select performances
Shanekia McIntosh’s research-driven performance work, heavily influenced by Fluxus, blends poetry, text, sculpture, and sound design to create disruptive interpretations of her poetry, creating new contexts.
Call Me Ishmael: A Story of Exploitation, 2019
Commissioned by Hudson Hall in honor of the 200th Anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth in New York. Performed at Second Ward Foundation.
Expanding on the narrative themes of Moby Dick and the start of modern environmentalism, Call Me Ishmael is a collaborative performance piece utilizing poetry, video, and sound. This one-woman performance uncovers a historical thread connecting the brutality of the whaling industry, the black migration experience, and the birth of the Save the Whales movement, giving voice to the stories from the frontline of modern-day environmental conditions—those of exploitation, disenfranchisement, and convenience.
Sound Design by Chris Garneau, accompaniment by Nkoula Badilia, Movement by Davon Rainey, and visuals by Rebecca Borrer.
Limited Edition Broadsheet for Call Me Ishmael
Curated by the Flow Chart Foundation
Commissioned poem read to 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Flow Chart Foundation is dedicated to exploring the interrelationships of various art forms as guided by the legacy of renowned American poet, John Ashbery. Inspired by “Benshi,” the Japanese performers who provided live narration and cultural translation for audiences in the silent film era, neo-benshi artists take scenes from popular film or television and replace the sound with their own live spoken works. The result is a new kind of multi-media happening that has taken the experimental performance world by storm.
RAGGA NYC: All the threatened and delicious things joining one another
New Museum
Touched, 2017
Commissioned poem and performance with musical accompaniment by Eliza Douglass & Mounanou Badila
Installation view: TENDER RAGE, 2016
Portland Insitute of Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, 2016
Tender Reading @ PNCA 511 Gallery
Exploring complex realities of postmodern womanhood through prose and sculpure.
