Unnamed Shapes

Unnamed Shapes is an ongoing project of intertwined images, objects, concepts, stories, environments, movement scores and physical vocabulary since 2017. This logbook/substack is a way for me to share and better understand this long-form project as it exists through ideas in time.

March 5th - May 30th, 2026, Unnamed Shapes will be presented as Loess, an evolving sculptural installation and performance series rendering an unreliable landscape and the bodies therin, commissioned for the Moscow Contemporary galleries and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Beside the more formal performances series, I will be visibly at work inside the installation most of the three months, changing its seasons, contours and character.

Within the Loess performances are Iris Dances, a founding/informing element of Unnamed Shapes. These group dances are inquiries into choreographic structure, created through a process of modular online and in-person rehearsals with a cast of exquisitely opinionated dancers. Iris Dances are presented as performances while also generating maps, objects, photography and paintings.

Iris Dance casting has included: Hendri Walujo, Deena Goodgold, Hannah Turner, Michael Schumacher, Lavinia Vago, Allie Hankins, Hannah Rae, Linda Austin, Emily Stone, Ben Goosman, Mary Margaret Moore, Sheri Cohen, Serge Gubelman, Sarah Hogland-Gurulé.

Extended cast + contributors: Mark Haim, Fox Whitney, Will Courtney, Nan Little, Richard Arvey, Amelia Reeber.

Unnamed Shapes has been supported by funding from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, and through residencies at UW’s bst and Performance Works Northwest.