The Family Room formed as a queer performing artists’ collective in 2018, and consists of members Sylke Rene Meyer, Todd Moellenberg, and Matthew Savitsky. We got to know each other in the context of group relations processes and found that we have a shared interest in interpersonal dynamics and participatory performance art. Our projects investigate everyday life as it manifests in family dynamics, societal and institutional mores, and sidewalk observation, to name a few.

While we have a shared investment in performance, each member approaches our work through the lens of diverse disciplines. The practice of poet and performance artist Todd Moellenberg is informed by using language to create a poetic framework of discrete language segments that allow him to deconstruct structural mechanisms of consumerism and bureaucracy. Using film, video, and improvised performances, visual artist Matthew Savitsky creates social sculptures, miniatures of institutions, institutional symbolic space, and adjacent spaces to expand, contract, and distort the scale of his material. Writer/director Sylke Rene Meyer works with actors and players in a narrative space, synthesizing language, the collective unconscious of the performers, and physical models and dolls to uncover less visible power mechanism through improvisation and play.

Together we created Strange Loops in Fall 2018, an improvised theatrical performance, Bernadette Goes to Hollywood, a feature film currently in production, and Paper Over, a series of durational performances which we developed in residence at the gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid in April 2019, in Fall 2019: “House of Fear”, a Family Room solo show at the art gallery at CSU Northridge, and “The Minutes”,  a performance production at the Arena Theatre at Cal State Los Angeles.

Contact: thefamilyroomcollective (at) gmail.com