an arts initiative dedicated to
developing new forms in compositional performance,
discovering new ways of making compositional performance an economically sustainable form,
and constructing new methods of thinking and writing ethnographically about contemporary performance forms
for more information contact
Morgan von Prelle Pecelli
morgan@lostnotebook.org
Morgan von Prelle Pecelli is a curator, producer, anthropologist and performing artist who has been working in New York City’s independent performance sector since 1999. In 2002 she began the Lost Notebook. In 2008 she served as the PRELUDE 08 festival dramaturg and curatorial advisor. In 2007 and 2008 she served as Artistic and Development Director for Emerging Artists at 3LD Art & Technology Center. She is on the Board of Directors of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater where she was the Managing and Programming Director from 2004 – 2006. She started the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator programming for young artists, through which she curated and produced festivals and residencies in 2005, 2006 and 2007. She has also worked as the Associate Managing Director for 3-Legged Dog Media and Theater Group, and the Director of Operations for Wet Electrics, a company that developed software used to design and control multi-media commercial and artistic installations and performances.
She has worked as a performer, butoh dancer, writer, director, production manager and designer. In 2008/09 she is performing in the Richard Foreman/John Zorn Opera “Astronome” at the Ontological Theater in NYC. In 2008 she also created a solo butoh piece "The Bell Girl" performed at the CAVE Artspace in Brooklyn, designed the lights for Woof Nova’s “Tongues & Hearts” at LaMama in NYC, and participated in a 3 month intensive butoh training at the CAVE Artspace in Brooklyn: Master teachers included Ko Murobushi, Tadashi Endo, Katsura Kan, Minako Seki, Mari Osanai. In 2007 she performed in SU-EN’s "Linné Gala Event 2007: New Life" in Uppsala Sweden, as well as Title Point Production's "Journey Path: an Experiment in Rightness" at the Ontological Theater in NYC. Prior to this she worked as a light designer and technical artist throughout New York City and participated in performance workshops led by various artists including: Akira Kasai, SU-EN, Sachiyo Ito, Hiroshi Koike (Pappa Tarahumara), Masaki Iwana, Yumiko Yoshioka, Goat Island Performance Group, Mike Pearson, and Phillip Zarilli.
She is also a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University (MPhil 2004, MA 2002). The current working title of her dissertation is An aesthetic anthropology of delay: tendrils of lost time and the self. Her current research is concerned with subverting a divide between self-present-living-matter and thought particularly as it plays out in anthropological theory and ethnographic practices and trying to devise a way to express material knowing through Charles S. Peirce, anarchist practices and postmodern aesthetics. She works on non-narrative aesthetics and the material realities and human event time of artists in postindustrial economies. Her areas of interest range from New York to Japan and Europe and historically from Dada & Futurism through the American Avant-Garde, Butoh and current manifestations of hyper-mediated compositional performance. Particular focus is paid to experiences of waiting, delay, flesh and the banal violences of contemporary civilization. At Columbia, she has taught courses on Anarchistic Anthropology and "Contemporary Civilzations" a Core Curriculem course on Western ethics and political theory. Before attending Columbia she received an MA from the University of Chicago, was a Fulbright Scholar in Augsburg, Germany in 1998, received a BA from Colby College, studied in Freiburg, Germany and Perugia, Italy, and won the N. Penrose Hallowell award for Theater from her high school, Philips Academy in Andover MA.