Lissette Olivares

Sin Kabeza Productions

Lissette T. Olivares is the co-founder and co-director of Sin Kabeza Productions and SK Symbiotic, activist research platforms developed in collaboration with Cheto Castellano to work across diverse mediums and together with multiple life-forms. As a diasporic trans* Latinx that is non-binary and gender defiant Olivares’ applies transmedia storytelling to research that engages mestizx, cyborg, and companion species consciousness.  Postanthropocentric and SF imaginaries become palpable through mediated environments as well as intragalactic conversations with the extraterrestrial cyborg Coco Rico.  More than human ethnography is diverse technologies that include creative writing, performance, intervention, experimental film and sound, architecture, design fiction, and multimedia installation. Olivares acquired critical research skills from study programs at Vassar College, Peking University, and the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program where they* were a Helena Rubenstein Fellow in Critical Studies. A co-taught class on Multispecies Storytelling by Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing in 2010 offered the working space to develop a performative approach to multispecies storytelling while pursuing a PhD in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Between 2010 and 2012 Olivares was an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies where they* were supported by a NYU Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity. In 2012 curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev invited Sin Kabeza Productions to submit a collection of their experimental video works with multispecies and SF themes to The Worldly House: An Archive Inspired by Donna Haraway’s Multispecies Writings on CoEvolution at dOCUMENTA(13). It was in this same context that SKP produced their first architectural intervention, SEEDBANK: An eco evo devo design fiction in the SF Mode, designed as a living posthumanist research site for dOCUMENTA(13). After an unexpected encounter with an orphaned hedgehog during their artistic residency in Kassel they became committed to wildlife rehabilitation and multispecies architecture, and have worked with Indian free roaming dogs, raccoons, squirrels, and white-tailed deer.  Between 2012-2013 they presented some of their initial and colorful fieldwork as OPEN TV in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective at the Devi Art Foundation in Delhi and Donaufestival in Austria. Between 2015-2016 Olivares and Castellano were research fellows at Terreform ONE where they investigated Speculative architecture and design for a Post Anthropos/Anthropocene. In 2016 Olivares presented SKP’s multispecies architectural platform at the Yinchuan Biennale Conference in China, while their multispecies architectures were displayed at the NGBK gallery in Berlin as part of the Animal Lovers exhibition. SKP’s SEED: Visualscapes from the Future was recently exhibited at the Edith Russ Haus for New Media Art in Oldenburg and at Muzeum Sztuki as part of Pangea United . Their* intradisciplinary research has been supported by the Fulbright Fellowship, Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, ICI-Berlin Curatorial Fellowship, and A Blade of Grass’ Artist Files Fellowship, which recognizes socially engaged art production.  SKP and SK Symbiotic are currently engaged in a coevolutionary dream that envisions a refuge, research, and rehabilitation center for dis/placed and crip wildlife that will jointly serve as a laboratory for eco and bio art in a 1730 Georgian stone house they are renovating and remodeling in Blairstown, NJ. 

Cheto Castellano is a yogi who is studying to be a shaman. He was born near Chile’s Andes, migrated to the US in 2013, and has spent extensive time researching spiritual cognition in Asia’s Himalayan region, where he pursues tantric studies. Recently Castellano made carbon ink from human bone, and produced a kangling (thigh bone trumpet) using ancient technologies of consciousness; these are activated  in ritualistic performances with the experimental sound collective he founded, Sarama Sound. For the past year he has been learning how to restore a pre revolutionary stone house using 18^th century joinery and masonry. His artistic labor explores how colonialities of power, nature, and gender produce conditions of slavery and oppression for both human and non-human species. His projects in media come from exploratory experiences that research the spiritual cognitive sciences from diverse peoples, animals, and plants. Castellano is the co-founder of Sin Kabeza Productions and SK Symbiotic, and is a multimodal practitioner whose work develops diverse mediums including: experimental video, animation, drawing, painting, engraving, corporeal modification, performance, and multimedia installation.  Together with Lissette Olivares they are currently investigating 18^th century witchcraft for an upcoming film project that will be filmed on location at their soon to be inaugurated eco art studio in a 1730 stone house in Blairstown, NJ.   chetocastellano.com

Luk Kahlo was (re) born in Mexico City in 2544 of the Buddhist calendar, 5119 in the Mayan Great Cycle. He claims to have lived and worked with Frida Kahlo in a past life. In 2003 he crossed the US-Mexico border and led a nomadic life between the US, Latin America and Europe. In 2009, he joined Coco Rico as a co-presidential candidate in a transpecies postgovernmental platform that articulates the basis for a just society. Luk is remembered by his students as a rinpoche, a being of love. His teachings continue in a not so distant galaxy.

Matsya, an Indian dog from Goa, received her name from the fish scales she wore on her body as a puppy. Her name is an invocation of the mer-avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. She is a companion that when not performing critical service animal work is happy to act as a collective member to SKP’s artivist production. She was the cameradog of Matsya’s Dogumentary: A Cuban Travelogue, where she used a go-pro camera to document everyday life in contemporary Cuba while Sin Kabeza was in residence at the Havana Latinxamerican International Film Festival. She is trained in K9 Nosework where she is a NW1 Trial Champion, and performs the ancient art of canine fortune telling and divination. @GoddessMatsya

Sin Kabeza Productions can be visited online through their websites http://www.sinkabeza.com/architecture/ and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/sinkabeza.  Some of the institutions they have collaborated with include: dOCUMENTA(13) (Germany), DonauFestival (Austria), Institute of Cultural Inquiry-Berlin (Germany), Muzeum Sztuki (Poland), Mix Experimental Queer Film Festival (NY), Sarai Exhibition Reader Curated by Raqs Media Collective at the Devi Art Foundation (India), Havana International Film Festival (Cuba), Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (NY), Columbia University (NY), UCSC History of Consciousness Department (CA), Berlin Porn Film Festival (Germany), PopPorn Film Fesival (Brazil), Terreform ONE (NYC), nGbK (Berlin) Edith Russ Haus for New Media Art (Oldenburg), Nida Art Colony (Lithuania), Queens Museum (NY), Drik Magazine (Mexico)