Experiment in Trouble

Aimee Bahng is Associate Professor and Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies as well as American Studies at Pomona College. Author of the award-winning book Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times (Duke University Press, 2018), she has also co-edited the Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies volume, with the Feminist Keywords Collective, as well as a special issue of Journal of Asian American Studies on Transpacific Futurities with Christine Mok. Her current book project, Settler Environmentalism and Pacific Resurgence, engages environmental law’s settler colonial history and points to alternative models of planetary accountability that highlight ongoing Native Pacific environmental movements.

Samuel Vasquez is Director of the Performance Art Museum, a new nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the visibility, legacy, and scholarship of artists working in performance. Most recently, Vasquez served as Deputy Director, Advancement at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and helped to establish the museum’s performance program, Wonmi’s Warehouse Programs, and the Environmental Council, a first of its kind in the U.S. He managed the opening of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) in 2017, formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and introduced new fundraising approaches centered around community building, social inclusion, and mission-driven programming. He served in a leadership role at the Hammer Museum during the launch of Made in L.A. 2012 and Free Admission, and previously at MOCA, where he oversaw the success of its 30th-anniversary gala, the largest fundraising event in its history. This followed his experience as co-founder of the collective-run performance art space eighteen-thirty. He received his BA in Political Science from UCLA, sits on the Board of HomeLA and JOAN, and is the founding co-chair of El Comité de Arte.

Edgar Miramontes (he/him/his) is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA), an internationally recognized public arts organization dedicated to the advancement of the contemporary performing arts by leading artists from around the world in all disciplines—dance, music, spoken word and theater, as well as emerging digital, collaborative and cross-platforms. He is an arts leader with broad experience as a curator of contemporary performance, producer, lecturer, administrator, fundraiser and festival organizer. He previously served as the Deputy Executive Director and Curator of REDCAT (Roy and Enda Disney/CalArts Theater), a multidisciplinary center for innovative visual, performing and media arts founded by California Institute of the Arts in the Walt Disney concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. In this role, he was responsible for the international, national, and regional programming and management with an emphasis in dance, theater, and performance. During this time, he also served as co-curator and co-producer of the Getty-led Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, an international celebration of art and performance, with more than 200 Latin American and Latinx artists supported by a major grant from the Getty Foundation.

Chloë Flores is a Latinx Yaqui Native curator and arts writer, producer, and administrator whose work centers on body-based, performative, and site-specific practices and the production of culture in public space.  She is the Executive and Artistic Director of homeLA, a LA-based performance organization and platform for experimental and site-specific dance, performance, and art. Flores founded and directed GuestHaus Residency (2011-2023), was Programs Director at Heidi Duckler Dance (2021-22), and co-founded the Los Angeles Dance Worker Coalition (LADWC) that developed/launched the first dance-specific grant program for the Los Angeles’ DCA Performing Arts Division (2022). Flores has worked in the arts in Los Angeles since 1999, co-founded/co-directed enView Gallery in Long Beach from 2005-2008, and received her MA in Curatorial Practices in 2011 from USC.  Over the years, she has worked on exhibitions, programs and texts for the following organizations: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Office, The Armory Center for the Arts, Dance Resource Center, Monte Vista Projects, Cypress College, The Sweeney Art Gallery at UC Riverside, Anthony Greaney, Sierra Nevada College, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House and at the Mackey Garage Top, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and The Box.

Katy Dammers is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Performing Arts at REDCAT, CalArts’ center for the visual and performing arts in Los Angeles. Her curatorial practice presents, organizes, and contextualizes contemporary art in performance commissions, exhibitions, festivals, site-specific installations, and publications. She has held past leadership positions at The Kitchen, FringeArts, and Jacob’s Pillow. Dammers has also worked as a creative administrator, and was the General Manager for choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener from 2014-2022, in addition to organizing projects with Jennifer Monson, Donna Uchizono, and Tere O’Connor. A writing fellow at the US National Center for Choreography, her essays about dance have been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Motor Dance Journal, and MOLD as well as edited volumes by University of Akron Press and Princeton University Press. Dammers was a member of the Inland Academy and holds degrees from Goldsmiths College and Princeton University.

Further details can also be found here: https://www.redcat.org/chiefcurator2024 and here: https://www.katydammers.com/about

Selene Preciado (she/her) is the Curator and Director of Programs at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). Prior to this post, she was a Program Associate at the Getty Foundation, where she supported museum and professional development initiatives through Pacific Standard Time and the Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship program. Preciado has also worked at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Centro Cultural Tijuana, the San Diego Museum of Art, and inSite_05. Preciado’s curatorial practice is research- and history-based, approaching topics such as memory, language, place/diaspora, ritual, and popular culture through experimental perspectives.

Selected curatorial projects include ABUNDANCE, a performance series co-curated with Juan Silverio, presented by LACE at L.A. Dance Project (April 24–26, 2024), Collidoscope: A de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective, at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, organized in conjunction with the National Museum of the American Latino (2022–2023, ongoing national tour); Ser todo es ser parte/To be Whole is to be Part, LACE (2020); Desecho, a performance project by Regina José Galindo for Zona Maco, Mexico City (2017), Customizing Language, the inaugural exhibition of the Emerging Curators Program at LACE co-curated with Idurre Alonso (2016); and José Montoya’s Abundant Harvest: Works on Paper/Works on Life, co-curated with Richard Montoya at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

Raised in Tijuana, Mexico, Preciado obtained a BA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and holds an MA in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California (USC).