Program Notes for Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025

Autumn Knight
Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025
February 20-22, 2025
Walker Cinema

Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025

AUTUMN KNIGHT

Video Director
ROSS KARRE

Video Design & Camera Person
MONICA DUNCAN 

Video Design & Camera Person
ADELE FOURNET

Video Design & Camera Person
MERVE KAYAN 

Sound Design
LEVY LORENZO

Lighting Design
TOM MAYS

Table
STEPHANIE LUNIESKI

Animation
VALERIE CAESAR

Guides
MAJE ADAMS, HAWONA SULLIVAN JANZEN, ATLESE ROBINSON

Walker Production
JUSTIN AYD, KD DEUTSCH, WYATT HEATHERINGTON TILKA, JON KIRCHHOFER, DOUG LIVESAY, ELIZABETH MACNALLY, AARON ROBINSON

Commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Program support provided by John L. Thomson.

Please join us before and after the performances in the Walker’s Main Lobby.

About Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025

Boundaries between screen and stage dissolve in this new work by New York–based artist Autumn Knight. Building on her experiments with streaming during the COVID-19 lockdown, Knight and her production crew will film, edit, and transmit a real-time performance from the Walker’s McGuire Theater to the Walker Cinema, calling into question the nature of “liveness.” Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025 flows from Knight’s interdisciplinary performance practice, which strives to unsettle entrenched power dynamics and probe perceptions of behavioral norms.

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Collapsing Cinema and Stage: Autumn Knight Live at the Walker

In Autumn Knight Live at the Walker, 2025, the artist collapses the distance between the McGuire Stage and the Walker Cinema in an improvisational work that blurs live performance and film. In advance of its premiere, the artist chatted with Jenny Schlenzka, director of the Gropius Bau, Berlin, about Knight’s history with drama therapy, the power of group dynamics, improvisation, and nothingness.

Living Land Acknowledgment

The Walker Art Center is located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today. 

We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself. 

We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work. 

Acknowledgments

Producers’ Council

Media Partner

To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2024/25 Walker Performing Arts Season.