"The Future Is Now!" November 19, 2010

Performance Artists from the Boston Museum School + Peter Kastner/Rodney Dickson

[Germany / Boston]

" The Future is Now! "

Friday, November 19
9:00 pm - 1:00 am
$5 suggested donation

Performance Artists from the Boston Museum School + Peter Kastner/Rodney Dickson

Cathy McLaurin. SMFA, Boston
There's a new vibrancy in the air! It's tangible now! You must be feeling it!

Performance-Art is hitting a new stride, with fresh and original experiences happening within this art form everyday. When Abstract Expressionism hit the art world, it created an explosion. This is the energy we're feeling around performace-art today.

Peter Kastner's work explores new fields in sound, and the Museum School in Boston explores new fields of expression through "solo work based in the visual, while also encouraging an engagement in an interdisciplinary practice incorporating other media." (SMFA website)

ARTISTS:

Special visiting artist:
PETER KASTNER [Germany] with Rodney Dickson

SMFA artists:
Cathy McLaurin
Erik Benjamins
Daniel Cevallos
Sarah Hill
Valerie Rafferty
Heidi Reynolds
Joanna Tam

PETER KASTNER with Rodney Dickson

Born 1960 in Hamburg. Painting since 1981. 1997 cofounder and organisator of the Transindustriell group, 2001 cofounder and organisator of the Trans Industrial Toy Orchestra (TITO). After the end of Trans Industrial (October 2009) there are actual four main projects: KO*OP (together with Paolo Moretto); Permanent Revolution (paintings, installations, performances and audio works) and the two projects for performance and improvised music; Sonic Toy Lab (w. Ine Ophof and Jan van Wissen); futureduck (w. Robert Klammer)
Since 1989 performances, collaborations, group and solo exhibitions in Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Verona, Venedig, New York, Tokyo, Beijing ...
RODNEY DICKSON: Born in 1956 in Northern Ireland, I grew up during the troubled years of civil disorder that engulfed that country. Having drawn and painted since a child, I have reacted to my early experience by considering the futility and hypocrisy of war through art. http://www.rodneydickson.com

MFA SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
students of artist Tony Schwensen

CATHY MCLAURIN
Cathy McLaurin: I use common objects in uncommon ways, transforming my body in order to create a dreamlike atmosphere with an emotional core.

ERIK BENJAMINS
Erik Benjamins explores social ritual with optimism and informality. His practice necessitates participation and exchange, reflecting a desire to investigate the successes and failures of communication within and across cultural contexts. For this exhibition I am facilitating a portable tasting station incorporating audio, text and image.
Erik received a BA, double majoring in Communication Studies and Studio Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA and is currently a second year MFA candidate in Studio Art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in affiliation with Tufts University. Erik Benjamins: http://erikbenjamins.com

SARAH HILL
Sarah Hill: This is what I have been thinking about this semester? Does Artaud intend his ?theatre of cruelty? to be an act of love? ... It can be seen, as an act of love, thus is positivity negates the difficulties of power. For Artaud is clear that although the ?theatre of cruelty? is about power over the audience, it is also about empowering the same audience. This is the double bind of love ?? (223 The skin of the Unconscious, 100 years of cruelty). I am wondering if it is even possible for an audience to feel love or anger? Are they not only experiencing the signifiers of love or anger?

HEIDI REYNOLDS
Heidi Reynolds is a second year MFA student working primarily in performance, video, and sculpture.

JOANNA TAM
Title: 107,594
Joanna Tam is a Hong Kong-born visual artist working primarily in photography and video. She received a BS degree in Computer Science from Boston College and is currently a MFA candidate at the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Often incorporating performative elements in her practice, she makes work that provokes discourses on issues and social phenomena around the themes of identity and social memory

DANIEL CEVALLOS
Title: Out of bounds
By the use of soccer vernacular, Out of Bounds, is the blurring and the revealing of the obvious, understanding, translating, and communicating with equanimity and quietness. The substitution of some seriousness for a bit of absurdity and even humor, finds a balance of ambiguity and specificity. Art has the potential to closely question and activate the space created between two sides of a conflict.
I am interested in how each individual becomes existentially aware of her/his social standing and her/his relationship to those parameters that politically situate us all in the world.