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December
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Social Object: Sculpture and Software
An interactive software installation by Michael Rees Curator, Koan Baysa December 17 - January 23, 2010 in The Project Room for New Media at CAM Artist talks January 21, 6 - 8 pm
The Project Room for New Media at CAM 556 West 22nd St. Free with museum admission Info: chelseaartmuseum.org
“Social Object: Sculpture and Software” is an interactive software installation by Michael Rees that includes correlated physical objects with virtual objects. Interacting with artist authored software creates screen based experiences that construct virtual objects from which physical objects can be derived. The work explores the relationship between language and form and creates a framework for virtual and physical play.
The exhibition includes the Sculptural User Interface (SUI) application, along with objects made from the SUI using contemporary automated sculpting processes. The SUI is a language to form synthesizer. The software generates 3D forms by typing letters on the keyboard. Many letters, words, sentences, turn into many kinds of shapes can be combined in multiple ways to create a rich user experience. The exhibition includes the software Sculptural User Interface, along with objects made from the software. The Sculptural User Interface is a language to form synthesizer. Social Object and The Sculptural User Interface are inspired by Joseph Beuys’ ideas about Social Sculpture, Duchamp’s ready mades recapitulated by Joseph Kosuth as the ready made made ready and how these relate to the open source software movement.
More information: michaelrees.com/Michael_Rees/SUI2009.html
Produced by Don Guarnierri. Alphabets from: Anj Ferrara, Geoff Flash, Randy Illum, Prem Mckeig, Sarah Menchise, Pablo Morillo, Adam Nowicki, Michael Rees, James Stewart, Alex Vicenzi, Ray Vikete, Matthew West.
Sponsors: Experimental Television Center, NYSCA, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
This project is made possible by grants from the National Foundation for the Arts, the Creative Capital Foundation and the Tribeca Film Institute’s Media Arts Fellowships.
Special thanks to Chris Burnett, Donald Guarnierri, Kristofer Schlachter and Koan Baysa.
Exhibition in The Project Room for New Media is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. The Artist talk is sponsored by The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program which is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.
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Kathleen Supove, pianist
As They Discover Us, We Discover Who We Are A Concert of Piano Works by Louis Andriessen and Jacob Ter Veldhuis In Honor of Henry Hudson’s legendary voyage and discovery of “New Amsterdam” (New York!) December 2, 2009 at 7 PM Performing Arts at CAM General Admission $15, Students/ Senior $10, CAM Members free
Kathleen Supové is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists, known for continually redefining what it means to be a pianist/keyboardist/performance artist in today’s world. After winning top prizes in the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpretation of Contemporary Music, she began her career as a guest artist at the prestigious Darmstadt Festival in Germany. Since then, Ms. Supové has annually presented a series of solo concerts entitled THE EXPLODING PIANO. In this series, she has performed and premiered works by such established composers as Louis Andriessen, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, and Morton Subotnick, as well as emerging composers from varied backgrounds such as David Lang, Randall Woolf, Eve Beglarian, Anna Clyne, Missy Mazzoli, and Bubblyfish, just to name a few. In recent seasons, she has developed THE EXPLODING PIANO into a multimedia experience by using electronics, theatrical elements, vocal rants, performance art, staging, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines. A recent large-scale project is an evening-length, staged Concert Theater work for singing/reciting/moving pianist called “Jitters”, with music by Randall Woolf and texts by Valeria Vasilevski. She is also involved in an ongoing project of commissioning a repertoire of pieces for piano and electronics. In 2001, Kathleen became a Yamaha Artist and is working on a long-term project of commissioning works for the Yamaha Disklavier. She has received grants from Meet The Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Greenwall Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and American Composers Forum.
Kathleen is a featured performer in the Summer 2000 issue of Yale Theater Journal, which is devoted to Concert Theater. She has appeared with The Lincoln Center Festival, Other Minds Festival, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Bang On a Can Marathon, Music at the Anthology, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Composers’ Collaborative, Inc., and at many other venues, ranging from concert halls and universities to theatrical spaces to clubs. Her most recent CD is INFUSION, released on the Koch International Classics label. Other recordings can be found on the Tzadik, CRI, Innova, New World, Neuma, Bridge, Centaur, OO, and XI labels.
