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Coming up, FEB 28 + MAR 1Network: / SUBSTACK

          WELCOME TO BLUE SCREEN //
Hernandez + Dayna Offenbacher, UABDS 2021
STORE contemporary, Reimagined as Play Station, 2024
April Ball as Maya Pearlman, Monaco 2014
Jeff Wall, reimaged 2024
Erica’s Apartment, 2024π
My feet–duh, 2022
Beer Can Still Life, 2022


#0000FF. Blue. Not just any blue. The blue. If you’ve never encountered this hex code, then I ask: do you even exist? Is there meaning without blue? Are you merely a simulacrum of your former self, adrift in the endless sea of RGB values, yearning for the sharp clarity of a single hexadecimal existence? Perhaps, perhaps not. But consider this: Felix González-Torres would have had thoughts on #0000FF, that much we know. Blue—his blue, your blue, our blue—speaks in a tongue we cannot comprehend, yet we try. Always, we try.Let us begin with the most basic observation: blue is a color, yes, but not just any color. #0000FF is the purity of blue, stripped of all narrative baggage. It is not melancholy, nor is it serene. It’s just… there. It sits, a static representation of non-being in a world desperate for meaning. Felix González-Torres might say it’s a mirror—reflecting only what you bring to it, the fragmented remnants of your own sense of self. But is that what blue is? Or does it ask us to question the very notion of self in the first placeWhen you look at #0000FF, you are confronted by the nothingness of its saturation, a void that refuses to acknowledge the subjective experience of the viewer. This is not blue in the way we think of blue. This is the blue that Felix González-Torres sought to create in his work—an infinite, open-ended process that evokes presence and absence simultaneously. His iconic candy spills were not just about the candies themselves; they were about the process of engagement, the act of taking and leaving. They existed not in isolation, but as an ongoing exchange between the object and the viewer, between presence and disappearance. In this sense, #0000FF is not simply a color. It is an ongoing dance, a ritual where the boundaries between self and other, subject and object, dissolve in the digital ether.BUT!  let's not pretend that #0000FF is some kind of singular, transcendent truth. No. To engage with it is to confront a language that defies interpretation. When we place it in the context of postmodern theory, we find that it resists semiotic closure. Roland Barthes would scoff at the idea that #0000FF could have any definitive meaning. "The death of the author" indeed. What meaning could there possibly be in a hex code, a mere string of characters? Is it possible to attach a cultural or political weight to this pure shade of blue, this unmediated representation of color? Perhaps it is, but to do so would be to lose sight of the fact that #0000FF cannot be owned or contained—not in the same way Félix González-Torres’ candy or his stacks of paper could be owned. And yet, here we are, assigning it value, meaning, significance, as though it were a commodity in the marketplace of ideas. Blue, in this case, becomes both commodity and nothing.

BLUE SCREEN 

Joseph Hernandez
LIBRARY


BLUE SCREEN is the latest iteration of the work of artist Joseph Hernandez.  Hernandez has acted as a choreographer  dancer,  writer, curator, educator, and persona non grata in some of the world’s most famoust institutions and least famous internet circles.  He comes from Germany but now lives in Seattle, WA – where he hopes to  adopt a dog and find some meaning in creation again. He took a break from making dance (or making art of any kind for that matter) because he got tired.  (He got tired of making work for dance companies that treat their employees like cattle and who cling to the past because they are greedy and scared.).  Art is one of his biggest loves and he is excited to be making it on his terms.  BLUE SCREEN is where you will find collaborations, events, essays, and baseball caps with pithy slogans.  BLUE SCREEN is amorphously organised public forum where he intends to enlist a lot of people he loves to display their grief, growth and resilience alongsinde his own.  
PAST WORKS

FULL OF IT VOL. 1

Co-Seattle / Mutuus Studio
Library

Full of it was an improvised solo for the 8th edition of Co-Seattle’s Performance Party. It happened on the 8th of November, 2024 – right after the election.  There was a lof of frenetic energy in the air, as can be imagined.  The dance was a short, improvised attack that one onlooker described as a “melennial bowel movement. (non-derogatory)”.  The music was an improvised score that DJ Calico and JH devised together that made the whole thing seem kind of madcap and funny.  It was was as though  a cursed workout instructor met swan lake.  

BIG FEELINGS

Open Space / Oregon Contemporary
Library


BIG FEELINGS premiered in June of 2024 .  It is a mainly improvised performance piece for 4 perfomers that follows a kind of intuitive logic through a “dangerous” emotional landscape.  The perfomers writhe and giggle, antagonise and harass each other in order to raise the stakes of each consecutive moment.  The original cast was Cydney Covert, Michael Arellano, Maya Tacon, and Joseph Hernandez.  Blue Screen is incredibly grateful to Franco Nieto for the invitaition as well as the Kenton Club for housing much of the early ideation for this piece.

