Embodying the experimental nature of the Workshop, Halftone draws inspiration from our collaborations with artists and brings you stories from this place we so often inhabit in the creative process: the space between the known and the unknown. Halftone is now available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and RadioPublic.
We’re back for season 2—this time exploring ideas of belonging and estrangement, and the ways we navigate a complex world. Inspired by our current exhibition, Ahmed Alsoudani: Bitter Fruit, we walk from the museum through the streets of Philadelphia with Palestinian Poet Ahmad Allmallah as he searches for home and Venezuelan artist Ana Mosquera as she weaves together a cyber territory.
Premiere Date: April 26, 2022
Can the elements of a city that remind a person of home or their estrangement be too personal for others to understand?
In this episode, we accompany Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah as he walks home from The Fabric Workshop and Museum through the streets of Philadelphia, contemplating ideas of family, language, home, estrangement, and the magic of a big white dog.
Ahmad Almallah is a poet from Palestine. His first book of poems Bitter English is now available in the Phoenix Poets Series from the University of Chicago Press. He received the Edith Goldberg Paulson Memorial Prize for Creative Writing, and his set of poems “Recourse,” won the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. Some of his poems appeared in Jacket2, Track//Four, All Roads Will Lead You Home, Apiary, Supplement, SAND, Michigan Quarterly Review, Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by Refugees, Cordite Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Great River Review. He holds a PhD in Arabic Literature from Indiana University Bloomington and an MFA in poetry from Hunter College. He currently lives in Philadelphia and teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Premiere Date: May 10, 2022
Episode 2: Ana Mosquera
How does the virtual impact our relationship to home, travel, and belonging? In Episode 2, artist Ana Mosquera travels through Philadelphia using Samsung intelligence assistant Bixby, confronting the boundaries of language in pursuit of a definition of home.
About Ana Mosquera
Ana Mosquera is an artist from Caracas, Venezuela, currently based in Philadelphia. She obtained her MFA in Sculpture at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2020. She holds the 2016 National Prize for young artists awarded by the Museum of Contemporary Art Zulia and was awarded in 2021 with the Honorable Mention Carmen Cordovez Crespo by HFFA at the16th Mendoza Awards, Venezuela. Her most recent exhibitions include the 20/92 Video Festival. Icebox Projects Crane Arts Building, Philadelphia (2022). Familiar Distances – Edge Zones, Miami (2021); Serendipia / Instalar – Espacio Monitor, Los Galpones Caracas (2021). ¿Por qué Islas? Solo Licencia de Reconocimiento, Tenerife (2021).
This pilot season, presented in partnership with Pig Iron Theatre Company, takes inspiration from Blood Moon, The Fabric Workshop and Museum exhibition featuring a recent collaboration with artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley. Over the course of three episodes, artists Francesca Montanile Lyons, Jeanne Lyons, and Tony Moaton present three experimental audio works exploring the question: whose voices have stories to tell that have not been fully heard?
Premiere Date: November 12, 2021
Francesca Montanile Lyons (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator living in Philadelphia. Her work seeks to disempower shame through playful honesty and voyeuristic delight. She’s a member of the pussy pop rock band Girl Poop and co-artistic director of Antigravity Performance Project. MFA in Devised Performance from UArts/Pig Iron School (2016). BA in Theatre Arts & Performance Studies from Brown U (2011). francescamontanilelyons.com. Instagram: @fmldrawsbutts
Premiere Date: November 26, 2021
Jeanne Lyons (she/they) is a music producer, photographer, and performing artist based in Philadelphia. Lyons is process oriented as a protest to perfectionism and has a strong commitment to experimentation. Her work explores themes of identity, shame, grief, death, nature, and technology. Check out her latest release, Another Place [EP], an ethereal sonic journey with haunting vocal layers + deep electronic pulses on Spotify or Apple Music. iamjeannelyons.com
Premiere Date: December 10, 2021
Tony Moaton (they/he) is an artist and inclusive designer from Oak Park, Illinois. Tony’s passionate about creating intimate and accessible spaces and places. Their work spans a variety of mediums and collaborators, but the root of all of it is drawing from their non-traditional background to create work in a way that radically centers the user. Check out Tony’s range of work at tonymoaton.com
Premiere Date: December 24, 2021
As the culmination of Halftone’s pilot season, dive into the making of the podcast. You’ll learn about some of the inspirations for Blood Moon, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley’s exhibition that inspired this season, and the collaborative process between The Fabric Workshop and Museum and Pig Iron Theatre Company.
Founded in 1995 as an interdisciplinary ensemble, Pig Iron Theatre Company is dedicated to the creation of new and exuberant performance works that defy easy categorization.
The mission of Pig Iron Theatre Company is to expand what is possible in performance by creating rigorous and unusual ensemble-devised works; by training the next generation of daring, innovative theatre artists; and by consistently asking the hardest questions, both in our art and in its relation to the world around us. Pig Iron Theatre Company is based in Philadelphia. To find out more, visit pigiron.org.
Season 2 of Halftone comes to you from The Fabric Workshop and Museum and is presented in connection with Bitter Fruit, an exhibition by artist Ahmed Alsoudani. This season of Halftone and Bitter Fruit are supported by Maja Paumgarten Parker and John Parker.
Season 2 is produced by Katie Parry and Alec Unkovic, engineered by Joel Metzler at MilkBoy the Studio. Our music was contributed by Char McCutcheon. Special thanks to our collaborators Ahmad Almallah and Ana Mosquera, as well as members of our visitor services team, Kristina Centore, Olivia Dwyer, and George MacLeod, who contributed reflections about the exhibition to this episode.
Season 1 of Halftone was created in partnership with Pig Iron Theatre Company and presented in connection with Blood Moon, an exhibition by artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, which is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
Season 1 was produced by Katie Parry, Erin Sweeny, and Alec Unkovic, engineered by Joel Metzler at MilkBoy the Studio. Our music was contributed by Char McCutcheon. Special thanks to our collaborators at Pig Iron Theatre Company, including Quinn Bauriedel, Francesca Montanile, Jeanne Lyons, and Tony Moaton.
