About the Curators
Bailey Placzek
Bailey Placzek is the Clyfford Still Museum’s curator of collections and research and project manager. Placzek has been engaged with CSM’s curatorial program and has led collection inventory and research efforts since before the Museum’s opening in 2011. Placzek’s work is focused on advancing access to collections, promoting art’s ability to foster connections among humanity, and deconstructing museum work to make it more transparent, collaborative, and fun. Recent curatorial projects include Awful Bigness (2023); Clyfford Still, Art, and the Young Mind (2022); A Decade of Discovery (2021); and Still: Elemental (2019). She has contributed research and writing for exhibitions at institutions around the country, presented widely on Clyfford Still and contemporary museum practice, and been published in forums like the American Alliance of Museum’s peer-reviewed journal, Exhibition, and Dimensions of Curation: Considering Competing Values for Intentional Exhibition Practices, edited by Ann Rowson Love and Pat Villeneuve. Placzek received a MA in Art History from the University of Denver and dual BA degrees in Art History and Painting from the University of Kansas.
Ben Coleman
Ben Coleman is a British multi-disciplinary artist residing in Denver, CO. His practice is rooted in sound and performance-making but often plays with other media, including music, text, video, and installation. Coleman grew up in theatre and music, forming his first bands in London while studying contemporary performance. Moving to the US in 2006, he dedicated some eventful years to musical projects, later returning to performance alongside new roles as composer, sound designer, and installation artist. His practice now embraces curatorial projects and frequent collaboration with dancers/choreographers, visual artists, and theater practitioners. His work has been presented by institutions including the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, High Museum of Art, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Understudy, Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Contemporary, Redline Contemporary Art Centre, Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Gibney Dance, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. Coleman’s work has been featured by Hyperallergic, Wire Magazine, Vice, Pitchfork, The Denver Post, Southwest Contemporary, and NPR. He is a resident alumnus at Redline Contemporary Art Centre, Denver. Visit Coleman and his work online.
About the Artists
Maria Chávez
Born in Lima, Peru, and based in NYC, Maria Chávez is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist, and DJ. Coincidence, chance, and failures are themes that unite her work across mediums, including improvised performance, sound and marble sculpture, visual art, and book objects. Her approach is rooted in Deep Listening, a form of embodied listening developed by her late mentor, Pauline Oliveros. Maria is the only abstract turntablist in the world who performs with a rare needle known as the RAKE Double Needle. This special device contains two needles on one head, allowing it to read two different segments of a single record at the same time. Paired with her inimitable ability to create unforgettable sonic experiences from shards of broken records, each performance is truly unique. Maria’s practice is profoundly expansive, responsive, and curious. Her work has been featured and supported by a myriad of institutions over the past decades, including Rewire Festival, Counterflows Festival, Donau Festival, The Guggenheim Museum, The Getty, The Wire, MOCA Jacksonville, Black Mountain College Museum, and many, many more. Chavez’s 2012 book, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable, has garnered a reputation as both an academic resource on turntablism and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists.
Maya Dunietz
Maya Dunietz is an artist and musician who has been performing internationally for the past 30 years. She works in the thin lines between music, visual art, performance, technological research, and philosophy. Her compositions are commissioned by renowned performers and ensembles around the world, such as Saar Berger (Ensemble Modern), Meitar Ensemble, Bat Kol Choir, Hyperion Ensemble, and many more. Her works have been shown in institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Arnolfini Gallery, Reykjavik Arts Festival, and a major solo exhibition at the KKL in Lucerne.
Kalyn Heffernan
Kalyn Rose Heffernan is the wheelchair-using, rap-heavy, freedom-fighting producer, educator, and foul-mouthed rabble-rouser. Raised by the DIY (Do It Yourself) spirit of experimental independence, Kalyn fronts the internationally acclaimed band Wheelchair Sports Camp. The band has since stretched into theatre, performance art, television, politics, prison tours, permanent installations, and more. Kalyn led Denver’s first disabled, queer artist campaign for the mayor’s seat in 2019. The tiny, happy mayor has advocated for herself and other marginalized communities through music, direct action, education, and art. Commonly known for fighting for access and human rights and calling out those in power who protect capital interests over the future – Kalyn makes herself heard with a very loud and distinct, high-pitched sense of humor.
Matana Roberts
Matana Roberts is a sound experimentalist, musician, and alto saxophonist who works in many performance and sound mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theater. Their music aims to expose the mystical roots and the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression. Working across many contexts and mediums, Roberts is perhaps best known for their acclaimed Coin Coin project – a multi-chapter work of ‘panoramic sound quilting’ mixed media performance work that aims to expose the mystical roots and intuitive traditions of American creative expression while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrative, history, community and political expression within sonic structures.
Michael Schumacher
Based in Brooklyn, Michael J. Schumacher has innovated in the area of spatialized sound and algorithmic composition since the 1980s, creating multi-channel, generative “Room Pieces” presented in galleries, museums, concert halls, and public and private spaces. XI records has published a DVD set of five sound installations as computer applications. His installation at EMPAC ran 24/7 for one year. “Living Room Pieces” is a generative installation designed for home listening. “The Portable Multi-channel Sound System” is a completely immersive environment that fits in a suitcase, with which he has toured Europe and the United States. Schumacher’s compositions have been presented at Roulette, Issue Project Room, Artists Space, Ostrava Music Days, Transmediale in Berlin, the MCA Lyon, The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Klangraum Krems, The Dream House, etc. His music has been published by Superpang, XI Records, Sub Rosa, Entr’acte, Quecksilber, and Sedimental. Schumacher is the music director of the Liz Gerring Dance Company. He is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Steinhardt and Tandon schools and at Ramapo College in New Jersey. He studied music composition with Stanley Applebaum, Bernhard Heiden, John Eaton, and Vincent Persichetti and piano with Seymour Bernstein, John Ogdon, and Shigeo Neriki, and has degrees from Indiana University and Juilliard.