Emmy-Award winner Machine Dazzle and Vangeline
announce their new project
VENUS EX MACHINA
Photos and creation by Machine Dazzle
In August 2024, building on vintage costumes from Materials for the Arts, Machine Dazzle created original looks for Vangeline who inhabited and interpreted his dream. More than twenty iconic looks were photographed in Dan Flavin's light installation at Mana Contemporary.
Listen to the latest episode of our podcast Butoh Musing with Vangeline, featuring no other than special guest Machine in an episode called Saying Yes to Life.
LISTEN ON SPOTIFY
LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST
Follow us on Instagram for unique photographic content of this project released weekly.
https://www.instagram.com/machinedazzle/
https://www.instagram.com/vangelinebutoh
🌟 #Congratulations #EmmyWinner #CreativeCollaboration #ButohMusing #VenusExMachina
Thanks to the Monira Foundation for their support, Mana Contemporary, Pomegranate Arts, and the Dan Flavin Foundation. This project was made possible by Materials for the Arts.
VENUS EX MACHINA- Photos/creations by Machine Dazzle
About the Artists
Machine Dazzle. Emmy Award winner, beloved downtown bon vivant and all-around creative provocateur Machine Dazzle has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performances since his arrival in New York in 1994. An artist, costume designer, set designer, singer/songwriter, art director, and maker, Machine describes himself as a radical queer emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker trapped in the role of costume designer, sometimes.
Machine designs intricate, unconventional wearable art pieces and bespoke installations. As a stage designer, Machine has collaborated with artists from the New York downtown scene and beyond – including Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art Group, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Taylor Mac, Basil Twist, Godfrey Reggio, Jennifer Miller, The Dazzle dancers, Big Art Group, Mike Albo, Stanley Love, Soomi Kim, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Opera Philadelphia, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, the Curran Theatre, and Spiegelworld; and has created bespoke looks for fashion icons including designer Diane von Furstenberg and model Cara Delevingne for the 2019 Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala.
Machine’s costumes and sets were featured in Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. A documentary feature film directed by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein and co-produced by Pomegranate Arts will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023.
In 2019, Machine was commissioned by Guggenheim Works and Process and The Rockefeller Brothers to create Treasure, a rock-and-roll cabaret of original songs including a fashion show inspired by the content.
Recent collaborations include the Catalyst Quartet on Bassline Fabulous – a reimagining of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and his debut collaboration with Opera Lafayette, for the historic premiere of the never-before-seen Rameau comedic opéra-ballet, Io.
Dazzle was a co-recipient the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design, the winner of a 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award, and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow. He delivered a TED Talk at TED Vancouver in 2023.
Machine Dazzle’s work has been exhibited internationally. His first solo exhibition, Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle, was held at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City in 2022.
https://www.pomegranatearts.com/projects-and-artists/machine-dazzle