The Visualist » Performance

Songs for October

chad — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Doors open at 11 PM, Seance starts a little before midnight

Dear Comrades,
USSA 2012 cordially invites you to Songs for October.
What: Séance/ “Performance”/ General Transmigration. Vol.5
When: October 8th, Saturday night, 11:00pm
Where: threewalls, 119 North Peoria Street, 2c, Chicago, IL
Why:
- Because we (you & I) choose not to privilege the natural world
at the expense of the supernatural.
- This is not a bear’s game!
- Libations are on me.
What to Bring:
- Your suspended disbelief.
- Dress clothes (It’s a seance so dress accordingly).
- Something you can’t part with…but something you would part with (if asked nicely)…a keepsake…an offering … not much larger than hand-held size…IT WILL BE DESTROYED AND WILL NOT BE RETURNED.

PLEASE NO PHOTOGRAPHY OF ANY KIND!!

RSVP to abigail (at) three-walls.org

if you’d be so kind, study the following link very carefully:

To Say Nothing Of

chad — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Joni Murphy, Brian Wallace, Benjamin Chaffee, Benjamin Pearson, Millie Kapp, Noah Furman, Hillary Kennedy, Annie Maurer and Matthew Shalzi share a bill of body-based performance art that provokes, prods and questions. Three night of performances with the same programming running each night: Friday, September 30 at 8pm Saturday, October 1 at 8pm Sunday, October 2Continue Reading

Klein Bottle (for “The Search”)

chad — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Industry of the Ordinary investigate the state of being internal, protected and private, while simultaneously external, vulnerable and public.

http://www.industryoftheordinary.com/html/projects-klein.html

The Lovers. The Paradise. – Christopher Kurt Keener closing reception

chad — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

With live performance by “Down There”
(http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=down+there)

Art on Track 2011

chad — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

For the fourth time, Art on Track will gather a group of cultural ambassadors from Chicago’s diverse art world for an extraordinary mobile gallery experience. Once aboard the train, passengers in the gallery are encouraged to explore and interact with prominent members of Chicago’s art community. The train will circle the ‘Loop’ track, making stops at Adams/Wabash, Washington/Wells, Quincy/Wells, and Randolph/Wabash.

Entrance is the Adams and Wabash CTA platform (between 200 and 220 S. Wabash).

hover

chad — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Live performance by:

Beat Unternährer: trombone
Lou Mallozzi: turntables, CDs, microphones, mixer

Evolving from the artists’ shared fascination with the Aurora Borealis and the anecdotal reports of audible sounds associated with them, hover explores the ephemeral intersection of light and sound that the Northern Lights create. Peters’ multichannel sound installation reconfigures natural and man-made sounds that refer to the vivid sonic metaphors found in various accounts of auroral sound. Wallers’ visual component employs hundreds of strands of monofilament and copper wire to create the illusion of striated or parallel beams of light that appear and disappear, depending on the position of the viewer and the natural conditions of the shifting light illuminating the space.

Steve Peters makes music and sound for a wide range of contexts and occasions using field recordings, found/natural objects, electronics, various musical instruments, and spoken text. Since the late 1990s his main focus has been on site-specific listening environments, alone or in collaboration with visual artists. He performs occasionally as a member of the Seattle Phonographers Union, and also works as a freelance producer, writer, and curator. Since 1989 he has been the Director of Nonsequitur, a non-profit organization presenting experimental music and sound art, currently via the Wayward Music Series in Seattle. His work has been released on such labels as Cold Blue, Palace of Lights, SIRR, and Dragon’s Eye. He recently completed a three-week Binaural artist residency in Nodar, Portugal.

Christine Wallers is originally from the Chicago area but has lived, exhibited and curated shows in Seattle, New Mexico, France and Germany. Her work has referenced her interest in natural phenomena, most notably light and water phenomena in the Northwest, the Southwest and the Midwest. She is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work uses formal procedures of minimal and post-minimal art to craft installations that are site-specific, experientially-based and often fleeting. Within this she attempts to create an experience of the ephemeral, the just emerging and the barely visible from the interplay between object and space. Time and its shifts are key to understanding her process. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America and featured in Dwell.

The Free Store 2011

chicagoa — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It’s back for one day only in Pilsen near 17th & Damen!

Bring stuff, take stuff.

Already available: clothes, shoes, and accessories for men, women, and children, dining room table, true crime paperbacks, fancy table lamps, portable electric fans, task chairs, recorded music and sounds on vinyl, cassette, and the CD format, a rocking all-in-one stereo unit with a broken cassette player but working record player (comes with speakers), tote bags, luggage, a headboard & full-size bed frame, GREAT GREAT ITEMS

First come, first served. No cuts, no buts, no coconuts.

Guerrilla Girls

chicagoa — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The Guerrilla Girls are feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman. Wearing gorilla masks in public, and taking the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms, they use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture.

Their interactive extravaganza follows the opening of Unfinished Business: Arts Education, a new community-curated, participatory art exhibition that explores the importance of the arts and insists on cultural rights for all. The exhibit features interviews with some of Chicago’s most scintillating teaching artists juxtaposed with profiles of Hull-House arts education reformers; the Hull-House Pop-up Print Shop, an installation co-curated by David Jones at Anchor Graphics, that will have a working relief printing press that visitors will use to print postcards designed by local artists; and a Community Loom, three floor-to-ceiling looms, designed and built by artist Alexis Ortiz. Visitors will be able to learn a simple Guatemalan weaving technique and contribute to a large-scale woven map of Chicago.

Temporary Allegiance : Happy Collaborationists + Claire Ashley

chicagoa — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Reception for the raising of a new flag by Happy Collaborationists, created with artist Claire Ashley for Philip von Zweck’s project: Temporary Allegiance.

Grow No Moss: Poetry Reading

chad — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Writer and artist Julia V. Hendrickson will read from her new book of poetry, GROW NO MOSS, at the Forest Park Public Library on Saturday, September 3rd, 2011 at 3:00pm.

With the help of a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant (CAAP), and the resources of a wide-ranging creative Chicago community, Hendrickson recently released Grow No Moss. The book is designed by the talented Chad Kouri (The Post Family), printed offset with the help of Aaron Smith at Spudnik Press, and the cover created this summer as a lithograph at the Ox-Bow School of Art.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Books and lithographic prints will be available for sale.

Max Reinhardt : Don’t think you can change our evil ways

chicagoa — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:00:37 +0000

Don’t think you can change our evil ways
how I learned to relax and enjoy our New Dystopia.

New paintings and sculptures by Max Reinhardt.

With live performance.

