LOS ANGELES – Look for our 1951 Spartan trailer at the Leimert Park Art Walk on Sunday, October 28 where multimedia artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle will present “Kentifrican Travel Narratives,” a performance piece exploring the nomadic cultures of Kentifrica, a continent where the history of Kentucky and the ancestral heritage of West Africa converge. The event will feature a concert with Kentifrican songs for safety on the road and other music performed on instruments made from and inspired by Kentifrican culture. A café with Kentifrican food will offer food to the public.
Kenyatta Hinkle (Cal Arts, M.F.A. ’12) was the youngest artist to participate this summer in the Hammer Museum’s “Made In L.A.” Her work is currently on display at a group exhibit, “BAILA con Duende”at Watts Towers (September, 2012 – January, 2012. ) In October, she will be at the Bindery Projects in St. Paul, MN. In November her work will be shown at another group exhibit at The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Kentifrican Travel Narratives: Transversing Boundaries Leimert Park Art Walk Leimert Park Village, Los Angeles, CA 91804 mapSunday, October 28 – 12 pm – 4 pm This event is a co-production with Ben Caldwell’s Kaos Films
This post is part of a series documenting Sam Breen’a Spartan Restoration Project. Please see his first post here and check out the archive here. The CSPA is helping Sam by serving in an advisory role, offering modest support and featuring Sam’s Progress by syndicating his feed from http://spartantrailerrestoration.wordpress.com as part of our CSPA Supports Program.
To create a design-based performance piece in response to the 2011 Prague Quadrennial that examines materials, and then organizes and redistribute (would be wasted) materials to the local arts community.
The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts is a hybrid organization dedicated to gathering and redistributing information about sustainable practices in art making. This project marks our first initiative to solve one of the major dilemmas of creating art on the ground: Wasted Materials! We will travel to Prague this summer to focus on the environmental impact of production at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial and will creatively repurpose the waste generated from this 10-day design conference of over seventy exhibiting countries.
Organizing team members include Ian Garrett and Miranda Wright (co-founders of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts), Sarah Peterson (Production Manager, Theater Artist, New York CSPA Associate), Moe Beitiks (artist, cultural volunteer, and writer for inhabitat, CBOT, and the CSPA), Misa Rygrova (leading researcher on this topic in the Czech Republic), and James McKernan (faculty at York University and Technical Director for the PQ’s Scenofest).
The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space is a leading world artistic event – a presentation of contemporary work in a variety of performance design disciplines and genres including costume, stage, lighting, sound design, and theatre architecture for dance, opera, drama, site-specific, multi-media performances, and performance art.
Founded in 1967, the Prague Quadrennial has presented work from more than 70 countries on 5 continents. The exhibition draws thousands of performance and theatre professionals, students, and spectators from all over the world. At the most recent Quadrennial in 2007, 35,000 visitors came to enjoy installations, photos, videos, and live performances of work ranging between theatre and visual arts, as well as more than 500 events, workshops, performances, presentations, lectures, and discussions.
This project will be a significant catalyst for the advancement of sustainability in theater and design. It is an opportunity to develop a comprehensive case study on community engagement in creative resource management. As a performance, it will examine the relationship of production communities from around the world to their use of materials practically and dramaturgically. It will create new methods for distributing large amounts of previously used materials quickly, test the limits of a community’s ability to absorb the material, and develop a mode of a working network of materials exchange.
We are looking for $4,000 in additional funding to supplement travel for our team, and to provide resources and tools for distributing materials and documenting this project.
We promise to give you what we get: INFORMATION! We’ll be documenting this project, and will gladly share our findings with you. Other perks include copies of the CSPA Quarterly, a publication dedicated to sustainable practices in all creative areas, CSPA membership, and special tokens from the PQ!
Other Ways You Can Help
Spread the word! Share this project with your friends and colleagues.
To support the greater effort of the CSPA, become a member by visiting www.sustainablepractice.org/join-the-cspa
Director of the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and CalArts alumnus, Stephen Nowlin (BFA Design 71) has curated a beautiful and multifaceted exhibition, simply titled ENERGY, which is currently on view at Art Center through Jan. 23, 2011.
