Devyn Manibo

= Biography =

Devyn Manibo is a full time diva and East Coast based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in multi-media installation with a basis in diasporic affect, kinship, queer narratives of home and trauma through a postcolonial/neocolonial lens. She creates and collaborates as a means of cultivating space for resistance, survival, and love for and by her communities. She believes in femme supremacy, and has a love for extravagance and the illusion of lavish. She can usually be found race raging, shade bending, and averting your settler colonialist gaze with a resting glare of displeasure.

Also, please read this Anti-oppression Link Round-up, especially if you're white. If you don't, you're gonna need to leave.



= Academics =

High School
Devyn Manibo attended St. Dominic Academy, a private, all-women's Catholic high school located in the heart of Jersey City, New Jersey. There, she was an active member of Student Council, president of the Photography Club, an active member of the Drama Club, an editor of ELAN, the literary magazine, and a contributer and founder of the entertainment section of The Trumpet, the school's news publication.

Division I
A lot of queer theory academic boners, and realizing that video and performance are worthy vehicles for these boners.

Advisor: Christoph Cox

Fall 2010


 * HACU-127: Alienation w/ Christoph Cox
 * HACU-140: Writing from the Diaspora: Contemporary Women's Literature w/ Alicia Ellis
 * SS-166: Girls In School w/ Kristen Luschen
 * CS-137: The Problem of Freewill and Determinism w/ Jonathan Westphal

January 2011


 * HACU-243: Futurist Performance and Performativity w/ Mary Russo

Spring 2011


 * SS-225: Intro To Queer Studies w/ Jaclyn Pryor
 * IA-147: Devised Theatre: Creating and Performing Original Performance Material w/ Jaclyn Pryor
 * SS-217: Hybrid Identities, Authentic Selves w/ Kim Chang
 * NS-120: Complementary Medicine: Science, History, and Practice w/ Helaine Selin and Emily Maiella

Div I Projects
• Lust, Power, Force (9:30), a video in the Futurist style, exploring women in relation to war, and the sexualization and desexualization of the female form for Futurist Performance and Performativity. (Director, Editor, Collaborator) • Read Me (2:58), a short narrative film, which explores the fluidity and ambiguity of identities for Hybrid Identities, Authentic Selves. (Director, Editor, Performer) • Food and Mood (16:40), a documentary video piece exploring the correlation between diet and depression among young people in the Hampshire College community for Complementary Medicine. (Cinematographer, Editor) • Harbored Dreamz (10:00), an experimental performance piece as a commentary on the notion of the American Dream, based on text from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman for Devised Theatre: Creating and Performing Original Performance Material. (Collaborator)

Division II
Title: AUTO/ASSEMBLAGE: (Re)presentation and Resistance through Media Production, Performance, and Installation

An amalgam of video, performance, and site and time based installation as modes of resistance within postcolonial and diasporic narratives, with a basis in queer of color theory and critical media studies.

Chair: Jules Rosskam / Chair: Jaclyn Pryor / Member: Susana Loza

Fall 2011


 * HACU-208: Intro to Non-fiction Filmmaking w/ Jules Rosskam
 * HACU-211: Still Photography I w/ Michele Turre
 * IA-188: Performing Identity: Race/Gender/Sexuality in Theory and Practice w/ Jaclyn Pryor
 * ANTHR-222: Making Class Visible w/ Debbora Battaglia (Mt. Holyoke) 

Spring 2012


 * HACU-185: Sample! Remix! Mash! w/ Susana Loza
 * CSI-239: In a Queer Time and Place w/ Jaclyn Pryor
 * FLMST-290: Feminist &amp; Queer Theory through Film w/ Christian Gundermann (Mt. Holyoke)
 * (Re)imag(in)ing Transgender - an independent study on the queer gaze in experimental film w/ James Theophilos and Jules Rosskam

Summer 2012


 * New Media Intern at Bitch Media in Portland, OR

Fall 2012


 * HACU-280: Immigration Nation w/ Susana Loza
 * HACU-258: Advanced Experimental Narrative w/ Jules Rosskam
 * AAS-242: Death &amp; Dying in Black Culture w/ Kevin Quashie (Smith)

Spring 2013


 * HACU-301: No Place: Utopian Visions in Film and Video w/ Jules Rosskam
 * HACU-286: Immediate Site: Time Based Installation Theory and Practice w/ kara lynch
 * FLS-250: Queer Cinema/Queer Media w/ Lokeilani Kaimana (Smith)
 * Queer Diasporic (Corpo)realities: Performance, Narrative, and Image - an independent study exploring film and performance as mediums of resistance and ways to convey and embody diasporic and postcolonial narrative(s) of struggles with the Pilipin@-American experience of displacement, melancholia, and the search for new meanings and understandings of “home” and “family.”

