Up Until Now Collective
UP UNTIL NOW (UUN) is a New York City-based artist collective co-founded by Brandon Kazen-Maddox, Kevin Newbury, Jecca Barry, and Marcus Shields in 2020. Committed to inclusive, accessible, and equitable working environments, UUN develops and produces new interdisciplinary work that explores language, empathy, intimacy, and community, and seeks to challenge the status quo by building new structures for artistic creation. Since its inception, UUN has collaborated with over three hundred artists.
Projects include the pioneering SOUL(SIGNS): An ASL Playlist, a series of American Sign Language music videos featuring songs by iconic Black female artists including Nina Simone, Tina Turner and Gladys Knight (commissioned by Broad.stream Media). SOUL(SIGNS) was profiled by The New York Times and ABC World News. The first video in the series, “Georgia,” was chosen by the Times Square Alliance as the July 2021 Midnight Moment, appearing on ninety screens in Times Square every night at midnight throughout the month. UUN has curated free, ASL-accessible music performances in Times Square as part of the Midnight Moment, in Union Square and Astor Place as part of Make Music New York, at Sotheby’s auction house as part of the Burning Man: Boundless Space exhibit, and in collaboration with Lincoln Center for “An Evening of Access Magic.”
Other film work includes the series SOUL(SIGNS): OPERA, commissioned by Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Columbus, and Portland Opera, and streaming for free for OperaBox.tv. SOUL(SIGNS): OPERA made its film festival debut in September 2022 at Opera Philadelphia’s Opera on Film Festival and will be featured at the Reel Abilities Film Festival in May 2023. UUN’s experimental short music film Up Until Now (commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects) debuted at OutFEST in LA in 2022 and made its NYC Festival Premiere at NEW FEST in October 2022. UUN has also created music videos for Morgan James, Shafyer James, Coyle Girelli, and Lachi, as well as the Prototype Festival (composer Jimmy Lopez and singer Sasha Cooke’s “Where Once We Sang”).
UUN developed and coproduced Karim Sulayman’s opera theatre piece Unholy Wars, which premiered at Spoleto Festival USA in May 2022. It was reviewed by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Unholy Wars will be featured at Opera Philadelphia’s O Festival in September 2023. Commercial work includes activist video campaigns celebrating Pride for Global Citizen, featuring opera superstar Jamie Barton and many others.
UUN recently premiered their multisensory installation and exhibit UP UNTIL NOW: midair for some time at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, as part of UUN’s Brooklyn Arts Council Grant. UP UNTIL NOW: midair for some time will also be presented in collaboration with HERE Arts Center at the Reel Abilities Film Festival in May 2023. Upcoming projects include the ASL Dance Theatre re-imagining of Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party.