Sewing, Performance by Thatiana Oliveira

chicagoa — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Photographer and Video Artist Thatiana Oliveira is hosting two live performances in Space 308 at the Water Tower Building on West Lake Street. Audiences are invited between the hours of 6pm and 9pm on August 19th and September 9th to view the ongoing performances.

Oliveira’s performances investigate the relationship of cruelty, care and mourning. She has a BFA from SAIC (2007) and will earn her MFA from Columbia College in 2012.

*these performances feature nudity.

Name listed at in directory box at front door is Thatiana.

Destineez Child and BEAST

karly — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:46 +0000

Destineez Child, comprised of artists April Childers (on view in the upstairs gallery) and Carmen Tiffany, offer items for your convenience. They are “…providing the best stuff around the area.” Some of the great ideas that got Destineez Child started and inspired an entire empire are the Oscillating Ashtray, Cute Bread (with designer cut outs) and Fragrances for her or him (her: Easy Cheez, him: Beefnut Water) They have performed all over the globe, most recently at Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY and the Seven Art Fair during Art Basel Miami Beach. Life-size replicas of the artist will be in attendance. Destineez Child will have something for you that is “convienent.”

BEAST, described in numerous circles as a “three-piece percussive drone/noise force, complete with two drummers and skull-based strobe-electronics” is comprised of three 6’ 2”+ artist/ musicians Thad Kellstadt, Tim Nickodemus and Ben Russell. BEAST has performed most recently at the MDW Art Fir, Chicago, and at Form Fit. Members’ projects have been viewed at La Casa Encendida (Madrid), the Rotterdam Int’l Film Festival (Netherlands), the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). Epileptic eyes! Heart attack ears! BEAST BEAST BEAST BEAST BEAST BEAST

Both Destineez Child and BEAST appropriate familiar and distinct nomenclatures. In so doing, they speak a language that is both coherent yet disguised. The shift of frame creates a new syntax that becomes the core of creative production. Recall the child hood game that degrades an original phrase through repeated whispers, until it’s source is lost. A similar gestalt is apparent in each of these performances. As the new phrase emerges, though imprecise, it now retains its functionality. Here, this temporal and spatial shift in cultural grammar becomes the locus of the creative pursuit.

R.E.H. Gordon: The Observants

karly — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:00:19 +0000

Through sculpture, performance, sound, and writing, R.E.H. Gordon’s work explores and honors the ways communities engage with objects in order to build and sustain new worlds. Throughout is an ongoing interest in exploring various modes of forming communities through the creation, use, exchange of, and reverence for material objects. She is interested in exploring new ways of understanding gender, and in the creation of alternative spaces that embody these different modes of gendered personhood. Can a different world be imagined through new ways of engaging with materiality?

The body of work in The Observants explores the creation, or re-creation, of a past, lost, or future material practice involving a group of monochrome white objects, handmade upholstered furniture, and performers. The works are fictional artifacts—objects of ambiguous and ceremonial use. They are sacred objects that waver, uncertainly, between functionality and formalism. They are extremely precise objects of ambiguous use. The performers utilize these objects in a communal mourning ritual, finding strength in their collectively crafted space of refusal of the options their world presents to them. In the central section of the performance, they chant the word “No” (or “Know”) in repetition along with a recorded chorus of their voices, until becoming one hundred voices strong reiterating their refusal, mournful and celebratory.

Throughout her work Gordon employ strategies for transforming everyday objects through various modes of covering—painting, upholstering, coloring in, and mosaicing. She is intrigued by surfaces, both of objects and physical bodies, as rich sites for creative reinterpretation and redeployment. Gordon’s works both create and honor the real life production of secular materialist rituals as modes of personal and social transformation.

Trindlerschinquand: The Shed Performance

karly — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:34 +0000

Over five days, Adrian Schindler and Romain Trinquand will set up a working space functioning like a building site and props factory in the back lot of Roxaboxen Exhibitions. As their own employers, the two performers will be present each day on a five hour schedule. They will progressively activate the props they create by leaving the shed and engaging the surrounding rough environment, blurring the lines between working process and performative gestures.

Trindlerschinquand is a Parisian based performance duo composed of Adrian Schindler and Romain Trinquand. Their partnership began in 2008, and they have continued to share their theatrics internationally. Their performances promote absurdity, intensity, materiality, and failure. They use their bodies as tools taken out of their usual context through raw and grotesque situations. Their performance in Chicago at Roxaboxen Exhibitions acts as a culmination of the pairs extended visit to the states.

Elon Katz and Kyle Evan: DIDGERIDOO BEAT

karly — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:23 +0000

DIDGERIDOO BEAT will be a live performance of digitally augmented dideridoo played by musician, artist, instrument builder Kyle Evans and accompanied by live electronic machine rhythm from Elon Katz (White Car, Streetwalker).

Anthony Pateras

karly — Sat, 21 May 2011 01:00:15 +0000

For his first Chicago performance, Anthony Pateras will present a new 4-channel work made especially for the occasion—an homage to Henri Chopin, using revoxed voice, manipulated Doepfer synthesizer recordings and prepared piano polyrhythms, performed in the dark.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo.

EAR EATER #5: Longing in Discrete Corners

karly — Sun, 01 May 2011 01:00:28 +0000

EAR EATER is a semi-monthly curated reading and performance series held at the apartment of Sara Drake and Cassandra Troyan in Pilsen, Chicago called PARASITE LOST.

This session is based on the use of abstraction in language, and how the desire to enunciate, or to speak through desire, works in hypnotic ways. Come be mesmerized and disoriented and enthralled by the following performers/readers: Ken Baumann, Brett Gallagher, Devin King, Carrie Lorig and Bailey Romaine.

Florian Hecker

karly — Sun, 01 May 2011 01:00:16 +0000

Interested in notions of surprise and abrupt change in sound, Florian Hecker will perform Speculative Solution for the first time in the U.S. on April 30, 2011. Speculative Solution is a series of “micro-chronics” or auditory sequences that range from extreme stasis to the most dynamic intensities. Hecker has set out to create new music exploring philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of “hyperchaos.”

Here is Hecker’s predicament: it may be impossible to create a rational presentation of hyperchaos because hyperchaos may not be experienceable. While any composition has a finite duration, “hyperchaos is a theory of time, a theory to show that time is not becoming,” as Meillassoux puts it, which we understand as a sort of continuity or reference to the infinite nature of the universe. And, achieving real disorder is impossible anyway, “because disorder is just another form of order than the one you expect,” where fast-moving sound is a cliché of randomness and merely another form of organization…

His performance delivers a perfect combination of theoretical underpinning and drop-dead digital disorientation.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo.

