Bard Fisher Center Presents Andrew Schneider NERVOUS/SYSTEM

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.— What connections are we missing in an always-on world? OBIE award-winning interactive media artist Andrew Schneider and his collaborators perform a cartography of the all-too-fleeting revelations, narratives, and emotional interactions flooding our bodies and brains every second. A breathtaking intersection of human physicality and stunning visual technology, NERVOUS/SYSTEM will be presented in the LUMA Theater on Friday, October 12 and Saturday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, October 14 at 4 pm. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased at fishercenter.bard.edu or by calling the box office at 845-758-7900.

NERVOUS/SYSTEM specifically follows the trajectories of 7 individual and entirely disparate narratives throughout history and explores how interconnected all events truly are. Borrowing concepts from physics and philosophy such as “loop gravity,” “eternalism,” and “block time,” NERVOUS/SYSTEM’s narrative structure attempts to collapse linear time, putting effect before cause and causing us to think about our realities and how we as humans affect each other in profoundly new ways.


The New Yorker describes Schneider’s work as “jagged and miraculous”; “revelatory theater” writes the The Village Voice. Read The New York Times profile of Andrew Schneider here.
A Live Arts Bard co-commission with MIT and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NERVOUS/SYSTEM is the third project in a triptych of new performance works by Schneider with a core ensemble of collaborators (following YOUARENOWHERE and AFTER) that create rapid-fire existential meditations using physics lectures, pop culture, and personal revelation to dissect subjects ranging from quantum mechanics and parallel universes to missed connections and AA recovery steps. Using an array of complex visual and aural effects to produce a fluid, shifting landscape of sensory overload, these three projects transform the physical performance space and to short-circuit preconceived notions of individual perspective and what it means to be here now.

The core company includes collaborators Alicia ayo Ohs, Bard alum Kedian Keohan, and Peter Musante, with designer and mechanical engineer Elena Tilli, working on set and video design. Joining the team over the course of the company’s three-week residency at the Fisher Center will be 14 Bard undergraduate students, who will observe the development of the work and will perform in the piece. 

Andrew Schneider is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, video, and installation since 2003. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Schneider creates and performs original performance works, builds interactive electronic art works and installations, and was a company member of The Wooster Group from 2007-2014. Andrew’s original performance work in NYC includes AFTER (2018 – Under the Radar Festival, The Public Theater), YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE Award – The Invisible Dog, 2016 Drama Desk nomination,  3LD), DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Dance Roulette), and TIDAL (2013 – River to River Festival).

Andrew creates wearable, interactive electronic art works such as the olar Bikini, (a bikini that charges your iPod), and wireless programmable sound effect gloves.  His interactive work has been featured in such publications as Art Forum and Wired, among others and at the Center Pompidou in Paris.

Andrew is a recurring collaborator with The TEAM, Heather Christian, Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera, Hotel Savant, Fischerspooner, Kelela, and AVAN LAVA. His off-Broadway designs include Dolphins and Sharks at the Labyrinth Theater; Small Mouth Sounds at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre; and Roosevelvis at the Vineyard Theatre. Schneider has served as an Adjunct Professor at NYU and has taught courses on Technology and Performance at the Interactive Telecommunications Program, and at Bowdoin, and Carleton Colleges. Andrew holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU.

Live Arts Bard (LAB) is the interdisciplinary residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center. LAB creates a community of professional artists and students who develop work side by side, inspiring one another to create and experiment. LAB provides commissioning and residency fees, studio and stage time, research resources and dramaturgy, and production support to a wide range of professional artists and ensembles. Though their projects and working methodologies vary widely, LAB artists share a common commitment to rigorous inquiry and innovation. Artists recently commissioned by the Fisher Center include Suzanne Bocanegra, Anne Bogart, Annie Dorsen, Carl Hancock Rux, Nilaja Sun, Geoff Sobelle, Jack Ferver, Michelle Ellsworth, Will Rawls, Claudia Rankine, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Dan Hurlin, Ralph Lemon, and The Wooster Group.

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This event was last updated on 10-02-2018

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