Mount Tremper Arts Announces Watershed Laboratory 2019 Season

Nestled in the Catskill Mountains, Mount Tremper Arts (MTA) is an artist-founded laboratory space dedicated to supporting artists in the creation and presentation of new works of contemporary art. Beginning on June 15, they will present eight new experimental performances-deeply rooted in collaboration and activism-through their Watershed Lab. Guided by the metaphor of the Catskills as the watershed for New York City, MTA serves as the artistic headwaters for works that are incubated through residencies and performances before traveling to presenting partners in NYC.

For its 12th season of public programming, MTA has invited Guest Curators to expand and diversify its artistic community. The 2019 Curatorial Team includes Curatorial Director and Co-Founder Mathew Pokoik, Laurie Berg and Lili Dirks-Goodman ofAUNTS, Barbara Bryan and Anna Adams Stark of Movement Research, Jamie Shearn Coan, Marýa Wethers, and Tara Aisha Willis.

Throughout the summer and concluding on October 26, MTA will support more than 25 artists working in a variety of disciplines including Stephanie Acosta, Hadar Ahuvia and Tatyana Tenenbaum, Ballez, Lorene Bouboushian, mayfield brooks, Megan Byrne and Jennifer Kjos, Leslie Cuyjet, Lisa Fagan, Ellie Ga, Charlotte Gibbons, Madison Krekel, Mina Nishimura and Kota Yamazaki, iele paloumpis, Jillian Peña, Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal and Raha Behnam, Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers, Tara Sheena, David Thomson, Julie Tolentino, Mariana Valencia, Takahiro Yamamoto, and Mlondi Zondi.

Deepening its commitment to its community, MTA partners with Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center, Phoenicia Library, and The Golden Notebook Bookstore (Woodstock) to present free events by solo musicians from International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), readings by writer/performers Mike Taylor and Anna Young, and a workshop with Ballez.

"Our Watershed Lab artists are challenging the status quo in their art forms and through activism," says MTA Executive DirectorCrystal Wei. "The very nature of their work is collaborative, and the Watershed Lab model reflects this-from our curators to our partnerships, and our relationship to the mountains and the NYC watershed."

MTA is known for its elaborate food events featuring bounty from its garden. The popular Art-B-Q will be held on Sunday, June 30 in conjunction with Movement Research Artists-in-Residence, and Meeting Point Benefit - a multi-course feast of dinner and performances - will be on July 27 with artists Gelsey Bell, Becca Blackwell, and Edisa Weeks. MTA's chef is Ethan Knechel, formerly of Spotted Pig and Reynard in the Wythe Hotel.

Tickets can be purchased online at MountTremperArts.org, by phone at 845-688-9893, or at the box office one hour before events.

Nestled in the Catskill Mountains, Mount Tremper Arts (MTA) is an artist-founded laboratory space dedicated to supporting artists in the creation and presentation of new works of contemporary art. Founded in 2008 by visual artist Mathew Pokoik and choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke, MTA cultivates generative artistic communities while making experimental contemporary art accessible to its diverse local community.

MTA has hosted more than 300 residencies for performing art companies, 145 public events, and supported a broad range of artists working in dance, theater, music, poetry, opera, criticism, the visual arts, and ranging from emerging to internationally renowned. Notable artists have included 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Robert Ashley, Nayland Blake, Anne Carson, Nora Chipaumire, David Lang, Young Jean Lee, Tere O'Connor, Pam Tanowitz, and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

The Watershed Lab locates MTA's work as incubator, residency center, and rural presenter upstream of New York City, where its surging energy sustains a creative symbiosis between rural and urban New York. Its primary streams consist of partnerships with a range of presenters, in which MTA serves as the headwaters-the incubator site supporting the creation of new artworks. Just as the Catskills' mountains, streams, and reservoirs send water downstream to the city, MTA's rural setting generates original works-and relationships-that travel downstream to NYC and beyond.

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