luciana achugar: Cultivating Communal Vibrations

“Celebrating the female experience, achugar’s work focuses on the sensuality – not sexuality – and pleasure of movement and the body. Her development of feminine expression aims to channel energies and cultivate communal vibrations.

achugar draws on the use of ritualized sound and movement to encourage a social bond between the audience and the performers. Patterned and repetitive sequences strengthen and clarify the dancers’ emotional intent, and empower the audience to actively engage with the performance. Recurring sounds construct an otherworldly, meditative space in which the choreography comes to life.”

via luciana achugar: Cultivating Communal Vibrations — The Green Room — Walker Art Center.

AMO Studios

 

“AMO is a collective of young creatives working to merge educational, research, and artistic practice through a shared space.”

via AMO studios by AMO Studios — Kickstarter.

The Question of Performa 13

Marianne Vitale, “The Book of Missing Spurs” (2013) (all Vitale images courtesy Performa)

“Marianne Vitale’s “The Missing Book of Spurs,” her commission for Performa 13, features half-naked women in corsets, a man in assless chaps, and “natives” in outfits inspired by traditional Native American clothing; it features blocks of wood, a wooden sculpture that looks like a torpedo, and a large, old-fashioned wooden bar; it features loud music, a smoke machine, and erotic dancing. It is a big spectacle. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it’s anything else.”

Read more: http://hyperallergic.com/95153/the-questions-of-performa-13/

School of Making Thinking

“At SMT, our mission is to merge the practice of thinking or academic research with
a broad range of making practices such as performance, sculpture, writing, and
music composition.  Previous classes have explored subject areas such as
Visibility in Performance, the Uncanny Imagination, and Occult Shenanigans.”

Read More: School of Making Thinking

“Psychonaut will achieve a musical communion of performers, audience, and collaborators.”

Rehearsing a song called, “Mount of the Moon”

Tonight I’ll be performing in my friend, Riley Skinner‘s senior show, Psychonaut. It has been a pleasure to work with Riley and the other ensemble members.The Bennington Free Press published an article about the show last month:

Psychonaut: Senior Concert excavates the unconscious

April 26, 2013

By Forest Purnell ’13

The senior concert is among the most visible of all types of “advanced work” that Bennington students complete. For a month leading up to the end of term, music students and their multiple, volunteer performers fill the various campus music venues with a showcase of skill developed over the course of four years. Seniors often feel compelled to get involved in this work not just as musicians, but also as facilitators, designers, and directors of a “total work of art.” It’s easy for the choices to become unmanageable. In a cultural climate that places increasing value on not just quality of experience but also novelty, it’s a challenge to strike a balance between old and new—between exploring with ideas about performativity and just making the damn music. Riley Skinner ’13 has taken much of this into consideration, and she’s resolute. “The idea of Psychonaut is… to have some kind of experience with my ensemble and with the audience that is a shared dreamscape.”

Skinner is adamant about using the work to open up space for her participants, and to “create something together that we couldn’t create without all of [us].” The same way a psychonaut, an explorer of the unconscious, exhumes a dreamworld into waking existence, Psychonaut, Skinner suggests, will achieve a musical communion of performers, audience and collaborators. No wonder then that it’s also the largest group Skinner has ever worked with. “It’s a large ensemble. I’m working with six female singers, cellist, trombone, drums, synth, electric, upright bass… myself and whatever I’m playing, and four male vocalists as well—sometimes a fiddle player…” Skinner pauses to consider additions to the list, and then explains that this concert is much more “curated” than something she could show performing alone. She also believes it will mark a clear contrast with her current musical reputation on campus. “I feel like I’ve been pretty pigeon-holed here as the person who does singer-songwriter music, you know the girl who sings and plays ukulele. But I don’t study that here, that’s not actually what I’ve done in the music department… This is a chance to share what I’ve done here academically and personally. Psychonaut aspires to be one total experience, or as Skinner puts it, a “journey.”

When: Sunday, May 19, 2013 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Where: Margot Tenney Theater, Bennington College

Beauty is before me, above me and below me.

Last night, a group of beautiful people gathered for a community art event, Communitas/structure. Here are some photos from the event. Thanks to all who participated!

I put bread into baskets to share.

These are our folk-song chorus leaders!

We sing folk songs together.

We listen to a sermon delivered by a disguised individual.

Kione sets fabric on our laps…

And hands us each a sewing needle.

We all stitch together –

We stitch in prayer.

The king-like Ezra is carried on a platform.

He begins to walk off into the distance –

We watch Ezra go –

Is he coming back?

He disappears into the distance!

B.Y.O.R (Bring Your Own Ritual)

As promised in a previous post, I now have more information about the community event that we’ll be organizing at Bennington College. We’re calling the event Communitas/structure. The founding idea is based on the anthropological concept of communitas, which refers to a temporary state of liminality, often reached in ritual. It is, in a sense, the climax of community. We’ll be attempting to bring about a “moment in and out of time,” a fleeting sense of intense solidarity. In order to do this, we’ve reserved a space called The Lens and have begun inviting participants to help us design a ritual. Participants would be designing a small ritual (5-25 minutes), with two requirements:

1. People who attend the event, the other participants, must be able to join the ritual.

2. The ritual must deal with one of the themes (see below).

These binaries come from Victor Turner‘s The Ritual Process, where he talks about liminality in rituals. At the event, participants will be positioned all around  the space. Over the course of the event, ‘ritual leaders’ will switch in and out. The larger ritual, made up of these smaller rituals, will continually evolve, and those attending the event will be offered an intense and continually evolving experience. Participants will be able to go from ritual to ritual, taking part in various pieces. We’ve talked to musicians, dancers, and other artists. It is going to be a wonderful event. More soon!