Abraham Burickson is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Odyssey Works, a cross-genre collaborative of artists which continually strives to challenge and re-conceptualize traditional notions of experience design, performance, and the artist-audience relationship. The work, in which performances are made for small and intimately known audiences, has been called by the New York Times: “A beautiful inefficiency [for] a small but infinitely more affected audience.” Trained in architecture at Cornell University, Burickson’s work spans writing, design, performance, and sound art. His work has been profiled on NPR’s Studio 360, in the New York Times, The Rumpus, ArtInfo, Fast Company, Vulture, the Marina Abramovic Institute's Immaterial, Archinect, the Stanford Storytelling Project, the SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, ARTE television, Metro NY,, and elsewhere, and he has lectured at such places as Gallaudet University, MICA, The Brooklyn Museum, Cornell University, The Battersea Arts Centre, Fordham University, The GoGame, and Southern Exposure Gallery.
Burickson was trained in Architecture at Cornell University, and received his MFA in Poetry and Playwriting from the UT Michener Center for Writers in 2008. He teaches writing in MICA, and architecture at the Academy of Art University, and maintains a small design practice. In 2010, Charlie, a collection of his poems, was published on Codhill Press. His book, co-written with Ayden LeRoux, Odyssey Works, Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One, was just published by Princeton Architectural Press. Burickson makes his home in Baltimore, MD.
Note from the artist about the portfolio: As with most performance work, everything I have shown in the portfolio is in some way collaborative. Dance work is created in collaboration with dancers and choreographers, acting is developed in collaboration with actors, Designs developed in collaboration with designers, etc. Please be mindful when browsing the portfolio that the work is as much about the structures I have developed for collaboration and co-creation as it is about the final products. Even when I am the sole author - for instance of a script or a devised scene - it is always made with a specific performer in mind. You may even think of the audience-of-one structure as inherently a collaboration, as the work is only alive when in the experience of the audience member, whose influence on its creation is enormous.
