Crossing Screens: Performances, Presentations and Workshops in Kellen Gallery
Jarrod Kentrell (BFA Fine Arts ’13) “Decide and Change”
Selected Performances, Presentations and Workshops from Graduating Students in the School of Art, Media and Technology
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 2 West 13th Street
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May 14th, 3pm
Jarrod Kentrell
“Decide and Change”
Performance
This performance deals with the body in space. Seeking transparency within process, I aim to leave the performance open to undetermined results. Using everyday objects to manipulate the body, I investigate movement.
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May 15th, 3pm
Bettina Behjat Banayan
“100 Pounds”
Performance
In 100 Pounds, artist Bettina Behjat Banayan creates dough to equal to her body weight, 100 pounds. 100 Pounds relates to the way that consumption has become a spectacle. The spectacle of consumption has similarly come forth today via digital technology. Food-based television shows, which portray a person cooking or eating–sometime excessively, such as in shows like “Man Vs. Food–are fitting examples of this. In the “Man Vs. Food” ‘food challenges’ the town’s community goes to the restaurant to watch the host test his eating abilities. Like 100 Pounds, the viewer is able to live vicariously through the performer. Banayan also argues through her performance that the rise in personalized social media technologies such as Facebook have given us a desire for the constant need of fulfillment therefore, generating the spectacle of consumption in another sense.
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May 15th,6pm-10am
Amanda Maduri
“Depth Perception”
Installation
Depth Perception seeks to visually represent what the mind takes for granted. It has been a year-long design project (http://www.depthperception.info) of exploring what makes us interpret 2 dimensional elements as showing illusions of 3 dimensional depth. Being presented is the performance of my screen based designs that seek to show simple depth, projected onto a physical space, which results in a complicated juxtaposition of illusion vs reality.
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May 16th, 12-1pm and 5-6pm
Daniel Udell
Wikitongues Interviews
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May 17th, 1pm
Daniel Carroll
“Quartet”
Interactive Performance
Quartet questions people’s senses and how modifying their vision instinctively assigns them a new voice and role within a collective. In the performance, I blindfold three participants and lead them through a series of meditative sensory exercises, where they are simply told to interact with the space and each other. This piece acts as an attempt to train and condition my performers to communicate and work together, which results in an improvised dance that ultimately slows down their consciousness of time. Using blindfolds to hinder their vision, I unpack their personal vulnerabilities in attempt to observe their individuality within the collective, to reconstruct their actions under the premeditated conditions. I challenge them to see and move through alternative forms of perception, and ultimately find their voice and position within the composition
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May 17th, 4-6pm
Robert Hickerson
“Objekt Permanence”
Installation/Performance
Objekt Permanence presents Olympia / Sleep, a performance work which revives and re-imagines Olympia (1863) by Édouard Manet and Le Sommeil (Sleep) (1866) by Gustave Courbet. Working through several iterations of the two masterpieces, Objekt Permanence will question the gender and power roles found within the original works. This performance, only viewed through the lens of a camera, will prompt the viewer to challenge their already made associations to the paintings, while also exhibiting a reclaiming of the objectified female body found within both works. Hidden within a large construction, Objekt Permanence’s Olympia/Sleep will also question the nature of performance art as the performance is only witnessed through documentation made by audience participation.
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May 20th, 3pm
Frederico Andrade
#Kony, Hashtags and the Power of Communication
Presentation
In a global environment where current events are widely available in real time, those with access to mass media cannot avoid exposure. Ability to participate in social media symbolizes freedom to travel and meet people from anywhere else in the world without having to leave one’s routine. The ability to communicate, organize and have measurable impact anywhere in the world is relied upon now more than ever. We have seen examples such as Kony 2012 in which social media stood at the center of an entirely arbitrary organization which, through the sheer size and the noise it generated, was able to mobilize a troop of american soldiers to be dispatched for action in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Another striking consequence of the power of communications through virtual networks was the Egyptian revolution, which relied heavily on twitter and facebook to not only coordinate events but also to spread valuable intelligence leading to the effective mobilization of the masses. Who has the real power able to make the greatest changes? Through intelligent use of the communications technology available to us today, it is not impossible to glimpse our own roles in the society we all want to live in, from choosing to learn about one’s global neighbors to choosing to make a change and leave a mark. It is time to add perspective to your social responsibility.
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May 20th, 5pm
Presentation by Robin Silevitch and Hope Weisman
Robin Silevitch
“Ad-Opt-Ed”
We live in a highly media-influenced society. News channels, movies, and television are a large part of our daily lives and have a profound effect on our feelings and thoughts. Adoption has become a victim of these influences, and because drama sells it has become stigmatized. This has lead to a taboo on the subject, so interested parties are forced to rely on seemingly scripted adoption testimonials and government-issued facts and statistics, which can be unreliable. Ad-Opt-Ed aims to dispel all the myths surrounding the subject through “subjective education”: learning vicariously through the experiences of others. On the site you can get first-hand accounts of real-life experiences: recorded, uploaded, and sent in by the person telling the story. The range of topics covers all facets of adoption: reunion fantasies and realities, meeting your adopted child for the first time, the adoption process, saying goodbye to your baby, etc so that it will involve all members of the adoption community- adoptees, birth and adoptive parents, even siblings; anyone who feels their story is important to the conversation. My hopes for this site are that it will help a wide range of people: new birth mothers without options, prospective adoptive parents, and adoptees hoping to feel normal. It can help those who are just starting out on their own adoption journey.
