Hot Wheelz Festival is a virtual live arts platform that was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic by Lauren Steinberg and Jill Perez. We set out to burn rubber, speed up, slow down, dodge cones and redefine acceleration.
The platform is an annual residency for curators who are looking to explore liveness in virtual programming while loosely addressing the question, “How do we keep moving?” Each residency includes a webpage takeover as well as engagements across our different social media channels. Hot Wheelz Festival believes live work hinges on the present experience of the audience, whether that’s watching a live stream, limited engagements with prerecorded work, virtual reality, or an ever-changing webpage. Through these varying responses a “roadmap” is being created on our archive page that represents a coalition of diverse live work in Chicago.
PITSTOP 2022 @ OHKLAHOMO
Hot Wheelz first in person event titled: PITSTOP, a mini outdoor performance fest featuring some of our previous residents + new friends.
When we created our platform over two years ago deep in quarantine, we sought out to make space for the live art community to connect, play with programming in the virtual world, and address the question “how do we keep moving?” We’ve all been moving for quite a while since then, so we invited the folks featured in PIT STOP to address that same question from their current perspective. Some will be revisiting the work that they presented with us during their residency, others might be presenting something entirely new.
Summer 2021 Residents
Click each image to access the webpage archive
In My Room
Curated by Afriti Bankwalla
Featuring work by Ted Bourget, Aza Greenlee and Jackie Margolis
In My Room explored the way artists grapple with and track their evolving identities over time. Delving into this motif through works that range from video games to art books, this exhibition strived to illuminate the performance that can be found in everyday objects. Each art object in this exhibition also represented a unique understanding of performance and liveness, and by placing them together, In My Room hoped to underscore and bring light to the performances we encounter every day that shape our lives and selves.
BIMBO
Curated by Hot Kitchen
Video work directed by Audrey Polinski made with Claudia Castillo, Ida Cuttler, Katelyn Douglass, Jiana Estes, Alex Hovi, Wade Howard, Jasmine Jordan, Justin Lynk, Andy Slavin, Kori Whitby and Carly Wicks
You never leave the house without your make-up, hair, nails, and botox done. Everything is pink, everything is fun, and everything has boobs. BIMBO, from Hot Kitchen Collective, was an exploration of that person. Made in a series of video vignettes released daily, BIMBO paid homage to the bimbos who make their femininity known to the world, and explore how this archetype is worn and performed on different bodies.
beyONd GREEN/$
Curated by MMM
Foregrounding by Clareese Hill, Britney A King, Laleh Motlah, Dao Nguyen, and Darryl DeAngelo Terrell with broadcasting by Kristin Abhalter, Lois Bielefeld, Eliza Fernand, Whit Forrester, Lindsey French, Nathanael Jones, Jiayi Liang, Travis Mitzel, Adrian Wood, Nick Van Zantan and more
beyONd GREEN/$ featured *live* work interjections throughout daily broadcast transmissions. Ranging from VJ performances to an intimate hotline experience, these special encounters encompassed a wide genre of performance work. Hosting the work of over fifteen artists beyONd GREEN/$ set out to prove INTELLIGENT LIFE by Performers / Artists / Researchers whose philosophy & social forms challenge+glitch+shift paradigms of oppression & Those who enliven eco-futures!
Fall 2020 Residents
Click each image to access the webpage archive
Maggie Wong: Gothwerk
A collaborative effort by Morris Fox, Kyle Ozero, and Katherine Finkelstein. This residency is a constellation and reflection of this group’s conversations about power, reckoning, deep time, and the affordances of a goth orientation.
LVL3
Featuring performances and work by Wanbli Gamache and Yvonee Martinez. This residency showcases Martinez and Gamache’s individual practices as they both value digital social engagement with their audiences to produce their work.
Sarah Skaggs and Constanza Mendoza Guerra present I can see my house from here.
Featuring work by the collective F.M.7, and artists Eliane Adela Padrón, Fabián González, and Mario Sergio Álvarez with a writing contribution by Margarita Lizcano Hernandez. This residency is a reunion of collaborators and friends currently dispersed around the world and immobilized by pandemic in New York, Havana, Chicago, and Amsterdam.
DIVINE
Programming by DIVINE co-creators Ry Douglas and Sebastian Olayo featuring: Tati Rodriguez, Zullay Orozco, Jasmine Barber, Talia K. Wright, Mariah Emerson, Monique Marshaun, and Kenyetta Johnson. In their residency, Douglas and Olayo explore spirituality and ritual through a critical queer, trans, BIPOC lens by producing workshops, dialogues, and performance.
