Asa Horvitz

Asa Horvitz

Course
DAS Theatre
Class
2021

In this moment of what seems to be a widespread inability to imagine a sustainable present or future, what artistic strategies can help us move beyond what we already know and allow the arrival of the unknown?

I grew up in a Zen Center in California and began formal Zen training at 15. Since 2013 I’ve studied psychoanalysis and various ways of working with dreams. Drawing on these experiences, at DAS I’m making a practical inquiry into artistic strategies that might facilitate the arrival of the unknown.

On the one hand, I’m working on the relationship between the body, dreams, and the flow of images through time, influenced by Aby Warburg and focused on mass shootings in the US. On the other hand, in collaboration with Seraphina Tarrant (University of Edinburgh) and Alejandro Calcaño (AI Now), I’m doing a critical exploration of Artificial Intelligence as a way of reflecting on the nature of consciousness, which simultaneously seems to be a way of exploring new forms of theater rooted in sound and music.   

Originally trained as a composer/musician under Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxon, Asa Horvitz makes performances that draw on elements of visual and performance art, non-human presences, and many kinds of music, to create spaces in which the audience, confronted by paradox, begins to imagine for themselves. Horvitz’s work has been seen at The New Museum, Microscope Gallery, Death by Audio (NYC), CounterPulse (SF), Living Arts Museum (Tulsa), Teatr Polski (Wroclaw), National Theater Institute (Warsaw), etc. He had long-term collaborations with a number of stage artists including Lukasz Korczak (2011-2013), Scott Gibbons/Romeo Castellucci (2014-2016), and Pavel Zustiak (2018-), the results of which toured major festivals worldwide. He leads the critically acclaimed band VALES with Carmen Rothwell. From 2017-2018 he participated in artistic exchanges in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia; he currently collaborates with Marta Keil/Grzegorz Reske in several contexts. His work has been supported by The MacDowell Colony, The Camargo Foundation, Creative Europe, The Goethe Institute, and a Fulbright Scholarship. He previously lived in New York City and Poland and currently lives in Amsterdam where he is a participant at DAS Theatre.

More information

asahorvitz.com | valesvalesvales.com | valesnyc.com

Back to list
Share