to music by Paul Boesing. The work will be produced in the summer of 1996, co-sponsored by the Walker Art Center, Red Eye Collaboration and the New Music-Theatre Ensemble, as part of a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Gertrude Steins death.

David W. Butler, Minneapolis, MN, $2,000 (Completion). Neighbors Mural. Finishing funds for a 26-minute video documentary on youth artists completing the fourth and final panel of the We Claim Our Lives mural, part of the Phillips Neighborhoods Safe Art project.

Adam Cohen received funding to produce Voyage to El Xino, an extended series of filmed image-poems about cities here and abroad. The film will be a portrait of Barcelona's Barrio El Xino, shot as the city implements the last stages of a massive redevelopment plan that is radically altering the character of both this neighborhood and the city center. This portrait will be framed within the context of larger issues of history and urbanism symbolized by the housing projects and urban sprawl on the edge of the city-themselves products of earlier cycles of economic change and displacement.

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized $7,000 to the Minnesota Dance Alliance, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for Concrete Farm, a collective of seven dancers/choreographers: Stephanie Dumaine, Susan Scalf, Winona Sorensen, Kelli Tennyson, Morgan Thorson, Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. Funding will support a two-month period of rehearsal and development time for the choreographers, in a retreat setting.

Cecelia Condit, Milwaukee, WI, $10,000 (Production). Book of Love. A 60-minute videotape, which will weave the violence, capture and escape that has been a recurring in theme in Condit's mothers life into the fairy tale, Rapunzel.

The Minnesota Dance Alliance, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal agent for Corning Dances & Company, received $7,000 to support the 1995-96 season of Corning Dances & Company. Immediately following the Company's summer season, Beth Corning will begin work on the second part of a trilogy, to be premiered in March of 1996. Titled Painted Windows, it will be based on the paintings of Mark Chagall, and will explore family and community.

Dennis Darmek, Milwaukee, WI, $4,000 (Production). Gaijin Diary. A 20-minute personal video portrait of contemporary Japan in which Darmek will continue his exploration of cultural dichotomies using his instincts as a documentary street photographer along with his artistic sensibilities.

Laura M. Davis, Minneapolis, MN, $4,500 (Completion). Womens War. For the completion of a 30-minute videotape, made in collaboration with Nigerian artists and village women, on the 1992 reenactment of the 1929 "womens uprising" against British colonial rule.

Mo Donahue, Minneapolis, MN, $6,000 (Completion). Wayward Hearts. For the completion of a feature-length narrative film - a comic look at loneliness in the 70s which explores the lives of three unhappy women who find transcendence from their plight in unconventional ways.

Two-year subsidy of $16,000 was awarded to David Dorfman Dance, New York City, in support of the 1995 and 1996 seasons. This marked the third grant given in support of the choreographer's work. Not only will Jerome funding support the creation of specific works and the general operating expenditures of the company, but it will also assist in the development of large-scale, community-based projects.

LeAnn Erickson, Iowa City, IA, $3,000 (Completion). From One Place to Another. For the completion of a feature-length video documentary which takes an historical and personal look at the Emma Goldman Clinic for Women in Iowa City, IA.

JANIE GEISER received support for Magnetic Sleep, an experimental animation using two and three dimensional puppets and live actors in a pictographic, elliptical narrative. Magnetic Sleep was a term used in the 19th Century for hypnosis, referring back to Mesmer and his magnetically/electronically induced trances. The film will center around the figure of a woman hypnotist, and will explore issues of power, manipulation, desire and loss. This will continue Geiser's exploration of the subject of memory, especially as it is intertwined with issues of power.

Karen Haselmann, Minneapolis, MN, $3,000 (Completion). Burning Desire. Finishing funds for a video documentary, which documents the creative collaboration of women - "fire junkies" - who involve themselves in all aspects of the foundry arts.

Acting as fiscal agent for an independent artist project, the Minnesota Composers Forum, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $3,000 to complete the production of a CD of chamber music by composer Steve Heitzeg.

Peter Herwitz received funding to produce Music for Several Voices, a film combining visual montage and superimpositions, spoken text, and sound effects into a richly patterned work using musical forms, particularly contrapuntal forms such as fugue and canon, as a model. The film begins with purely abstract imagery, evolving into more representational forms suggested by the abstract images. In the climactic section, images, sounds and spoken words function as different voices in a complex dialogue of gestures and rhythms addressing the similarity between a polyphonic composition and the development of a visual sound composition over time. Herwitz will explore musical and cinematic analogies as poetic possibilities.