biographies

ROBERT KOCIK

Robert Kocik’s cutting-edge work blurs the distinction between art and architecture. He has studied poetry at the New College in San Francisco and engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique IBOIS in Lausanne, Switzerland. After apprenticing with Japanese woodworkers in the San Francisco Bay Area, under the tutelage of Makoto Imai, and working with the Compagnons du Devoir, a traditional French wood-framers guild, Kocik began fusing these two traditions in his own work, beginning with furniture, and gradually evolving into architecture and sculpture.

He has been commissioned to design buildings for several well-known artists, including internationally acclaimed sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard and prestigious art critic David Levi-Strauss. As an architect in the public sphere, he works toward the realization of “missing civic services,” conceptualizing, designing, and constructing buildings that serve a public function and provide an activity that in some way “turns the world around.” Examples of past missing civic services include Preemptive Peace Place, Enfranchisement Ranch, and Furniture While You Wait. Kocik has exhibited related sculptural work at P.S. 122, Hunter College Gallery, the Kentler International Drawing Space, and the Makor Gallery, all in New York, among many other venues. His work is currently on view at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan.

Kocik is also an acclaimed poet whose books include Over Coming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2000) Rhrurbarb (Ecopoetics, 2007) and the forthcoming The Prosodic Body (The Factory School, 2009). His poetry and writings have appeared in the journals Acts, Object, Crayon, Action Poetique, The New Coast, and Ecopoetics, among many others. He has also translated and published the work of several contemporary French poets.

In 1990, Kocik co-founded the Atelier Trigon, a multidisciplinary arts, trades, and performance space in Paris with choreographer Daria Faïn, where he served as Co-Artistic Director from 1990-94. In 1997 he founded the Bureau Of Material Behaviors, a materials research, consultation, design, and building practice located in Brooklyn, NY. Kocik has taught and lectured extensively throughout the United States.

photo: Miana Grafals

DARIA FAïN

Daria Faïn is an acclaimed New York choreographer originally from Antibes, France. Her choreography fuses her European cultural background with two decades of practice in Asian philosophies of the body and American dance training. Her influences include the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, the butoh-based work of Min Tanaka, and the study of 17th century landscape architecture. Faïn has also extensively researched the reciprocal influence that architecture and human behavior have on one another, and has given several lectures on Swiss-born modern architect and urbanist Le Corbusier. Over the years Faïn’s choreographic research has led her to work with psychotics, patients with other mental disorders, and blind-deaf individuals, leading to a complex understanding of the body as a resource of knowledge.

In New York, Faïn's work has been presented at The Kitchen, Danspace Project, PS-122, and the 92nd Street Y, among many other venues. Over the course of her career, she has presented 15 evening-length performances and numerous other short works and installations. She founded, designed, and built the multidisciplinary arts center and performance space Atelier Trigon with architect/poet Robert Kocik in Paris in 1990, and served as its Co-Artistic Director from 1990-1994. In 2000, Faïn founded the dance company Human Behavior Explorers, and in 2008, with Kocik, she launched the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Universal Coverage, Inc.

In 1979, Faïn received the Cultural Ministry Award from the Concours Internationale de Choregraphie de Bagnolet (France). In 1986 she received a special fellowship from the French Ministry of Urbanism’s Architecture Research Section. She has also been awarded numerous grants from the French Ministry of Culture, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Foundation Cartier (Paris), the Ecole de Beaux Arts (Paris), and Marseille Objectif Danse (Marseille, France). Faïn has been a faculty member at Movement Research since 2005, and she has taught master classes and workshops at institutions across the United States, including the Trisha Brown Studio, New York University, Tulane University, Adelphi University, Rutgers University, Cooper Union, and Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing has frequently been published in the Movement Research Performance Journal.

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