For up-to-date information on Kathleen’s diverse activities, visit supove.com
PROGRAM: THE MEMORY OF ROSES (1992) by LOUIS ANDRIESSEN (For Piano, Toy Piano, and Rose) BASE (1994) by LOUIS ANDRIESSEN CITIES CHANGE THE SONGS OF BIRDS (2008) by JACOB TV (Three Urban Songs for Piano and Soundtrack) Lying Piece of Shit From The Time She Was a Baby That’s It, Your Honour IMAGE DE MOREAU (1999) by LOUIS ANDRIESSEN TREPIDUS (1983) by LOUIS ANDRIESSEN THE BODY OF YOUR DREAMS (rev. 2004) by JACOB TV (For Piano and Soundtrack) “What Ms. Supové is really exploding is the piano recital as we have known it, a mission more radical and arguably more needed.“
Anthony Tommasini, NY Times
"This was classical music played like the best rock'n'roll. It was passionate, earnest, loud and more complex than the gatekeepers of high culture would like to think. Brava."
Ben Sisario, NY Press
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November
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BREAKTHROUGH CONCERT
Taka Kigawa, pianist Beethoven, Debussy and Stravinsky November 11 at 7 PM
On November 11 at 7 pm, Performing Arts at Chelsea Art Museum presented pianist Taka Kigawa performing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, arranged by Liszt, commemorating the historic performance by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein in East Berlin on December 25, 1989. Also on the program are “L’Isle Joyeuse” by Debussy and “Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka” by Stravinsky.
BREAKTHROUGH by Edwina Sandys
an exhibition in The Project Room for New Media and throughout the global network of Streaming Museum November 5 – December 12, 2009 Opening reception and meet-the-artist, Thursday, November 5, 2009, 6-8pm
Photo by Richard Sugg
To commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, The Project Room for New Media presents a 32 x 12 ft image of the sculpture “Breakthrough” (1990), a monumental historic work Edwina Sandys created from 8 Berlin Wall panels. The exhibition incorporates audio excerpts from Edwina Sandys’ grandfather Winston Churchill’s historic “Iron Curtain” speech, delivered in 1946 at the site where the “Breakthrough” sculpture stands, by the Churchill Memorial on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri; prints that illustrate the history of the work; the documentary film, “Writing on the Wall: Remembering the Berlin Wall, Co-produced by John Michalczyk and Ronald Marsh; photographs curated by Bobbi Baker Burrows, LIFE Director of Photography; and "Stronghold” 2009 a piece for 8 basses by American composer Julia Wolfe.
On the first anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, President Ronald Reagan dedicated “Breakthrough” to a crowd of thousands of people including diplomats and dignitaries. “In dedicating this magnificent sculpture, may we dedicate ourselves to hastening the day when all God’s children live in a world without walls. That would be the greatest empire of all.”
In May 1992, the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Westminster College. Speaking from the same podium where Winston Churchill first spoke of an “iron curtain,” Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed that humanity has entered a new era of history and needs a democratic world government to guide it. “Here we stand, before a sculpture in which the sculptor’s imagination and fantasy, with remarkable expressiveness, convey the drama of the “Cold War,” the irrepressible human striving to penetrate the barriers of alienation and confrontation. It is symbolic that this artist is the granddaughter of Winston Churchill and that this sculpture should be in Fulton.”
Breakthrough concert
On November 11 at 7 pm, Performing Arts at Chelsea Art Museum will present pianist Taka Kigawa performing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, arranged by Liszt, commemorating the historic performance by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein in East Berlin on December 25, 1989. Also on the program are “L’Isle Joyeuse” by Debussy and “Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka” by Stravinsky.
Breakthrough at Chelsea Art Museum is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
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October
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Performing Arts at CAM - Fall Season Launch
Two Time Grammy Winner, percussionist, photographer, digital rhythmatist, WILL CALHOUN, (mostly known for his unique drumming/composing for NYC Rock icon band Living Colour,) will perform a solo electronic/Indigenous multi-media concert at the Chelsea Museum, 556 West 22nd St., NYC, Wednesday, October 28th, 7-8.30 pm. Will’s performance will explore traditional/electronic rhythms laced with digital visuals and Will’s photography from his research abroad. Special Guests include: Dancer- Ethel Calhoun and Real World Recording Artist-Tibetan vocalist Yung Chen Lhamo.