FISTFUL

Northwest Dance Project / Newmark Theater
Library


This was the last dance that I made at the Northwest Dance Project.  I loved workinng with these five dancers (four ended up performing becuase poor Nicole hurt her ankle).  it felt special for me becuase it really felt like the culmihation of a project that I had started in 2021.  I had been working with many of these dancers for years and it was lovely to see them bloom into these improvised solos.  I was also so happy that Anohni gave us the permission to use her music.  Big thanks to Thyra Hartson and Jeff Forbes for all of their work on this project <3. Ingrid Ferdinand, Quincie Bean, Lucy Tozzi, Alejandra Preciado and Nicole Hennington were the original cast. -- Joseph Hernandez




contest/contest

Whim W’Him / Cornish Playhouse
Library




This was the third piece I made for Whim W’him.  We started it in a really weird and grey winter.  It felt like there was a kind of storm that we had to figure out how to artiuclate.  This piece is a way for us to try and reconcile the personal and the political, the grandiose and the personally tragic.  We also tried to make somethign that felt as goofy as possible within the parameters that we had.  Dance is difficult osmetimes but the making of this piece really felt like a party.  I have some very old bonds with many of these artists and that’s somethign that I am going to be thankful for for many years.   The music was made by my long time collaborator Barret Anspach. ---Joseph Hernandez

The original cast was Michael Arellano, Kaylan Gardner, Jacob Beasley, Nell Josephine, Jane Cracovaner, Andy Mcshea, and Kyle Sangil.


I lost my love. 

Ballet Idaho  / Velma V. Morrison Center for the Performing Arts
Library



I lost my love. is a reorganisation of the ideas that surround Giselle. This production mines the source material because it is as good a place as any to start talking about death, love, and grief.  Anspach and Hernandez, after years of working together, are deeply aware of the kinds of love that they are interested in and have been sacrified to.  With the help of performers Cydney Covert and Daniel Ojeda, they excavate of world of heartbreak and abandon.  Special thanks to Garret Anderson and Anne Mueller for their help and fortought in bringing this production to life. 



Petrushka: a contemporary fantasia on classical themes 

Northwest Dance Project  / Newmark Theater
Library



"The creation of this piece was incredibly personal to me.  Taking on the racist history of much of classical ballet in the context of the Portland dance scene felt stimulating and terrifying. The piece focuses on how memory and violence intersect, and what it means to dream about a future free from fascism, racism, and disaffection.  I am very thankful to the dancers of the Northwest Dance Project for their creativity and commitment to these complicated topics, and for their enduring commitment to the creation of joy."  

-Joseph Hernandez 


"Lucia Tozzi paces the stage in a shimmering emerald cocktail dress. She looks ready to share something important. And she does: this is not a traditional staging of Stravinsky’s iconic ballet about a love triangle involving three puppets brought to life, Tozzi informs us. That story would be too boring and, frankly, in 2023, too problematic...The show kicks off as the ensemble flurries across the stage to the opening lines of Stravinsky’s score...As Tozzi narrates, Ingrid Ferdinand portrays Petrushka’s lovesick desperation. Her movements are frantic and uncertain, as if she has just awakened from a deep slumber, discovering her extraordinary dance abilities...The narration, a blend of Hernandez’s writing and Tozzi’s improvisation, often strays from the storyline...In the midst of this interlude, dancer Alejandra Preciado joyfully twerks and shimmies, creating a ludicrous, yet comically effective, contrast between the history lesson and exuberant dance. It’s refreshing to see the production doesn’t take itself too seriously." 

-Oregon Arts Watch

Original cast was Lucy Tozzi, Michael Greenberg, Ingrid Ferdinand, Alejandra Preciado, Jacob Beasley, Quincie Bean, Nicole Hennington, Evita Zacharioglou, and Anthony Pucci. 



BEHEMOTH

Treefort Music Festival / Old Greyhound Bus Station
Library

BEHEMOTH is a performance installation that crashes, thrashes and bellows.  There was lots of blood and smoke and the whole thing ws happenig while Brian Cranston was slinging cocktails outside.  Was a hell of a time.  

Origijnal Cast was Jacob Beasley, Cydney Covert, Quincie Bean, Selby Jenkins, Joseph Hernandez 

Special Thanks Lioness Studios Film/Treefort Music Festival + Daniel Ojeda 



Content/Content THE MUSICAL!

 Societaetstheater Dresden / Festspielhaus Hellerau / Caroline Beach 
Library

ContentContent is a performance piece born out of millennial terror and decades of friendship. Musicals, talk shows, TedTalks, memes and cartoons come together in a celebration and elegy of unavoidable media. 

Joseph Hernandez and Caroline Beach are the 90s kids, the experts and victims of this cultural circus. They follow a clown through the post 2008 financial collapse through a maze of suburbian nostalgia, dead malls, and formal tomfoolery. They invite us all to play the jester in order to reverse engineer our own humanity.

 Co-produced by Societaetstheater DresdenSupported by Prozessförderung Fonds Darstellende Künste 

 thanks to Go Plastic Company for the additional support 

concept, choreography, performance, Music: Caroline Beach and Joseph Hernandez 
Stage and Costume: Amelie Sabbagh and Jinx Rüger
 video art: Lucie Freynhagen, with contributions from Eva Jaekel, Clemens Reinicke, Nelli Lorenson, Markus Stein, and others

Project Manager: Ana Dordevic