Nowlin has long been a significant voice in the contemporary discourse between art and science. In his 18 years as director of the Willamson Gallery he has curated a number of exhibitions exploring this relationship, often partnering with colleagues at Caltech, and featuring artists who work at the intersection of art and science.
The exhibition includes two large-scale video and sculpture installations by L.A. artist Rebeca Méndez; a series of works by New York photographer Richard Barnes; small-scale archival videos documenting post-war growth in energy consumption and Cold War fears driving the development of atomic weapons; and artifacts from scientific exploration at the beginning of the modern industrial era.
Finally, to directly connect ENERGY to Art Center’s students, Nowlin invited a class called “Design for Sustainability” to install its solutions to energy-based assignments on a wall in the exhibit. As it unfolds over the course of the semester, the wall continually changes, becoming “like a performance piece”–pedagogy on display. Assignments revolve around a designed product’s extended life-cycle analysis. Working within the context of the exhibition, says Nowlin, “reminds students that if they want to be enlightened designers for the 21st century, they need to understand issues relating humans to their environment. And to do that, they must factor science into their design equations.”
In June 2011 The Institute for Figuring, founded by Chair of CalArts’ Writing Program in the School of Critical Studies, Christine Wertheim, and her sister Margaret Wertheim, will bring their Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef to the Williamson Gallery. Currently on view at the Smithsonian Institution’s Sant Ocean Hall in Washington, D.C. through April 24, 2011, The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, weaves together strands of art, science, mathematics, and conservation.
We’ve had a great response from many talented people. More than we expected actually and it has become necessary to go through a short selection process (see message below). The project commences Saturday, April 17 at 2pm at Arcola Theatre. It is for performers, writers, theatre practitioners and generally interested people over 18. The aim is to use theatre to explore a variety of sustainability themes and create a high-quality short performance piece. If you are still interested in being involved here is some more information.
The group will meet over seven weeks, exploring sustainability issues through a variety of theatrical workshops, with the intention of devising a short performance piece. The location and dates of the performances are still to be confirmed. It will mostly likely be an outdoor or site specific performance. It is going to be very much a collaborative process and we welcome input from as many view points as possible. This is the first outing of The Green Theatre Project so there will be a lot of room to play.
Here is an outline of the sessions:
Session 1 – April 17, Arcola (2 -4pm)
Intros
Idea sharing
Short devising session around a theme
Session 2 – April 24, Spitalfields City Farm (2 -4pm)
Physical theatre workshop led by Irene Athanassiou
Devise short movement sequence
Decide on theme of final performance
Session 3 – May 1, Arcola (2 -4pm)
Forum theatre workshop led by Rosie Leach
Structure and form of final performance decided
Session 4 – May 8, Arcola (2 -4pm)
LeCoq workshop led by Skip Theatre (tbc)
Workshop potential material for final performance
Session 5 – May 15, Arcola (2 -4pm)
Interpreting text workshop (based on an Irish play) led by Cathal Clearly
Workshop and rehearse writer’s material for final performance piece
Session 6 – May 22, Arcola (2 -4pm)
Workshop and rehearse performance piece
Session 7 – May 29, location to be announced (2 -4pm)
Dress rehearsal/possible preview performance
Potential themes: energy usage, resource consumption and distribution, human/nature relationship, interconnectedness, the individual’s behaviour, fair trade, conservation, sustainable agriculture, social sustainability, etc. (These are just possibilities, the group will decide together on what issues they want to explore)
IMPORTANT: If you are interested in being involved, please send us a short paragraph describing what you hope to get out of the project and what you could bring to it. As well as what role(s) you would be interested in for the performance piece (i.e. writer, performer, stage manager, producer, etc) and a contact phone number. In order to be considered for the project we need to receive your email by the end of Tuesday, April 13. We will then let you know who has a place in the group. Please also let us know if you can not make any of the dates. We will be giving priority to people who can make six or more of the seven sessions.
Please note: That although the group is suitable for non-performers, the workshops will require some performance elements within the group.
Thank you for your interest and we look forward to hearing from you!