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Tina B. Prague Contemporary Art Festival
October 8 - December 8 in Streaming Museum and The Project Room for New Media streamingmuseum.org
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August
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VENERATIONS (APPLAUSE 1) 2009
caraballo-farman Multi-channel video installation, DVD players, projectors, portable DVD players, televisions, plexi see-thru mirrors
Culled from hundreds of hours of talk shows, late shows, reality shows, celebrity shows, award shows, life-style shows, game shows, and shows about shows, this installation takes TV applause to its logical end: no object or context, just the pure build up and downswing of collective clapping and hooting, an on-going show made up only of the audience. The Project Room for New Media is filled with applause, reflected, refracted, repeated, in sound and video. The audience is the performer.
Inciting applause has long been part of the manipulation, or perhaps the making, of an audience. Today’s American TV culture presents applause at its most ritualized, culturally-prevalent and prescriptive mode. ‘Live studio audience’ is an American cultural category, with personnel and staff dedicated to their guidance, to tell them what to do, when to clap, to wave frantically in the front and stir them up over something or other.
The object of applause doesn’t matter as much as the ritual itself, as the self-satisfying burst of euphoria, the self-referential appeal to fame, melting the obsessions of celebration and celebrity into one form, regimented, quasi-pavlovian waves of approval after approval reinforcing the image of participation and unity, confirming beyond words the validity and vitality of a group to itself.
A good newspaper, Arthur Miller once said, is the nation talking to itself. We might say that today’s television shows have the nation clapping for itself – all day, every day. Applause is a collective act, infectious, feeding on itself, an audience performing for itself, performing itself.
caraballo-farman is a two person team based in NY. Working in a wide range of settings, from stadiums to hotel rooms, their work explores the relationship between individuals and groups, unit and structure, and how one enables or dissolves the other, setting up a tension between being in particular and social being. They have exhibited nationally and internationally, in such venues and events as the Havana Biennial, the Tate Modern, PS1, LAXART’s billboard project, Artists Space and the Chelsea Art Museum’s current show Iran Inside Out.
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July
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Eduardo Kac, Reversed Mirror, 1997
videopoem 7 minutes July 7 - August 8 ARTIST TALK Wednesday, July 29, at 6 PM sponsored by the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
CAM commemorates the 40th anniversary of the first walk on the moon…and beyond
Reversed Mirror (1997) by artist Eduardo Kac, is a seven-minute single channel videopoem. The text of this work is a poem written by Kac from which he has created a constant flow and transformation of forms, presenting an ever-changing image of infinity that resonates in the context of the vastness of space. Oscillating particles emerge and evolve into ephemeral words, only to dissolve again and reemerge as new ephemeral words. Reversed Mirror takes language into a domain of trance where the subtle dissolution and reconfiguration of verbal particles is charged with a feeling of calmness and agitation.
Eduardo Kac is known for his 1999 groundbreaking transgenic artwork Genesis, and attracted global attention in 2000 with GPF Bunny a.k.a. Alba, the fluorescent green rabbit. From June 1 to September 14 Kac is also exhibiting throughout The Project Room’s Streaming Museum cyberspace and international public space network, a video of his new transgenic work,
Natural History of the Enigma – a plantimal called “Edunia”, that is a genetically-engineered flower hybrid of the artist and Petunia. The work is a poetic reflection on the contiguity of life between different species and further stimulates the imagination to ponder what other life forms might exist or be created beyond earth. It has received the Golden Nica 2009 - the highest award given by Ars Electronica, the world’s premier cyberarts competition.
Also exhibited in Streaming Museum are selections from the video oratorio, Paradiso, by renowned Dutch avant pop composer Jacob Ter Veldhuis and video artist Jaap Drupsteen; and a performance by El Sistema program’s top youth orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. Founded by Dr. Jose Abreu in Venezuela over 30 years ago, this visionary program transforms the lives of children through music and has proven to be a new model for social change. Dr. Abreu has received the TED Prize 2009. For information and to view the exhibitions go to streamingmuseum.org.
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June
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Four Artists in Concert
An exhibition of visual art by Morgan Russell, Mark Wiener, Fedele Spadafora, and Stephan Fowlkes
June 25 - July 4
The exhibition Four Artists in Concert arose out of Music & Art, a concert series highlighting emerging new music ensembles and visual artists. In collaboration between Performing Arts at CAM and Artlog.com, the concert series took place at Chelsea Art Museum during the fall and winter of 2008/2009. Visual artists from across the globe were invited to submit work through the arts community site artlog.com, emulating the themes of the concerts. Chelsea Art Museum curators considered all submitted work and selected two artists, Morgan Russell and Mark Wiener to be exhibited in The Project Room for New Media. The public selected two additional artists through a voting system, Fedele Spadafora and Stephan Fowlkes, to be included in the exhibition. The product of this unique project is Four Artists in Concert.
