Kate, Frankie, and Serena here. No Place to Go is our dream of an artist-made haunted house of unrealized fears manifested in an immersive world driven by choice-making and the horror of the binary. The project has grown out of our desires for more artist-led, collaborative projects that create more immersive, accessible, inclusive experiences that pay fair, equitable wages to the artistic contributors. That’s where you come in...we need to raise $7,000 to lift the project off the ground. In collaboration with a team of awesome artists, we are going to DIY this project into existence this October 2020, and we need your help to make our fears a reality!

No Place to Go merges the absurdist storytelling of dance-theatre with tactile, interactive visual art installations to create environments where the audience can examine and embrace the interaction between fear and desire. The project will premiere just before the presidential election. The work will be a timely commentary on the limitations and fears inherent in our political “choices.” In the shadow of the impending election, we are confronted with our fraught participation in the nation state and will necessitate radical, queer modes for re-imagining the relationship of our bodies to our haunted (national) home. 

Through queering the haunted house experience, this project will offer a critical look into the cultural fears of bodies in oppressive sociopolitical spaces. In a typical haunted house, viewers are faced with culturally dominant fears that take the form of recognizably scary objects and scare tactics, such as zombies, chainsaws and demons. Alternately, No Place to Go will connect audiences to internal landscapes of fear, allowing them to experience the ultimate fear that there is no place to be, no place to go for certain bodies in oppressive sociopolitical spaces.

WHY THIS PROJECT

We live in fearful times. What better way to cope than by harnessing our fears--collective and individual--and turning them into a creative direction? The original idea was a singular haunted house, but given the new era we are in, we are unhousing our fears, re-imagining the performance structure to support physical distancing for both the artists and the audience: dispersed sites across Denver and Jefferson County, an accompanying soundscore to be the connective tissue as you drive between sites, and a VR experience for audiences to experience the work from the safety of their own home (and in the possible event we have to shut it all down when the second wave hits!). These limitations are inspiring new creative avenues, and your funds directly support the livelihood of Denver-based artists. 

We believe artists play an important role in critiquing current realities and envisioning alternative futures, which is why our primary goal is to be artist centric, supporting as many artistic voices in this collaborative project. It also means paying local artists fair and equitable wages. The project leadership includes:

The team weaves together three complementary expertise in text/narrative, performance, and visual/tactile art. Each installation will be a fantastical realm designed by some of the boldest, emerging, and mid-career visual artists in Denver: Eriko Tsogo, Nolan Tredway, Nicole Banowetz, Renee Marino & Hayley Dixon, Steven Frost, Moe Gram, BAGBAYSHA (Thomas Scharfenberg, Koko Bayer & Chris Bagley), Chrissy Espinoza & Grace Cooper, Emily Duffy & Michaela Mujica-Steiner, and Hayley Krichels. A key dimension of the immersive landscape is the sound design by music collaborator Mike Clark. And an integrated app by Bryan Costanza to create a digital, contactless experience connecting each installation. Discover more about the artists here! And if we surpass our goal and get to our REACH goal of $10,000, we can bring in EVEN MORE ARTISTS to lend pre-existing work that will create a richer environment.