D.C. Performance Art

Performance Art: What Is It? ROSSLYN BID 2013 LECTURE SERIES, ROOMS WITH A VIEW

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:35:45 -0400

22nd Annual “Rooms With A View” Lecture Series

22nd Annual ”Rooms With A View” lecture series gives participants access to Rosslyn’s special spaces and interesting discussions on various facets of our urban community. This years lecture series focuses on Rosslyn as a center of art, technology & entrepreneurship - a place of global business and connection.

Join Philippa Hughes, Chief Contrarian of the Pink Line Project, and three artists, for a look behind the scenes of SuperNOVA, the Washington region’s first performance art festival.

Panelist Include:

Ellen Chenoweth - Managing Director, Dance Exchange Involved with cross collaborations between dance and performance art
Lindsay Rowinski - a young performance artist who will perform at SUPERNOVA
Sheldon Scott - an experienced and well-known performance artist who will perform at SUPERNOVA
Dr. Jamie Smith - Co-owner, D.C. art gallery ConnerSmith Co-founder of
(e)merge art fair

Click here to R.S.V.P.

But real talk, I am loving that graphic.

Plot: A performance by Eames Armstrong, J.J. McCracken, and Ian McDermott 5/16/13

eamesarmstrong — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:11:57 -0400

I am really blown away by the opportunity to do this performance tonight, in collaboration with J.J. McCracken and Ian McDermott. Plot is the second forum in Wilmer Wilson IV: The Forever Aftermath.

On Artisphere website and on Facebook

It’s tonight at Artisphere, 7-9 pm in the Dome Theatre. Come early to check out Amy Braden’s opening in the WIP Gallery, 6-8pm.

Rachel Hynes: "Just Put it Behind You" 5/3/2013

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:14:49 -0400

I watched the news reports this fall about the Colorado “Batman” shootings with horror and fear. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like,” I thought, except, I could. In 2006 a man broke into my workplace and started shooting my co-workers. I was lucky and escaped out the back entrance unharmed. Five women were shot and one was killed; hundreds of lives were shaken and traumatized, including mine.

I was appalled that I should forget something that significant, but the truth is, in order to heal, in order for us to feel ok walking down the street to buy a loaf of bread and not go insane with anxiety, we have to forget. We have to find a way to move forward and put it behind us.

This is how I ended up special ordering 200 temporary tattoos of handguns for a durational performance called “Just Put It Behind You,” at the art opening for Art Crimes: The Gun Show at The Dunes on May 3^rd.

The title is taken from the world of body workers and holistic healers, who have noted that people with unresolved emotional issues manifest as back problems, because they “just want to put it behind them.”

By necessity, we are wounded and must heal from each act of mass gun violence, but though we try to put each incident behind us, I believe that there is a cumulative effect on the American public.

Over the course of two hours, I would watch news reel after news reel of American mass shootings, while my assistant (Naima Ramos-Chapman), dressed in scrubs, gently applied temporary tattoos to my back, as though cleaning a wound. The after-effect was a small tattoo of a black handgun on my back, which cumulated over the course of two hours to include the backs of my arms, legs and soles of my feet. In between news footage reels, the assistant would guide me around the room, getting a drink at the bar, viewing the art, talking with patrons—all seemingly normal, until I turned and revealed a back full of handguns.

I don’t consider this piece to be adversarial, neither pro nor anti-gun, but a matter of Public Health. It’s a call for awareness that whether we realize it or not, our entire country’s sense of well-being is affected by these continued incidents and, hate engenders hate. The point at which normal people begin to do desperate things is when they feel their sense of security is threatened.

kyartcow: The stand for a life guard we all know. #jjmccracken...

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:10:36 -0400

kyartcow:

The stand for a life guard we all know. #jjmccracken #humanitarian #lifeguardstand #beachpost #studio #visit (at Red Dirt Studio)

shorttage: I found myself in KC.

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:30:58 -0400

shorttage:

I found myself in KC.

