Projects

ELEMENTAL: Spectacles of Earth, Air and Water

ELEMENTAL: Spectacles of Earth, Air and WaterThrough the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks, DCASE’s 50x50 Neighborhood Arts Project and 11th Ward Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson, Erica Mott Productions presents ELEMENTAL: Spectacles of Earth, Air and Water, a community driven performance event at Bridgeport’s historic quarry Palmisano Park. Presented in and around the pond in the northwest corner of the park, ELEMENTAL will celebrate the history and future of Bridgeport through the lens of three organic elements that shaped industry, immigration, lore and daily living in Chicago’s oldest neighborhood. Erica Mott has engaged community members from across the 11th Ward to participate and contribute to the site-specific ambulatory multi-media performance, which includes live singing, storytelling, music, contemporary dance, lantern lighting and projection mapping across the cliffs of the old quarry ... Read More

Mycelial: Street Parliament

Mycelial: Street ParliamentMycelial: Street Parliament is an interdisciplinary and interactive installation performance that researches social organization and civic participation in a dizzying age of digital connection and sociopolitical division. Developed through a series of one-to-one cultural exchanges between American and Egyptian composers, programmers, dancers and new media artists, this artwork will culminate in live multimedia and participatory events in both Cairo and Chicago. Drawing on the experiences of activists during the Occupy Wall Street Movement and Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the team ... Read More

3 Singers

3 Singers

3 Singers is a technopera–a performative convergence of vocal and electronic music composition, interactive technology, sound installation, choreography and video in an evolving and immersive installation. This technopera explores the role of women’s rights in the textile industry through three different periods of global history: pre-Civil War agricultural production, the Industrial Revolution, and the contemporary ‘sweatshop’. The structure of this evening length performance is arranged into three ‘song spirals’ that … Read more


Palliative Neglect

Palliative Neglect

Palliative Neglect: The World Spelled Backwards, is a series of community discussions/workshops culminating in an interdisciplinary video, sound, and performance installation addressing queer health and healthcare in contemporary America.

This work is scheduled to premiere in the Summer of 2013. Led by independent choreographer/object designer/performance maker, Erica Mott, an interdisciplinary and intergenerational collective of four artists including Paul Escriva (writer, performance artist), Rebecca Kling (actor/writer), Dion Walton (female impersonator/writer), … Read more


The Victory Project

The Victory ProjectThe Victory Project is a series of works that incorporate image, text, movement and elements of puppetry to dismantle body parts and allegories that confuse and conflate patriotism and perversity. It is presented as a series of delicate and intimate duets between mundane objects and the human body awkwardly juxtaposed with visually arresting and sometimes disturbing chorus pieces creating darkly humorous shifts in tone and rhythm.

The Cowboys and Vikings Trilogy

The Cowboys and Vikings TrilogyErica Mott's Cowboys and Vikings project creates unique space where sound, objects and movement create interactive performance environments. Ambulatory and site-specific, Cowboys and Vikings casts audience members as active participants and witness in environments of the performance. The mundane is transformed into the magical in visually and aurally arresting ways -- a harmonica bridled to the mouth of the dancer captures the wind across the vast high desert (while charting the breath/energy of the dancer during exertion). Eight-foot diameter weather allude to vast skies of the frontier and, with helium, provide the tug and unpredictability of cattle being roped.

Revised and Revisited

Revised and Revisited

A solo performance combining dance, found text, and objects written and performed by Erica Mott

Duration Performance 50 minutes. Installation Durational 50 minutes-12 hrs.

Performed December 17-19, 2009 at Links Hall in Chicago

Revised and Revisited traces Mott’s memory and absence of memory of her ancestry. Through her body, she traces her family’s journey to America through present incorporating the movement based rituals that have kept them together and ones … Read more


re[public] in/decency

re[public] in/decency

re[public] in/decency is an inter-arts activist initiative and creative think tank that explores the trans-national intersections between live art, social justice activism and arts-informed pedagogy.

Created in 2008 through a collaboration between two professional artists: community-based developer, theatre and performance artist Coman Poon (Toronto, Canada) and cultural worker, choreographer and performance maker Erica Mott (Chicago, USA), re[public] in/decency seeks to engage diverse audiences in our interdisciplinary work while acting as a conduit between social justice activism … Read more


On the Practice of Dying

On the Practice of Dying

A solo performance written and performed by Erica Mott.
Duration 20 minutes.

Versions of this solo piece were performed August 13-16, 2009 and February 12-14th, 2010 at Links Hall in Chicago.

Initially curated by two-time Obie Award-winning artist and playwright Holly Hughes and performed at additional festivals including SELF(ish) solo fest, On The Practice of Dying traces Mott’s medical family history, theories of genetic inheritance and her inability to dance … Read more


The Palimpsest Project

The Palimpsest Project

Over the course of a month, re[public] in/decency, in collaboration with dressmaker and visual artist Kristin Mariani, embarked on an integrated arts-based investigation of the relationship between personal and collective memory entitled The Palimpsest Project, as resident artists of SPOKE Gallery, Chicago.

April 26-May 23, 2010 at SPOKE, Chicago. Upcoming performance research to take place at hub14, Toronto February 21st-March 5th, 2011.

re[public] in/decency’s inspiration for building an … Read more