Erin Thurlow: OH WHY DID I DID IT MY WAY

karly — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:30:04 +0000

Erin Thurlow‘s new performance/social sculpture, set in the dystopian near-present, incorporates aspects of action poetry, prop-art and an interactive comedy workshop.

Arcuri/Rodriguez/Novi

karly — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:00:21 +0000

This event will feature two performances and two videos. Each consider the role of artifice in mediating cultural content, and subtly reframe similar themes in the exhibit Gill/Gill.

Marc Arcuri, (ironically labeled ‘undefineable’) is self-defined as a drifter, gambling addict and sock fetishist. He will perform two sets of his poetic slop-art remedial comedy.

Esme Rodriguez, drag queen and trans/intersex cultural theorist will perform a drag show on the loading dock and amidst Ben Gill’s Brancussi-esque sculpture garden.

The video installation Stone Painting by Amsterdam based Estonian artist Katja Novitskova, merges caves at Lascaux with virtual reality.

At 10 pm, the evening will conclude with a screening of Paris is Burning the documentary chronicling ball culture in 1980’s New York.

Aberration of Light: Dark Chamber Disclosure

karly — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:00:23 +0000

Since 2001, New York-based artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder have collaborated on a series of performances and installations that transform the mundane mechanics of film projection into sublime experiences of light and space. The duo uses a system of film loops, crystals, and hand gestures to bend, reflect, and refract the projector’s beam, recasting the theatrical space of the cinema into a unique medium for sculpting light. This evening, in their first-ever Chicago appearance together, Gibson and Recoder present their latest projector performance, developed with noted Chicago-based composer and sound artist, Olivia Block. Block, who mixes field recordings and live instrumentation, has been likened to “a good cinematographer who happens to use sounds instead of images” (Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader). This is the second piece the three have created together; the first, Untitled (2008) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened at the Tate Modern, London, and Redcat, Los Angeles.

Botborg!

karly — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:00:33 +0000

As Botborg, Berlin/Brisbane-based artists and musicians Scott Sinclair and Joe Musgrove fuse and rewire raw electronic signals to create intensely visceral experiences of sound-color synaesthesia. Using a complex array of custom electronics, audio and video mixers, cameras and screens, the duo blends sound and vision into a self-perpetuating web of interdependent color and rhythm, generated (in real time) entirely by device feedback. In their first US duo performance, Musgrove and Sinclair will present a new, improvisatory performance, incorporating the unique characteristics of the Film Center’s theater into their system. Botborg’s work has screened around the globe and they have performed throughout Europe and Australia, including at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and the Spectropia Festival in Riga, Latvia. Co-presented by the experimental music series Lampo.

G. Vincent Gaulin: WORK IN THE WOODS from SCARCITY asks, “IS THIS YOU, WANT?”

karly — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 23:00:44 +0000

March’s Project Residency WORK IN THE WOODS is act I, scene II in a sprawling “slow play” called IS THIS YOU, WANT? Written, directed, and performed by SCARCITY, a character created by interdisciplinary artist, writer, and performer G. Vincent Gaulin as a personification of the foundational conditions of economics. The first act of the play, POPULATION, is based on a saying handed down by the artist’s grandfather: “Used to, there was just three bears [of Goldilocks and the Three Bears] in the woods, and now the woods are full of them.” This act dramatizes the confounding affect of population growth on the state of politics, and translates large-scale political dynamics into interpersonal, relational dramas between its characters and viewers.

WORK IN THE WOODS is a darkly comical scene. The main character DISCIPLINE BEAR, workshops his BEARbrand, “a lifestyle corporation” with five administrative agencies and six product and service divisions, approaching every corner of life from food to clothing, exercise, occupation, scheduling, and even entertainment. The BEARbrand’s corporate structure aims to ensure comfort and security in the WOODS, as countermovement to ETIQUETTE BEAR’s leaving. At best, DISCIPLINE is an attentive and charismatic young executive. At worst, he’s an exploitative megalomaniacal sentimentalist. In a tragic confusion of motivations, DISCIPLINE spends a month wrestling with his compulsively cumbersome ultra-bureaucracy under the guise of attending to ETIQUETTE’s increasingly obstructed needs.

Desperate for any sources, the protagonist turns to the viewers of the work, ordinary humans with no experiential knowledge of the WOODS, to help him define and resurface conditions that ultimately have no potential for bolstering his far-reaching romantic project. The drama attempts to portray the dark energy massing in the wake of failing societal conventions like gender roles and dominant ideologies (religious, nationalistic, militaristic, industrial, and progressive), and also the mounting tensions between social “norms” and contemporary efforts to define and orient identities distributed across life’s real conditions, in real time.

Due to the relational nature of the project WORK IN THE WOODS will be open for viewing on an invitation and referral basis only. Viewing the work is not like viewing a conventional play. Participants are invited to schedule a personal meeting with DISCIPLINE BEAR to digest the work in conversation with the character and/or collaborate through exchange as he workshops his BEARbrand. Invitations will go out the first full week in March.

Subtitles 3

karly — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 23:30:25 +0000

The evening begins at 6:30 with a sound experience by Max Alexander. His work has been shown around the world form New Zealand to Saskatchewan. Alexander is a dominant player in the sound and new media community in Chicago.

Readings begin at approximately 7:00 by Zach Dodson, Natalie Edwards and Justyn Harkin. Following will be a live improvisational performance by Max Alexander and Eric Powell.

Wu Tsang: Wildness-Work in Progress-Live Presentation

karly — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 01:00:34 +0000

Wu Tsang presents a performative lecture & screening about his upcoming feature documentary Wildness, combining live narration and excerpts.

Wildness depicts the creativity and conflict that arises when queer avant-garde performance artists intersect with community at the historic Los Angeles bar Silver Platter, a 40-year-old, family-owned bar in the MacArthur park neighborhood of Los Angeles that serves as a refuge to the Latina transgender immigrant community.

In 2008, Director Wu Tsang teamed up with Ashland Mines (DJ TOTAL FREEDOM) and Daniel Pineda (1/2 DJ-team NGUZUNGUZU) to throw a weekly party at the bar on an off night of the week. They were inspired by the Silver Platter scene, and built an exciting collaboration with the owners and some of the regulars. For a brief period of time, this unlikely union produced an explosion of underground music, dancing, and art. But the party’s rising popularity cast a more mainstream spotlight on the Silver Platter, raising questions about gentrification. Ultimately real life overcame the drama when the unexpected death of one of the owners transformed the fate of everyone involved.