Summer 2013


 * Communications Intern at QWOCMAP in San Francisco, CA

Div II Projects
• Bodies Move (3:02), a collaborative short documentary film depicting and preserving the body as space, highlighting the ambiguity of the human form for Intro to Non-fiction Filmmaking. (Director, Editor, Collaborator) • Brutally Beautiful Life (5:26), a short narrative/interview piece focusing on anxiety, depression, and eating disorders and the manifestation of these issues on every day life, and living with, accepting, and loving a queer body for Intro to Non-fiction Filmmaking. (Cinematographer, Editor) • Names We Have Been Denied, a collaborative narrative and movement performance piece with Frederick Fluchel and Mel Mel Mooring, part of a multimedia QPOC centered drag spectacular entitled Burning Down The House of ___________, performed on December 4th, 2011 in the Red Barn. (Collaborator) • Nawala Salita / Lost Words (7:16), a collaborative experimental non-fiction narrative video piece focusing on the notions of loss, desire and the search for home for Intro to Non-fiction Filmmaking. (Director, Editor, Collaborator) • Queer as a Class (12:32), a documentary video focusing on class and privilege dynamics within the queer community at Mt. Holyoke College. (Cinematographer, Editor) • The Jungle of Hypercathection, a ten minute performance piece based on performance ethnography of various field work communities for Performing Identity: Race/Gender/Sexuality in Theory and Practice. (Collaborator) • My Body... That's an Interesting Topic, a small photo project featuring twelve prints, focusing on the vulnerability and anonymity of the human form, as well as the subjects' relationships with their bodies, accompanied by an audio piece compiled of clips from each subject for Still Photography I. (Photographer, Editor) • Do You Feel Threatened?, a fifteen minute collaborative video/performance/installation piece based on Jack Halberstam's book In a Queer Time and Place. (Cinematographer, Editor, Collaborator) • still (14:30), a collaborative experimental autoethnographic video piece exploring queer kinship, history, and time. (Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Collaborator) • Differences (3:02), an improvised experimental satire about ableism in relationships, based on a conversation in Chili's. (Director, Editor) • ''Swallow, Beauty. You are already inside the body you fear. (A Division III by Zique Fancy Lyric), Stage Manager • Never Never Other: Mixed Bodies, Melancholia, and the Corporeality of Queer Diaspora'', an academic zine for Immigration Nation. • THIS IS ABOUT YR NEEDS (10:07), an extension/progression of Differences, focusing on ableism ableism, communication, (in)visibility, and the way(s) we love or do not love or cannot love. (Stage Manager) • rot + remembrance, a three part collaborative sculpture and sound installation exploring tactile and aural memory through a lens of loss, nostalgia, escapism and recreation. (Collaborator) • now/here: mo(ve)ments of almost there, a video and sound installation exploring utopia as the almost touched, almost there, now, here, but nowhere. (Director, Editor, Performer) • WELCUM TO SALVE////ATION, a dual channel collaborative sound and video installation of temporal oozings. (Collaborator) • manlalakbay ng kalawakan // celestial traveler, a collaborative video piece exploring histories of colonialism, forced migration, corporeal traumas, new industrial slavery, and the search for home for queer diasporic filipina/os. (Director, Editor, Collaborator)

Division III
Title: for the islands i've lost // the islands i've never known: imag(in)ing home in a queer diaspora

Chair: kara lynch / Member: Susana Loza

My Division III project is a culmination of the research and aesthetic I have been developing for the last three years. In all of my work, I seek to create visual representations of marginality and liminality, and the ways that bodies survive together. This, is a collapsing of worlds, the melting of bodies, the time I do not have, and the time I cannot have, the time I am clutching, and losing – the spaces and names I have been denied, that make my knees feel weak, that make my hands shake. I utilize island diasporas and melancholia as broad themes for an exploration of video, performance, and installation as mediums of resistance, survival, and homage. I used this as a platform to convey and embody my own diasporic and postcolonial narrative of Pilipin@-Amerikan experiences of displacement, grievance, desire, and the search for new meanings and understandings of home, kinship, mourning, and bodily haunting and ancestral trauma. This is a space of convergence for past, present, and future – motherland and diaspora, a melding of mediums, spaces, and bodies. This is for us, for our bodies, for the islands that float on my full belly, in the depths of my collarbones, in crevices, under fingernails, and in my palms. This is an imagining of home. This is only the beginning of my story, which will never cease to unfold and unravel as I continue to create, as I continue to resist, as I continue to survive.

The installation took place on April 29th and 30th in the Red Barn at Hampshire College.

For more information about my process, please visit my Div III blog.

Fall 2013


 * CSI-159T: Hybrid Identities w/ Kim Chang (TA)

Spring 2014


 * HACU-399: Film/Photography/Video Studies Seminar w/ kara lynch and Billie Mandle

= Extracurriculars and Beyond =

Devyn has been a freelance photographer for a number of years now, scoring jobs with New York Magazine and Impose Magazine, as well as having her work exhibited in various venues in the New York Metropolitan area, and published by various print and web publications. Her portfolio can be viewed here. She has also interned with Bitch Magazine in Portland, OR, and the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project in San Francisco, CA, and is the co-host of A Rise From The Ashes: Queer Performance Salons 4 U and Me with Karyn Warren-Gregory, a year long recurring event to showcase new queer work in the Centrum Gallery on the first Thursday of every month.

Student groups and academic involvement
Five College Queer Gender & Sexuality Conference • Core Organizer (F11-S14)

Community Advocacy Union • CFF/QCAC Representative and Liaison (S12-F13)

QIPOC (Queer International and People of Color) • Signer (S12-F13)

QCA (Queer Community Alliance) • Signer (S11-S12)

PASA (Pan Asian Student Alliance) • Signer (F11-S12)

Awards and Recognition
2014 Hampshire College Ingenuity Award Recipient Five College Film Festival participant 2013 26th Annual MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival participant Princess Grace Foundation Undergraduate Film Award recipient Community Partnerships for Social Change Social Justice Scholar grant recipient 2012 Participant in 120 dB: A Group Show of Concert Photography Hampshire College Student of Color Rising Star Award recipient Hampshire College Ingenuity Award recipient