by PAI’s current artist-in-residence
Piotr Bujak, Thursday, April 18th
through Saturday, April 20th
4:00pm until 9:00pm

The Performance Art Institute proudly presents
“Light Rhapsody”, the second installment of current artist-in-residence, Pio’s, mixed-media installations.

Piotr Bujak (a.k.a. Pio) is an interdisciplinary artist from Poland, graduate of Jan Matejko’s Acadmy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland and San Francisco Art Institute. His most current exploration is based on a research in the intersection of violence, mass media and consumption, together with the mechanisms and theories of human perception. In his work he combines the idea of Fluxus’ DIY strategy, the minimalistic approach to new media, and accessibility of the visual impulse in the modern world.

“‘Light Rapsody’ is a mixed-media work depicting my interest in obsessive-compulsive nature of consumerism,” says Pio. “It is a critical study of the notion of ‘Bread and Circuses’ in a modern civilization of unlimited access to information. It also reflects my research into dialogue between digitally manipulated time-based media and very rough materials used in a single installation.”

This event is free and open to the public.

The Performance Art Institute proudly presents “Glee” a multi-channel video installation by its current artist in residence – Piotr Bujak.

“Glee” is a minimalistic and site specific project that revolves around the dichotomy of bitterness and appeal in modern world of tabloided virtues. It is also a first installment of a brand new cycle “Sublime Pleasures”

Pio Bujak is an interdisciplinary artist from Poland, graduate of Jan Matejko’s Acadmy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland and San Francisco Art Institute. His most current exploration is based on a research in the intersection of violence, mass media and consumption, together with the mechanisms and theories of human perception. In his work he combines the idea of Fluxus’ DIY strategy, the minimalistic approach to new media, and accessibility of the visual impulse in the modern world.

A conceptual riff off of the San Francisco Building Code, Building Score 101B is a set of task-based instructions to be carried out through four evenings of live construction and performance. Six carpenters and two performers will come together each night to explore the temporal uncertainties and structural instabilities embedded in every act of construction. Equipped with their own dust masks and safety goggles the audience will be invited to witness the translation processes between what we think will happen and what actually does.

Bios

Angrette McCloskey (Director)

Angrette McCloskey is a New York based set designer and carpenter having recently relocated to the Bay Area. Angrette has worked in theater and film for the past 8 years. Her notable design credits include Swimming to Spalding directed by Richard Schechner and The Bacchae directed by Kevin Kulhke at the Warsaw International Theatre Festival, as well assistant credits on Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, and English National Opera. As a scholar Angrette writes about the intersections of architecture and scenography, construction as performance, and the work of the “building-body” as an embodied approach to construction. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Stanford University’s Department of Theater & Performance Studies and holds a BFA in Scenic Design and MA in Performance Studies from New York University.

Jamie Lyons (Projection Designer)

Jamie Lyons is an educator, film maker, writer and stage director who received his A.B and PhD. from Stanford Univeristy.  He has worked at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, Magic Theatre in San Francisco; The Public Theater, and Mabou Mines in New York.  For the stage he has directed the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Sam Shepard, Peter Weiss, and Heiner Müller.  Jamie’s most recent work was as video designer for the Collected Works’ production of Princess Ivona.

Derek Philips (Sound Artist)

Derek Phillips is a composer and sound artist based in San Francisco. Among his credits are original scores for dance-theater: Cockroach,Comedy Ballet, and TUTOR: enter the exclave, with Dark Porch Theatre Company; scores for dance: Heir by Brendan Behan, Slab by Chris DeVita/LINES Ballet; and live sound performance in collaboration: Home in Five Parts by Ryan Tecata/Stanford Drama, and 18 1/2 Minutes by Calderon and Donovan. His work has been played or performed at the DeYoung Museum, The Exit Theater, The Garage, Kunst-Stoff Arts, Stanford University, and The Performance Art Institute. He studied literature at UC San Diego, and is self-taught as a composer.