Ashley Hunt: Notes on the Emptying of the City

karly — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 01:00:05 +0000

Notes on the Emptying of a City is a performance that acts as a dismantled film, where a narrator pieces together the sounds, images, and storytelling of a documentary about Hurricane Katrina before a live audience. Exploring the first-person politics of being in New Orleans with a camera and microphone in the months following the storm, it recounts Hunt’s engagement with community activists while researching the city’s refusal to evacuate the Orleans Parish Prison, raising themes of architecture, cameras, and visibility; and the powers of speech, silence, art, and journalism in a moment of crisis. Set up as a slide lecture, a narrator sits at a desk before an audience, with papers and a laptop computer connected to a projector. Between meditations on his own experience he cues testimonies—videos of a citizen, a neighbor, an organizer, and others—each one drawn from the archive of material compiled during his visits. Together, the artist’s narration, still images, and videos weave into a montage that offers a larger testimony on disaster, race, law, speech, and witnessing at a time when the urgency of Katrina’s crisis seems to have receded into a comfortable past.

Edie Fake: Lock and Lee Relvas: Exhaust Yourself

karly — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 01:00:23 +0000

Performance by Edie Fake and Lee Relvas.

Lock is a metallic sonic scrapheap of psychic safe-cracking and emotional emergence. Exhaust Yourself is a musical meditation on scarcity and abundance, looked at through the deepwater prism of oil spills.

Anne Elizabeth Moore: Garment Work Redux

karly — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:00:10 +0000

Anne Elizabeth Moore humbly invites you to think through the international garment trade and women’s issues in developing nations while you help her tear a pair of jeans to threads. A working meditation on capitalism, integrity, loss, and perserverence held at DOVA Temporary, this informal performance / workshop offers no new skills or information; only the opportunity to do the seemingly impossible, together—shred global poverty. Our inefficient sewing circle will mourn our collective and unintentional destruction and celebrate the potential to create and improve.

Subtitles 2

karly — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:00:19 +0000

Subtitles II is a night of Roald Dahl inspired video, noise art, performance and readings. Roald Dahl is most known for his unsentimental and often wickedly humorous children’s books, but he also wrote 60 adult short stories most noted for their dark sense of humor and surprising endings. Dahl’s short stories have inspired tonight’s programming. Participating artists include VIDEONERO (Paolo Bonfiglio), James Payne, and Mark Franz.

The evening will begin with a video screening of Mater and Mortale by Italian artist VIDEONERO. Both videos are animations developed in collaboration, using the drawings of Paolo Bonfiglio and the music of Mick Harris. Mater is a dark story of a woman in a tiny room giving birth, from a most absurd conception. Mortale follows a man, a dog and a crow lost in a snowscape.

At approximately 7:00 Matt Griffin (or Catherine Forster) will read one of Dahl’s short stories, followed by a James Payne reading. James Payne is an artist, musician and writer from Columbus, Ohio, currently living in Chicago.

Mark Franz, visiting from Florida, will present The Pig an audio/visual performance based on text written by Roald Dahl. Franz is intrigued by Dahl’ s reputation, known for imaginative children’s stories while his adult texts are mostly forgotten. This work attempts to present both sides simultaneously, with each informing the content of the other. Custom electronic instruments provide rhythmic pulses that accompany the spoken word, visual, and textual elements.

Mark Franz’s video and sound work explores contrasts between technology and nature.

Coppice and Maya Pik

karly — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:08 +0000

A closing event for the exhibition Almanza/Crawford.

Coppice/Pik features a live performance by Chicago-based duet Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer) and a video screening by Israeli artist Maya Pik.

Coppice will be performing Vinculum (Coincidence), a procedural composition that unfolds from intersections between two accordions, fixed media, spatial/temporal intervals, and audience flow.

Echoes is a video by Maya Pik, recently screened at Synesthesia Nights Festival, in Jerusalem.

Subtitles 1: Doves and Crocodiles

karly — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:00:33 +0000

Subtitles is a series of projects inspired by the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, Doris Lessing and Roald Dahl. Subtitles will take place at threewalls on the third Friday of every month. The events will include video screenings/installations, new media, sound art, performance and literary readings.

Participating artists, Robert Ladislas Derr, Jac Jemc, Ryan Dunn and Joseph Kramer, will present work influenced by Edgar Allen Poe’s body of work. Poe is most known as the father of the detective story, the master of horror and the voice of “The Raven,” but he also wrote hoaxes as news, comedic works, satire, parodies, sketches and experimental stories.

To Helen by Robert Ladislas Derr is a psycho geographical walk (wearing four video cameras) through Providence, RI at midnight, loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “To Helen.” Beginning at the Athenaeum where Poe was known to write, Derr traced the footsteps that Poe might have taken while creating this poem written to his beloved Helen Whitman, resident of Providence. Dressed in white, reminiscent of Poe’s remembrance of Helen “clad in white upon a violet bank”, Derr moves through the dark night on historic Benefit Street toward the First Baptist Meeting House, then down Meeting Street to Waterplace Park, continuing on the Riverwalk, and back to Benefit Street. Upon the John Brown and Nightingale Brown houses, Derr looked for the roses that Poe says “grew in an enchanted garden”. From there, he continues on Benefit Street until the Point Street Bridge, where he meets in Poe’s words “the mossy banks and the meandering paths.”

In The Dreaded Miscellany, Jac Jemc will try her hand at the Gothic—the genre for which Poe is perhaps most famous. A miscellany is gifted the narrator by an intellectually curious uncle who has met an untimely end. On a daily walk, the life of a stumbled-upon fruit bat slips away without explanation. The book calls to the narrator, drawing him away from his own livelihood, and asking him to believe the content of its pages despite his most common sense.

Ryan Dunn and Joseph Kramer will take on Poe the trickster in this fake news broadcast. In 1844′s “The Balloon Hoax”, Poe created an entirely fictitious story of a balloon crossing the Atlantic in three days, and published it in the New York Sun, ostensibly as fact. Here, Dunn and Kramer subvert traditional notions of fact and fiction through obscured language and varying levels of intelligibility, while simultaneously questioning that which should be viewed as an authoritative broadcaster of information.

Sean Fader

karly — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:00:54 +0000

It is the Greeks’ way of stating they have come to a level of serene exuberance able to enjoy life as children. … In a state where having been fed, and having quenched our thirst, and having enjoyed the pleasure of uniting with others, we have filled with hope and confidence that life abounds with all that we need, … and that food will always be there, … and so, we break the plates, … because tomorrow there will be more. … And we light a fire and dance around it as a symbol of the warmth that surrounds us. … and … We break the plates as a way of saying thank you to those that helped us reach a state of celebrating our life, … as a way of saying thank you to the music that brought peace to the world, … and we break them to honor the one that’s dancing, as we kneel in front of them and look up to them exclaiming: Oooopa !!!

Performance by Sean Fader.

