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Recreation Services

Recreation Services are community-based project created by a diverse coalition of visiting artists in collaboration with the City of El Paso’s Senior Recreation Services Department. Over the course of June 2017, lead artists, Jessica Hankey and Erin Colleen Johnson offered bilingual workshops in theatre, improvisation and performance at three local senior centers in El Paso, Texas, including: Pavo Real Senior Center, Wellington Chew Senior Center and Hilos de Plata Senior Center. These workshops included improvisation, scripted dramatization, practices of psychodrama and interviews.

The project is a process-oriented work that consists of carefully orchestrated activities that facilitate the emergence of themes specific to the interactions among participants. It aims to explore the transformative potential of performance to shift existing social values and express the complexity of the human experience by focusing on incorporating the ethical and aesthetic tensions at play in collaboration and community engagement. In each workshop, seniors shared their life stories, sang, dance and acted, and in many ways became inspiring reminders of the core values of a living a full life, despite the realities of the mundanity of everyday life. The U.S./Mexico border served as a stage for the exploration and enactment of psychological, historical and social boundaries, such as those dividing young and old, rich and poor, insider and outsider.

The spirit of Recreation Services sought to invigorate and enliven the senior community with a unique opportunity to support their overall health and wellbeing through the theater arts. The project offered participants opportunities for self-expression and human connection that allowed these extraordinary individuals to explore their talents, hopes and dreams. The culminated in an exhibition entitled Salidas y Entradas| Exits and Entrances which was exhibited at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center from May 31 - August 10, 2018.

LEAD ARTIST

Jessica Hankey is an artist, curator, and is currently Director of the New Media Program at Southside Community Center in Ithaca, NY. Her installations combine modes of video and photographic practices to explore the social life of institutions. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at HERE in NY, NY and CTRL+SHFT in Oakland, CA. She received her MFA from UC Berkeley in 2014 and was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2015.

jessicahankey@gmail.com

http://Jessicahankey.com

Erin Colleen Johnson received an MFA and Certificate in New Media from The Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of California, Berkeley in 2013 and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College. The deeply social nature of Johnson’s artistic process diffuses meaning across a network of contingent agents, both inside and outside the arts. In the creation of her works - comprised primarily of video, performance, and installation - Johnson’s interlocutors have ranged from graphologists and economists to poets and labyrinth facilitators. Her work utilizes both fictional and historical narratives to examine devices of social connection, possibilities raised by chance encounter, and the act of searching.

ejohnson00@gmail.com

PARTNERS

Texas Commission on the Arts

Parks and Recreation Department, City of El Paso

The Hospitals of Providence

United Healthcare