Kunj Patel killed it Iast night at Grace Space

eamesarmstrong — Sat, 04 May 2013 16:07:06 -0400

Kunj Patel killed it Iast night at Grace Space

BYT: PREVIEW: WILMER WILSON IV @ ARTISPHERE

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:39:38 -0400

All words: Rachel Pafe

At the tender age of three, I decided that my newborn brother was just not a good fit for the family. The solution? I covered him in various stamps and stickers, stuck him in the closet and waited for him to be mailed away. My plan was speedily foiled, but in Wilmer Wilson IV’s 2012 work: Henry “Box” Brown: FOREVER, he sees this idea out to its bitter, hilarious and illuminating end. The performance, commissioned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for its 5×5 public art project, is explored by Artisphere in its Wilmer Wilson IV: The Forever AFTERMATH series, running from April 3rd through June 30th. It includes the FOREVER exhibition as well as three successive AFTERMATH forums featuring local performance artists: Holly Bass, Kathryn Cornelius and Jeffry Cudlin (April 18th), Eames Armstrong, J.J. McCraken and Ian McDermott (May 16th) and cukwumaa, Sherman Fleming and Wilmer Wilson IV (June 8th).

The Artisphere exhibition chronicles the physical journey of Wilmer’s initial queries regarding the dimensions of freedom and its malleability. The artist, inspired by the story of Henry “Box” Brown, a slave who escaped Richmond by mailing himself to independence in a wooden crate, decided to modernize this historic journey and contextualize it within the contemporary discourse on freedom concerning location, finance and skin color.

(via Wimer Wilson)

Click HERE for the rest of the article

Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) deadline MAY 27

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:11:42 -0400

amperage:

The Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) is scheduled for July 4-28, 2013. Please find information, calendar, and more at: http://www.bipaf.net/bipafwiki/, on the indiegogo here, and on Facebook. Find other open calls for BIPAF here.

There are many spaces and curators working together, this is just one open call for one of the spaces, Goodbye Blue Monday, which is being curated by Valerie Kuehne and Esther Neff. This space is a semi-indoors barn space on Broadway in Brooklyn. Durational performances are encouraged, length for performances can be 1-10 hours and the dates are July 6th, 10th, and 21st each day from 2pm to 2am.

To respond to this open call, please “reply all” and maintain the subject line. DEADLINE: May 27

Include:

Name, address, website

Brief performance description/idea

Technical needs (note: there is no projector)

Proposed duration

Which date (see above)

Links to your past work or attach images

Please also feel free to contact us with any questions.

ECA on Fast Forward at BAE this Saturday

eamesarmstrong — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:46:23 -0400

Artist Reception: April 27 with performances 5-7 pm and reception 7-9 pm

Read the full press release here

Seniors at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. just finished their thesis projects for NEXT, an exhibition in the Corcoran Museum downtown that features work by all graduation candidates, including the 26 senior undergraduates completing their BFA degrees. And now, these BFA candidates are making one more project before graduating. Their new works make up Fast Forward, and are being shown at the Brentwood Arts Exchange and 39th Street Gallery in the Gateway Arts Center—just over the Northeast D.C. line in the Gateway Arts District (Mt. Rainier/Brentwood, Maryland).

Brentwood Arts Exchange and 39^th Street Gallery are located in the Gateway Arts Center, 3901 Rhode Island Avenue, Brentwood, MD

Read the whole article here!

5/1 “May Day / Night Shift” at Hamiltonian

eamesarmstrong — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:20:13 -0400

May Day/ Night Shift – Discussion & Live Performance

May 1, 5pm - 12 am, 2013

“May Day / Night Shift” is an event organized at the Hamiltonian Gallery by current fellowJoshua Wade Smith. The program of events revolves around a cycle of lectures, panel discussion, slideshow, film showcase, and endurance performance.

The topics discussed will bring focus to matters of labor, art, and 21st century “work” in education and outside the studio. Participants will give lectures about the history of May Day, also known as International Workers Day, and the ethical crisis in higher education as well as questioning broader issues of labor, debt, and faculty equity in the New Academy.

The educational programming will conclude with a moderated discussion centered on the “practice” of emerging artists. Four artists will discuss the high and lows of making one’s work, defining success outside of monetary gains, and how the “work” of making art extends so far beyond the studio.

Please RSVP to info@hamiltonianartists.org or call 202.332.1116.