Young Joon Kwak: Eating Without a Face & Death Rites

karly — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:00:03 +0000

Young Joon Kwak’s newest series of sculpture, photography, installation and performance work Eating Without a Face and Death Rites, a ceremonial program of performances themed around the possibilities contained in different forms of death and decay.

The works in Eating Without a Face grew out of Kwak’s experience working in the kitchen at Acre Residency and learning about composting this past summer. Compost, a dinner table, and kitchen scraps are featured materials in these new works. Themes of decay, regeneration and the desperate search for the possibilities contained within a dying self impelled the creation of these works.

These themes recur in Death Rites, featuring performances by a variety of artists working in different disciplines, curated by Kwak. The ceremony draws from various ritual practices including Kwak’s experience growing up in a Korean-American Christian church, but the participating artists produce a multiplicity of pathways, connections and possibilities for transformation that destabilize common expectations of the church-going experience.

Coppice: Copse

karly — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:00:52 +0000

A performance and installation by Coppice (Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer) with sculptures by Alex Miller.

Copse is a three-movement composition for performed multi-channel sound installation, based on the atomization and dispersal of instrumental aspects. The products/by-products of the instrumentation are separated and shuffled spatially and temporally, in an effort to present the parts-to-the-whole relationships as fluid and continuous.

Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer) is a Chicago-based duet of bellows and electronics. Formed 2009, they have produced original compositions for stage, fixed media, and performed installation settings, with a focus on adhering textural attenuation, processed gradation, the contours of instrumentation, and their multiple aspect highlights.

Their variable instrumentation departs from bellow and reed instruments (accordion, pump organ, shruti box, harmonica), custom electronics (reproduction, transmission, spatialization, interference and gentle feedback), and multi-channel systems adapted in ways responsive to location, audience flow, and aural perspectives.

60 x 60

karly — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Christopher Preissing and Kotoka Suzuki present an installation and performance comprised of 60 sonic works, each being one-minute long, by 60 sound artists from across the globe. 60×60 is produced by Vox Novus, an organization in New York dedicated to the promotion of contemporary music. This presentation of 60×60 premiered in New York in June,Continue Reading

Andy Ortmann: Composition for Four Motorcycles and Four Synthesizers

karly — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:00:43 +0000

The live recording of Andy Ortmann’s performance Composition for Four Motorcycles and Four Synthesizers to be released as a quadraphonic LP. A performance by Greg Stimac and Blake Noah will follow, bacon provided by the artists. Also, Maria Jönsson’s sculpture Releasefest remains on view in the upstairs gallery, and Greg Stimac’s video will be displayedContinue Reading

Now It’s Dark #2

karly — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:25 +0000

Experimental film and music series curated by Marc Riordan.

Movies by Matthew O’Shaughnessy, Ross Meckfessel, Lyra Hill, Bethany Schmidt, Randy Sterling Hunter, Francisco Cordero-Oceguera and others TBA.

Performances by Daniel Fandino, Frank Van Duerm and Jacob Kart.

The Now It’s Dark Experimental Film and Music Series seeks to explore the intersection of film and music by pairing original works by Chicago filmmakers with live performances by Chicago improvisers. These scoreless films will incite and inspire the spontaneous creation of autonomous musical pieces that will merge and stray from the projections on the wall.

This month’s installment will feature a stellar program of 16mm film projections!

Hamish Fulton Chicago Art Walk

karly — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:00:50 +0000

Hamish Fulton will conduct an artist walk in Chicago. Open to any and all individuals interested in participating, this walk will illuminate the importance of a local community’s involvement in Fulton’s artistic practice as a walking artist. Interested participants are asked to meet at Jackson & Michigan Avenue by the bust of Sir George Solti (located exactly East of S. Michigan Avenue, south of E. Jackson Drive). The walk will last approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. Those who arrive after noon are welcome to observe the walk in progress but will not be able to participate so prompt arrival is important.

Joe Grimm: Transitions

karly — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:34 +0000

Transitions is a new piece of music arranged for multiple TV monitors. In this work, Grimm extends some of the ideas from past work with 16mm audiovisual performance to the realm of digital video. It is a senseless but ecstatic exploration of the prefab geometry that is always already present in video-editing software in the form of cheesy cuts, wipes, and fades. In this controlled explosion of the standard “bars and tone,” Grimm constructs a sonic and visual experience that is paradoxically image-free, consisting solely of a kind of weaving of the tools that we use to transition from one image to another.

GLI.TC/H run.time & real.time program 2

karly — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:00:08 +0000

The second GLI.TC/H screening program features a diverse collection of artifacts and glitch works. From magnetic media to celluloid, nothing is safe from the GLI.TC/H. Realtime performances will follow the screening spotlighting artists misusing hardware and software.

Work by Jodie Mack, Theodore Darst, Nick Briz, Alexander Stewart, Clint Ens, Nick Salvatore, Johnny Rogers, Jon Satrom, James Connolly, Ben Pearson, Jimmy Joe Roche, Karl Klomp, JB Mabe and LJ Frezza.

Performances by James Connolly & Eric Pellegrino, Tamas Kemenczy & Mark Beasley, Jeronimo Barbosa, Andrew Bucksbarg, Ben Baker-Smith & Evan Kühl, StAllio!

GLI.TC/H run.time & real.time program 1

karly — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 01:00:44 +0000

Andersonville’s TRANSISTOR hosts an evening of pixelated, corrupt, noisy time-based work. The first installment of the two-part GLI.TC/H screening program kicks off the evening featuring video-work from around the wwworld followed by an realtime program culminating into a cluster-fsck of audio and video.

Work by Theodore Darst, Ben Baker Smith, Cole Pierce, Omar Mashal, Clint Ens, Morgan Higby Flowers, Antonio Roberts, Evan Meaney, Richard O’Sullivan and BotBorg.

Performances by Aaron Zarzutzki, Morgan Higby Flowers, Jeff Donaldson, Vadim Sprikut Anton Marini, jon.satrom, Jason Soliday.

Meg Duguid: Everyone is a Bathing Beauty

karly — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:02 +0000

Drawing from George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion, with a Busby Berkeley twist, visitors may perform in short, scripted scenes playing the role of Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle, or a supporting character. On July 27, at 7 pm, a large-scale Busby Berkeley dance scene utilizing audience members is performed and filmed on the MCA Terrace. During the week, audience members are invited to act and are given cards with a description of a scene, along with a minimal costume that represents the character. Scenes are edited by Duguid and presented the following day on television monitors in the gallery, culminating in a finished work. By the end of the week, the silent movie features numerous visitors acting as Higgins’ and Doolittle’s of varying age, gender, race, and physical appearances.