Ryan Tacata (Performer)

Ryan Tacata holds a BFA (2007) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied briefly at the Experimental Performance Institute with an emphasis in queer activist performance. He is currently a PhD student in the Department of Drama at Stanford University. He has performed at Links Hall (Chicago), the Voice Factory (San Francisco), Duckie (London), The Living Theater (New York) and elsewhere across the US. Most recently, he as worked for/with artists: Ann Carlson, Marry Ellen Strom, Leslie Hill and Helen Paris (Curious), Robert Whitman, and Hugo Glendinning. His current research is at the intersections of performance and architecture and he is writing about the performing body in conceptual architecture from 1965 – 1985.

Raegan Truax (Performer)

Raegan Truax is a New York City based durational performance artist who recently relocated to the Bay Area to pursue a PhD at Stanford University in The Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. Truax’s choreographic scores and installations engage and investigate her concept of the “Misbehaving Body” as a body that acts against a normative figuring of progress and resilience. Her work has been presented at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZKU) in Berlin, The Northern California Performance Platform, Stanford’s Department of Art and Architecture, and Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City. She is also collaborator to Carlos Motta’s international art project “We Who Feel Differently” with recent symposium at the New Museum in New York City. In Spring 2013, Truax will perform a 29-day performance titled Misbehaving Body #28 which culminates with a 28-hour performance in Stanford’s Pigott Theatre.

Please click here for tickets.

NEW ADDRESS FOR LA POCHA NOSTRA SHOW!

Saturday, March 30th, 8PM

NEW venue:  435 23RD STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107

Free parking!  Accessible on the MUNI Light Rail!

(Cross Streets: 23rd Street & Illinois, STORAGE facility on the waterfront)

A performance project by Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes & Erica Mott. With La Pocha Nostra Associates: Brittany Chavez, Allison Wyper, Esther Baker Tarpaga, Rico Martin and Marcos Nájera
Producer: Marcos Nájera

Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/350355

What happens when you examine the intersection of the following performance personas: An aging deviant shaman, a Neo-Aztec priest making romantic religious tableaux with a goat, a flamenco drag king and an Oil Spill Madonna?

The newest work of La Pocha Nostra, considered by critics to be “the most influential Latino performance art troupe of the last 10 years.” La Pocha Nostra Live Art Laboratory presents the US Premiere of Corpo Insurrecto 3.0: The Robo-Proletariat. Corpo Insurrecto samples both new work and performance classics, addressing the current global culture of far right isolationism, xenophobia, the violence of organized crime and a broken economy and how these factors impact the human body.

As in most Pocha projects, audience members are invited to participate in this bizarre experiment. They will be invited to collaborate as we incarnate “the dreams and nightmares of our current times,” and to help the performers re-imagine new iconography by intervening the performance with their own bodies in dialogue with the performers. Through this, LPN will invoke a “wonderfully clumsy but efficient form of radical democratic practice.”

La Pocha Nostra is a trans-disciplinary arts organization that provides a support network and forum for artists of various disciplines, generations and ethnic backgrounds. La Pocha is devoted to erasing the borders between art and politics, art practice and theory, artist and spectator. La Pocha Nostra has intensely focused on the notion of collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of radical citizen diplomacy and as a means to create “ephemeral communities” of rebel artists.

More info can be found online at:

http://interculturalpoltergeist.tumblr.com/

http://tinyurl.com/apfuygq

Friday, April 26, 2013 at 8:00pm

The Performance Art Institute is proud to present Auroville, a media ritual and an homage to the experimental township of Southern India, organized and performed by composer Nick Hallett in collaboration with visual artists Seth Kirby and Brock Monroe and featuring composers Betsey Biggs, Luciano Chessa, Pamela Z, and Jeff Cook, with performances by Ana Matronic, Monique Jenkinson (Fauxnique), and other guests. This event will take place on Friday, April 26th at The Performance Art Institute’s new location,  435 23rd Street in San Francisco, California.   