Schedule of Events

6 pm – 8:45 pm Lectures and Panel discussion

9 pm -12 am Slide Talk and Curated Video/Film Screening

4 pm -12 am An 8 hour-long cycling performance by Joshua Wade Smith

About the Participants

Thomas Castillo Ph.D. teaches history at Trinity Washington University. He is a historian of the U.S. working class and is currently writing a book based on his dissertation Laboring in the Magic City, which explores class and race relations in the first half of twentieth century in Miami, Florida.

Kathryn Cornelius is an artist, educator, and consultant whose background influences her performance and video work. Her work as a consultant focuses on user experience, human capital management, application development, and IT strategy. She has a MA in Communication, Culture, & Technology from Georgetown University and a certification in User Experience from Human Factors International.

Claire Goldstene Ph.D. is a US historian whose research has focused on the idea of equal economic opportunity in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. She has published and presented at numerous conferences about the growing dependence in higher education on contingent and adjunct faculty.

Joyce Yu-Jean Lee is a visual artist and former Hamiltonian Fellow (2010-2012). She currently teaches and works at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she earned a MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art.

Magnolia Laurie received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007. She is a Baltimore-based painter and former Hamiltonian Fellow (2009-2011). Her work was selected for the Artist Platform at the 2012 (e)merge Art Fair in DC and the WPA’s Options 13 currently on view at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA.

Zach Storm is a Baltimore based painter who received his M.F.A from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. He is represented by Johannes Vogt Gallery (NYC), where his first solo-show “Solitaire” opened in March.

Joshua Wade Smith is a performance artist and sculptor who lives and works in Baltimore, MD, but is originally from central Texas. Currently a second year Hamiltonian Fellow, Smith will spend part of the summer as Artist-in-Residence in Drachten, the Netherlands.

Good Morning Washington! Eleanor Barba and Rachel Hrbek

eamesarmstrong — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:12:48 -0400

Good Morning Washington!

Eleanor Barba and Rachel Hrbek

kmacyshyn: The artist is present

eamesarmstrong — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:49:43 -0400

kmacyshyn:

The artist is present

Fast Forward, at the Brentwood Arts Exchange and 39th Street Gallery April 22-27

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:37:00 -0400

Saturday, April 27: performances 5-7 pm; reception 7-9 pm

Text by Bryana Siobhan

As the school year comes to an end and the art season begins, twenty-six graduating seniors from the Corcoran College of Art + Design’s Fine Arts Program will have one last pow-wow at the Brentwood Arts Exchange and 39^th Street Gallery in the Gateway Arts Center—just over the D.C. line in the Gateway Arts District (Mt. Rainier/Brentwood, Maryland).

In Fast Forward, students articulate the culmination of a rigorous undergraduate program of study, and as one season ends, new possibilities begin…

While spanning a range of traditional media from sculpture, painting, and photography, to printmaking and new media, the works also include performance art, video, and social practice/awareness-raising projects. Content ranges from the ever-political nature of global, economic issues to criticisms of western agro-business, the culture of food preparation, and the bourgeoisie middle-class. (Some details are below.) Other focus includes psycho-social human interaction, race politics, and narrative story-telling: These students have something important to say. As viewers, we are reminded that they are sensitive maker-thinkers who have been working next-door to the White House for the past 4 years.

A closing reception on Saturday, April 27 will feature performances from 5-7 pm in the 39^th Street Gallery on the second floor of the Gateway Arts Center, followed by drinks and light fare downstairs in the BAE until 9 pm.

Artists: Annie Rose Hanson, Armando Lopez-Bircann, Bryana Siobhan, Cindy Tidler, Daesik Kim, Dandan Luo, Indigo Wakatama, Deshaundon Jeanes, Gabriel Mellan, Hope Sorensen, Jeremiah Holland, Jessica Levin, Katelyn Kang, Ji-sun Yoon, Jordan Sanders, Judas Recendez, Julia Bancroft, Katie Macyshyn, Kyrae Cowan, Mazin Abdelhameid, Micah Myerov, Morgan Roberts, Rachel Hrbek, Rene Medrano, Robert Yi, and Rostin Rostai

Location/getting there:

The Gateway Arts Center is 3 miles from the Rhode Island Avenue metro station (red line) and 1.25 miles from the West Hyattsville station (green line; easier bike ride). From Rhode Island Ave, take any of the 8o0’s buses (http://www.wmata.com/bus/timetables/md/81-86.pdf) to Mt. Rainier/Brentwood and get off where 39^th Street intersects with Rhode Island, just past the Mt. Rainier traffic circle. Free parking is available in the neighborhood surrounding the art center.