This summer, the popular performative art exhibition Here / Not There returns, and asks how participatory actions within structured events can encourage a collective act of creation. The viewer, rather than the artist, is the focus as guests are encouraged to participate in performing and creating works. Remnants and documentation generated by the artist and visitors during each performance are on exhibit in the gallery for the duration of the week through the following Sunday. Visitors are invited to return to the museum throughout the week of each project to witness the results of their contributions. Through these four diverse performances, activities, and events, the artists and public expand an understanding of performance, visual art, and ideas of communal engagement.

Georgia Wall: Where 37th intersects Wolcott

karly — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:00:22 +0000

An unseen performance by Georgia Wall.

“The structure for the unseen performance is as follows: I invite two people to view a performance that will remain unseen by all others. As these two people witness the event they will provide accounts of what they are seeing to the others present.”

Unit 2 Art and Design Collective: Live Station Project

karly — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:02 +0000

For this work, the gallery becomes a place of learning, listening, contemplation, and dialogue, as it incorporates the ideas of studio practice, re-use of materials, and an examination of the local waste stream. Live Station Project aims to be an evolving “tool-box” where the public is invited to build, draw, write and share. Various stations such as a construction station; salvaged material station; research, archive, and listening station; and contemplation and interaction station, allow the public to learn how to create objects with salvaged materials. Materials, from the waste stream at large, are prepared for reuse and the objects may remain in the gallery or may be taken home. The various stations not only provide materials but also serve as a resource center for recorded expert interviews, research materials, and how to guides.

Natasha Wheat: Self Contained

karly — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:18 +0000

The orangerie, a type of building which grew oranges on estates such as the Palace of the Louvre before the French Revolution, serves as an inspiration for this work. On Tuesday, a temporary free restaurant serves a communal meal which includes citrus foods. Seating in the restaurant is made from surplus materials such as pallets and crates related to the fruit industry. Throughout the week, lectures and discussions about the culture of food, agriculture, and the emancipating potential of exhibition space take place at various times in the gallery.

Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder and Elysia Borowy: Club Nutz

karly — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:17 +0000

In “the world’s smallest comedy club,” visitors may experience an array of programs and events such as stand-up comedy, DJ dance parties, academic lectures, screenings, and musical performances. Every day features extended open-mic sessions for audience participation. Complete with a stage, disco ball, and DJ booth, Club Nutz is an eclectic and lively temporary venue connecting audiences with a shared Chicago culture of performers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers.

Cory Arcangel: Music for Stereos

karly — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 23:00:40 +0000

On the opening night of Sound & Vision, Summer Sounds, a series of Friday night performances, kicks off with the world premiere of a new composition/performance by composer/performer/digital artist Cory Arcangel.

Born in Buffalo and trained at Oberlin’s renowned music conservatory, the 32-year-old Arcangel is known for a range of subversive uses of computer and video technology; one to two works by Arcangel will be in the Sound & Vision exhibition. For this performance in Fullerton Hall, Arcangel will début Music for Stereos, a composition/performance for low-end modern home stereo systems.

she went back to where she began & she sat with her back to me

karly — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:30:18 +0000

5 durational performances based on 4 accounts of 1 event. Video by Georgia Wall. Performances by Vicki Fowler, Millie Kapp, Isabella Ng, Libby O’Bryan, Ali Scott and Hannah Verrill.

Luke Munn and Max Alexander

karly — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Luke Munn performs physical gestures and minimal instrumentation, emulating the phasing, looping, and soundscapes of contemporary electronic music with no electronics or post-processing. This is both an audio and visual performance utilising hand movements, breath, glass pieces, water and various surfaces.

Max Alexander cuts, pastes, mixes, remixes, bends, breaks, twists, turns and molds his existing compositions, drones, and soundscapes into a whirling dirvish of electroacoustic benevolence.

EJ Hill: Solo Exhibition

karly — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:00:34 +0000

Join us for the first installment of our Spring Series Cotillion. And exploration of those events that bring us to age and explore the many facets of a right of passage. Performance by EJ Hill.

Stephanie Nadeau: Waiting Room

karly — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:00:39 +0000

Presented by Stephanie Nadeau, hosted by Spoke, and back by popular demand, Waiting Room invites you to come spend your time. Our mission is to allow you to contribute your time comfortably and productively while remaining completely idle. Wait for as little or as long as you like, it’s entirely up to you. Stop by anytime for your free timecard and we’ll get you started on a rewarding and enjoyable waiting experience. We look forward to seeing you!

Waiting Room is a performance that operates much like a place of business. Spoke will be transformed into a waiting room, complete with comfy chairs, a variety of reading material, and soothing music. A camera will monitor the room, automatically capturing digital stills at regular intervals.

As a participant, you will be asked to sign and stamp a timecard, and we’ll set a timer for your desired wait time. This can be as short or as long as you like, minutes or hours. Then relax and enjoy an aimless span of time. An attendant will call your name when your wait is over, and you’ll again be asked to stamp your time card to conclude the experience.

The images and minutes collected during the performance will be used as documents of the event, and presented together as a monument to moments lost in waiting. Nadeau is interested in how these performed instances of waiting function within the larger narrative of the mechanics of time, as well as how they engage the politics of production, and offer a new valuation of idle time.

Tessa Siddle: Hexenhaus

karly — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:00:47 +0000

The private lives of humans, animals, and houseplants exist betwixt and between the magic and glamour of polarized human emotions in Hexenhaus. Fantastic environments created by Tessa Siddle build psychologically charged hybrid spaces and narratives. Domestic objects, natural elements and projections combine to embody multiple versions of self in evocative settings and situations. The breakdown of communication-attraction-domesticity-loneliness-jealousy-witchcraft becomes a meditation.

As a Transgender film/video, installation and performance artist, Siddle’s work uses costumes, cosmetics, projections, blue-screen and minimally worked materials such as cardboard, yarn, tin foil, untreated wood, leaves, paper, fabric and fur to critique binary social constructions—Nature/Culture, Animal/Human, Autobiography/Fiction, Physical/Mental, Intellectual/Emotional. Fragmenting the boundaries between these categories forms new connections and relationships that extend beyond the confines of mainstream social dualities.

Takeshi Murata and Robert Beatty

karly — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:00:32 +0000

For the last six years, artist Takeshi Murata and musician Robert Beatty (Hair Police, Three Legged Race) have collaborated on a series of visceral glitch-based animations, setting Murata’s psychedelic imagery to Beatty’s hypnotic compositions. Murata’s videos range from hand-drawn animations of fluidly morphing shapes to painterly abstractions of meticulously hijacked digital code. Beatty employs hacked electronics and thrift store cast-offs to craft otherworldly sonic narratives. Together, the duo’s electronic alchemy transforms the detritus of consumer culture into dazzling tapestries of sound and color. This evening, CATE teams up with experimental music and intermedia series Lampo to bring you Murata and Beatty in a special screening and performance. The two will present their work in three sets: a solo performance by Beatty, a screening of videos by Murata, and a new audio-visual performance, created especially for this program, by both.

