Thursday, October 27, 2005

Affairs as performance art

Some time back I was reading an interview with Laurie Anderson. The interview was mostly about her work as NASA's Artist-in-Residence, but in passing she mentioned a performance artist in New York, whose medium was having affairs with her collectors.

I have done some cursory web searching but I haven't found out who this artist is. If you know, please comment; I'd love to know her name.

I've been musing about this on and off ever since I read the interview. Before any of you cynical dismissive types start scoffing and wondering, "what's next?! first it's Sex Worker, and now it's Performance Artist?" just hear me out for a second.

Performance art is multiple disciplines forming one work of art. This art must take place live; it can't be recorded, without ceasing to be performance art.

An affair takes place live, and can't be recorded without ceasing to be that. An affair, in that it's more than just friction of body parts, involves multiple disciplines...potentially sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Plus all the other senses that are engaged when you form a bond with someone.

What must it be like to get a commission from someone, and then start planning and executing the work -- which is an affair? The artist would plan how long the affair would be. She would arrange every aspect of it for her lover -- who is her audience. Surely the artist would want the work to be original, a new way of expressing oneself in the genre. She would want to come up with something thought-provoking, startling, moving.

How much input would the audience have into the work -- since s/he's also commissioning it? Does the audience collaborate with the artist, or is the audience passive?

What would it be like if all of us out there who are having affairs...relationships...viewed them as works of art? If we were that conscious of them, if we cared that much about their beauty, originality, and the way they're expressed; if we considered them an expression of the highest capabilities of our humanity, how would they be different from the relationships we've had up to this point?

What if our partners knowingly collaborated with us in creating the works of art that our affairs can be? What if we were all that engaged, and never took each other for granted?

I never shrink from a challenge. :)

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Great weekend


Paul and I undertook a 12-mile hike, with a 1700-foot overall climb, in Butano State Park. Our goal: to find the Abandoned Landing Field indicated on the map. We'd tried this a couple of years ago and not made it all the way, on account of not having brought any food with us. This time, we were all prepared with sandwiches, granola bars and plenty of water to get us there. And we made it all the way up to the landing field...the most disappointing landing field ever.

I guess I wasn't expecting a flat stretch of gravelly dirt with a radio shack on it. I think from looking at the map, which had an icon that looked like a long concrete slab with a center line painted on it, I erroneously started visualizing it as a concrete slab with a center line painted on it, teeming with the spirits of airplanes that had taken off and landed there, perhaps.

It was so anticlimactic when we got there that Paul wasn't convinced we had actually reached it. A guy came by on a mountain bike and we asked him if this was really the abandoned landing field. He assured us yes, that was it. How long had it been abandoned? 10 or 15 years. Was this really it? Yes. Furthermore, it was the same one that had been featured on Bay Area Backroads. It had been used for logging and ranger stuff and they had landed Piper Cubs there.

Thus underwhelmed, but very thoroughly exercised, we completed the hike and proceeded to Duarte's in Pescadero for dinner. There where the artichoke is a totemic vegetable, we went artichoke mad: chilled artichoke hearts, cream of artichoke soup, artichoke ravioli in pink sauce, and pie a la mode (not artichoke pie. even in Pescadero, apparently, they don't make that). We spent the night in a B&B, and now we're back, lavishing attention on cranky Murphy. :)

Friday, October 14, 2005

60 x 60 Project: new dates

If you want to hear my piece "Cold Blood", and 59 other short pieces, check out the dates below. There have been some new ones added and they're in bold.

February 9th, 2006 60x60 Project at the University at Albany, Albany, New York
December 17th, 2005 60x60 Project at Forest Park Community College, St. Louis, Missouri
December 14th, 2005 60x60 Project at The Essl Collection, Klosterneuburg, Austria
November 19th, 2005 60x60 Project at Los Angeles Harbor College, Wilmington, California
November 16th, 2005 60x60 at Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom
November 12th, 2005 60x60 Project at the Auditorium of the National Conservatory of Region of Lille (CNR), Lille, France
November 11th 2005 60x60 (2005) at Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois

November 6th 2005 60x60 Project at Collective: Unconscious, New York, New York
November 5th, 2005 60x60 Project at Galapagos, Williamsburg, New York
November 3rd, 2005 60x60 Project at Collective: Unconscious, New York, New York
October 22nd, 2005 60x60 Project Kansas City Community College, Kansas City, Kansas

Thursday, October 06, 2005

O my FRAGGING god.

http://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RSPCA/RSPCARedirect&pg=sharkbait

Brace yourself.
And then sign the damn petition.

Monday, October 03, 2005

"Cold Blood" selected for the 2005 60 x 60 Project

My piece, "Cold Blood", which was written for the Pax Recordings compilation "Voices in the Wilderness", has been selected to be a part of the 2005 60 x 60 Project run by the NYC-based Vox Novus collective. For more information about the project and who the other 59 selected composers are, use this link:

http://www.voxnovus.com/60x60.htm

The original "Cold Blood" was about a minute and thirty seconds long, so to meet the 60 x 60 requirements, I had to re-record it and make it exactly one minute long. (Pieces can be 60 seconds long or shorter.) So I had to edit Will Grant's electronica background and re-record the vocal part while speaking faster. All the words are still there though.

Here are the upcoming concert dates for the 60 x 60 project:

02/09/06 - 60x60 Project at the University at Albany, Albany, New York
12/17/05 - 60x60 Project at Forest Park Community College, St. Louis, Missouri
12/14/05 - 60x60 Project at The Essl Collection, Klosterneuburg, Austria
11/19/05 - 60x60 Project at Los Angeles Harbor College, Wilmington, California
11/12/05 - 60x60 Project at the Auditorium of the National Conservatory of Region of Lille (CNR), Lille, France
11/05/05 - 60x60 Project at Galapagos, Williamsburg, New York
11/03/05 - 60x60 Project at Collective: Unconscious, New York, New York

Aviation music

An effort that has taken up most of this year so far is finally coming to a head! This Saturday evening, October 8, will be the world premiere of my piece Remove Before Flight.

The scene will be the annual fundraising gala at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, CA. The gala is sold out, so there will be 300 people there having dinner and listening to aircraft designer Burt Rutan speak. At the beginning of dinner, 4 flutists will take the stage -- myself, Amy Likar, Julie Burkert and Sarah Holzman -- armed with 2 C flutes, an alto flute and a bass flute.

Ten minutes later the crowd will have heard the two movements -- a slow one called "The Breeze" and a fast one called "Takeoff" -- and we'll see what the reaction is to the very first piece of new music commissioned by the Hiller Aviation Museum, supported by a grant from the American Composers Forum's Community Partners Program.

This week is probably going to rush by at a high rate of speed towards Saturday. I'm sure it will be over so fast I won't remember a thing about it. :)