While traveling in Southern India in the early 2000s, composer and artist Nick Hallett visited the “experimental township” of Auroville, the City of Dawn.  He describes his experience there as “a futuristic, universalist, minimalist approach to spirituality, through which new models of environmental, economic and social change could be attempted, the dream of the 1960s manifest in urban planning and architecture, a cradle for the new age.”  Hallett’s travels concluded in Bangalore, where he purchased an electronic tanpura (drone) and tabla (drum).

Returning to his home in New York, Hallett’s experiments with these electronic instruments resulted in his creating an homage to the experience at Auroville:  a melding of sound, projections, video art, and new media performances, first in collaboration with artist Seth Kirby, and eventually with other musicians and performers, as a finale to his performance residency at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009.

Now in its fourth iteration Auroville debuts in America’s “experimental township” of San Francisco, CA, and includes the talents of Seth Kirby, Brock Monroe, Betsey Biggs, Luciano Chessa, Pamela Z, Jeff Cook, Ana Matronic, Monique Jenkinson (Fauxnique) and other guests.

Auroville is a one-night-only event.  Admission is $10 in advance or $15 on the day of the event. The Performance Art Institute is a wheelchair accessible venue.  Doors will open at 7:30pm and the performance will begin promptly at 8:00pm. Seating is limited, so please arrive early. Space will be provided on a first-come-first-serve basis. This event will last approximately two hours.

Click here to purchase tickets for the event: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/369159

CONTINUA IN LIGHT, THREE ACTS is a video installation by Bay Area artists Cheryl Calleri and Thekla Hammond premiering May 4th, 2013.

A continuum is a continuous path along which an object is transformed by minute shifts and subtle changes into its opposite. Darkness becomes light. One fractures into many. Stasis explodes into movement. Direction loses purpose and becomes random. Scale is altered from large to small, small to large. Multiples coalesce into one. Then the process of transformation reverses itself.

Two projections will illuminate the walls with enhanced images of moving light. One projector will begin at the end of the video, the other at the beginning. They will intersect mid-way and then reverse directions.

Act I: VOICE, will combine the visual experience with music by Morton Lauridsen and Pauline Oliveros, performed live by Sine Nomine and Gioia, two Bay Area a cappella ensembles.

Act II: DANCE, features choreography by Nancy Karp in which the dancers’ movement patterns interact with the visual environment and the music of Nik Bärtsch.

Act III: IMMERSION, will expand the video projection and will integrate vocal ensembles, dancers and members of the audience, accompanied by the music of Tin Hat Trio, in an immersive experience to become physical and psychological elements in CONTINUA IN LIGHT.

PAI cordially invites you to “The Body as the Design”, a talk by Scott Summit inventor, designer and participating artist of “The Future Imagined: What’s next? The talk will be followed by “The Future is Design” a short presentation by Tim McNeil, professor of design and director of the Design Museum at the University of California, Davis, and a moderated discussion led by Jonathon Keats, experimental philosopher, journalist, art critic, and artist.

When we think of a prosthetic limb, the image that typically comes to mind involves titanium pipes, bolts, mechanical flanges, and a rubber, lifelike foot. The product, though a vital and intimate part of the wearer’s life, appears mechanical and utilitarian, devoid of individuality or personality. The forms appear disjointed and brutal in the context of the fluid forms of the human body. Why do we assume that this must be the definition for something intended to return normalcy to an individual’s life? 

This project set out to explore how design, technology, and a fundamentally new outlook may rethink the prosthetic limb. A combination of 3D scanning, parametric computer modeling, and 3D printing allows design and individuality to be infused into the product on a per-person basis. It invites design and style into an area previously defined only by mechanical necessity. It invites attention and engagement, attempting to celebrate the human it complements.

