Jupiter Nights: kraftwitch (John Moletress) // Sally Decker & Briana Marela

July 7

DOORS 7PM, MUSIC 8PM

At the Basilica Gallery Building 
108 South Front Street, Hudson, NY 12534 (right next to the main building on our campus)

JUPITER NIGHTS – Basilica Hudson’s new weekly series of arts events in our Gallery Building – continues with kraftwitch (John Moletress) and Sally Decker & Briana Marela. Meditative, experimental, dreamscapes that evoke introspection.


KRAFTWITCH (JOHN MOLETRESS)

John (they/them) is a genderqueer artist based in Denver. Their practice, both interdisciplinary and willfully undisciplined, is rooted in performance. It may employ performance practices + environments for live actions, digital platforms and writing, often teetering between unsimulated and theatrical.

Current work is compelled by ritual, divination, magick, earth-based practice(s), and sound + spectral objects.

MORE ABOUT JOHN MOLETRESS

John is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and Founding Director of force/collision, an interdisciplinary performance ensemble. Their work has been seen within the US at The John F. Kennedy Center, Abrons Art Center, Queer Biennial LA, Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, La MaMa ETC, Highways Performance Space, Intersections Festival, Fusebox Festival, Arena Stage, New Dramatists, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, FUNDarte/Out In The Tropics, OUTsider Festival, George Washington University, EMP Collective, Time Space LTD., to name a few. Internationally, their work has been seen at Shout Festival (UK), King’s College London, Homotopia/unity theatre (UK), Warehouse 9 (DK), The Gulbenkian (UK) and The House at Plymouth University (UK). Publications include Wendell. (NoPassport Press), Boy Tail (Amazon) and as a contributor, Jarman (all this maddening beauty) and Other Texts (Intellect Books UK) and Innovation in Five Acts: Strategies for Theatre and Performance (ed. Caridad Svich; Theatre Communications Group). Additionally, they practice psychotherapy on unceded Lenapehoking (Philadelphia), and lead a monthly collective dream work group for Catland Books (Brooklyn); www.kraftwitch.com


Sally Decker & Briana Marela

Sally Decker is a composer & performer working with feedback systems, synthesizers, text and voice. She is interested in mind-body connectivity, healing processes, and sound as a vessel for practicing presence.

Briana Marela Lizárraga is a mixed race Peruvian American composer, performer, and vocalist currently based in Oakland, CA. Her voice is a frequent focal point and ambient texture in compositions, exploring minimal lyrics and text in combination with gestural performance.

Their new album Small Tremble In Slow Motion opens as a guided meditation. Through monologue, two storytellers emerge in a non-linear daydream, drifting between poetic cadence and plain spoken narrative. Together they tell a story of grief that shows up in the body before the mind, and engage in the revelation of new aspects of self that are exposed and activated in experiences of loss.

MORE ABOUT DECKER & Marela

Sally Decker is a composer & performer working with feedback systems, synthesizers, text and voice. She is interested in mind-body connectivity, healing processes, and sound as a vessel for practicing presence. She has performed at venues such as The Lab, SFMOMA, Indexical, Pioneer Works, and has been featured by The Quarterless Review, WFMU, and Bandcamp Daily. Her full-length album In The Tender Dream was released in 2021 on NNA Tapes.

Briana Marela Lizárraga is a mixed race Peruvian American composer, performer, and vocalist currently based in Oakland, CA. Her voice is a frequent focal point and ambient texture in compositions, exploring minimal lyrics and text in combination with gestural performance. She is an Allied Arts Foundation Grant recipient as well as an AAUW Career Development Grant recipient. She has toured with artists such as Jenny Hval, Waxahatchee and Emel Mathlouthi and has toured across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe. She has played such festivals as Sasquatch, Decibel, and Green Man (UK). She has been interviewed by Vogue, Interview Magazine, and Billboard. In 2018 she received a commission from Radiolab’s More Perfect Podcast to write a song about the 4th amendment for their album celebrating the constitutional amendments.

Sally and Briana both attended the Electronic Music & Recording Media Masters program at Mills College, and studied with Laetitia Sonami, Zeena Parkins, James Fei, and John Bischoff. They started collaborating while at Mills, and worked remotely on this piece. Using a shared drive and frequent video calls from opposite coasts, this piece was able to emerge intimately despite physical distance.

MORE ABOUT Small Tremble In Slow Motion


Small Tremble In Slow Motion opens as a guided meditation. Through monologue, two storytellers emerge in a non-linear daydream, drifting between poetic cadence and plain spoken narrative. Together they tell a story of grief that shows up in the body before the mind, and engage in the revelation of new aspects of self that are exposed and activated in experiences of loss. These dreamscapes follow the grasping rhythms of the subconscious; words become texture within layers of self-study and self-tending. The final and title track, an improvised performance, offers resolution through a striking shift in tone. In opposition to the reflective, wandering pace of the composed material, the two voices engage in immediate mutual expression. Small Tremble In Slow Motion explores the expansive possibilities of being present with oneself within experiences of deep emotional contraction such as grief and loss.