If you walked into Elsewhere this past Friday you would have found Visiting Artist Toni Subira cascaded across a chair, Program Director Danna Rooth slumped over the front desk and Events Coordinator Kat Lee sandwiched between the front door and the artist boxes. The three began the evening inanimate like plush toys or robots but came to life against the sound shapes created by Creative Assistant Anthony Lowe. The beeps, scratches, and loops activated each performer and finally through changes and accelerations arouse them for what would become a television program of karaoke in Spanish hosted by Toni. Participants were asked to select either Bomba Latina or Vaquero (Latin bomb or cowboy) their karaoke performance would then determine the number of points awarded for their side. The battle raged in the first hour as many visiting artists, staff and public did their best to sing the Spanish pop songs. In the end the Latin bomb rained supreme but fun was had by all cowpokes. Stay tuned for next week as we delve into mapping and territories with Lindsay Palmer.
09/14/2009
Bomba Latina vs. Vaquero spanish karaoke with Toni Subira
09/03/2009
duet for objects: a dance based conversation
Florence Peake and Sally Dean came to
Elsewhere via London, England. The two are a collaborative dance pair entitled
Duet for Objects. Their time here was spent in movement with collection
objects from cardboard fabric tubes to shards of peeling wallpaper. On
Friday August 21st the duet engaged our public and staff in a dialogue based on
their creative process. At 8pm enclosed in a lovely yellow version of our front
window Sally and Florence began what would become a two and a half hour dance
performance.
Their performance was fueled by objects delivered to the front window by participants in "The Quiet Game," a sensory based procedure involving experiencing objects deprived of sight. This procedure facilitated by (the lovely and most solid intern of all time) Alexa Terry entailed being blindfolded and stepping into the log cabin from there selecting an object based strictly on touch and answering a series of questions to determine the nature of the object and finally taking piece to the front to be enveloped in the dance.
When not watching the durational dance or taking
part in "The Quiet Game" guests could step into the tent and view
three films made by Documentarian Blake Mason featuring dance pieces by Duet for
Objects. We were pleased to have a diverse audience on this hot summer night for a unique conversation.
Stay Tuned for our upcoming conversation on September 16th with artist Toni Subria hailing from Barcelona, Spain.
08/17/2009
a conversation with Eliza Fernand
This past
Friday the quirky and charming Eliza Fernand filled Elsewhere with colorful
accessories, song and drawing. Eliza has been outfitting Elsewhere since she
arrived on her second night in the space she and fellow resident Rachelle
opened Tabitha and Tina's Tea Emporium as part of City. Here the two made ties
and turbans for our visitors and staff to adorn. She followed that project by creating custom-made swim suits
for our staff to wear as we ventured to the outer banks for a little
vay-cay. Having firmly established
her like unifying folks through dress Eliza chose to place this into her
conversation. As guest entered the
space they were welcomed to jump into the front window and receive a
personalized apron, tie, necklace, smock or the like to sport for the evening.
From there guests encountered a video slide show featuring a montage of our
swim suits in action on the beach and image from the community lunch
curated by the artist.
At 9pm visitors, staff, and directors made their way to the tent where we viewed 3 videos made by Eliza one featuring her beloved Chicken McNugget toys, the other a collection of Eliza's favorite styles from the Wardrobe, and finally a lovely adventure into the garden. The final video served as a backdrop for an original song created by the artist based on memories collected in relation to toys from the collection. From within a conical fabric costume Eliza's unique voice emanated telling an a cappella story of the smells, wonder and loss of childhood toys. Throughout the evening guests were invited to share their childhood toy stories with Eliza through a drawing and story writing station at our kitchen table. A question and answer session followed the performance and from there Eliza returned the window to conclude a successful evening.
the body of Molly Lowe and the Questions of Anthony Lowe
Friday July 31st and August 7th featured conversations from the family Lowe. Though not actually kin Anthony and Molly may have been mistaken for such by the way in which they collaborated to make Molly's conversation a success. Elsewhere was in high production mode the last week of July to pull of the multi-media event of Come into Your Body (a conversation with Molly Lowe).
During her residency Molly transformed existing installations into kinetic body systems, the red room became a beating heart, the ribbon room became the digestive system featuring a chopping mouth, the wardrobe came to life with people dressed in skin sacks and the back of the stairwell was shaped into the bone structure. Each of these rooms were captured on film by Molly with the help of our staff and transformed into a music video for which Anthony composed original music.