This panel discussion event is part of a series 2012 ZERO1 Biennial and “The Future Imagined” series of conversations that delve into an in-depth discussion about the intersection of art and technology, and the future of design.

This event is being promoted in collaboration with Codame (www.codame.com)

“Tfisa, Or—-?”, a contemporary dance performance.
January 11th, 8pm
tickets $10 in advance, $15 at the door.
To purchase tickets, click here.

“Tfisa, or—-?”, a contemporary dance performance, was developed at The Performance Art Institute and is directed, choreographed and performed by Yuriy Pestov, the artistic director of Cloud Dancing Enterprise.

It is based on cantorial and other Jewish music. Beautiful cantorial singing with raspy, ululating, sad and smiling voice creates high drama of existentiality with laughter through tears amid it.

A peculiar guttural, visceral and bodily quality reminds one of the humble position we humans occupy in our daily earthly life as the poor replicas of the Almighty. You can hear crying, laughing, and rasping of metal in this beautiful singing. Having in it this great drama and texture both lures a choreographer and suggests an abundance of movement material. In addition this material together with the addition of Jewish klezmer and other melodies, like nigguns, has a rich possibility for ornate and playful dancing. The merry klezmer dancing inserts roaring laughter into the high drama of the majority of the performance. Laughter through tears..

Says Pestov, “I was attracted to these pieces of cantorial music- mostly sung by Zawel Kwartin- by their performance quality, which is on par with the opera. Yet here the most important universal and existential values I have always been fascinated by come straight at you. These are basically prayers or conversing with God set on sublime melodies. A peculiar guttural, visceral and bodily quality reminds one of the humble position we humans occupy in our daily earthly life as the poor replicas of the Almighty. You can hear crying, laughing, and rasping of metal in this beautiful singing. Having in it this great drama and texture both lures a choreographer and suggests an abundance of movement material. In addition this material together with the addition of Jewish klezmer and other melodies, like nigguns, has a rich possibility for ornate and playful dancing. The merry klezmer dancing inserts roaring laughter into the high drama of the majority of the performance. Laughter through tears…”

Yuriy Pestov performed at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, ODC Theater, CounterPulse, The Garage, Shotwell Studios, Union Square, UN Plaza in San Francisco, Julia Morgan Theater in Berkeley, Mountain View Dance Festival, Mountain View, California, sjDANCEco 4th Annual Dancin’ Downtown Festival, San Jose, California and other venues. He presented his own choreography and structured improvisation at the Garage, Project Artaud, UN Plaza, and other venues including Russia and Finland. His work was commissioned by Independent Arts and Media.

pestov.wix.com/clouddancing

Translated by Catherine Robbins and Krystyna Griffith-Jones
Directed by Michael Hunter

Shows run Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from January 24th through February 9th
all shows begin at 8:00pm
Tickets: $30 ($20 student rate)
For tickets email: boxoffice@thecollectedworks.org

The Collected Works (www.thecollectedworks.org), together with the Performance Art Institute, is proud to present the Bay Area professional premiere of Princess Ivona, the 1935 Absurdist comic masterpiece by the celebrated Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz.

Princess Ivona (or Ivona, Princess of Burgundia) is the first, and most internationally performed, of the plays of Witold Gombrowicz, the influential Polish novelist, playwright, and diarist, whom
John Updike has called “one of the profoundest of the late moderns” and Milan Kundera “one of the great novelists of our century.” Widely performed and celebrated throughout Europe and on the East Coast, Gombrowicz’s timeless and wickedly funny allegory is finally being introduced to Bay Area audiences, by a brand-new company of gifted and experienced theatre makers, in the exciting new warehouse space of the Performance Art Institute.

Written in 1935, the play was published in 1938 but not performed until 1957, after which it was immediately banned by the Communist government in Poland. Professional productions of the play began to emerge in Europe in the 1960s, quickly establishing Gombrowicz’s status as a major Modernist playwright.

