www.ErikAndTheAnimals.com

Kerry James Marshall's insights on self-determination...

Erik Fabian — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 02:02:00 +0000

The folks over at the Bad At Sports Podcast stumbled onto a fabulous interview with Chicago painter Kerry James Marshall.

KJM is breathtakingly clear on the art market and his orientation towards the market. I recommend it.

e

2007 New Years Day Chicago Polar Bear Club Plunge

Erik Fabian — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 17:23:00 +0000

Merry Christmas!

Here is a quick invite to join me and a hundred other folks for a quick dip in cooling waters of Lake Michigan for the 8th Annual Chicago Polar Bear Club New Years Day Swim.

Noon, North Ave Beach. Everyone is welcome.

Here is a link to a Craigslist announcement for more info: http://chicago.craigslist.org/eve/232942115.html

Here to download a word doc version of the same info that seems to update yearly: http://tinyurl.com/wrade

Here is some guy's pics from 2006: http://www.worldisround.com/articles/260779/index.html

e

2007 CAAP Grant is Available

Erik Fabian — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:10:00 +0000

Materials for the 2007 Community Art Assistance program grant is available on the Chicago Dept of Cultural Grants website. They grant up to $1000 for projects, development and training.

Here is a link: CAAP Grant

Jeff Harms' Response to "YEAR"

Erik Fabian — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:28:00 +0000

Jeff Harms is a friend of mine, an actor, musician and artist. He has kindly contributed some performance reviews and I hope others will follow suit.

This article responds to Brian Torrey Scott's new musical, "YEAR", which can be seen at the Prop Theater as a part of this year's Rhinoceros Theater Festival here in Chicago. Jeff has acted in several of Brian's productions and I think this may be the first one he has seen as an audience member in sometime.

e

PS. You can hear a talk I did with Jeff a ways back in the Dialogues section of this site.

-------

[From Jeff Harms, 9/26/06]

I am a child of the musical. I loved the serious, even awful, musicals of the 70's and 80's: Phantom, Fantastiks, Chess, Les Miz. But now, 20 years later, there are only a handful that I can listen too. Most are now schmaltzy, saccharine, and painfully dated.

So here come's YEAR, the new musical by Brian Torrey Scott and Azita Youseffi. Beautifully acted and staged, this play still haunts me, just like Sweeney Todd did with its passionate dischord when I first saw it. Year is a great theatrical experience. I have been trying to sort out why. It is not, as most musicals are: a spectacle of love affairs and declarations of interpersonal conflict. Instead, Year uses the relationships of its characters to discuss larger more intangible themes of loss and change. And this is the singular achievement of Year, making it a musical unlike any I have seen.

The characters in Year sing directly to the audience in a Brechtian/Kurt Weil style, and I believe that Scott is, similarly, interested in including the audience in this way, inviting them to consider the play to be about them, about our times. Year is a collage of colloquialisms slightly askew, of small mannerisms and social micro-moments that placed onstage, sit in a strange isolation. It is in the midst of this libretto that the songs and the subtle shifts in theatricallity reveal the real themes of Year, creating a poetic effect that at times truly chills you to the bone. From my point of view these were very poetic glances as though through a rearview mirror, not at ideas of loss, but at the unavoidable FACT of loss and at the inability of language and metaphor to truly deal with it.

When the characters in Year turn to the audience to sing it is at once a confessional and an invitation to share the experience. The music reveals the real emotional questions beneath the dialogue. It is oddly poetic.

All my breath from the sky
takes a path and rounds the earth
follow it down to the town
To the home that you have built.
The houses walk in this place on all fours
I feed them years, years of weeks
all full of days, minutes and hours.
And my breath the same as dog's
goes in and out of these lungs to fight with yours.

On the surface it might seem abstract and difficult to follow. But I think Scott truly respects his audience's intelligence and their ability to find meaning for themselves. One could see it again and again and discover new things every time. Near the end of the play Hannah admits, "I never really understood how she and I were sisters." The playwrite's sense of humor is right there with you the entire time, and perhaps that is why the play is so accessible. Listen and you will recognize yourself in Year. In many ways you are already living it. This text and this music is just another way to try to get through to something of meaning in our lives. This is a deep play with its heart on its sleeve. And, done well, there is nothing else I would rather see.

http://www.jeffharms.net

Jeff Harms' Response to Deva Eveland's "3 attempts to convince the audience of something really important"

Erik Fabian — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:36:00 +0000

Deva Eveland performed for the last three Saturdays down at the mn Gallery in the Bridgeport neighborhood here is Chicago. You missed out if you missed "3 attempts to convince the audience of something really important" but luckily Jeff Harms has writted up a response.

e

PS. You can hear a talk I did with Deva in the Dialogues section of this site.

------

[From Jeff Harms, 9/25/06]

I think Agnes Martin said once that an individual either loves humanity, and therefore is a Romantic, or turns their back on humanity and becomes a Classicist. Deva Eveland is the former in my opinion. And what is more, I feel in his work one can often feel that humanity has turned its back on him (or his characters), turning them into archetypal figures of innocence, abandonment, collective anxiety, or the grotesque.

In the case of Eveland’s September performances at Mn Gallery, this was very clear. Green tinsel, shredded paper, streamers, and portions of fake Christmas trees litter the floor of the gallery. Somehow the jumble of party supplies resembles a dense natural underbrush. It is noisy underfoot, and the audience comfortably gravitates to sitting in it, toying with the fake leaves and the grass-like paper.

Deva appears in character as an early ancestor of man, grunting and yelling at the audience. His ears stick out, and he has something in his mouth that makes his jaw protrude. You can see the white of a cumbersome prosthetic in his mouth and it makes him drool. You can see threads of hot-glue behind his ears where he has wedged something in to hold them out. And he has made a “grass” pair of shorts from party streamers and green duct tape. It would be simply an amusing costume if his presence wasn’t so passionately convincing. He has really become an ape man. And it is clear he is very disturbed and desperately wants to communicate something too us. He holds a stack of green silo cups in the air as though he were challenging us, finally throwing them in our direction. The desperation and the attention to detail is what makes it hilarious. He is offering us wine and food, and I remember, “Oh, yeah. This is a gallery opening.”

