zavé martohardjono is a queer, non-binary trans, Indonesian-American artist born in Canada and living in Brooklyn. Working across performance, film, installation, and poetry, zavé uses dance and ritual as primary languages across projects that engage in anti-colonial storytelling. With dreams of a more just future, they make work that contends with the political histories our bodies carry and prompts inquiry into how healing and political education can de-condition the assimilated body and reconjure liberatory memory. They have made documentaries, experimental films, and video works that have shown in festivals and galleries in the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, and Indonesia. zavé is a 2022 Bessie-nominated performer whose choreographic and live performances have been presented in theaters, museums, and galleries across the U.S. including in New York, Los Angeles, Omaha, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and in Skopje, North Macedonia.
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asmr4apocalypse invites you to a collective embodied composting of a too-powerful imperialist institution: the Pentagon. Enter Vox Populi, relax into soundscape, take in performance, and let bundles of mugwort in the room facilitate your visualization of geological futures. Eons from now, the monumental disaster-producing military office complex we once created will fall apart and disintegrate back into the earth.
Originally a solo work, this rendition of asmr4apocalypse shares new choreographic research cultivated in classes and workshops led by zavé martohardjono this Spring in Philadelphia thanks to the support of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the Penn Museum and Leah Stein Dance Studios.
About the Artists
zavé martohardjono uses dance, ritual, and multimedia to make works that engage decolonized memory, explore ecological and somatic realities, and dream of more just futures. They are a 2025 UPenn Center for Experimental Ethnography fellow, 2024 NEW INC member, and recipient of a 2023-25 Mertz Gilmore Foundation Dancer Award.
Mike Clemow is trans-disciplinary artist working with traditional and digital media with a strong focus on field recording as a practice and improvisation as creative strategy. They use sound, text, images, and found objects, generative and chaotic systems, to create performances, installations, and objects as “improvised sites.”
Daphne Silbiger is a playwright, dramaturg, and musician who collaborates with the bands Go Home & MOTHERCAT, releases music as sa_phne, and makes collage.
Join a dance workshop in Philadelphia that explores our bodies’ regenerative systems and ecological resilience. ReMAp workshops offer somatic warm ups, deep and quantum listening exercises, shaking practice, and choreographic prompts that explore composting, Deep Time, geology, regenerative natural cycles, and interspecies relationality.
Drop-ins are welcome! You do not need to attend all workshop dates to participate. You can RSVP to hold a spot.
Friends, this year I am facing financial precarity. My creative team has expanded and I’m taking a break from teaching to jumpstart new productions. More focus, less income! If you have the means, please help fund my projects. Your contribution will fuel my Creative Producer and Production Assistant team and will help me keep up with my basic needs as a full-time artist.
Make a tax-deductible donation today.
© 2025 Zavé Martohardjono | performer. video artist. community-minded curator.
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