CHAMELEON: A VISUAL ALBUM
Chameleon: A Visual Album, 2020, film, 21:15 minutes.
Chameleon is an experimental visual album inspired by the radical queer feminist genre of the “Biomythography” which refers to Audre Lorde’s foundational work entitled Zami: A New Spelling of My Name published in 1982. It combines history, biography, and myth, and holds a literary perspective that serves as a guiding light for complex narrative storytelling rooted in a queer, Black self-defined, feminist imagination.
Broken into five distinct confessional/autobiographical poems: Linoleum, Stank, Entertainer, Wake, Effigy (all written by kosoko); each poem acts as a chapter depicting and rewriting specific moments from the protagonist's lived experience. In each shot, kosoko's body responds to memory, moving in and out of dream, nightmare, present practice and ceremony. The process––a necessary re-conjuring––allows past ghosts to exist alongside present reconfigurations underscoring the creative, therapeutic and sometimes necessary but painful impulses of fugitive beings to shape-shift as a measure of survival.
Funding: The creation of Chameleon was supported by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; the Wexner Center for the Arts; Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program; Dance/NYC Advancement Fund; and Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF), a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; the Pew Fellowship in the Arts; and The Hinterlands Residency, Detroit.
People
jaamil olawale kosoko (co-director/concept/choreographer/performer/styling/music)
Geoff Abbas (assistant director)
Jonathan Alexander (production manager)
Mick Bello (b camera operator/focus puller)
mayfield brooks (music)
Eric Brucker (digital information transfer)
Bruce Bryne (master carpenter/rigger)
Gordon Clement (production technician)
Isabel Donelson (assistant production technician)
Sara Griffith (production technician)
Ian Hamelin (venue project manager)
Mike Hanrahan (gaffer)
Ima Iduozee (co-director/director of cinematography)
Ryan Jenkins (director for photography/steadicam operator)
Vicki Kereszi (c camera operator)
Maxwell Krantz (assistant production technician)
LaBelles (music)
Michael Lake (production technician)
Catherine Loughman (production assistant)
Jocelyn McConnon (assistant production technician)
Alexis McCrimmon (film editor)
Stephen McLaughlin (production sound mixer)
Meena Murugesan (projection designer)
Samuel O’Connor (assistant production technician)
Maria Salmon (production technician)
Alena Samoray (second focus puller)
Everett Asis Saunders (music)
Tara Sheena (project manager)
Joy Taney (makeup)
SaVonne Whitfield of 27Hangers (stylist)
Past Screenings
March 12-August 14, 2022
Presented by the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
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February 6-16, 2022
Presented by the Brussels Independent Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium (Official Selection)
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January 20-30, 2022
Presented by the Slamdance Film Festival, Park City, UT (Official Selection, Experimental Short Winner)
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December 26-31, 2021
Presented by the AfroTalent Film Festival, Accra, Ghana (Official Selection)
July 16, 2021
Toronto Dance Community Summer Love-In Festival, Toronto, Canada
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September 9-18, 2021
Toronto Independent Film Festival, Toronto, Canada (Official Selection)
Funding
Chameleon is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; the New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency program; and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, in partnership with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Tanz im August/HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and NPN. New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency program is made possible with additional support from the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council with special thanks to Council Member Corey Johnson, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, and the Shubert Foundation. Chameleon is also made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional development support for Chameleon was made possible, in part, with commissioning support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program, as well as the Bates Dance Festival, Gibney DiP, pOndersoa, D.O.C.H., Within Practice (Stockholm), the Centre for the Less Good Idea (Johannesburg, South Africa), PassaPorta International House of Literature (Brussels), Studio 303 (Montreal), the National Center for Choreography (Akron, OH), and Red Bull Arts Detroit.