The Project Room for New Media is an incubator of new ideas, showcasing groundbreaking concepts in all art mediums, and the intersection of the arts through technology. Four Artists in Concert relies on technology to create the exhibition’s immersive environment that intersects art and music. The Internet was also vital to the initial process whereby artists listened to music samples online and uploaded their work on the website artlog.com.
The Music & Art series was designed to promote innovation and creativity in the Performing Arts at CAM series; to create an awareness and interest among young adults in the works of contemporary composers; to explore the natural and necessary relationship between music and the visual arts in accordance with Chelsea Art Museum’s mission. Through Artlog’s free online social platform, artists and art lovers from around the world were given the opportunity to engage and participate with the series online.
The music program, curated by Konrad Kaczmarek, emphasized cross-genre chamber music and live electronics. It included music by Konrad Kaczmarek, Red Hooker, Tristan Perich, Build, Now Ensemble, and William Brittelle, whose recordings will be played in the exhibition space. The Project Room focuses on immersive experiences that bring together all art mediums and this is an important aspect of this installation.
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Manhattan New Music Project presents Sabine and B3+
Wednesday 6/3 at 7 pm An evening of jazz-infused contemporary chamber music, performed by young new music collective The Sabine Players and seasoned brass trio B3+, including a world premier by John Clark and Twilight Music by John Harbison. This program is presented by the Manhattan New Music Project as part of its New Composers Series, highlighting living composers with new approaches to jazz and other forms of new music.
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Composers Concordance
Wednesday 6/10 at 7 pm New and recent works, including three world premieres, by the directors of Composers Concordance and music by Otto Luening. There will also be large-scale projections of the visuals behind the performers: Margaret Lancaster, flute, Esther Lamneck, clarinet and Paul Hoffmann, piano. On the Moon and Beyond, a multi-media summer exhibition at Chelsea Art Museum celebrating the 40th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon, will be reflected in new pieces written for flute.
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May
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Waves by Helidon Gjergji (Albania/US)
May 14, 2009 – June 13, 2009 ARTIST TALK sponsored by the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts
Gjergji creates environments in which the images of live television are reflected and refracted in a variety of ways to produce colorful kaleidoscopic abstract paintings that are meant to dazzle the viewer while exposing the morphology of television programming and staging its consumption of the viewer.
Gjergji creates environments in which the images of live television are reflected and refracted in a variety of ways to produce colorful kaleidoscopic abstract paintings that are meant to dazzle the viewer while exposing the morphology of television programming and staging its consumption of the viewer.
Waves consists of some thirty 5” TV-sets progressively descending from the ceiling. The last one (the lowest one) is crashed into the floor. At that area of the floor there is a small hill of sand at the center of which is a sort of crater opened by the crash of the last TV-set. The TV-sets are tuned in different random channels. The sound coming from the different TV-s creates a wall of sound, making it virtually impossible to focus on the content of any one channel in particular.
A native of Albania, Helidon Gjergji had been studying art in Italy before he came to the United States for the first time to get his master’s degree. He considered himself a painter, but he was so struck by America’s throwaway mentality that he started assembling discarded TV sets and plastic bags to express his concerns about the abuse of political, religious, and economic power. Waves explores this theme by tracing the history of television.
At the dawn of the mass television era, a handful of television stations broadcasted a few programs for only several hours per day. The absence of choice meant that television was autocratic, dictating what viewers would watch and when. As television rose to become the new center of gravity for the private social sphere, it often produced unintended consequences. While channel surfing for the football game, for example, a sports fan might inadvertently watch the recent developments of a coup d’etat in the Ivory Cost, which he didn’t even know existed.
As TV stations boomed, they extended broadcasting around the clock, which increased viewer’s choices thus “democratizing” television. Gradually, the unilateral relationship between the TV and its viewer morphed into a mutual rapport as televisions (or at least their producers) started watching their audiences: Which programs are the most popular? At what time of day do most people watch TV? How do gender, race, age, and socioeconomic status dictate programmatic and scheduling preferences? Demographic statistics aided and encouraged this process of democratization, as cable, video, satellite, and other technological achievements developed to provide infinitely more choices, resulting in a sophisticated virtual system.
