Contemporary Performance is hosting an online video festival of performance works and excerpts from 06.14.2010 to 07.02.2010. We’ve curated some of our favorite user submissions and online videos from today’s leading contemporary artists and embeded them here. The videos range in purpose and content and include rehearsal videos, process videos, performance documentation, lectures, made for video, dance on camera, video art, and vj.

DAY 07

Proto-type Theater (UK)
Virtuoso (working title)

The ‘garden’ scene from Virtuoso (working title)
written/directed by Peter S Petralia
performed and devised by Mark Esaias, Gillian Lees and Andrew Westerside
music/sound design by [zygote]
lighting design by Rebecca MK Makus

Visual foley. A television show that doesn’t exist. A spot on the wall.

With Virtuoso (working title), Proto-type Theater expands on the sensual experience of their critically acclaimed Whisper into a world of televisual decadence. Three performers stage the story of a stagnant American suburbia, circa 1963, where the minutiae of everyday life has become strange: glass windows portend violence, a spot on the wall promises freedom, a stranger appears in the living room. Playing games to keep boredom at bay, they switch virtuosically from persona to persona, never content to idly wait for something to happen. Outside, the world seems to be closing in on them as the protective banality of suburbia dissolves – leaving them stranded, and exposed.

The audience witnesses the construction of this strange world on three flat screen monitors, behind which the performers can be seen assembling the backgrounds, costumes and props necessary to crafting a series of perfect images. Building the visual world in front of the audience using live video feeds, the performers also manipulate miniature figurines, houses and scenery in a play on scale that toys with the boundaries of perception. Virtuoso (working title) is a negotiation of the live and the mediated, ruminating on love, home, and perfection.

Proto-type Theater is based in Lancaster, UK and Brooklyn, NY and we make original theater and media work that tours internationally. Our recent piece, Virtuoso (working title) is touring throughout the UK where it has been hailed as “an immensely satisfying piece of culture history” and as “an exhilarating theatrical experience” by Total Theatre. Whisper toured throughout the UK and to PS 122 in New York City where it was acclaimed as “an intriguing brush with altered reality… poetic. And the production flirts with the feel of a supernatural, psychological thriller.” (New York Times). We create touring theatre/live art/media, conduct workshops and summer schools, and run networking events to create a stronger contemporary performance sector in the UK.

die urbanauten (Munich, Germany)
Moment of Starlings

Video of the second swarm happening on November 25th by die urbanauten (Munich) within the SPIELART theatre festival 2009 with the support of the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Munich.

Real-time theatrical happenings in real public space, which set the stage for encounters. Selforganized
performative urbanity. Swarm communication in 140 characters. A relay station coordinates the players
in the swarm. There are two channels of communication: mail-to-SMS and an event-specific twitter channel.

Moment of Starlings allows participants to communicate, discuss and distribute ideas via SMS back channel
or hash tag (such as #schwarm1). The swarm is democratic: anyone with a mobile phone or a twitter
account may suggest a location, a time or a choreography for the swarm’s performance – in advance or
in real time. The idea most often sent or “retweeted” is realized; in other words: the most democratically
popular idea prevails.

Absent spectators are not limited to real time twittering; they can watch the motions of the swarm,
which is accompanied by several mobile livestream cameras. Intervention and participation is possible
from a couch in Tokyo just as easily as from a mobile phone in the swarm. Communication sans frontières.
Genres with fuzzy borders. A communication cloud surrounds the project.

Contemporary Performance is hosting an online video festival of performance works and excerpts from 06.14.2010 to 07.02.2010. We’ve curated some of our favorite user submissions and online videos from today’s leading contemporary artists and embeded them here. The videos range in purpose and content and include rehearsal videos, process videos, performance documentation, lectures, made for video, dance on camera, video art, and vj.

DAY 06

Andrey Bartenev (Moscow, Russia)
100 games on one face” performance

Andrey Bartenev is a graphic artist, designer, author of a number of sculptural performances.

Russell Higgs (London, UK)
999 Days

A CULTURE’S POWER STRUCTURE DEPENDS LARGELY ON HOW WE LOOK AND HOW WE ARE LOOKED AT.

Between 17th July 2006 and 29th May 2009, working with mask and sculpture, Russell Higgs created a photo of himself every day.

In this project he made a commitment to abide by a series of (arbitrary) boundaries and rules, eg: each portrait must be taken between midnight of each day, they can never be shot days in advance nor in retrospect, and the default pose is as for ID cards, forward facing, and minimal expression.

Contemporary Performance is hosting an online video festival of performance works and excerpts from 06.14.2010 to 07.02.2010. We’ve curated some of our favorite user submissions and online videos from today’s leading contemporary artists and embeded them here. The videos range in purpose and content and include rehearsal videos, process videos, performance documentation, lectures, made for video, dance on camera, video art, and vj.

DAY 03

Kalup Linzy (USA)
All My Churen (2003)

Second installment of the churen series and the debut of the Braswell family played by Kalup Linzy. Kalup Linzy (born July 23, 1977) is an American video and performance artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Clermont, Florida, Linzy graduated from the MFA program at the University of South Florida in 2003. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture video art workshop, and in 2005 received a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Linzy was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2007. Linzy’s best known work is a series of video art pieces satirizing the tone and narrative approach of television soap opera.[citation needed] Linzy performs most of the characters himself, many of them in drag. He also performs many of the same characters on stage. Linzy’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, and Artforum.