Isabella Ng and Millie Kapp: A Bridge by a Hill on a Pond

karly — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:37 +0000

Performance by Isabella Ng and Millie Kapp.

Chasing Two Rabbits

karly — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:00:20 +0000

Chasing Two Rabbits is a special event curated by Sonia Yoon and Shannon Stratton that pairs animators with live performances by sound artists and musicians. Inspired by the experimental films of Norman McLaren, who combined abstract imagery (including scratching and painting into the film stock in earlier work, as well as paper cut-outs and live action and dance) with imaginative music and sound, Chasing Two Rabbits, acts to pair artists in both genres to produce a unique event where, rather than leaving art to illustrate a story, perhaps sound and vision will illuminate each other.

The program for the evening will include animations by Gracen Brilmyer, Peter Burr, Tom Burtonwood, Dana Carter, Jodie Mack, Tracy Taylor and Rebecca Schoenecker with sound by The Chicago Phonographers, Chris Hammes, Eric Ziegenhagen, Steve Lacy, Frank Van Duerm, Kotoka Suzuki, Cait Stevens, George Monteleone and Broken Chooser.

UnCommon Territories

karly — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:00:17 +0000

Contemporary sculpture is an increasingly intriguing notion, defining it is a somewhat useless activity. Nineteen artists will make an attempt with performances, installations, photographs, sculptures, videos, sound and drawings. The artists work towards common goals and are situated inside un-common territories. Notions of site and space specifics, place and dislocation, memory and architecture, the body and utopian worlds, everydayness and unfamiliar grounds collide and diverge.

Work by Marissa Benedict, Christopher Bradley, Scott Carter, Lauren Carter, Younghwan Choi, Colleen Coleman, Allison Fall, Elise Goldstein, Katya Grokhovsky, Samantha Hill, Holly Holmes, Scott Jarrett, Selena Jones, Maya Mackrandilal, Lisa Nonken, Luis Palacios, Ben Stagl, Stephanie Victa and Andrew Norm Wilson.

Nikhil Chopra

karly — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:00:16 +0000

He Said She Said presents a special one-night event by Mumbai-based artist Nikhil Chopra. Chopra’s work addresses cultural identity through work that brings together a wide variety of theatrical and visual traditions.

The event continues a series in which Chopra assumes the persona of a Victorian-era figure named Yog Raj Chitrakar, who is loosely based on the artist’s grandfather. The silent and costumed Chopra will remain in character throughout the evening, while preparing and offering an array of food and drink. Video, slides, and sound components will include the video Memory Drawing II (Mumbai 2007) which documents Chopra in character, drawing on the city streets.

No Coast: Heaven is Real

karly — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:03 +0000

No Coast presents Heaven is Real, a collection of performances, presentations and activities themed around our abnormal/paranormal/celebratory/transcendent relationship with death and dying, as part of the Cabinet of Curiosities series. The MCA describes the event as “A grab bag of ‘un-lectures’ about a myriad of topics that create a variety show-like evening of artist presentations curated by different groups from around Chicago.” We like to think of it as a morbidly fantastic show-n-tell.

Featuring performances by Acephalous, Andre Callot, Aaron Dicks & Colin Self, Andrea Fritsch, Rebecca Gordon and Brandon Joyce, Ted Marino and Carnal Torpor. Hosted By Lil Elote. Special activities by No Coast.

LESSEN

karly — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:00:06 +0000

This one goes out to all you bloated-stomach Thanksgiving celebrants, you 4am Best Buy Black Friday tent-pitchers, you Damien Hirst diamond skull collectors, you non-recyclers and you Gucci Mane enthusiasts. These are foodstamp and slim wallet times after all, and by now it should be clear that the best way forward is on your tiptoes, preferably in some nice soft leather moccasins. Your friends at BEN RUSSELL are here to help you focus your art consumption by 2/3rds, to find a use for all your apple picking surplus and, if you do end up throwing anything away, to make sure that it ends up in that compost pile out back. With our help, you’ll realize that gaudy neon flourishes are so 2008, that neo-minimalism persists only because Minimalism was abandoned far too soon, and that even “less is more” can be LESSENed to much less.

It’s been a tough month or two at BEN RUSSELL, but now that our BEER hangover is finally over, we can clearly see that BEN RUSSELL : LESSEN is in fact a lesson of the most useful kind, in five parts:

1) ABATE: From a Paiute American Indian reservation in California, ecologist/urban forager/gardener Nance Klehm gives us a virtual lesson on how to reduce and reuse our trace in the material world.
2) DECAY: Casey Lurie presents Apple Structure 2, the second iteration in a series of outdoor structures designed to be built using only quarter-inch dowel rods and apples as joints.
3) DIMINISH: In which the cash money ice glitz bling of hip-hop and R&B’s greatest is subjected to the minimalist compositional tendencies of Joe Grimm‘s sonic minimalism/process art installation.
4) MINIMIZE: Complicating the transcendent ambition of high modernism’s abstract expressionism, Ben Foch employs a common house painting roller to create a large scale gestural painting with an economy of means.
5) REDUCE: Michael Snow‘s 1967 seminal structuralist 16mm film Wavelength, comprising of a 44:00 zoom across a NYC loft, is screened in its 2003 15:00 video iteration as WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don’t Have the Time).

Please join us for the glorious-yet-humble 5th installment at BEN RUSSELL as we prepare for that long cold Chicago winter by clearing our collective bodies/minds of distractions and focusing on LESS(EN). Nothing, after all, is permanent; everything will LESSEN if we give it enough time…

Being Beings: We’ve Been Busy

karly — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:00:36 +0000

Being Beings uses performance-based video to describe the role of collaboration in the art-making process, as well as, to look deeply into the artist in order to share broader concepts of a generational and meditative background.

Sarah Elliott

karly — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:00:33 +0000

Sarah Elliott presents Elastic strategies for making vertical moves on a horizontal trajectory and horizontal moves on a vertical trajectory.

Elastic strategies for making vertical moves on a horizontal trajectory and horizontal moves on a vertical trajectory is a model for discourse.

Elastic strategies for making vertical moves on a horizontal trajectory and horizontal moves on a vertical trajectory is also an event and the resulting exhibition at Knock Knock Gallery. This event will take place on on the evening of December 4th, 2009 and will include the reworking/rearranging/remaking of an installation over the course of that evening.