Deva is an amazing performer who becomes so enmeshed with his characters that he channels a real energy that is palpable and spell-binding. I know few other performers who display as deep a mental and physical commitment to their work. Deva embodies his ideas until they are completely inseperable from him self. Within the richness of the worlds he creates, a lesser artist would simply coast through performances or adopt an ironic distance, but Deva lives the performances every time. And every performance seems to push the boundaries of himself and his understanding of the world. In the true spirit of performance, his work becomes a liminal experience, or a rite of passage in a way. People remember his performances as things they experienced, and after which they were not the same. Certainly I do in regard to the three shows at Mn Gallery.

Each evening, this ape man appears. And each night there is something he wants us to do. The first night we each receive a chicken nugget, not too eat, but to care for. The second night we eat KFC and try to reassemble a broken Hallmark store skeleton with the leftover bones. The third night paper skeletons are magically born in a shower of green glitter and we are each given our own to nurture. Each night the rules are very simple. And as he presents them with such emotion, the tasks get elevated to a state of real urgency. It is though we have become involved in the make-believe world of a child, but then a child who’s intelligence and earnestness begins to tread into some very forboding and disturbing subject-matter:

Night one. The chicken nuggets get blended into some fluid (strawberry soda) in preparation for being “incubated” in our bodies. The concoction of familiar lunch time snacks suddenly smells like death. He pushes himself to a point of visible nausea as he tries to "save" the remaining orphaned nuggets.

Night two. The failure to adhere real bone to the paper skeleton prompts Deva to call the KFC hotline. He thanks them for creating a communal chicken bucket, and offers the idea that hunting and killing animals, and subsequently violence, is the very thing which allowed humans to evolve and which holds our society together. He suggests that KFC might use this in one of their ad campaigns or something.

Night three. We are trying to generate a list of rules to help us raise our skeletons. At one point he asks what the KFC bucket smells like. We say chicken, but he corrects us with the answer: It smells like humans first, chicken second. The implication being that man’s intervention, the process of cooking and the smell of the paper bucket itself are all more apparent than the smell of an actual chicken. At this moment, for me, adding up Deva’s artificial “landscape”, the “idea” of a “pure” early ancestor of man, the use of a magic KFC bucket to raise our children, I begin to percieve an inherent riddle and an inherent sadness in the work. For me it seems to involve a dissconnect between the comfortable life-support system of the developed world and the desire to live a meaningful life, as a healthy human being. It is not the nature of any other species to doubt their living conditions, their origins or their destiny, but this is what Deva seems to be doing. When we cannot predict what the future has in store for our skeleton children on the last evening, Deva decides to use a “magic white rock” hidden in the brush, and telephones a phone sex operator. She talks him through a sexual fantasy involving the two of them as primitive humans mating on the savannah (“…and everyone is watching?” Deva asks. “Yes, everyone is watching.” She assures him.”) And just when Deva suggests that he “mount” her and copulate, he hesitates and suggests that maybe they shouldn’t. He sweats through a premonition that she will get pregnant from the phone sex and they will raise a race of humans that will pollute and otherwise complicate and disrupt the pure relationship they have with their environment. It may seem silly to describe here and in this way, but having played along with the simple fun of the evening, the intimate phone call is extremely jarring and strange. And his subsequent change of heart and his concern for his "unborn children" is oddly heart-wrenching. Hanging up the phone, he then, as simply as he did on the previous two evenings, becomes himself for a moment, says, “thankyou,” and exits.

I am reminded of Phillip Guston who described his figurative paintings as “going back to see if I didn’t miss something.” Deva’s work has a similar effect on me. By looking closely at himself in a kind of first-person anthropological research, it seems he has become aware of a strange personal connection to society’s accepted rituals and beliefs. By wielding it with a careful awkward innocence, he and Guston both make society’s vocabulary double-back on itself. I believe that both Eveland and Guston are in that place where, because of their honesty, their specific personal questions quickly begin to reference something much larger and universal.

http://www.jeffharms.net

Call for public performances from Anni Holm

Erik Fabian — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:30:00 +0000

Here is a email from Anni Holm...e

PS. Her personal website might be down for some reason.

Hello!

I am looking for performance artists to participate in this years Art Walks Chicago. Please let me know if you are interested by emailing me a short proposal, along with date(s), time(s) and location suggestions. If you know anyone interested in performing as well, please forward my information. The performances have to be suitable for the outdoors, and there is no compensation involved, however, since Art Walks Chicago, this year is one of the featured programs for the Chicago Artists' Month, we are expecting a lot of exposure...

You can see examples of what we did last year here:
http://artwalkschicago.info

Thank you,
Anni

PS. Please note that the performance doesn't have to take place in Chicago, if we can have things going on in other cities around the globe it would be even greater!

http://www.anniholm.com

The Hunchback Variations @ Links Hall

Erik Fabian — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 02:53:00 +0000

Theater Oobleck presented a performance of Mickle Maher’s, “The Hunchback Variations” for the last couple weekends at Links Hall in Chicago, featuring Jeffery Bivens as Ludwig Van Beethoven and Colm O’Reily as Quasimodo.

This script is hilarious and the performance is simple and clear. The premise is a supposed panel discussion between Beethoven and Quasimodo on the topics relating to an apparently failed collaboration to create the "impossible sound" described in the stage directions of the Chekhov play, “The Cherry Orchard”. “The Hunchback Variations” is structured in short, ten-minute or so, repeated variations…Beethoven repeatedly introduces the panel and then some kind of discussion about the collaboration takes place, the reasons and details of the failure are explored (and bemoaned by Quasimodo), and a kind of diligent chipping away at the impossible is presented.

The set is a long table, covered with a white cloth, with two mics and a pitcher of water. An abstract chiming soundtrack plays behind the performance, at times haunting the actors with a reminder of the sounds they (both being deaf) can no longer hear, of the sound their collaboration failed to evoke, and perhaps, for Quasimodo, the bells of Notre Dam left behind. Both characters comically acknowledge both the sounds and the audience at times with looks of pain, bewilderment, stoicism and indignation.