Today, the remote control has become an additive fictional muscle of one’s body, obediently sending impulses from one’s mind to the TV monitor. No more need for the football fan to watch news about the Ivory Cost, or for a Georgian expatriate to follow the Georgian - Russian conflict through Russian, American or French channels, when the Georgian channel is available via satellite. The Georgian channel will speak to its citizen exactly the way she wants it to, in her own language, literally and metaphorically. Meanwhile, a Russian viewer is delivered a different version of the story in her respective language. Thus, TV assumes a chameleon-like identity, conforming to the tastes and cultural nuances of whoever happens to be watching. What once transmitted a virtual version of reality now reflects a virtual reconstruction of one’s own superego.
BIOGRAPHY
Helidon Gjergji born in Tirana 1970, lives and works in NYC.
593 20th Street, #1 gjergji7@gmail.com Brooklyn, NY 11218 C: +1-646-546-2788
Selected group and solo shows 2001-2009:
- VENICE BIENNALE 52, Albanian Pavilion (among the finalists for the Golden Lion Prize), curator Bonnie Clearwater, (Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami). - TIRANA BIENNALE 1, National Gallery of Albania, Tirana, curator Francesco Bonami. - MADRE, (Museum of Contemporary Art), Naples. - “PRESENT FUTURE”, Artissima 10, Turin, curator Emma Dexter (Tate Modern, London). - NATIONAL GALLERY OF ALBANIA, Tirana. - VILLA ARSON, Le Centre National D'Art Contemporain, Nice. LOTHRINGER DREIZEHN, Kunsthalle, Munich. - PAN (City Museum of Contemporary Art), Naples. - GALERIJA NOVA, Zagreb. - STRAY SHOW 1, Chicago, curator Heather Hubbs. - SUBURBAN, Oak Park. Other artists: Rirkrit Tiravanija etc. - CIOCCA GALLERY, (solo) Milan, curator Michele Robecchi (Phaidon London). - The KOSOVO ART GALLERY, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Prishtina. Other artists Phil Collins etc. - TBA Space, Chicago, collaboration with Julie Rodriguez (MCA Chicago), Sylvia Chivaratanond and Hamza Walker (Renaissance Society). APEXART, NYC. Selected press 2001-2009: - Flash Art, Venice Biennale 52 (catalogue), Tirana Biennale 1 (catalogue), Present Future (catalogue), Contemporary, Sculpture, New Art Examiner, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Journal, Exibart, L’Uomo Vogue, Espoarte, New City, Shekulli, Coterie, Tirana Observer etc.
Education: 2000 M.F.A., Northwestern University, Chicago. 1996 Diploma di Laurea, Accademia di Belle Arti, Napoli. 1994 Diplome Universitare, Akademia e Arteve, Tirana.
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A Tale from the World of Parallel Thinking Semi-Systems drawings and Performance Art from the 1980’s by Hassan Sharif in the UAE
May 27, 6:30 PM
A lecture by art historian, Paulina Kolczynska, presented prior to Hassan Sharif’s exhibition in the Venice Biennial at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) platform for visual arts, curated by Catherine David, June - November 2009.
This unprecedented lecture brings to light experimental material of mathematical drawings created in “Semi-systems” and a series of performances by UAE artist Hassan Sharif in the early and mid 1980’s in Dubai. In-depth analysis of drawings created according to the “chance and order” constructivist formula will be presented for the first time to the Western audience.
Kolczynska will examine the phenomenon of constructivist theory in conjunction with middle-eastern spirituality and trace its evolution from the drawings to the series of performances which are the sole examples of performance art in this region in the time frame of early to late 1980’s. She will discuss the unique aspects of these performances which took place in Dubai and in Hatta, a desert area near Dubai, comparing them with Polish and Czech performance art executed in the same time frame.
The comparative aspect of the constructivist influences as well as certain similarities rooted in geo-political circumstances will open up a new perspective on performance art which will allow us to see the importance of the contribution of Hassan Sharif and will underline his unique place as an international experimental and performance artist.
Hassan Sharifs works will be presented in the group exhibition at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) platform for visual arts, curated by Catherine David, June to November 2009. He will also participate in the Tina B. Festival where he will discuss his performances in the panel discussion with Czech performance artist Jiri Kovanda and Polish conceptual artist Zbigniew Libera in Prague in October 2009.
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Farewell on Z axis digital puppetry by Korean artist Semi Ryu and XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! a Barbi Doll opera on film by Irish artist Jennifer Walshe
5/27 at 7 PM
Digital puppetry by Semi Ryu (Korea), Virginia Commonwealth University New Media professor.