Hope Weisman
Thesis Project Presentation/Discussion
My thesis stemmed from my own adoption story. During the months before my birth my birthmother made a quilt to give to me before letting me go. My adoptive mother also made a blanket years before, knowing one day that she would give it to her child. from this idea, i began to think about the connection between my own identity and thread as a means to examine connections between people and events. I combined a mix of drawing and embroidery to create images that portrayed this theme.
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May 21st, 12-1pm
Daniel Udell
Wikitongues Interviews (cont.)
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May 21st, 3pm
Andrew McCausland, Bryce Williams and Christoper Lunney
Real Space / Virtual Space: A Conversation via Parsons
As we advance in our mastery of modern technology, we begin to see how such technologies, new and old, can reshape our view of real space. Join three Parsons students as they present their current projects relating to the interaction of real and virtual space, along with a discussion of such experimentation.
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May 21st, 5-6pm
Daniel Udell
Wikitongues Interviews (cont.)
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May 22nd, 1pm
Ermioni Giakou
“Athens In & Out”
Athens in & out is an online platform that hopes to provide a medium for young artists and designers from Athens to share their work and collaborate with each other. Tired of world news showing an Athens suffering from austerity measures, the site aims to show the world how the current economic crisis has influenced young Athenians to project their feelings and hopes through innovative projects.
Athens has been a city of great inspiration and progress since way too long ago, and we hope that it will remain so. Athens In & Out wants to give a chance to young artists and designers to promote their ideas by showcasing their work., to share their feelings and dreams through innovative ideas. Our mission is to unify young Athenians and make them act and react in a creative and inspirational way. Through our website we can prove to the rest of the world and to ourselves that we can change!
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May 22nd, 3-6pm
Naomi Sundberg
Pop-Up DIY Sewing Workshop
Hazel is a contemporary lingerie brand that promotes women’s free expression. Innerwear is presented fashionably as outerwear. Via methods illustrated in the Hazel Manual, you will learn how to create your own looks by recycling the clothing provided. Old clothes that you don’t wear anymore, or clothes with tears and stains don’t need to go to waste if they are reconstructed. This is the playful side of Hazel, where the customers engage with their personal assets and rearranging them with their creativity and unique taste to create something new.
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May 22, 6-7
Dawa Dolma
“An Investigation of the Tibetan Lifestyle and Culture to Shed Light on the Chinese Politics Governing Tibet.”
Presentation
Tibet is an innate part of me that has been endowed upon me by birth. Despite growing up in the culture, there are certain practices, customs and objects that are very alien to me. All of these have immense symbolism and complexity. The unique lifestyle, culture, and religion are a unifying force for all Tibetans, and it is for the preservation of this culture and its values that so many Tibetans are not even hesitating to self-immolate themselves to continue the fifty-year fight for freedom.
The Tibetans sacrificing themselves are crying out for help and recognition from the international community, and it is their cries that I would like to bring forward in this presentation. The design approach I have used to shed light on the political issues and difficulties faced by the Tibetans under the Chinese regime, have been through the medium of two videos and a typographic book. The book, titled A Fight for Freedom, is a very political piece showcasing the issues that Tibetans have been facing for decades under the brutal Chinese occupation. For the two videos, Tibetan Altars and The Mundane Tibetan Life, I have taken a more personal standpoint, wherein I choose to capture the Tibetan culture, its practices and religious activities revolving around it from my own perspective.
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May 22nd, 7-9pm
Sofia Falcon
“Let’s Hang Out & Talk About Feminism”
Interactive Performance / Discussion
This interactive performance explores feminism as a personal identity and a broader cultural ideology. Creating a space for discourse and dialogue, this piece also addresses the stigmatization of constructed feminist identity and the term itself. Through conducting honest, open, and non-academic conversations among members of a community, this piece explores how creating such conversations can demystify feminism. This piece serves to observe how a community conducts a dialogue about feminism, as well as the pivotal role in-person communication has in dealing with complex cultural dynamics. By creating spaces for conversation we can begin to destigmatize feminism and critically address societal constructs surrounding identity and inequality.
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May 23rd, 4pm
Jonathan Abbo
Build The World
Presentation
Build The World is a direct social impact gaming system, that provides a platform for players to create crowed sources solutions to critical social issues, by creating games that are directly linked to real data and NGOs. The two founding philosophies that each game is built on is that games remain fun and enjoyable, and that every stage of the game is dedicated to solving the issue. Build The World goes beyond raising awareness and money; it allows players to directly influence and fix the problem. With Build The World players never lose touch with the people they help.
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Ongoing pop-up “performances”:
*EXOH, artist Tara Long‘s ater-ego/muse extraterrestrial, visits and maintains “Alone, together”: a 3-part installation featured in the exhibition. The act of maintaining the installation is a part of the isolation of the artist/alter-ego, “alone” in her work, yet “together” with the inadvertent spectator.
*Ariela Kader Berliavsky turns the act of daily social communications and interactions into a commodified experience producing tangible artifacts of trade.