Gallery info:

Brentwood Arts Exchange and 39^th Street Gallery

Gateway Arts Center

3901 Rhode Island Avenue

Brentwood, MD 20722

(301) 277-2863

Gallery hours: Monday through Friday: 10 am – 7pm, Saturday: 10 am – 4pm

Video Schedule @artisphere PERFORMANCE: AFTERMATH "NOW PLAYING"

eamesarmstrong — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:15:23 -0400

APRIL 3 - JUNE 30

FREE
Town Hall Video Wall

Performance art is a rapidly evolving art form in which artists use human bodies, often their own, as their medium in durational and expressive actions. The exhibitWilmer Wilson IV: the FOREVER Aftermath (Artist in Residence Studio), the nine artists presenting forums in the Dome (April 18, May 16 and June 8) and the videos rotating on the Town Hall Video Wall all respond to current issues of aftermath in performance art. What happens after the performance?

The video and slide show documentation demonstrates a variety of contemporary approaches to performance art through examination of social issues, staged personal transformations, street interactions and reconceptualization of spectatorship. Performance: Aftermath explores the ongoing life of these works. How do performance artists feel about documentation and artifacts? How has documentation evolved from the 1970s when the focus was more exclusively on the artist’s action? Does the aftermath ever eclipse the performance itself in importance? How is mobile technology such as cell phone cameras and Internet platforms like Tumblr or Twitter changing the way performance art is perceived and recorded?

VIDEO SCHEDULE:

April 3-9: Holly Bass
40 continuous dances (for freedom), from
the Moneymaker series, 2013, 1:38:56 minutes.
Filmed at Platt Studio. Video production: Robin Bell.

April 10-17: Kathryn Cornelius
Kathryn Cornelius, Resolve, 2005;
Common Ground, 2007; Or, Death Speaks for Us, 2010;
One Day at a Time, 2012, 25:29 minutes.

April 18: Compilation of all performance artists

April 19-25: Jeffry Cudlin
BY REQUEST: Do You Wanna Dance?, 2010, 13:44
minutes. Filmed and edited by Brian Long, Paris
Bustillos and Jackie Steven.

April 26-May 2: Eames Armstrong
12 months in 1,200 Pictures, 2012, 2:40 minutes.

May 3-9: J.J. McCracken
The Huntress, 2012; Thirst, and the Martyr, 2011;
Hunger, Philadelphia, 2010, 13:34 minutes

May 10-17 (except May 16): Ian McDermott
Fitter, Happier, More Relaxed (Two Poses), 2013,
7:15 minutes.

May 16: Compilation of all performance artists

May 18-24: chukwumaa
Samson, 2011, 15 minutes. Videography: Wilmer
Wilson IV

May 25-31: Sherman Fleming
Come Again, 2010, 18:19 minutes. Philadelphia,
Pa. Filmed by Rodney Camarce. Edited by
Christianne Kapps.

June 1-7: Wilmer Wilson IV
Study for Bandage, 2011; Study for I Voted, 2011,
30:35 minutes

June 8-30: Compilation of all performance artists

An Evening of Performance Art with Emily Francisco Saturday, April 20, 7 – 8pm

eamesarmstrong — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:29:43 -0400

Emily Francisco constructs situations that manifest in response to personal and physical understandings of limitation and loss. Her work is not destructive, though it involves deconstruction. She pushes the limits of how much an object can withstand, while exploring how these objects transform.

This Saturday, Emily Francisco will host a series of performances. The night will open with a classical cello performance featuring David Ross utilizing a bow that not only plays the instrument, but also sources a live radio feed. It will conclude with a performance with Emily playing a toy piano constructed in an enclosed space that will slowly flood.

Emily’s work is on view alongside pieces from Jenny Sawle and Ashleigh Werner for our April exhibit Pia Mater. Read more about the show on our website.

