Annie Lukins

(De)monstro

(De)monstro is a series of participatory mythopoetic rituals created in and around the city of Porto, Portugal, and culminating in an event co-organized with A Leste Studio.

The ritual is a digestive process and a catharsis of curative destruction. Using sacred clowning, special dress and custom implements, (De)Monstro honors transgression in service of life.

Created together with Andy P. Davis, collaborating under the name TONGUE: the instrument of expression and the animal itself.

Photos by @ojoaogarcia, @maximedisy, @marine.del.c.r.o.i.x

Live performance with sculpture and paintings / performance still / approx. 1 hr / 2023

Character portrait with sculpture and special dress / up-cycled fabric, paper mache, reclaimed materials, wire, paint / 2023

Live performance with sculpture and paintings / performance still / approx. 30 min / 2023

Egg Of Heaven

Egg of Heaven is an emergent story about the annunciation of a new world narrated and live direction by Mudwig the Love Goblin. Clumsy angels made from plants open a portal to heaven, and a song of love and longing brings a cycle into fruition.

Created together with Andy P. Davis, collaborating under the name TONGUE: the instrument of expression and the animal itself.

Presented as part of World World, an evening of performances curated by TONGUE at Vox Populi, Oct. 8, 2022.

Project support provided by the Illuminate the Arts Grant, administrated by the Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy.

Photos by @haleycmcdevitt + @worldsstrongestbaby

Live performance with video / performance still / approx. 30 min / 2022

Mudwig the goblin delivers his opening monologue on love and grief. Mrs Death looks on alongside her consort of water goblins.

Live performance with video / performance still / approx. 30 min / 2022

This scene is the transition between the narrator Mudwig’s monologue and the opening of a portal to the Celestial Realm, the Abode of the Goddess. Three dancers in green activate the Angel paintings through movement. The dancers spin and push into the crowd, borrowing gestures from contact improvisation and the mosh pit at a punk concert.

Live performance with video / excerpt of video component / approx. 30 min / 2022

Theion, all-sensing, all-knowing, watches from her celestial abode with her company of Pink Witches. Elsewhere, an angel yearns for her omniscient gaze.

Video components screening as part of the 20/92 Video Festival/ installation photo / approx. 1 min / 2022

CURRENCY

2018-ongoing

CURRENCY weaves anthropological research, spiritual investigation, and ecophenomenology to depict a deep history of the collapse of financial markets.

A video essay from the project was screened as part of the 2020 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. This video takes place in 5 chapters corresponding to the 5 stages of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle of terminal illness.

The video essay was created together with Andy P. Davis, collaborating under the name TONGUE: the instrument of expression and the animal itself.

The CURRENCY project is supported by a Deans Grant from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

Video essay / still / 40 min video / 2020

Currency [Excerpt]

Video essay / excerpt / 40 min video / 2020

Mutual Service Exercise

An Investigative Intervention in the Psychosocial Behaviors of two White Female Test Subjects.

Made in collaboration with Suso Phizer.

Video projection installation / production still / 30 min video / approx. 15' x 6' x 3' installation / 2019

Video Projection Installation / excerpt / 30 min video / approx. 15' x 6' x 3' installation / 2019

Strategic Communications Group

2018-2019

The “Strategic Communications Group” is a fictional organization designed to study the relationship between Temple University and residents of the surrounding neighborhood through role-playing conversations.

Strategic Communications group is organized in collaboration with Suso Phizer, Maya Bush, Lauren Fueyo, Kris Rumman, Anna Sweeney, and four anonymous artists.

A documentary about the group was made in collaboration with Suso Phizer

Project support provided by the Velocity Fund, administered by Temple Contemporary with generous funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Performance, role-playing conversation / production still / 2018

Strat Comm staged experimental interviews with residents, professors, students, and activists referencing tools from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.

Documentary Video / still / 30 min / 2019

Pictured: Strat Comm employees sitting in their ‘Mobile Office’ on the Temple campus.

Documentary Video / excerpt / 30 min / 2019

Documentary made in collaboration with Suso Phizer.

Surveyor

Score: The dancer selects a section of road which passes through a broad variety of real estate, both publicly and privately owned. They don an apparatus which is both a marking device and ritual armor. The apparatus is 10 feet tall, and made from bamboo and steel with surveyor's chalk fixed to the apex.