The play follows the bizarre intrigues of a self-confident Royal Court, whose members enjoy an unchallenged sense of privilege, luxury, and control – over both themselves and others. The presence of a strange, awkward, silent young woman who mysteriously wanders into their world soon throws the court into a tailspin – the King and Queen begin to unravel at the core of their being, and the rational functioning of the court’s administrators becomes increasingly lunatic. As the play spirals towards its astonishing ending, both the story and Gombrowicz’s inventive language become more outlandish and theatrical.

The Collected Works is a new, San Francisco-based producing company, comprised of theatre makers, performers, and scholars, who met and began working together when they were in doctoral programs in performance at Stanford and Berkeley. The group is committed to exploring new collaborative models, and to developing both experimental performance and strong, intelligent productions of classic texts. Princess Ivona is their inaugural production.

The core members of the company are Michael Hunter (director), Barry Kendall (producer and actor), Renu Cappelli (assistant director), Matthew Daube (actor), Florentina Mocanu (actor), and James Lyons (lighting designer). The cast features Tonyanna Borkovi, Ryan Tacata, Brian Smick, Atessa McAleenan-Morrell, Will Trichon, James Udom, Shaudy Danaye-Elmi and Jean Franco.

The production features a large and extremely talented team of designers, including sound designer Derek Phillips, architect Ariane Fehrenkamp, visual curator and furniture designer Brian Yarish, and textile artist Latifa Medjdoub.

In advance of the performance, Latifa Medjdoub has been fabricating a large soft textile sculpture at the Performance Art Institute, which will be used in the performance. The public has been invited to participate in the making of this abstract knitted-fiber piece built on a computerized loom and recalling living forms from the deep ocean.

The incredible local singer and string player Meredith Axelrod (The Get Happy String Band) will perform old American songs from the 20s and 30s as part of this innovative production of Gombrowicz’s classic play.

To celebrate the important debut of Princess Ivona in the Bay Area, leading Gombrowicz scholar Professor Allen Kuharski (Chair of Theater at Swarthmore College) and Lillian Vallee, translator of Gombrowicz’s influential DIARY (recently republished in a new edition by Yale University Press) will lead a talkback after the performance on January 25.

“Review your platitudes.” – Witold Gombrowicz

The Fabric of our Daily Life
Experiencing the making of a soft sculpture

Latifa Medjdoub is a contributing member of The Collected Works, a dynamic collaborative producing company originally formed at Stanford. In the past three months the group has focused on creating a new dimension in the theater field with their respective skills in performance and visual arts, based on a play by the Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz called “Princess Ivona,” directed by Dr. Michael Hunter and assisted by Renu Capelli.
One of the key parts of the performance is the making of a larger soft sculpture at the Performance Art Institute in the SOMA district.The cast, together with the general public visiting “The Future Imagined: What’s Next?” exhibit, curated by Hanna Regev, is invited to participate in the making of the abstract knitted-fiber piece, built on a computerized loom.

The artist is inviting you to be part of the experience of fabricating this soft sculpture piece. Your participation is symbolic and does not request any artistic skills rather than you being part of its conception and eyewitness. Medjdoub will document the process by taking a portrait of each person involved. This material will be then projected during the performance and in other future venues.

From Sunday the 16th to Saturday the 22nd anytime from 10am to 3pm.
Thurday and Friday the 20th and 21st from 10am to 7pm.

Medjdoub has collaborated in a number of theater, opera, film, dance and performance art projects with leading artists Philippe Guillotel, Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle, Christian Lacroix, Gabriella Pescucci, Marina Draghici and directors Raul Ruiz, Yves Angelo, Marcel Marechal, Philippe Decoufle. Her work has been shown at the Museum of textile and fine arts, Roubaix France; Cheongju Art Center, Korea; De Cordova Museum, MA; Santa Fe Art institute, NM; National Building Museum, DC.

http://www.thecollectedworks.org/latifa_s_textures