Each of these rooms was presented to our public haunted house style on Friday night. After passing through the space and viewing portions of the music video guests were invited should they choose to be toured through the body by the blood marrow woman. Each tour was baptized into the body by being clocked in a skin sack and taken along a blood vessel tube into each space. Around 24 people stepped into the body that evening.
On the first Friday in August local artist Anthony Lowe asked "What Goes with What," "Who did the What Now," "How it Fit," and "What about Ron"? Over 300 guests were invited to pair songs together for an interactive dj set in the front window, view a video scrapbook featuring photos of staff and installations in process, play a form of abstract chess to see objects fit and to listen to Anthony give a talk about a previous resident Ron Longsdorf.
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07/25/2009
a conversation with Derya Altan
On July 17th we celebrated the residency of Derya Altan. Derya in collaboration with friend and fellow resident Casey Droege transformed our "yellow wallpaper room" into an honorarium for the spirits of Elsewhere. Derya began her work here by collecting our staff's experiences with the spiritual inhabitants of the space.
During the course of her conversation Derya escorted visitors up to "the ghost room." Along the way tours were meet by our staff and told the ghost stories that informed Derya's portraits. Additionally guests were invited to make "tribal poofs" out of scrap ribbon from the ribbon curtain. Nearly 50 visitors experienced each part of Derya's process: the information that informed the work (the staff stories), the tactile material process (poof making) and the final result (the ghost room itself).
07/20/2009
a conversation with Claire Cronin
07/15/2009
a conversation with Casey Droege
On July 3rd Elsewhere happily hosted an interactive evening with
artist-in-residence Casey Droege (Check out her blog here:
http://caseydroege.vox.com/). Casey's work often deals with connection and engagement.
She seeks to move people toward communicating and sharing stories with one another. For her conversation she sought to coerce
people into interacting via object speed dating and dead pet
storytelling. With the help of our staff she created It Takes 2, a
dating show in which visitors were invited to select an object and
shape a narrative about it, or share a personal story connected with it
from there object pairs were created. The front window became Kitties in Heaven:
a venue for pet therapy. Here with the help of two of our other great
artists Claire and Derya, Casey collected stories from visitors about
their deceased pets and which dead celebrity they felt was caring for
their pet in the afterlife. From there an awesomely cheesy slide show
was created depicting the pets and celebs kicking it in heaven. Overall
the event was tremendous success with over 300 guests in the space.
Artist Conversation with Ernesto Gomez, Jeff Thompson and Angeles Cossio
On June 26th we hosted a
conversation with three phonically pleasing artists: Jeff, Angeles, and
Ernesto.
Ernesto's piece Ed's Thriller Angel is a kinetic sound
installation located in the much neglected back right corner of the third
floor. On the last Friday in June he toured over 80 guests through his
piece helping them to engage all of it’s musically facets.
Meanwhile in the front window Jeff (a returning resident from summer '06) and his partner/collaborator Angeles activated a musical bed of glass they spent their week at the space creating. The two discovered the collection of broken glasses, cups, and various other objects and decided to make a sound piece out of them. The result was a beautiful multi-colored, shimmering instrument that accompanied the evening rain perfectly.
05/25/2009
05/19/2009
Dining for Friends Benefit and CITY Exploration
From April until October you can count on Elsewhere to provide an interesting and unique interactive experience Friday nights at 8 pm. So where were those colorfully dressed Elsewherians last weekend? We were all tied up hosting a private party for the Triad Health Project's Dining for Friends Benefit.
Besides being an all-around good time for the guests, the hosts, and the Elsewherians, the party let us all make some new friends. It's always exciting to see new faces come in and experience our environment for the first time. Music was provided by our own DJ Spacecamp (Dan White) while George gave tours to small groups and we all busied ourselves chatting with our new pals.
The party also gave us an excuse to rearrange much of Elsewhere, which is exciting news for any and all of you who participate in our events. And if any of you are interested in hosting your own private event at Elsewhere be sure to email events@elsewhereelsewhere.org.
Coming up: CITY - Mapping the Urban Landscape
This week's episode of CITY will be a special game. We are stepping out of our City and into the South Elm Neighborhood to map the people, locations, and experiences that surround Elsewhere. Small groups will be departing the space with an Elsewherian every 30 minutes. Come join our team of geo-ethno-cartographers in creating a new map of our immediate environment that we hope will influence the long-term chaotic narrative and disscusion created by CITY.
Before I finish I have to give a special thanks to Jona, Mark, Laura, and Martha who all came out and volunteered their time to help us pull off last week's benefit.
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