The romantic Quasimodo, long suffering, now living in a hut in a bog, was a constant bell tone throughout the play for me. He repeatedly made me laugh by lashing out at Beethoven or the audience from some new low of comic despicableness. He is costumed with a hump, ragged clothing and a mask. He opens the play by coming down the aisle and going to the table. He proceeds to remove a number of objects (sticks, jars, a pink toy guitar, etc) from a bag and place them on his side of the table. Colm performs this with excellent focus and interest and very confidently draws the attention of the audience to the stage and establishes a tone for the show.

Once Quasimodo finishes setting up, Beethoven enters briskly carrying a book. He is middle-aged, dressed in casual, contemporary dress and wearing glasses. Upon seeing the man enter from the audience’s right, I thought that I was about to listen to an NPR announcer give a talk. Beethoven takes the lead and opens the panel during most of the variations. In contrast to the Quasimodo masquerade, the Beethoven character lacks any theatrical or historical markers and is established simply by his repeated self-introductions. We are told that this is Beethoven, by Beethoven, and within the absurdity of the play, it is easy enough to accept.

I found Jeffery’s Beethoven less internally present than Colm’s Quasimodo though. Jeffery speaks very clearly and well and even while seated behind the table his body is activated and expressive; unfortunately I also found him fidgety at times. His hands where a big aspect of his performance to me and I began to think about how it seemed wrong to me that this was supposedly Beethoven, a master pianist, an athlete of the hands, and that, as he sat before us, his hands were flailing about the table and his person. It seemed that here was a character that should have been in his physical comfort zone at the edge of a table, a piano-like horizontal expanse, but was generally unsettled and fidgety. I enjoyed his calmer moments though and the more focused business he found fiddling with the microphone or the book.

I noticed that Jeffery wasn’t the person depicted in the program and later I learned that they had to bring him in to play Beethoven for these last two shows. I think the author Mickle Maher was the original actor, so perhaps Jeffery was just filling in on the spur of the moment.

Jeffery’s performance did leave me with a sense that this Beethoven is not used to failure and is, in fact, unable to accept or understand the event of failure. In that way his Beethoven seems almost innocent or naïve. He presents a good face as a panelist, routinely framing their predicament in an excusatory but poetic language only to be comically rebuked by Quasimodo’s romantic wallowing and stubbornness. Together they seemed like two aspects of the artistic temperament, the brilliant ego, and some trudging, self-doubting creature. Both reach for a kind of perfection, and are unwilling to give up romantic, if doomed, pursuits of impossible things. Both are self-involved, and achieve little…to the point of comedy.

This panel talk is initially presented in the play as a reconsideration of their failure but we quickly learn that their failure to find this “impossible sound” was never really accepted by either character. Beethoven, in his perfectionism, indulges his daydreams and never really contributes anything useful to the collaboration, avoiding failure by not trying, and Quasimodo is left with the work and the suffering of engaging in this doomed process. A repeated gag is when Quasimodo gathers together a few of the objects before him and triggers some pathetic little sound, and then Beethoven, called from some reverie, responds with a “No, that is not it.”

I suppose I don’t really care if they find the sound or not, their relationship and the proposed situation is amusingly described and basically satisfactory for me in itself. I struggle to find much more in this play than the results of an exercise that brings these figures together and self-reflexively considers the creative process. I suppose I feel like there is something in there about taking responsibility for ourselves, something about how we create romantic ideals and that those dreams can be more satisfying in themselves than other things, and something about the mystery of sound. I cannot coherently articulate what is being said about those things though, so I am left with the feeling that this piece is enjoyable but not so important.

Maybe I should see it again, I suggest anyone who has the chance to go. If I went back again, I imagine my questions for the play would be: What is really at stake here? What are the jokes hiding? Why am I keyed into a concern about the willingness and unwillingness to take responsibility in this play? And, why is Theater Oobleck presenting this play of responsibility and failure to me now, at this time?

e

Dog, Action Item: DOG does not perform @ PAC/edge

Erik Fabian — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 00:08:00 +0000

Dog is perhaps my favorite performance project in Chicago right now. They have performed in the PAC/edge Fest for three years now and they are the only group I have seen so far that has seemed to consider their presence in the festival.

This year Dog presents a breezy and amusing video in the place of their normal live ensemble creations. Edited together by one member and structurally tided together with some thoughts about Aristotle, sub-title humor and the lovely ambient music that is becoming a signature for their works, the video presents a series of excuses by each of the members of Dog for their absence in this year’s festival.

It becomes a bit of a behind the scenes event revealing the collection of artists that all seem willing to engage a variety of abstract agendas to sidestep, contain and perhaps accentuate their idiosyncratic quirkiness. This kind of thing seems to be on the mind of this subset in Chicago Performance because 500 Clown (who is connected to Dog in a variety of ways) also chose to turn in a video this year rather than re-perform their fabulous and popular version of Frankenstein yet again.

It seems some of Dog have better excuses than others….

Some have art or career opportunities that are consuming, some have had rather traumatic health issues, some seem to offer hyperactivity, negligence and a self-satisfied sense of oddness.

It is a hoot and perhaps marks the end of Dog or the beginning of a metamorphosis for the group.

Like I wonder if PAC is going to turn off their artist and volunteers with their ticket policies, I wonder if PAC is going to exhaust their core group of performers before the festival gets fully established. I don’t fully understand the relationships with the groups that PAC supports but I get the sense that PAC assumes it will at some point achieve the position in the city where the are in such demand that artists will want to participate in the festival no matter what.

Though aren’t the city’s artists the core audience for the festival in the first place?

There is a special website for this show at www.DogdoesnotPerform.com.

e

Intimate and Epic, Small Acts for the City @ Lurie Garden

Erik Fabian — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:35:00 +0000

I took part in a group performance over in the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park on Saturday. I won’t comment on that piece as I was in it but I was able to wander around some and want to mention some of the other works that took place during the day as I doubt there will be much media review of the event.

