ERIKA TSIMBROVSKY
'GRAY BOX' OF ART STUDIO
Interdisciplinary Art Studio Practice as Research, UC Davis
My choreographic research and studio practice explore the intersection of dance, visual art, and writing, focusing on themes of liminal spaces, embodied knowledge, and the transformative potential of contemporary dance rituals. Using materials such as paper, twigs, and plexiglass, I created a choreographic installation, emphasizing process over product, fostering relational presence and authentic conversations in shared space. Central to my practice are Living Open Diary events, where I investigate "asemic" cultural knowledge—ways of knowing that resist clear meaning within empowered systems—through collaborative, improvisational performances that blur the boundaries between artist and audience.
Living Open Diary investigates the intimate interplay between artists, materials, and audiences and integrates the fully present body into an immersive, bodily writing process. Exploring relational complexities, this practice unfolds in diverse settings—dance studio, theater lab, art studio—examining how each place/room shapes the experience. Living Diary in the Gray Box of Art Studio blends a few dance-art installations with process-performance and treats the space/studio as an active collaborator. Rooted in years of experimental practice combining dance, visual art, and text-driven multimedia projects, this work offers a choreographic gesture in the art studio and embodied writing as somatic rituals.
Fall Open Studio, UC Davis, November 21st, 2024
The Fall Open Studio unfolded as an iteration of dancer-audience engagement within the gray box—a space between practice and research. Framed by Living Diary and Experiencing Horizontal, it explored artist-audience relationality amid shifting times, emphasizing affective materiality, art labor’s patterns and repetitions, and the whole body’s responsive presence. Five dance-art installations emerged in a state of Rest, Pause—neither product nor process, but choreographic gestures in suspension, a living, moving continuum of performance as embodied “sense-ability.”
With Dancing Body
Artistic Research: Art-Dance Installations, Extended Writing Techniques, Language Materiality, and the Search for Unsettled Meaning
Performance-Installation The Book 2010-11 @SOMArts Center
Diary-like and A/semic embodiment
"We allow our personal stories to enter the performance space and leave behind an intimate message using any art media, creating a collective public diary." The Book is an ongoing series of multimedia performance installations at SOMArts Main Gallery. Conceived, curated, and directed by Erika Tsimbrovsky (choreographer/multimedia artist), this durational project blurs the boundaries between artists and audiences, transforming performance spaces into living, evolving public diaries. Each iteration of The Book invites guest artists to disrupt and reshape its structure, generating new layers of meaning through movement, sound, and visual traces. In 2011, Erika Tsimbrovsky and Vadim Puyandaev were awarded the Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts, where The Book unfolded over a month-long installation. Five performance-installations, each lasting 2–3 hours, accumulated evolving marks—diary-like traces of memories, videos, colors, and sounds—mapping the dynamic interplay of personal narratives in a shared space. Every performance was a random page from The Book, each uniquely shaped by the presence of invited guest artists, including Carol Swann, Jesse Hewit, Paul Clipson, Philip Huang, Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, PC Muñoz, Tommy Shepherd, Ken Ueno, and Matt Ingalls. Collaborators & Performers: Erika Tsimbrovsky, Paul Clipson, Daisy Phillips, Lucas Krech, Justin Morrison, Grundik Kasyansky, Kristen Greco, Izmail Galin, Daniel Bear Davis, Sean Feit, Andrew Ward, Elena Zhukova, Ronja Ver, Aleksey Bochkovsky, Kristina Kirshner, Rob Kunkle, Vitali Kononov, Mihyun Lee, Vadim Puyandaev. More about The Book: www.avyk.org/the-book-2010-11 Video by Loren Robertson Productions - www.lorenrobertson.com