Marianna Ellenberg

Marianna Ellenberg’s creative practice involves rigorous research and a commitment to expanding the medium of multimedia performance to bridge the disciplines of cinema, fine art, and theater, teasing the boundaries between the still and moving image, meaning, narrative flow, and digitization. Through language play, mixing found and original material, Ellenberg builds new possibilities for female embodiment and ontological presence within her video installations and live performances.

Selected exhibitions and performances include The Kitchen, David Lewis Gallery, Harvestworks, Joan (Los Angeles), Issue Project Room, LACMA and Anthology Film Archives in North America. Her films and videos have been screened at EMAF in Germany, In/Out Festival (Poland), The Horse Hospital (London) and Gallery SC in Zagreb, among others. She will be presenting a new performance piece at Pageant (Brooklyn, NY) in 2024.

At Rupert, Ellenberg will have the unique opportunity to incorporate primary research into the legacy of Lithuanian Jewish literature and intellectual history, as part of her ongoing project Mikva Girls. In this piece, a series of movements, monologues and musical suites meditate upon the codes of traditional female Jewish ritual dress, prayer and sexuality. This project incorporates chanting, language play, movement and improvised music to draw out the interstices between female sibjectivity, eroticism, coming of age, and intellectual discourse. In each additional segment of Mikva Girls, Ellenberg illuminates tales of Jewish female visionaries who challenge the constructs of religion, gender and sexual identity, from Andrea Dworkin to Simone Weil. In addition, Ellenberg will write a series of experimental monologues and chants, to be workshopped while in residency at Rupert.

Thana Brick ‘The Rindfleisch Rehearsals’, Canal Street Research Association, 2022