The show Intimate and Epic, Small Acts for the City was part of a larger weekend of events in the park called rather grandly titled The Great Performers of Illinois which seemed to feature mostly music acts in the Gehry bandshell and tourist-info booths. Mark Jeffery and Sara Schnadt should be credited for convincing the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Dept. of Tourism for including contemporary performance into the weekend.

It was a nice line up including The Seldoms, 3 card molly, Cupola Bobber, Stan Shellabarger, Industry of the Ordinary and a few others.

The Seldoms presented a fine processional movement piece that followed one of the central paths in the garden that has a creek/waterway running along one side. The waterway is full of coins (tossed for good luck I imagine) and often on hot days you see folks cooling off their feet in the water.

The dancers, as is typical of the Seldoms, were tastefully costumed and paired with an interesting material element (long, thick, lizard-like tails of braided clear shrink-wrap plastic which I believe was designed by Pate Conaway). The parts I saw had the dancers moving from a small pool, along the path, up a wall, wagging their bodies, leaving their tail behind, proceeding farther, sometimes lifting each other so they seem to walk on the wall, and then finally lowering a skirt of more colorful fabric to trail behind them in place of their tails. The wet tails left thick watermarks on the concrete as they walked. The shedding of the tail and extending of the skirt lent a note of metamorphosis to the piece. Very professional and easy to enjoy.

3 card molly’s piece Blitz was perhaps the most successful piece in the show. As a pair the performers seemed to be on an abstract military mission of exploration accompanied by a fabulous wooden tank and equipment created by Michael Rea. The tank was at least ten feet long with a driving compartment, turrets, missiles and a rear door…it seemed like a large reproduction of a GI Joe toy tank of somekind…and they were able to drive it along one of the walkways. The performance consisted of gibberish vocal communications and a variety of improvised explorations and some movement patterns (such as rocking huge missiles in there arms like babies). The big visual presence of the tank, the abstract political quality of piece, and the playful/interactive qualities made it fit well with the circumstances of this show and the audience of tourists as well as art fans.

Stan did a nice durational walking piece in which he circled the perimeter of the garden for the length of the event (I think he did about 5 hrs total). He was very pedestrian in appearance and had rigged a water filled backpack to send water down to his shoes. Each step seemed to squirt a bit of water out the tip of his shoes and left a watermark on the concrete that would evaporate with a bit of time. Depending on his pace (and the sunlight, though it was most a cloudy day) he might have a two or three laps of watermarks that he was maintaining with his circling. His piece asserted itself quietly but consistently over the day but often felt muted by the big presence of the garden and the other performers in the park. It created an inside/outside boundary, a directional flow and in a way stirred things up.

Mat Wilson of Industry of the Ordinary showed up right at the end of the afternoon with a big rectangular freezer on wheels. The piece, Manual Labor, consisted of leaving hand-shaped ice sculptures (water was placed in work gloves and frozen) around the garden with tags baring the names of workers who helped create the garden.

The piece seems to fit within the larger body of straightforward gestures of labor and production created by Industry of the Ordinary and highlighted rather bluntly an orientation towards labor as the defining activity of the body and a basis of performance for them as well. The somewhat sentimental quality of the melting hands and the lack of further information about who the workers were made the gesture kind of stunted to me.

I suppose it was intended to point to the presence of the effort of labor that saturates the garden in general but by naming names of a group of people who are probably still around Chicago (the garden is just few years old) yet not actually having them there or involved (as far as I could tell) seemed incomplete, disconnected or even a bit exploitive. I don’t have any sense or evidence of the workers being mistreated, unpaid or even somehow shut out of the garden as it stands now.

I wonder if any of the workers come and visit the garden ever with out of town guests or their families. Are they proud of their work? Was the paycheck, and their work in itself sufficient for them or would they like their names honored? Does Industry of the Ordinary have a beef with the general economic-political structure that lead to the creation of this garden? I feel like there is a politics of labor accumulating in Industry of the Ordinary’s work but I don’t know what it is yet and perhaps would need to look further through their past work to figure it out.

I should also mention a kind of moment that happened while I was chatting with Mat…a guy and his son came up to us with and this icebox hoping that Mat had some ice cream for sale. I thought it would have been a rather gruesome twist of this piece if they had stuck some popsicle sticks in these ice-hands and offered them to the tourists. An idea for another show perhaps.

Finally, Cupola Bobber’s piece, Light Curve, was abandoned when the long paper track they were attempting to extend across some of the vegetation in the garden became stuck. Apparently the artist weren’t allowed to venture off of a maintenance path so as to protect the plants. I was barked at by an earnest gardener at one point for laying my backpack in the wrong place so I can attest for the tight situation artists were working with. The garden in apparently still in quite the fragile state and clear and consistent boundaries are probably necessary to keep the general public from damaging the garden. If anything though was missing from the show it was the opportunity to see more direct engagement of the nature of the garden as an aspect of the landscape.

This was a polite show on the part of the artists in general but understandably polite. Having the cultural agents of the city supporting contemporary performance is important and perhaps with time more trust will build and the artists will be able the engage the limitations of the circumstances further.

So as an audience friendly, presentational showcase kind of show, the more visually bombastic and theatrical pieces fared well in the event. The big nature of the garden itself and the rest of the activities in the park were quite a difficult background to distinguish yourself in and a tough place for the quite conceptual work.

It would be appropriate in the future to start to consider how contemporary performance work sits with the rest of the city’s cultural agenda. The drive of the Great Performers of Illinois is obviously to encourage tourism as much as present the cultural gems of the region. Hopefully in the future the programming of the whole park will be a bit more considered so things like the strange decision to book an entire afternoon of loud drum circles in the neighboring (amplified) Ghery bandshell will be understood as a decision to set the soundscape for the performances in the Lurie Garden as well. And also perhaps so strange juxtapositions like having an Abe Lincoln impersonator (another Great Performer of Illinois) walking through the garden at the same time as some contemporary performance piece is unfolding on a neighboring bench won’t be lost.

