31 Mar 2010

The Theatrical. The Performative. The Transformative.

The Theatrical. The Performative. The Transformative. is a lecture series introducing key figures whose artistic practice is situated at the intersection of performance art, avant-garde dance, and activist theater. Focusing on time-based and ephemeral formats that navigate between art, film, theater and dance, the series juxtaposes speakers of different generations and backgrounds who share an interest in feminist discourses and politics.

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Monday, April 12 at 7:00 PM
Where's the Passion
Yvonne Rainer
Bartos Theater
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA, USA
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Where's the Passion
Yvonne Rainer made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/dancer (1960-1975). Where's the Passion is a lecture in which notions of self-expression, impersonation, and the politics of looking and being looked at are examined, accompanied by documentations of two of her recent performances.

Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer is a choreographer/dancer, film maker, and a Distinguished Professor of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent dances are AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M., a re-vision of Balanchine's Agon; RoS Indexical, a re-vision of Nijinsky's Rite of Spring; and a Performa07 commission, Spiraling Down. Her dances have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Helsinki, Kassel, Berlin, and Sao Paolo. A memoir, Feelings Are Facts: a Life, was published by MIT Press in 2006. Rainer is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Wexner Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Joan Jonas
The lecture is moderated by Joan Jonas, a pioneer in video and performance art and the 2010 recipient of the Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize, presented by the Council for the Arts at MIT.

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LECTURE SERIES SCHEDULE
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February 22, 2010 - Production and Reception of the Visual

Xavier Le Roy
Nell Breyer, moderator
French choreographer Xavier Le Roy explores the relationships between the production and reception of the visual. What do spectators see? Watching a choreography, they see not only a form or a content, but processes at work during the production of the movements in rehearsals as well as during execution of the movements in performance. How and when are these relationships constructed? Xavier Le Roy is in residence at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) this spring. Nell Breyer, a research affiliate at ACT, situates her work at the intersection of dance, new media, and visual art.

March 1, 2010 - Dance on Top of Everyday Throwaways: Extreme Simultaneity
Constanza Macras
Jay Scheib, moderator
Constanza Macras, an Argentine choreographer based in Berlin, was recipient of the 2009-2010 Abramowitz Award. Macras and her company, DORKYPARK, create works that mix video, dance, text and music with a diverse cast of performers. Her work is based on everyday situations that interrupt themselves and accumulate, creating a form of hyper-narrative.

March 8, 2010 - The Bread and Puppet Theater

Peter Schumann
John Bell, moderator
Peter Schumann, legendary founder of The Bread and Puppet Theater will present a short 'fiddle lecture' illustrated with cantastoria banners. Moderator John Bell, long-time collaborator of Bread and Puppet Theater, will discuss with Schumann the theater's use of public space, technology, the concept of progress, and the relations between puppet theater and modernism. The evening will end with a drum and fiddle performance. John Bell, a fellow at MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, is a puppeteer, scholar, and teacher.

March 15, 2010 - It's Real to Me

Magda Fernandez
Amber Frid-Jimenez, moderator
Magda Fernandez, a Boston-based artist, creates synthetic video worlds that question our real lives in contemporary times. Fernandez's videos rely liberally on composite technology and special effects to make sense out of the nonsensical. Fernandez will screen four of her videos and discuss their subjects and means of production. Amber Frid-Jimenez is a lecturer in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology

April 5, 2010 - Theatrical Fields

Ute Meta Bauer
Ute Meta Bauer introduces the evening with a short lecture on theatricality as a feminist practice. Students from 4.310 Contemporary Curatorial Practice will present new and in-process representative works. Ute Meta Bauer is a curator and director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology. The Catherine Sullivan lecture originally scheduled for this date has been postponed.

April 12, 2010 - Where's the Passion

Yvonne Rainer
Joan Jonas, moderator
Details above

April 26, 2010 - Text: Free and Indirect. A Future Perception.

Eva Meyer
Ute Meta Bauer, moderator
Eva Meyer, a writer and filmmaker based in Berlin, will screen and discuss Sie könnte zu Ihnen gehören/She Might Belong to you, a 37 minute film Meyer created with artist Eran Schaerf in 2007 for Skulptur Projekte Münster. Meyer describes the film: 'With the passing of time she has become clairvoyant….She could go beyond the perceptive and sensitive states of experience and entrust sensations surpassing them to a future perception.' Ute Meta Bauer is a curator and director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology.

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SAVE THE DATE
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April 15, 2010
The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) is celebrating its official inauguration with an Open House and day of activities in Buildings E14 and E15 presenting various projects by our current SMVisS graduate students, ACT fellows and affiliates, the launch of new ACT website and the release of Engaged a DVD celebrating 20 years of the MIT Visual Arts Program in collaboration with Aspect: the Chronicle of New Media Art featuring works by VAP faculty and alumni. MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology Inauguration

April 24, 2010
Fellow Xavier Le Roy will present more floor pieces his work resulting from his residence at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT). Saturday, April 24, 7 PM, MIT Media Lab Complex, 6th floor. More information