“Farewell on Z axis”, is a Virtual puppet performance project that will incorporate with Korean oral traditional storytelling performance, called “PANSORI”, exploring complicated interactive relationships between virtual puppet, puppeteer, drummer, and the audience. The story chosen for this performance will be the scene of farewell between young lovers (from the story “Chun-Hyang-Ga”), demonstrating the extreme state of constrants called “? Han.” This project explores Han in a paradoxical relationship between virtual puppet and puppeteer, and the distance between user and avatar in digital age, which will act as lovers facing each other, continuously exchanging dialogues of love and farewell.
“XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! is an opera on film by Jennifer Walshe (Ireland) composer and performer. Walshe takes the tradition of marionette opera and transforms it through the use of Barbie dolls. A riff on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, this notorious opera has been performed all over the world.”
Jennifer Walshe is a composer and performer who has been called “the most original compositional voice to emerge in Ireland in the last 20 years” by the Irish Times and "the wild girl of Darmstadt” by the Frankfurter Rundschau.
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April
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Immobilite by Mark Amerika
A feature-length mobile phone art film remixed for cyberspace and public space
April 7, 2009 - May 7, 2009 Opening Reception/Exhibition, April 8, 6-9 PM Artist talk, May 7 @ 7 PM - “We Write This To You From The Future: On The Making of Immobilite” Sponsored by the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts
Film still from Immobilité
On view in 75 minute feature length in The Project Room for New Media Ten-minute remix broadcast through Streaming Museum global network
See the site: immobilite.com
Shot on a mobile phone, uses landscape, portraiture, experimental mobile phone videography, poetic intertitles and subtitles, and original 75 minute soundtrack, creating a provocative story about a dream world within our own world. The work critically reflects on the fluidity of emerging identities in digital culture from both philosophical and literary (fictional) perspectives.
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Eternal Recurrence The Art of Lucero Gonzalez Jameson and Claudia Doring Baiz
Curator, Raul Zamudio Presented by Nina Colosi April 9 - May 9
(left) Lucero Gonzalez Jameson “Execution of Miramon” 30x27 in. (right) Claudio Doring Baez, “Manuel Gonzalez” 48x30 in.
Eternal Recurrence brings together the art of Lucero Gonzalez Jameson and Claudia Doring Baez, two artists from different generations whose works poetically vacillate from the present to the past. Both artists are related to important Mexican historical figures: one is Manuel Gonzalez (1833-1893), a President of Mexico and a liberal; and the other Miguel Miramón (1831-1867), an interim President of Mexico, a general, and a conservative; the latter was one of two persons executed with Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico and immortalized in Edouard Manet’s The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1868-69).
Lucero’s contribution to the exhibition consists of sculptures, a video, and paintings and she introduces her works in Eternal Recurrence via her rendition of Manet’s iconic painting. Her other canvases also trope history in that they are informed by canonical artists such as Picasso and Matisse, yet her paintings are of more personal subject matter and articulated in her distinctly abstract and expressive style. Claudia Doring Baez, on the other hand, approaches history almost as if it is fiction: her participation in Eternal Recurrence explores a postmodern spin on portraiture in which the models she depicts are based on real individuals, though the resulting works are titled vis-à-vis their professional occupation: the filmmaker, the librarian, the art dealer and so forth. Her strategy is to capture the quintessence of a maker of films, for example, so that the painting embodies a character or even an archetype rather than a specific person. She prefaces her paintings and sculptures in Eternal Recurrence with a series of portraits titled The President of Mexico, which is based on a full-length portrait of Manuel Gonzalez housed in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle and part of Mexico’s cultural patrimony.
Programs presented in conjunction with the exhibition: Live portrait painting by Claudia Doring Baez Thursdays and Saturdays 2-6 PM.
Sound Sense: a reading of poetry and prose
Saturday 4/25 from 3:30 - 5:30 pm Readings of works by MFA candidates at the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts Directed by Alexandra Zelman-Doring
With a strong emphasis on the listener’s experience of the work, this reading promises an awakening of the sheer force of literary language. The readers will perform both their own work and each other’s, sounding out the emergent voice of a new recourse to poetry. Participants: Marina Kaganova, Matthew Rossi, Justin Boening, Janice Greenwood, Jesse Longman, Prashant Keshavmurthy, Jeffrey Landman, Alexandra Zelman-Doring
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Performing Arts at CAM
Theresa Reflex Ensemble, Keren Rosenbaum and Cassie Terman
Wednesday 4/1 at 7 pm
Theresa is a performance by cellist Keren Rosenbaum, physical theater artist Cassie Terman, and 2 members of Reflex Ensemble, who transform an empty stage with sound, music and movement to explore a surreal realm of comic dilemma and the pathos of human frailty. Inspired by the writings of Italo Calvino, this performance was developed in the New Art Lab of The Project Room for New Media at Chelsea Art Museum.