Listen to talks I did with Stan and Mat in the dialogues section of this site.

e

New Charity to Start Plan for $50,000 Artists’ Grants

Erik Fabian — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:49:00 +0000

These folks are on the right track...

nytimes

Performa05 follow up...

Erik Fabian — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 05:02:00 +0000

The February issue of Art in America has a handful of reviews about the Performa05 festival that I mentioned in an earlier post.

Erik

Dialogue with CJ Mitchell, Executive Director of Links Hall added...

Erik Fabian — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:21:00 +0000

I have posted a dialogue with CJ Mitchell that has been sitting in the archives for too long now.

CJ is the Executive Director of Links Hall, the founder of the False Walls recording label and the former manager and current fundraiser for Goat Island (till they call it quit I suppose).

Lots of good stuff on Links, funding performance in Chicago and some the current performers in the city.

http://www.erikandtheanimals.com/Pages/Dialogues.html

e

Goat Island announces their last show ever...

Erik Fabian — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 02:50:00 +0000

From an email today....e

Dear Friends,

At our first work-in-progress of our new performance presented last Sunday at The Chicago Cultural Center, we announced that this, our ninth performance, will be our last. We have attached the complete text of the announcement for you to read.

We began working on this performance with a research trip to Zagreb a year ago. We plan to premier the work in fall, 2007. After we have completed creating and performing it, the company will end.

This decision comes from the challenge that all artists face: how to continue to grow, to venture into the unknown. We intend this end to present itself as a beginning. We have considered what comes after Goat Island – the multiple futures of company members, associate members, friends, audiences, students – those encountered and those yet to be encountered. We will do what we can to help sustain and multiply the practices of collaboration that the 20+ years of Goat Island have brought us. Each of us will continue to work in, and to advocate for, the field of performance. Our attitude as we arrive at this decision is one of gratefulness. It is time to find the change that growth necessitates. We end Goat Island in order to make a space for the unknown that will follow.

We have initiated this change ourselves, not in response to internal or external adversity, but creatively. We approach it, as we have tried to approach all changes – through a collaborative creative process. We want to provide an example of ending, of lastness, but it is an example we have not yet defined. We hope to discover that example through the two-year process of making this performance.

As always, thank you for your continued support of and interest in our work. We look forward to sharing the performance with you.

Sincerely,

Goat Island

Talk with Nicole Garneau

Erik Fabian — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 18:25:00 +0000

I have posted excerpts from a dialogue I had with Nicole Garneau at the beginning of the year to my website in the “dialogues” section.

“From January 1 to December 31, 2005, Chicago based interdisciplinary artist Nicole Garneau engaged in a year-long performance project called HEAT:05 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, during which 739 people died in a week. Garneau became interested in the subject after reading Eric Klinenberg’s book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, and many of the themes she explored during the year were inspired by this book.”

Nicole has documentation up from HEAT:05 at the Vespine Gallary in Plisen (1907 S. Halsted) through April 29th. http://www.vespine.org

Nicole is also performing as a part of Thaw: A benefit for Links Hall on Thursday, April 27th. I helped curate the show for Links and I think there will be will be a fine collection of spring-like performances to wake you from your winter hibernation. The performances go until 10pm and there is music and dancing afterwards till 2am. Wao Bao and drinks.

e

Thaw: A benefit for Links Hall

Erik Fabian — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 01:44:00 +0000

Hi all,

I helped curate these performance to get the winter chill out of your cutlet.

------

Thursday April 27, 2006
7pm-2am
at Sonotheque, 1444 W. Chicago Ave.

$25

Support Links Hall and experience Chicago's most innovative performance artists. From 7-10pm, enjoy live performance and music, atmospheric video art and spectacle, and free drinks and hors d'oeuvres. DJs will keep the party hopping until 2am; after 10pm the cover drops to $5. Valet parking available.

Performances: The Seldoms, Jessica Hudson, Deva Eveland, Nicole Garneau, Janet Schmid (with Natalie Bogira, Kate Sheehy, Jennifer Thompson), Margaret Morris, 3 Card Molly

Laptop/iPod bands: Lobisomem, Oh Charles

Video: Atalee Judy (Breakbone Dance Company), Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak, Laura Heit, Luftwerk, Lilli Carré

DJ's: DJ Joseph and Earwig of the SPOON Collective

Information: Links Hall 773.281.0824 www.linkshall.org info@linkshall.org
21 or older

Advance tickets available by credit card at www.linkshall.org
OR pay at door.

Video of Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece"

Erik Fabian — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:27:00 +0000

Check out this 8 minute tidbit of performance history. Old b&w footage of Yoko Ono performing "Cut Piece" in the 60's.

http://bedazzled.blogs.com/bedazzled/2006/04/yoko_ono_cut_pi.html

erik

Allan Kaprow is Dead

Erik Fabian — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:21:00 +0000

The artist (or un-artist) credited with inventing "happenings" died 4/7/06.

AP Obituary

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/07/allan_kaprow_1927200.html

erik

Pillow Fight Mobs

Erik Fabian — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 22:45:00 +0000

Something Chicago is missing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillow_Fight_Club

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Amina M. Cain's response to Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance

Erik Fabian — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 18:16:00 +0000

I asked Amina Cain to write a response to the performances on Friday at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the symposium: Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance.

Amina is a writer and co-curates (with Jennifer Karmin) the Red Rover Series of "readings that play with reading" at the Spareroom in Chicago. Amina teaches writing at Collumbia College in Chicago.

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[From Amina Cain 3/18/06]

Last night [Friday 3/17/06] I attended the Feast of the Un/Re/Do/Able at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as part of its Department of Performance
Symposium. Before the event began I sat talking with a couple of friends and the question was raised (as it's been many times) about the point behind re-doing a performance and the current trend in approaching a performative work in this way. This question stayed in my mind throughout the night and as I engaged with the work I was seeing I began to think perhaps that the festival's un-re-doable focus allowed me to understand the history of these original performances a little better and to also understand where we are today in relation to them. I like the idea of looking at a live event as a place to move around in and inhabit with elements both marked and alien to their original modes.