The installation is a collection of things arrived at through considering stairways, landings, living rooms and entrance ways, which Knock Knock Gallery is made up of.

New Blood III

karly — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:54 +0000

This three-evening festival features new performances by School of the Art Institute of Chicago students who blur the boundaries between theater, movement and the visual arts.

Performers include Libby O’Bryan, Jennifer Mills, Chryssa Tsampazi, André Lenox & Evan Lenox, Marissa Perel, Alan & Michael Flemming, Noah Logan, Millie Kapp and Isabella Ng, Chloe Seibert, Ethan White, Colin Self, students of SAIC choreographed by Stephanie Bailey, Christopher Bradley, Allison Fall, Elise Goldstein and Jillian Soto.

For details, the schedule and reservations, see the website.



Waveforms: New Dialogue
karly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:00:53 +0000
The SAIC Sound Department presents Waveforms: New Dialogue, a collection of works by artists exploring a new subject or medium. “Here we ask you to expand your voice, learn the language of a new people, and to have a conversation you haven’t had before, or in a way you haven’t before.”
Installations by Chris Bradley, Ryan Dunn, Joseph Grimm, Dorian McKaie and Kim Walker. Performances by Joey Carr, Benjamin Chaffee, Bethany Childs and Rebecca Simmons, Ryan Dunn, Joseph Grimm, Joseph Kramer, Monica Panzarino, Aaron David Ross and Michael Vallera.



Donelle Woolford
karly — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:00:10 +0000
The Suburban is pleased to present an exhibition by New York-based artist Donelle Woolford. This will be the artist’s first show at the gallery. Through her work Donelle Woolford investigates myth and the process by which art and literature contribute images, characters and story lines to the public discourse and, through that circulation, become real.
Donelle Woolford’s new paintings focus on Cubism’s obsession with surface tension and multiple points of view. They are influenced not only by her wanting to revisit the synthetic innovations of Picasso and Braque, but also by her exposure over the past few years and her increasing desire to have her paintings-and herself-return the exposure. As psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote: “I am not simply the punctiform located at the point from which perspective is grasped. No doubt, in the depths of my eye, the picture is painted. The picture, certainly, is in my eye. But I, I am in the picture.”
This “deja vu” or eerie familiarity, occurs on many layers in Woolford’s exhibition. For example, Woolford’s collage paintings are assembled from scrap wood, a material that symbolizes feelings of comfort and alienation because it comes from Nature and, since we are part of Nature, symbolizes a disembodiment of ourselves. Woolford’s paintings also resemble Cubism, an art movement whose perceptual innovations still haunt our notions of reality and identity, to the extent that the style itself can have the effect of looking in a mirror that is looking back at us. And then there is Donelle Woolford herself: a conflicted, talented, 32-year-old artist making her way through the world any way she can, all the while enjoying the background privilege of an Ivy League education and the comfort of supportive professional parents.
It is through these plays of interpretation and memory that Donelle Woolford’s story, Rashomon-like, contradicts itself and moves forward.
In honor of Beyond, Dan Graham’s survey exhibition touring the United States that is currently on view at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Donelle Woolford will present an afternoon performance for anyone who might be experiencing Dan Graham “withdrawal.” The performance will take place on Sunday, November 8, at 2:00 pm. Admission is free but seating is extremely limited.
Dan Graham Withdrawal Syndrome will continue Donelle Woolford’s investigation into her identity and its mutability through multiple portrayals, or selves. The unveiling began at the opening reception for her recent show at Wallspace, New York, where two veteran actors, Jennifer Kidwell and Abigail Ramsay, gave distinct portrayals of Donelle Woolford while performing an improvisational pas de deux. Throughout the reception, each actor followed the other’s eye contact and body language as a series of gestures that determined when the actors should move apart, circle, or change places. The effect on visitors was by turns playful, disorienting, elegant, and jarring. In some instances, the Donelle Woolford you were talking to a second ago was replaced by a Donelle Woolford from across the room. These “long crosses,” designed to mark a dramatic shift from one scene to the next, allowed the actors to inscribe a certain tempo on the duration of the reception while eluding any attempt to assign a fixed identity to the artist.
For Dan Graham Withdrawal Syndrome, Kidwell and Ramsay will perform a kind of verbal pas de deux, employing the give and take of a dialogue to reflect on various aspects of Donelle’s philosophy and work. As in Long Crosses-where the signals and gestures were predetermined but the actors’ interpretation of them was largely improvised-the dialogue that comprises Dan Graham Withdrawal Syndrome will attempt to convey these spatial dramas and improvisations in verbal terms. It will be as if the words each actor speaks and hears are being filtered through some kind of Dan Graham sonic device.



Alex Halsted and David Moré: Gnathonemus Petersii
karly — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:00:09 +0000
Gnathonemus Petersii is a unique collaboration between musician Alex Halsted and sound artist David Moré. Halsted emits a constant pulse that forms an electrical field that surrounds her body, disturbances to this field she interprets as obstacle, food, or mate. During performance, Moré works with this signal, processing it audibly and transforming the signal with various effects. On view during the exhibition will be a sound installation by Halsted and Moré, and handmade tape and vinyl recordings for sale. Halsted and Moré, in collaboration with other musicians and sound artists, will also create a series of new performances in the gallery. In an engaging format, Gnathonemus Petersii mixes together elements of displacement, inter-species communications, and the commercialism of sound.



InCUBATE: Sunday Soup with Carnal Torpor
karly — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:00:50 +0000
In conjunction with the Heartland exhibition at Smart Museum, in collaboration with InCUBATE‘s Sunday Soup series, Heaven presents TRY: STATION SOUP, the third in an ongoing series of a performance-meals presented by the collective Carnal Torpor.
TRY experiments use food as the liturgical basis for exploring the nexus of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ aspects of human experience. By providing meals designed to engage various facets of eating such as etiquette, nutrition, and collective ecstasy, Carnal Torpor seeks to provide an embodied experience of ‘culture’ as ‘nature’ and vice versa.
Opening performances with David Daniel & Mike Vallera and Henry James Glover & Frank Van Duerm.



Fest Fest
karly — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:30:46 +0000
For a complete lineup of the programming taking place on 26-27 September, see the official Fest Fest website.



Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat: The Time Machine
karly — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:00:54 +0000
The Time Machine is your guide through the fourth dimension! Watch and learn about Real-Time Rendering, Quartz, and Max patches as Sabine Gruffat steers you through the sensory drone of the digital and analog hyperspace. Bill Brown takes you on a guided tour of memory’s roadside attractions by way of scratchy records and the hazy glow of 35mm slides, narrating the interspatial monuments of our extemporary voyage.