Ryan Trecartin (USA)
I-BE AREA (Pasta and Wendy M-PEGgy)

Ryan Trecartin (b.1981, Webster, Texas) is a filmmaker and artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. recartin’s work has been exhibited at The Moore Space in Miami and the Getty Center in Los Angeles Getty Center and at the Penrith Regional Gallery in Australia. Reckless Behavior (video). April 19, 2006. Retrieved September 22, 2008.. He participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennale at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the “USA Today” exhibition at The Royal Academy in London. Trecartin was included in the 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled “The 23-Year Old Masters,” which selected ten top emerging US artists including Dash Snow, Rosson Crow, Zane Lewis, and Keegan McHargue. His work is featured in the Saatchi Gallery collection. He is represented by Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York.
In 2009, he became the first recipient of the Wolgin Prize awarded by Tyler School of Art.

Contemporary Performance is hosting an online video festival of performance works and excerpts from 06.14.2010 to 07.02.2010. We’ve curated some of our favorite user submissions and online videos from today’s leading contemporary artists and embeded them here. The videos range in purpose and content and include rehearsal videos, process videos, performance documentation, lectures, made for video, dance on camera, video art, and vj.

DAY 02

Controllar (Netherlands)
Anat Spiegel & Thomas Myrmel STEIM 2009

Controllar, art-pop duo of Thomas Myrmel & Anat Spiegel, spent two weeks in residency at STEIM, studio for electro-instrumental music in Amsterdam. The focus of this residency was to further develop the unique combination of vocals and electronics used in their live performance. Filmed and edited by Vivian Wenli Lin.

John Jahnke/Hotel Savant (USA)
The Archery Contest

The Party: Two teenagers are invited to the Reverend Kendrick’s home to celebrate an unnamed festivity. The Reverend’s wife does her best to entertain in a wholesome fashion, though the purpose of their invitation seems oddly licentious. Filmed at Performance Space 122, October 2009. Developed at 3LD Art and Technology Center. The document was filmed in performance and features Alexander Borinsky, Hillary Spector, Richard Toth, Carey Urban and Jeff Worden. Script, Direction, Design by John Jahnke. Set Design Peter Ksander. Sound Design Kristin Worrall. Lighting Design Miranda Hardy. Video Design Andrew Schneider. Costume Design Carlos Soto.

The Hotel Savant, a theatre company based in New York City, explores the livid, the uncertain, the magical and sublime: the seminal ideologies of history and mythology and their impact on contemporary narrative. Committed to mounting or developing one original work per year, they utilize a variety of performance techniques that include pageantry, dance and tableau. In addition they are dedicated to reviving obscure and rarely performed texts that correlate to present day topics. Utilizing visuals to explore the inherent root of a text, the company actively employs artists and designers with visionary interest, whose goal is to redefine standards of theatrical language and design. Works include The Archery Contest, Performance Space 122, 2009; Antonin Artaud’s The Cenci, The Ohio Theatre, 2008; Susan Sontag’s A Parsifal, Performance Space 122, 2006; Funeral Games (performance workshop), The Public Theater, 2004; The Shady Maids of Haiti, Walkerspace, 2002; Mercurius, HERE, 2001; and Lola Montez in Bavaria, HERE, 1999.

Contemporary Performance is hosting an online video festival of performance works and excerpts from 06.14.2010 to 07.02.2010. We’ve curated some of our favorite user submissions and online videos from today’s leading contemporary artists and embeded them here. The videos range in purpose and content and include rehearsal videos, process videos, performance documentation, lectures, made for video, dance on camera, video art, and vj.

DAY 01

Meg Stuart (Belgium)
BLESSED

The American choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart and the Portuguese choreographer and dancer Francisco Camacho met in New York in 89. He followed her to Belgium to dance in her debut work Disfigure Study. After that each went their own way but now theyre collaborating once more. Meg Stuart has choreographed BLESSED, a new piece with Francisco Camacho in a sound design by Hahn Rowe. In a corner of the world a man has created his own little paradise. How fragile are our mental constructions? How much illusion do we need to survive? Is mankind capable not to believe? Or is it the luxury of the privileged to escape in pipedreams? Is hope a matter of circumstances?

les ballets C de la B / Alain Platel (Belgium)
Out of Context – for Pina

Nothing up their sleeves, and nothing in their pockets. With Out of Context, director Alain Platel aims to return to the fundamentals of dance. Starting from a belief in the human body as emotional tool, as carrier of memories, as raw material for living fine art. While Platel has flirted with the boundaries of opera over the past years, with for example vsprs or pitié!, Out of Context is not a music-driven piece, and also has no set or costumes other than those the dancers can fit in their suitcases. It is however no crisis piece. It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself. The mastery of the dancers with which Platel embarks on this adventure is indisputable. Each and every one is an impressive figure with whom Platel has travelled far over the years.

Danced and created by:
Elie Tass, Emile Josse, Hyo Seung Ye, Kaori Ito, Mathieu Desseigne Ravel, Mélanie Lomoff, Romeu Runa, Rosalba Torres Guerrero, Ross Mc Cormack