The night began with Ellen Rothenberg's Soapbox, a very funny piece in which Rothenberg, dressed as a clown and projected onto the wall as she walked across the room ringing a bell, talked about the state of our nation through laundry detergent names and slogans such as Cheer, Tide, All, and Gain. Depressingly, her tone wasn't far from George Bush Junior's in the last State of the Union Address. Maybe that's what made Rothenberg's so funny.

One of my favorite pieces was Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited), a film made by Liz Rosenfeld in 2005 inspired by Barbara Hammer's Dyketactics from 1974. The performance description for the film in the festival's program reads: "Bodies move freely through an ambiguous urban utopia. Shot on 16mm film and digital video, allow yourself to be led through the space where bodies exist independent of social codes." I've never seen the original film, but Rosenfeld's version constructs a station where the city is as beautiful as the figures that exist within it and everything is warm and sensual. I was transfixed the entire time I watched it.

Apart from a few other filmed works most of the night was made up of live performances, though Mark Jeffery and S.I.R. worked with footage from documented performances. I really enjoyed We still love Marina and Ulay, even though they broke up a long time ago, in which Jo Amado and Isil Egrikavuk faced each other and pointed their index fingers so that they were almost touching and then when their fingers moved apart they found each other again. This piece created an empty, charged space and I was attracted to its small movement. The major moment of the night was of course Gretchen Holmes' unredoable version of Carolee Schneeman's 1965 Interior Scroll-- the words on her scroll dealt with the state of her own and Schneeman's pubic hair.

For the most part the work was strong, but to be expected in any type of festival situation there were some weak links. Forgiveness by Aimee Brown was so short and understated that I was confused when it was over. I appreciated her stated intention for mindfulness, but the performance felt almost insignificant. And though I liked watching Beatriz Albuquerque eat green and red jello in Green and Red, "a George Brecht score," it felt a bit insignificant too. Perhaps some moments resist being redone more than others? All in all, a fun night.

Symposium: Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance @ SAIC

Erik Fabian — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 17:27:00 +0000

I attended the Peggy Phelan talk on Thursday and then the performances that were presented on Friday night at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a part of their symposium, Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance.

I enjoyed the event in general and it was nice to see this crowd of performance artists gathered in Chicago.

Peggy Phelan's talk was an often wonderfully lucid report on Marina Abramovich's "Seven Easy Pieces" that were presented in November as part of the Performa05 festival in NYC.

Friday's performances were a mixed bag as you might expect but there were a few stunning stand outs including Gretchen Holmes' performance of Carolee Schnneeman's 1965 "Interior Scroll" and Ian Ray's (aka. S.I.R.) performance "MOMentum" which called back to Faith Wilding's "Waiting" piece as well as several other nice works including pieces by Jo Amado & Isil Egrikavuk, Aurora Tabar, S.G. Murthy, and Irina Botea.

I have been falling behind on reviews lately so I asked a few people to write responses of their experiences. I might add a few more comments later as well.

Erik

A Call to the Center of the Known Universe

Erik Fabian — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 05:07:00 +0000

Call for Performances and Engaged Audiences.

The Center of the Known Universe is presenting an intimate, savory and engaged performance series on select Sunday evenings in the Spring/Summer of 2006 to engage the provincial aspects of performance in Chicago, the housebound intimacy of domestic performance, and camaraderie of small groups scheming and plotting over a good meal.

Small audiences of four will be invited into my home to experience the performance by a local or visiting performance artist, to enjoy a delicious dinner, and then take part in a facilitated conversation bridging the performance, our casual dinner discussion, and the themes of this series.

An audio recording of the final discussion will be presented online as the primary public documentation of the series.

Each performance will feature a performance, dinner and seats for four guests. Tickets will be about twenty-five or thirty dollars (additional donations towards the artist stipend welcome).

…A Preliminary Call for Engaged Audiences

Willing and engaged audiences are encouraged to express their interest to attend by email.

Attendance is by invitation only. You are invited to mention what you do and if you have any projects or schemes on the horizon to best consider seating you with like-minded cohorts.

Audience members will also be asked to bring a gift for the group (TBD), to be open and ready to share what they are up to and to engage in the recorded dialogue.

Plots, agendas, and schemes that propose future performance activity in Chicago are encouraged from the audience. Ideally, dinner will be an occasion for Chicago performers, patrons, and visionaries to spark each other.

…A Call for Performances

Solo performers are invited to send one-page proposals, an artist statement and links to documentation of their work by email. Solo performers are preferred because we only have so much space but an extra special duet might be considered.

Performers will receive a small (tiny, really) stipend of one ounce of fine silver for performing in addition to dinner. We can assist with helping find out-of-towners a place to stay but no further financial or travel assistance is available. No comp tickets will be available for partners, lovers or other guests.

The primary performance space is a second bedroom I use as a studio in my apartment. The room is located just off the kitchen, it will be mostly empty for you and is about 7’x10’. There is a variety of reasonable restrictions on the use of the space to prevent damage and to spark your creativity. There are limited electrical sockets available, some audio support, and the white walls/hardwood floors cannot be sullied. (I rent.)

More information is available by request.

Welcome.

erik

Call for Videos for Hyde Park Art Center / Links Hall

Erik Fabian — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:35:00 +0000

I am co-curating a public video-art show. Below is the official call. I encourage performance folk in Chicago to submit their work.

Good luck.

erik

Links Hall/Hyde Park Art Center - Call for Proposals
"For Public Consumption"
July 25-Sept 10, 2006

Hyde Park Art Center opens its new building in April 2006, and presents the exhibition "For Public Consumption" this summer. The facade of the new HPAC includes an innovative 5-panel video display (each panel: 10ft tall x 7ft 9" wide) which can either be used for a single unified display of video, for five separate canvases, or any combination in between. The video is viewable by the public from the street in front of the building; audio does not form part of the display.

Links Hall has been invited to curate part of the program for the video facade for this exhibition, and invites proposals as follows:

- Please forward a one page project proposal for video work to be shown on the facade; a one page artist statement; a one page artistic resume; and one example of your video work on VHS or DVD (15 minutes maximum). Please include your contact information, including email address.