Kickstarter: Control. Grace Exhibition Space, curated by Eames Armstrong

eamesarmstrong — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:41:56 -0400

Kickstarter: Wilmer Wilson IV Summer Art Residency at NLS

eamesarmstrong — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:41:17 -0400

Call for proposals: Visualeyez 2013

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:21:51 -0400

Call for proposals: Visualeyez 2013:

amperage:

Visualeyez festival of performance art happens from 10–16 September 2013 in the downtown core of Edmonton, Alberta, exploring on the curatorial theme of Vulnerability.

Control. Eleanor Barba, Adrian Parsons, Kunj Patel, curated by Eames Armstrong. May 3, 2013 Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn

eamesarmstrong — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:10:48 -0400

I am super super pumped about curating a show at Grace Exhibition Space next month.

Control. The curatorial strategy traces the limits of the work, laying out a border to be filled, met, contested. The impulse of the artist to organize actions. Parameters, limits, and shifting positions of power. The responsibility of the curator in the production of performance. To curate. To collaborate. To let go. Cyclical: performing, programming, interpretation and imposition. Three invited artists are given the constraint/freedom to make work that employs the curator.

Friday, May 3, 2013. 9-11pm

Grace Exhibition Space
840 Broadway, 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11206

Interdisciplinary curator Eames Armstrong works tirelessly to promote and create a community of performance art in the Washington, DC area. Eames writes the blog DC Performance Art, the only blog dedicated to the subject, and she programs Soapbox at Hillyer Art Space, the only monthly performance art series in DC. Eames is curating the Supernova Performance Art Festival, taking place June 7-9 in Rosslyn, VA. Eames received her BFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2010. She is a featured artist in Transformer’s FlatFile, and makes at the historic 52 O Street Artist Studios. “If the D.C. art scene had an assistant principal, it would be Eames Armstrong.” -Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper

Interdisciplinary artist Eleanor Barba grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA. She attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC where she started taking off her clothes and making performance art. Her work revolves around the overwhelming idea of being sexually active in the 21st century. The tragedy of hook up culture can be traced back to hilarity. Eleanor’s performances often uses text and her half-naked body to evoke the idea I’m naked but I don’t want to turn you on. Eleanor has performed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hillyer Art Space and Art@1830 in DC. She currently lives, works and gets regularly checked for STDs in Philadelphia.

Interdisciplinary artist Adrian Parsons is an activist and performance artist whose work is based on aiding or subverting the body and its provocative interactions with systems. Parsons has shown at The Fridge, Flashpoint, NYC’s Dorian Grey and The Warehouse in an offshoot of the DC Arts Fair. His continuing Drone series began as an imagined post-apocalypse–through a POV helmet channeling the gaze of (yet another) curator–atop the Gansvoort Hotel roof during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2009. He has collaborated with SUNY Buffalo’s Matt Sargent in sound & video offerings and more recently founded the performance art team Kool Raunch Collective with dancer Sebastian Rousseau of Korzo Theater Den Haag. Last year he gained international attention for a twenty-five day hunger strike promoting DC voting rights.

Interdisciplinary artist Kunj Patel’s roles are defined by activities in printmaking, sculpture, performance art, installation and curation. Kunj uses repetitive actions and ritualized behavior to portray the unstable identity that spawns from life as a first-generation American. He uses traditional Indian materials in American mannerisms or vice-versa. He explores the tense nature that may result, and the ideas of being stuck in this situation of no-identity or new-identity. Through repetitive action, he builds gestural, and visceral forms inspired by the human body within a cultural context. His works have an undertone of sensuality, fetishism, and play, while engaging the audience in an array of emotions through interaction or un-comfort.

Facebook grab from Anita Bose, Monica Jahan Bose performing...

eamesarmstrong — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 17:24:12 -0400

Facebook grab from Anita Bose, Monica Jahan Bose performing ‘Indelible Scent’ today.
Closing events for Be/Longing at Smith Center’s Joan Hisaoka Gallery, 1632 U St NW, from 3:30 to 7 pm. Monica’s performance/installation Indelible Scent is from 3:30 to 4:30. Then there is an artists’ talk at 4:30 with Samira Abbassy, Amina Ahmed, Nida Abidi, Marcy Chevali, Ruby Chishti, and me. Masum Momaya is a special guest. Finally, there will be a reception from 5:30 to 7 pm with lovely wine!