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Red Light Ensemble —- New York Times review, 4/13/09
April 13, 2009 MUSIC REVIEW | RED LIGHT NEW MUSIC Linking Composers by Contrast and Affinity By STEVE SMITH
At first brush Morton Feldman and Beat Furrer do not seem temperamentally suited to sharing a concert. Mr. Feldman, a New York composer who developed his style during the 1950s and died in 1987, is best remembered for the expansive works of his late years: sweeping glaciers that seem practically motionless but glisten with subtle plays of light and shade. Mr. Furrer, a Swiss-Austrian composer born in 1954, works in sudden gestures, frantic motion and stark silences.
But there is a connection between them, which the contemporary-classical ensemble Red Light New Music set out to illustrate in a well-attended concert at the Chelsea Art Museum on Friday night. In a program note Liam Robinson, a composer and a director of Red Light, discussed Mr. Furrer’s discovery of Feldman’s 1986 piece “Coptic Light.” What Mr. Furrer found there, Mr. Robinson related, was “the capacity and power within music to create a simultaneous sense of stasis and continuous movement.”
You could use the same words to describe Minimalism, which also has a place in Mr. Furrer’s nervous system, to judge by two 1997 works played here. In “a due,” Erin Wight’s viola scrabbled, hissed and yawned over Yegor Shevtsov’s steadily percolating piano figures. Unanticipated pauses cleared the air, and the music resumed with subtle changes in tint or inflection.
“Presto con fuoco” had Natacha Diels, a flutist, and David Broome, a pianist, in a similar relationship, with the piano gradually encroaching on the flute’s territory. All four of these sure-handed players brought out the enigmatic beauty of Mr. Furrer’s wiry constructions.
Ms. Wight and Mr. Shevtsov also gave an engrossing account of Feldman’s fragile 1970 work “The Viola in My Life III.” Alone, Mr. Shevtsov offered a gracious performance of Mr. Feldman’s “Last Pieces,” a transitional creation from 1959.
Further conjoining the composers were two playful films by Bady Minck. Both had been screened nearly a week earlier during a concert by Klangforum Wien, a new-music ensemble founded by Mr. Furrer.
“Being and Nothingness” showed Mr. Furrer plucking a copy of Schumann’s “Novelette” No. 8 from an antiquarian shop, then magically distorting it into his own “Ein Lied, das Über das Ende des Liedes Hinaus ein Anderes Ende Finden Wollte” (“A Song That Aimed to Find Another Ending Beyond the End of the Song”). In “Schein Sein” (“Seems to Be”) Ms. Minck pans across a desk cluttered with significant Feldman cues — a Mondrian painting, a rug pattern, the voice of John Cage — before playing perceptional games to the tune of Mr. Feldman’s “Madame Press Died Last Week at 90.”
C. 2009 The New York Times Company
Wednesday 4/10 at 7 pm
The Red Light Ensemble performs chamber music by two great composers of the late 20th century, Morton Feldman and Beat Furrer. In addition to these performances, the concert will feature a rare screening of the work of Luxembourgian filmmaker Bady Minck, who has crafted elegant and beautiful films around music by these two composers.
Wednesday 4/29 at 7 pm
Eric Huebner Pianist Eric Huebner and composer Caroline Mallonée team up with Icelandic video artist Björk Viggósdóttir to present an evening of electro-acoustic music accompanied by video projections. A new work by Mallonée for piano and electronics will receive its world premiere along with performances of solo piano music by Takemitsu and Ligeti.
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March
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Imaginalis
Artists: Jeremy Gardiner, Anthony Head, Nick Lambert, Jan Rafdal March 5 – April 4, 2009
Imaginalis is an exciting collaborative exhibition by a European artists’ collective Imaginalis. Bringing together interactive installations alongside multi-media, painting and print work firmly routed in the rich tradition of modern landscape artists, the exhibition is the culmination of a close collaborative partnership between the four artists.
The Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO world heritage site in Dorset, England, is the inspiration for evocative paintings and prints that blur the line between representation and abstraction. Viewing the coast from the land, sea and air layers of color convey sensations, changes in the weather and seasons. The working method behind the pictures, scouring, building accretions of paint, collaging, and sanding down, echo the history of the ninety miles of ancient coastal landscape we see today. Like the geological spectrum of the coast, these images are stratified, creating distinct bands of paint and color in complex layers built up over eons.
Jurassic Light Years further explores the coastline in the context of a dynamic and time-based virtual environment. The installation uses hybrid techniques that combine painting, drawing, satellite data and ambient sound with immersive virtual reality through computer programming. This work features natural systems, such as changing weather, sea and geological erosion, over time. The dynamic qualities of this interactive installation best convey the succession of changing climates and landforms during its 250 million year old history.
By contrast Oculus is an installation that focuses on the human desire to measure and quantify the passing of time to make sense of the eras of change. Taking its form from the rose windows of European medieval cathedrals the jewel colors of the stained glass are projected to create an ethereal animated installation. Oculus subtly captures movement over time, its circular form echoes that of many ancient calendars and clocks. Embedded in the roundels of the window are the signs of the Zodiac, the plan of Stonehenge, the Nebra star-disc, the Aztec calendar, Copernicus’s view of the solar system, and at the centre, the great clock at Hampton Court, the royal palace of King Henry the Eighth. The piece connects the beliefs, discoveries and world-view of the cultures that sought to capture time and place and frame it.
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Performing Arts at CAM
Taka Kigawa, pianist
Wednesday 3/25 at 7 pm
The critically acclaimed pianist Taka Kigawa will perform dazzling solo piano repertoires for this concert. The program includes the works of strikingly inventive composers; Etudes Book I by Claude Debussy, “Incises for Piano” by Pierre Boulez, and Etudes Book I by Gyorgy Ligeti.
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February
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Performing Arts at CAM
Project Perpetuum - a multi-media / jazz production February 25 at 7 pm
Gerd Baier, Emma Desjardins, Philipp Gutbrod, Micaela Leon, choreographed by Anne Zuerner
An Evening of Choreography and Improvisation, is a rare merger of live improvised jazz music, vocals, and contemporary dance. The piece is based on the album “Perpetuum” by the chamber Jazz duo Gerd Baier / Philipp Gutbrod. Many of the pieces that will be performed are inspired by literature, art, and science: The composition Milena is based on Franz Kafka’s love letters to Milena Jesenska. This piece will be performed by the whole quartet with a special emphasis on Emma Desjardins’ transformation of written words into dance. Another piece, When Vincent Got Lost, conjures up the struggles of Van Gogh in the beautiful scenery of Southern France. Finally, Pioneer 10 is inspired by the satellite of the same name that was launched in 1972 and has long lost contact with planet earth, but continues its journey into the unknown nonetheless.
Red Light Ensemble
Wednesday 2/4 at 7pm
Premieres commissioned works by American composers Liam Robinson, Scott Wollschleger, Vincent Raikhel. Also features Tether by Charlie Wilmoth winner of RL’s second annual composer competition, and works by Claude Vivier and French master Gerard Grisey.
Next concert April 8.
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January
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Bohdi Obfuscatus (Allegiance), an installation by Michael Joo (US)
January 10 – February 7, 2009 Guest Curator, Micaela Martegani, Founder and Director, More Art
A new media installation and community education program. moreart.org
An installation by Michael Joo features a video helmet comprised of 48 live surveillance cameras as they examine the faces of a group of New York teenagers as they tell stories about their lives and attempt to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. This multi-media installation consists of a video projection, mirrors, and sound. The portraits of these teenagers, at one representational and abstract, are presented as a matrix of recorded projection and reflected video imagery.
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Performing Arts at CAM
England - a play by Tim Crouch Part of the Under The Radar Festival presented by The Public Theater Thursdays and Fridays 1/8, 1/15, and 1/16 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm Saturdays 1/10, 1/17 at 2:00 and 4:00 pm
Two guides in a gallery. Two lovers with a lifestyle to maintain. Two hearts beating four thousand miles apart. A moving evocation of the relative values we place on precious things. Tim Crouch is fast developing a reputation as one of Europe’s most daring writers and performers. England won three major awards when it opened at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. England is part of the Under The Radar Festival presented by The Public Theater. Running Time: 60 minutes. The audience is standing for half of the performance.