- It is intended that the selected work be aligned with Links Hall's mission of supporting artistic innovation in the performing arts, as well as HPAC's objective that this exhibition include multiple community perspectives.

- There is no length restriction for your projected video, but under 60 minutes is preferred, and much shorter works are also welcome -- all artists in the video facade portion of this exhibition will have their work shown on rotation throughout the exhibition run from July 25 - September 10, 2006.

- Important note: your projected work can use any resolution/definition, but please be aware that the projection area is large and if you are using low resolution by choice that will produce a grainy or chunky look. Ask yourself, "will my work look good if it is 10 feet tall and up at the second floor of a street front facade?" Please reference why your work will work on this scale within your proposal.

- Please indicate if your work will use the facade as a single unified display of video, or if there will be five separate canvases used.

- No fees/expenses are available for this project.

- We can only accept proposals from Chicago-based artists/companies.

- The selection of artists will be curated by Erik Fabian and Stephanie Pereira; up to four artists/companies will be selected.

Deadline: proposals to be received at Links Hall by 5pm Wednesday March 1st:

Links Hall, 3435 North Sheffield #207, Chicago IL 60657

Selected artists will be notified by: Tuesday March 14th

Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope if you require any materials returned.

If you have queries, please email: cjmitchell@linkshall.org

www.linkshall.org
www.hydeparkart.org - which includes architect's drawings of the new facade.

Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance @ SAIC

Erik Fabian — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 04:20:00 +0000

Coming soon...

SAIC Performance Department Symposium,
March 16, 17, 2006

Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance

The Performance Art Department of the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago is planning an intensive 2-day Performance Symposium, "Re-Do It?
Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance." The Symposium begins on Thursday,
March 16,2006 with a public keynote address, "Performance Returns," by
Peggy Phelan, the Ann O'Day Maples Chair in the Arts, and Professor of
Drama at Stanford University. It continues on Friday, March 17 with a day
of panels and discussions; and ends with a performative extravaganza of
re-doable, un-redoable, and un-doable propositions and acts by
participating student and faculty artists. The Symposium will take place in
and around the Department's 280 S. Columbus Drive Performance Space, Room
012 (Basement). Peggy Phelan's keynote address on Thursday, March 16 will
be in the Columbus Building Auditorium and is free to the School and the
public.

Peggy Phelan has written, "Performance's only life is in the present.
Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate
in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so,
it becomes something other than performance." (Unmarked. The Politics of
Performance, p. 146)

On the other hand, Miwon Kwon writes, "Š(E)ven if the efficacy of
site-specific art from the past seems to weaken when it is re-presented,
the procedural complications, ethical dilemmas, and pragmatic headaches
that such situations raise for artists, collectors, dealers, and host
institutions are still meaningful. They represent an unprecedented strain
on established patterns of (re)producing, exhibiting, borrowing/lending,
purchasing/selling, and commissioning/executing art works in general." (One
Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, p. 43)

There has been a recent trend for signal performance artists of the 60s and
70s to either re-do iconic works from their past careers, or to recreate
the work through documentation and installations of ephemera and objects.
For example, Paul Schimmel, curator of Out of Actions: Between Performance
and the Object 1949-1979 (MOCA, Los Angeles, 1998) invited Carolee
Schneeman to partially recreate her 1963 mixed media installation Eye Body
for that exhibition. Ironically, a crucial element in the original
presentation of this piece was the performer's own nude, painted body,
which however was not included in the recreation. In November 2005, Marina
Abramovic "re-did" seven iconic performances by artists such as Vito
Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Gina Pane, and others at the Guggenheim Museum in
New York City. This event triggered further conversations about
performative repetition and re-presentation, historicity, and the
impossibility of documenting the ephemeral. As well, the increasing uses of
digital media, telepresence, electronic networking, and virtual presence in
performances have complicated questions of the "Re-do", embodiment,
presence, and virtuality in performative practices. Because by definition
performance art usually is live, experiential, ephemeral, site- and
occasion-specific, many scholars have argued that performances should not,
and some times cannot, be repeated or documented, as that would negate the
very nature of live presence art and its "you have to be there to
experience it" aura.
Re-Do It? examines and discusses these and other perplexing questions
raised by re-presenting experiential, "live" art, and the many
un-categorized practices that are commonly gathered under the sign of
"Performance Art."

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS AND SCHEDULE:

Thursday, March 16, 6:00 PM,
Keynote Address: "Performance Returns," Peggy Phelan, Ann O'Day Maples
Chair in the Arts, and Professor of Drama at Stanford University.
280 S. Columbus Dr. Auditorium, SAIC. Open and free to School and public.

Friday, March 17, 9:30-4:30 PM
Symposium, Performance Space, 012, 280 Columbus Dr.
*Participation by prior registration only (See registration information below).

9-9:30 Coffee and bagels.

9:30-12 Panel One: Do it Again? Re-Presenting Bodies
"Waiting for History," Welcome and Introduction, Faith Wilding, Chair and
Associate Professor of Performance, SAIC,
Panelists: Lin Hixson, Allan deSouza, Faith Wilding, Tania Bruguera.
Respondent: Peggy Phelan
Moderator: Ellen Rothenberg

12- 1:30 PM Lunch on your own in Museum, Sunny's, or elsewhere

1:30-4:00 PM, Panel 2: Documenting the Performative: Ephemera,
Repetition, and the Problem of the Archive.
Panelists: Matthew Goulish, Sharon Hayes, Jane Blocker, Simon Anderson
Respondent: Jennifer DeVere Brody
Moderator: Terri Kapsalis

4-5 Coffee Break and Wrap-Up Discussion Audience response and questions.

6:30 - 9:30 Feast of the Un/re/do/able. **(See registration information).
Feast and Performances, Screenings, and Actions by
Students/Faculty/Guests/Ghosts.

