Thank you to everyone who submitted to and shared the Open Call that we put out last November to find our upcoming Artist in Residence projects! FCCW staff and our review committee, Carmen Argote, Andra Nadirshah, and Tiffany Barber, were overwhelmed with the number of wonderful proposals we received! We are exceptionally excited to announce that we will be working with K. Bradford in Fall 2026, Kumi James in Spring 2027 and Nat Decker in Fall 2027. We hope you’ll join us in getting to know each of these artists through their FCCW residencies and programming.
Learn more about AIR, our current residency with Marooning Bodies, and our review committee for this round. Please keep an eye out for the next AIR Open Call coming up this fall!
K. BRADFORD
ABOUT THE ARTIST
K. Bradford (they/them) is an interdisciplinary performer, writer, director, and cultural innovator whose art + social practice invites radical presence, play, and pathways toward collective alchemy. K.’s gender theater, performance art, and public art works explore queer and trans ecologies, interspecies kinship, and mythic transformation in times of reckoning. As a performer and curator, K. activates inventive cross-pollination, inviting audiences into a call and response with ritual, camp, and poetic experimentation, stewarding futures of resilience and joy.
K. has toured across the U.S. with their writing and performance, and they have been awarded scholarships and residencies for their work, including the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Theatrical Jazz Institute, and the Fulbright Scholars Program. Their writing has been published in anthologies and journals such as the LA Review of Books, Gulf Coast, Soap Ear, Viralnet.net, & more.
Through trainings, mentorship, and collaboration, K.’s work sits in the lineage of Sharon Bridgforth, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Peggy Shaw, and Leslie Feinberg. In 2025, K. launched Qosmos, a post-drag spectacle, and they are at work on a full-length performance, Wild Glitch. Currently, K.’s curatorial practice also includes leadership roles at the Performance Art Museum and nina, an LA-based art space. K. is beaming with excitement to have their creative work nested in FCCW’s community and Artist in Residency program to bring this new work to life!
ABOUT THE AIR PROJECT
Set in a tale of trans time, Wild Glitch is a one-person performance work in progress featuring original song cycle, poetic narratives, speculative reality, and post-drag. Through a mythic journey led by Glitch, a futuristic transcestor, and an autobiographical post-dysphoric travelogue, this time-spirit-machine of a world is filled with flying fish, living ampersands, and breathing mobius strips as blueprints for survival and liberation in apocalyptic times.
KUMI JAMES
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kumi James, aka BAE BAE, is an LA based DJ/producer, organizer and sound artist. An LA native, she has risen to prominence within LA’s underground music scene, organizing innovative communal spaces, including the infamous underground party HOOD RAVE. BAE BAE is driven by her commitment to creating innovative dance music spaces for marginalized people to help them build connection. Her dj mixes race freely through ghetto house and techno, footwork, jungle, bass and beyond, with her lifelong love of R&B never far from the surface. The intuitive selector’s wide ranging taste and driving emotional sound are sure to get you on your feet and in your feelings.
As a DJ, BAE BAE’s selections uplift Black electronic music and femme voices, while her own productions, slick bootleg edits, and shape-shifting remixes have become club essentials. Her original productions have been lauded by DJ Mag, Resident Advisor, Tidal, Telekom Electronic Beats, and presenters like Joy Orbison on BBC Radio, while her mixes have made “best of” lists on Pitchfork and Crack Magazine.
BAE BAE’s curatorial vision is sharp and steadily evolving as she continues to produce one of LA’s most beloved underground parties, Hood Rave, and hosts two monthly radio shows with NTS and Dublab all while completing her PhD studies at USC in Media Arts and Practice. She has a forthcoming EP releasing on Planet Mu in 2026.
ABOUT THE AIR PROJECT
𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖆𝖗𝖈𝖍𝖞 explores the complex figure of the femme/woman leader within families and communities—her labor, invisibility, and inherited burdens, but also her dynamism, creative problem-solving, and capacity to build spaces where others can thrive. It asks what these leaders teach us about holding space, both sonically and communally, and how their accumulated knowledge can inform alternative ways of building and sustaining community. Each performance interweaves original electronic composition, movement, and archival video projection. The work draws from the language and practice of synthesis—layering tones, shaping frequencies, and combining signals into evolving sonic structures. The matriarch actively synthesizes—connecting disparate people, emotions, and histories into new forms of gathering.
The score is inspired by the early musical experimentation of Wendy Carlos, whose electronic reinterpretations of classical music on early Moog synthesizers helped pave the way for electronic music today. Claudia Jones, the Trinidadian feminist and communist organizer who founded the Notting Hill Carnival in the UK, is another key historical matriarch guiding this work.
NAT DECKER
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nat Decker is a Los Angeles-based artist working across digital media, sculpture, and performance. Disability is the lens through which they explore embodiment, virtuality, alienation, and liberatory networks. Their practice critically engages technology as both assistive and oppressive. Presently they are experimenting with autonomous internet infrastructure, researching simulation, generating a/v feedback, and making 3D computer graphics.
Nat is a 2026 United States Artists Fellow, LACE Lightning Fund grantee (with the collective Secret Server Club), 2025 Supercollider SciArt Ambassador Fellow, 2024 Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellow (with the collective Cripping_CG), Y10 member of NEW INC, 2024 Processing Foundation Mentor and 2023 Fellow, 2024 Coaxial resident, 2024 fellow at the Decentralized web camp, 2023 resident at Latitude Chicago, 2023 Leonardo CripTech Metaverse Lab Fellow, and 2021 resident and current staff of ACRE Residency. They have exhibited work and delivered talks internationally.
ABOUT THE AIR PROJECT
Nat Decker will develop a sculptural and participatory off-grid mesh network using LoRa (long-range) radios. An installation of abstract transmission towers, elaborate antennas, and solar-powered radios will explore experimental communication technologies, decentralization, accessibility, surveillance, and power.