Set, Standard

Overview

Set, Standard is a commentary on art criticism. Using dance, text, and improvisation, this work satirizes the conflation between art criticism and personal critique by questioning what happens when our art is critiqued. Is our personhood being critiqued as well? When bodies become art objects, how does critique capture a moving body in space?

Set, Standard originated as a choreographed hyperbolic fight between a visual artist and a dancemaker with live commentary from art industry professionals. The work was constantly evolving where the performers and choreography changed every time the piece was programmed as an effort to resist permanence and control. Set, Standard incorporates this unsettling,
humorous-while-indicting unwieldiness, relegating the audience to the discomforting, but privileged, role of spectator. It exists in the spaces in-between the hierarchical positioning of different creative industries, as well as the dissonance of enjoying one’s guilty pleasure, while thinking, “I really shouldn’t be here right now.”

Past performers include visual artists Bryan Fernandez and Dante Migone-Ojeda, performance artists George Emilio Sanchez and Alex Tatarsky, and Hyperallergic editor Hakim Bishara.

 

Watch this trailer HERE!

About the Artist

Kristel Baldoz is a Filipina-American multidisciplinary artist from Delano, California, who works across performance, dance, and ceramics. Her work has been supported by the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation, New York Live Arts, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. She was a 2019 EmergeNYC fellow at the Hemispheric Institute and, in 2022, an artist-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution School of Visual Art and Art Cake. Kristel's works have been featured in Brooklyn Rail and Fjord. As a performer, she has worked with Reggie Wilson, Anh Vo, Wilmer Wilson IV, Kate Watson-Wallace, and Alex Da Corte. She holds an MA in Arts Politics from New York University and a BA in Dance, Theater, and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.

Recently, I've been interested in considering everyday movements as dances, highlighting the spectacular of the mundane through laborious physicality. As a daughter of migrant field workers, I've become obsessed with repetitive and mundane movements, especially those reflected in the fields. I've also been interested in the concept of value systems and how certain things are valued more than others. As a Filipina-American, I personally see and experience the value system of social life based on my race and gender. Recently, I've been working with Anne Anlin Chengs concept of Ornamentalism, which addresses how the Asiatic woman is seen as an aesthetic ornament, fetishized as both person and thing. This concept has helped me articulate the value of Asian women in my work.

In Set, Standard, I hope to bridge concepts of the individual psyche and value systems. I am one of the performers and the other fighter is a BIPOC person, so I'm interested in how the race and gender of the performers impact the work. Im also interested in exploring objects in a conceptual way in this work by turning to the Filipino martial arts form called Kali, where fighters fight with sticks or knives. These objects are seen as an extension of the body and Im interested in exploring