Presenters/Panelists Biographies:
Simon Anderson, Associate Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism,
SAIC. Specializing in modernist performance histories and practices.
Jane Blocker, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Minnesota,
USA. Author of Where Is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity and Exile
(1999, 2002), and What the Body Cost:Desire, History, and Performance (2004).
Tania Bruguera, Arte de Conducta artist, Cuba/USA. Interdisciplinary
faculty,SAIC. Recent venues: Documenta XI, Venice Biennale, Sao Paolo
Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Wien.
Allan deSouza, artist, writer, London/USA. Visiting performance faculty,
SAIC F05, F06. Recent Exhibitions include at REDCat, LA: International
Center for Photography, NYC; Mori Museum, Tokyo. Contributing editor,
X-TRA, Contemporary Art Quarterly.
Jennifer DeVere Brody is the Weinberg College Board of Visitors Research and
Teaching Professor at Northwestern University where she holds appointments
in English, African American Studies and Performance Studies.
Matthew Goulish, writer, member of Goat Island collaborative performance
group. Adjunct Assoc. Professor, MFA Writing Program and Liberal Arts Dept.
SAIC; Recent venues: Venice Biennale; Links Hall, Chicago; Eurokaz
Festival, Zagreb, Croatia; Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany.
Sharon Hayes, artist (performance, video). Visiting Performance faculty,
SAIC, S06. Recent venues: PerformA 05, NYC, Art-in-General, NYC, Swiss
Institute, NYC, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.
Lin Hixson, writer, Artistic director, Goat Island collaborative
performance group; Professor, Performance Dept, SAIC. Recent venues: Venice
Biennale; Links Hall, Chicago; Eurokaz Festival, Zagreb, Croatia;
Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany.
Terri Kapsalis, artist, writer, health educator. Assoc. Adjunct Prof. and
Chair, Visual and Critical Studies, SAIC. Author of Public Privates:
Performing Gynecology From Both Ends of the Speculum. She is at work on a
study of hysteria.
Peggy Phelan. Professor of Drama, Stanford University. Author of Unmarked,
The Politics of Performance (Rutledge, 1993) and Acting Out: Feminist
Performances (co-editor), Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (1997),
and with Helena Reckitt, Art and Feminism (2001). From 1997 to 1999 Phelan
was a Fellow of the Open Institute's project on Death in America. 2005
Fellow, Ghetty Museum, Los Angeles.
Ellen Rothenberg, artist (performance, installation). Assoc. Adjunct Prof.
Fiber and Material Studies and MFA Writing Program, SAIC. Venues: Rona
Hoffman Gallery, Washington Project for the Arts, Contemporary Arts Forum,
Santa Barbara.
Faith Wilding, interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator. Assoc. Prof. and
Chair, Performance Dept. SAIC; member, subRosa cyberfeminist artist
collective. Recent venues: Skopje, Macedonia; NBGK Gallery, Berlin;
InteractivA Festival, Merida, Mexico; "BioDifference," Perth, Australia;
Aberystwyth, Wales; UC Irvine, CA.

Acknowledgements and Thanks
This event was made possible largely because of the generous support of
Carol Becker, Dean of Faculty, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and
her staff; and the faculty, students and staff of the Performance
Department, SAIC. Many thanks for support to Romi Crawford and Denenge
Akpem, Visiting Artist Program, Terri Kapsalis, Visual and Critical
Studies, and Trevor Martin, Director, Betty Rymer Gallery. Special thanks
to Meg Leary for her inspiration, intelligence and enthusiastic assistance.

Registration and Reservations:
*Symposium seating is limited to 125 people. Walk-ins will be accommodated
if space permits. You can register for the Symposium and reserve the
Feast/Performance by Email: performancesaic@artic.edu
Or send requests for reservations to: Performance Dept. SAIC, c/o Faith
Wilding, 280 S. Columbus Dr., Chicago, IL 60603-3103.
For registration and reservation purposes we need your name, phone #, email
address, SAIC ID, affiliation (if any), number and names of people you are
reserving for, and whether you plan to attend the feast/performance.
Reservation Deadline is Monday, March 13th.

** Admission to the Feast of the Un/doable is by reservation only. The
Feast includes food and performances. Costs are $7 for SAIC students with
ID, $10 for SAIC faculty/staff with ID, and $15 for all other guests.
Payment in cash at the door or you will not be admitted.

For further information: 312 443-3782

Congrats to Deva and Matt...Illinois Art Council FY06 Artist Fellowship Award Recipients in New Forms

Erik Fabian — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 19:42:00 +0000

Congrats to Deva Eveland and Mathew Wilson (as part of Industry of the Ordinary) on winning $7000 awards from the Illinois Art Council for their work in performance.

Take a look at the dialogues I recorded with both of them last year which are available on this site.

You can see the list of all of this years fellowship winners here.

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The cat show I saw @ Green Lantern Gallery

Erik Fabian — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 03:07:00 +0000

Contemporary performance is like trying to herd cats.

The Green Lantern Gallery playfully invited Samantha Martin to present a cat circus during an opening of Vivian Hass' parade inspired paintings on Friday.

A cat circus as in cats walking tight ropes, playing musical instruments, leaping through hoops and the like. There was another show that hovered around the cats' performances though, a show of frustration, bribery, excuses, and cutesy voices performed by Samantha and her young assistant that, in this art context, stood out perhaps more than it would in a more native theatrical setting and took this admittedly cute spectacle of feline disinterest and made the whole thing really engaging.

Tell me, is the following performance art or a cat circus?

1) Campy pop gimmicks that might include a rock band.

2) Attempting something impossible, mostly failing and being applauded for the effort.

3) Lots of props, which are not used as they were originally intended.

4) Hip young audience.

5) Performing for no pay.

6) Part of your audience's allergies are acting up.

7) Noticing to the audience, posing, going back to the task, noticing the audience, posing, and going back to the task.

8) Snacks/treats

Trouble telling them apart? Funny cause I got so caught up in this cat show that I was late and shut out by the throng of people at the opening of Justin Cooper's performance, sculpture and photo show at Monique Meloche Gallery later in the night...but even through the window I could see that at least half items on the list above were in action in Justin's performance...or should I say Justin's cat circus???

Justin Cooper, by the way, will be performing for the next few Saturdays. I plan to go back and get in the room this time. I will see if my comparison holds up to closer scrutiny.

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