Media

Podcasts / Webinars

Lectures, Conferences, Video Podcasts

Dead White Zombies: Performance as Lived Event

Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, Brno, Czech Republic.

Performance Lecture / November 2021

SUMMARY by Šimon Peták

Thomas Riccio gave a partially improvised, energetic, and insightful sixty-minute-long lecture in which he drew on his rich experience with living among – and creating art with – various indigenous groups. In the second part of his speech, Riccio presented the work of his group Dead White Zombies (the name expresses an attitude towards the “culture of the white man”, which – although already dead – keeps wandering the world). He specifically referred to the project Holy Bone, which is an immersive performance for small groups of spectators composed as a ritualistic journey. In his speech, he touched upon topics like:

*myths and their reception inside and outside the communities that tell them;

*transitions between the human state and the animal state;

*the role of spirits in both lived and artistic reality of indigenous people;

*possible uses of trance in the field of performing arts.

Riccio also shared his view of the creative process as developing an organism that, at some point, starts shaping itself. In the following discussion, he further elaborated on the given topics and opened new ones based on questions from the audience.

When Does a Robot Become Human?

Universita Cattolica Milan, Italy / Webinar 30 April 2021

Trickster: The Work of Thomas Riccio.

A documentary film by Patrick Dowling.

Original television broadcast, 2012.

Bridging Communities Through Indigenous Performance

TEDxUTD, 2016

African Art in Performance.

Excerpt from a talk at the Dallas Museum of Art, 2013.

Wedding Dresses, a feature film by Peng JinQuan. Featuring Riccio. Miao and Chineses with English subtitles. Shot in 2016 in the Miao region of Hunan, China. The film is the journey of an ethnographer (Riccio) who searches for a master dress maker. Wedding Dresses for the Miao take years to make and are embroidered with the stories of the people, their history, mythology, and cosmology.