22 August 2008

Today is the day...

An online bouquet for those who can't make it



See you soon, though!

15 August 2008

The Near Far

Saturday at 8 p.m. Sounds like fun. Thanks to Adam for the tip (Yes -- I sometimes rely on Berliners to get the word about what's going on in Kansas City)

See you there maybe

The Near Far – A one-time performance conceived and orchestrated by Jane Beachy + Randall K. Cohn

Charlotte Street Foundation


On August 16, 2008, a group of 14 artists from a dozen cities will present The Near Far, a performance built out of material they have spent the last year developing primarily through email exchanges. The piece will feature photography, video, text, music, choreography, and other materials created around the themes of distance, longing, mediation and mobility. The piece was conceived and orchestrated by Kansas City natives Jane Beachy and Randall K. Cohn (former director of The Evaporated Milk Society).

Beginning in September, 2007, the participating artists exchanged material once a month, building on and adapting each other’s work according to assignments from Cohn and Beachy, who archived all of the material and administered the exchanges. The artists, many of whom had never met each other before the project, will gather in Kansas City at la Esquina, August 10 – 17, for an intense workshop during which they will turn the
resulting raw material into a one-time performance.

The project was born out of an observation that while concepts like community and immediacy are often central to the rhetoric surrounding theater and performance art, the lifestyles of people working in those fields are often particularly itinerant, and their important relationships are increasingly maintained through electronic media across vast distances. The Near Far seeks to explore this paradox, both in the form of the collaboration itself and in the chosen themes around which the project was built.

Participating artists include Christopher Cromwell (Bar Harbor), Cara DeFabio (San Francisco), Laura Frank (Kansas City), Adam Greenfield (New York), Joe Hammers (Kansas City), Brynn Hambly (Seattle), John Kaufmann (Iowa City), Eric Lendl (New York), Carrie Louise Nutt (New Brunswick), Dhira Rauch (Los Angeles), Ava Roy (Oakland), and Allison Waters (Eugene).


Saturday, August 16, 2008
8 pm

Venue: la Esquina (an Urban Culture Project space)
1000 West 25th Street
Kansas City, MO 64108
Jackson County


Phone: 816-221-5115

Venue Website: http://www.urbancultureproject.org

Parking: parking on street




FREE

07 August 2008

Ghosties on Daytrotter


www.daytrotter.com

Tour dates:

Aug 8 2008 / Record Bar / Kansas City, Missouri
Aug 9 2008 / The Matinee / Cleveland, Ohio
Aug 10 2008 / The M Room / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Aug 11 2008 / The Red and The Black / Washington DC
Aug 12 2008 / Cake Shop / New York, New York
Aug 13 2008 / Death By Audio / Brooklyn, New York
Aug 14 2008 / Space Gallery / Portland, Maine
Aug 15 2008 / PA’s Lounge / Somerville, Massachusetts
Aug 16 2008 / Radio Bean / Burlington, Vermont
Aug 17 2008 / The Bug Jar / Rochester, New York
Aug 29 2008 / Eighth St. Taproom / Lawrence, Kansas
Sep 5 2008 / Record Bar / Kansas City, Missouri

06 August 2008

Cory's Drawing Game (Selected Works)

As self-absorbed as blogs can get, the best posts to me are ones involving the talent and bright ideas of others. Today's featured artwork is just that -- a collaborative text and illustration narrative brought into being via the game Cory introduced us to at the Stained Glass Factory circa sometime last year.

The instructions are pretty simple. If you've got 5 players, each person should start out with 5 index card-sized sheets of paper stacked on top of each other. Once everyone agrees to start, each player independently (and privately) writes an aphorism, common saying or quotation on the first piece of paper in ink. They then pass the whole stack counter-clockwise (I believe -- variations may exist) and the player then interprets his lefthand neighbor's text with an interpretive illustration. After only a few minutes, the stack is again passed, and the illustration re-interpreted and a new caption given (although the possibility certainly exists that the original caption may be recognized in the drawing, I've yet to see the same caption duplicated on subsequent cards).

After the players have received the stack they started with, the players go around the room and -- frame by frame -- reveal the story they've constructed together.

The four sequences I'm unveiling today were completed by Toby, Dave, Stu, Jenn and I, but Cory's imagination is easy to recognize in the overall spirit of the pieces.

I was going to post them one day at a time through the rest of the week, but I think it's best to keep them together. Besides, if you want to see more you can always come up with them yourself. Well, you and a few other people who are up for playing a cool drawing game.

...............

Believe It Or Not...


Space IS The Place


It Takes Two To Tango


The Fate of Humankind Is An Eternal Infancy