my name is anais ortiz
i live and work in chicago
and i make music, plays, and art inspired by my dreams,
meditation, my friends, God, and the world around me.
i play in an electronic music duo called "easygoingtech", (videos here) and i play music solo as apokatastasis.
for you, i can direct or perform theater, compose original music, remix your music, play at your show or event, or work on a cool new project which you propose :)
i also teach experimental, devised, and ensemble-based theater, as well as modular synthesis and sound art.
also i love the following:
i have strong convictions about communism ,
audio as the conjuring of specters ,
a pacificist bent , and a passion for diy aesthetics .
i would describe myself as post-situationist
and anti-algorithm (more on that to come soon,
hopefully, on a different site hosted on autistici / NoBlogs).
Click here to read about
Oscar Romero and the Catholic Workers' Movement.
Or here to read some passages on why I came to hold the political convictions I hold.
Here you can read about algorithmic vs arithmetic approaches to living and working.
I think these things are immensely relevant to the art i make!!
although much of my art touches on my convictions only obliquely ,
it's my belief that through art we can open up
and reveal the contradictions within our World
and gesture (in the gaps between the things we say
and the things we don't say) toward a deep
possible harmony
which gives rise to our hopes, dreams,
struggles, and the desire underlying our desire
theater- and performance- wise, my focus is on
devised theater (that is to say, theater made collectively),
children's and youth theater, and making plays with ensembles (groups of
artists which work together democratically) drawn from pools
of people who are not "professional" artists . My practice is inspired
by the work and writing of Asja Lacis and her program for a
"proletarian childrens' theater", by the life and
plays of Maria Irene Fornes, Antonin Artaud's writing and
his use of the Ondes Martenot, and Safdar Hashmi's street plays.
some of my favorite theatrical projects to work on have included:
I'm excited to be composing original music for Free Street Theater's upcoming production of WASTED. Check out Free Street and the great work they do by clicking here.
For some production photos and my theater resume, click here.
what kind of music do i make?
well... whatever the hell kind of music
i feel like making at any given moment!
it's often informed by what i am listening to;
i listen to a lot of footwork ambient, illbient,
techno, hardstyle, baile funk/funk carioca,
left-field reggaeton, "IDM", dubstep, "art pop",
dancehall, cloud rap, electro, ghettotech,
shoegaze, eurobeat, disco, jungle, noise,
and of course "experimental music."
i make music for partying and also
music for deep contemplative listening.
i'm deeply passionate about the history of
music tech in the last 100 years
particularly that of Don Buchla's
synthesizers and Suzanne Ciani's
1973 paper for the NEA on her
Buchla 200 Performance Patch.
i've composed music for four plays, coming up on five plays, two academic video projects, and one upcoming independent film.
Check out some (but not all) of my personal music (that is to say, music i make for my own enjoyment) at this link.
i love few things more than playing music and sound art live (and will say yes to just about any show u try to book me for)
some places where i've performed music and sound for an audience:
my teaching is inspired by my experiences working and learning at freedom schools and through the use of circle practice when i was in high school, as well as my readings of paolo freire's writings. i'm also very motivated by peter maurin's "easy essays" and his approach of "easy conversations about things that matter." additionally, i have learned a lot from the catholic practice of "breaking open the word."
my beliefs about teaching are the following:
1. Art should be dedicated both to the exploration of the deepest part of each person’s soul and to an encounter with a transcendent Other, whether that “other” is found in the mystery of the people around us or in an expression of the larger mysteries of the universe.
2. This purpose, being both grand and nearly impossible to achieve in a programmatic way, necessitates that artists make bold experiments in both form and content , and share the results of their experiments with others.
3. This experimental form of artmaking necessitates that all art include a process of education in itself. That is, the artists should work together to educate each other in their experiment, as well as to educate their audience in the language of their experiment.
4. These experiments should be responsive to the conditions and context of the people engaging in the experiment. They should be, even if not at first glance explicitly political, politically engaged with the phenomena which surrounds them.
5. Children are uniquely well suited to these experiments , but they also require great amounts of support in acquiring resources, information, frameworks, strategies, and feedback.
6. One of the most important abilities for teaching and learning artists to cultivate while experimenting is the ability to observe carefully and notice things with great detail.
7. As a teaching artist, I strive to foster these artistic experiments and realizations, and when in a teaching artist role am less focused on a product or specific aesthetic aims than I am in both the process of experimentation and the genuine experience of spiritual encounter of the self and the other. I believe this experimentation and experience actually leads to the sharpest skills and most rigorous artistry .