Zack King is our artist in residence at Art Produce. He is one of the three artists presenting work at our S P A C E Showcase on October 28th and 29th. Zack is a dancer, actor, and video artist who strives to cultivate empathy and curiosity by making work that is personal and socially relevant. His work in our S P A C E Alliance Studio Residency Program is pulling together all of Zack’s interdisciplinary skill to explore and question ideas of self-worth, perseverance, negotiation, and ambition. We recently interviewed him, learning more about his process behind the creation of his piece, Loyalty.
Other than dance, what mediums are important to the overall theme of your piece? What role will these aspects play?
Other mediums that are important to the piece are acting, music, projection, and video. These serve as a shift in perspective. The piece moves between the physical and mental stages. I’m using these mediums as a way of creating different worlds.
What does your typical creation process look like?
My typical process begins with curiosities. I never run out of questions. I’m constantly asking and dissecting questions. As I live my life, I do my best to collect those questions. When I have enough questions is about the time I start getting ideas for a piece.
I start with small notes; a sticky note on the desktop, a quote on the white board. I’ll look at these things for weeks or months until I’m satisfied. I’ll save them on my phone or in a journal and move onto something else. These thoughts sink into me until I can find some way to translate them with my body. I also spend a lot of time imagining. I love to let my mind wander. It’s kind of like fishing for me. I will often come out of deep thought with a better understanding of the ideas I’m working with. Once the ideas begin to take shape, it’s time to experiment. Dancing, monologuing, making my own sound effects, researching music, trying out characters. Most of it doesn’t make it into the work but it helps me see clearly. It’s a process of subtraction and distillation. When I begin my “official” making process, it’s centered around finding the ideas that don’t serve the work and going deeper into the ideas that do.
What would you like the audience to know about your work in this show?
In addition to the description of the dance, this draft of my work is so rough that showing it is painful for me. I still have so many ideas still up in the air and until they settle in my mind, it’s tricky to figure our how many of them will remain relevant to the piece by the end of the making process. This dance is rough. My process is rough. I’m not really sure what I’m doing yet but I hope you enjoy some part of it.
Join us at the City Heights Performance Annex on October 28 or 29, 2022 to watch Zack’s finished work! Shows start at 7pm on both days, and you can use the link below to RSVP to the event. We have more blog posts coming for the other artists, so keep an eye out for that!