AND YOU WERE WONDERFUL, ON STAGE

A few weeks ago I participated in a workshop for this forthcoming performance, at Wysing Art Centre, Cambridge.

The work is currently being performed in New York and I hope to join the chorus for the London edition at the Tate in the new year.

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PERFORMA 13

CALLY SPOONER
AND YOU WERE WONDERFUL, ON STAGE

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Friday, November 8, 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm
Saturday, November 9, 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm
Sunday, November 10, 6:30 pm

National Academy Museum, New York

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MOTINTERNATIONAL London and Brussels are delighted to announce Cally Spooner's most ambitious production to date: "And You Were Wonderful, On Stage", a new Musical presented by Performa 13, in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Tate Modern, London.

"And You Were Wonderful, On Stage" is a musical for an a cappella Chorus Line, relocated from the margins of the musical form, to take on a splintered lead role.

Spooner draws on the genre of the Broadway Musical to articulate the constructed mechanics of behaviour and a loss of live delivery in contemporary life. Teetering between moments of comedy and tragedy, the production is structured as a series of prologues and overtures, as the Chorus Line ruminate on fallen idols and dashed dreams, channelling distorted media feeds from current affairs. Prominent figures who have stumbled at a moment of liveness or authenticity, appear abstracted and episodically; Beyonce’s lip-syncing at Obama’s inauguration, Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal and public apology, and more besides, become dramatic public moments of standardization or mechanisation. Spooner sets up an interplay between the elegant, authoritative permanence of the National Academy’s architecture, and the ephemeral movement of songs, bodies, and conversations, asking ‘what it takes’ to become, and remain, visible. As the performance continues, the light, gossipy phrases become infected by an emerging language of “high performance” PR speak, which reaches toward sameness and automation, leading the performance to its climactic, spectacular finale.

"And You Were Wonderful, On Stage" is a Performa Premiere, curated by Charles Aubin and Laura McLean-Ferris.

The project is evolving and itinerant, with musical composition by Peter Joslyn and a core ensemble of singers who have been collectively developing the piece with the artist. The preliminary structure was commissioned and produced by the Stedelijk Museum, curated by Annie Godfrey Larmon with Hendrik Folkerts, and will evolve at and tour to Tate Modern in January 2014.

With very special thanks to Annie Godfrey Larmon and Wysing Arts Centre.

Supported by MOTINTERNATIONAL

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Cally Spooner (1983; Ascot, UK) is an artist based in London.

Using theory and philosophers as alibis to help her write, and casts of arguing characters to help her perform, she produces plotless novellas, disjunctive theatre plays, looping monologues and musical arrangements to stage the movement and behavior of speech.

Spooner’s productions have been presented at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Copenhagen; KW Institute, Berlin; Wysing Art Centre, UK; Jeu De Paume, Paris; Serpentine Gallery, London. She is represented by MOTINTERNATIONAL

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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Nicolas Jaar & Joshua Light Show @ The Barbican

MEGA.

The Source Family

The Weather Underground

Detroit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rkm3y/Requiem_for_Detroit/

Julien Temple's documentary is a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision - a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims.

Detroit was once America's fourth largest city. Built by the car for the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways and shopping centres, it was the embodiment of the American dream. But its intense race riots brought the army into the city. With violent union struggles against the fierce resistance of Henry Ford and the Big Three, it was also the scene of American nightmares.

Now it is truly a dystopic post-industrial city, in which 40 per cent of the land in the centre is returning to prairie. Greenery grows up through abandoned office blocks, houses and collapsing car plants, and swallows up street lights.

Police stations and post offices have been left with papers on the desks like the Marie Celeste. There is no more rush hour on what were the first freeways in America. Crime, vandalism, arson and dog fighting are the main activities in once the largest building in North America. But it's also a source of hope.

Streets are being turned to art. Farming is coming back to the centre of the city. Young people are flocking to help. The burgeoning urban agricultural movement is the fastest growing movement in the US. Detroit leads the way again but in a very different direction. 

Seen: Renzo Martens, Episode 3

Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977

Visited: Sounding The Body Electric @ Calvert 22

Sounding The Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957–1984 is an exhibition on the first experimental approaches to sound and image in Eastern Europe during the 60s and the decades that followed, featuring artworks and recordings by Fluxus artist Milan Knižák, plus works by Sots-Artists Komar & Melamid, Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer and composer Zoltán Jeney.

In the aftermath of Stalinism, composers and artists in Eastern Europe were given new opportunities to experiment. New recording studios equipped with magnetic tape recorders and, later, synthesisers were established, first in Warsaw in 1957 and then throughout Eastern Europe. New and often challenging forms of music were produced in these laboratories of sound.

The connections between the visual arts and experimental music were closer in the 1960s than perhaps any time before or since. Sound and image combined in artists’ films, ‘happenings’ and sounding installations. Experimental forms of notation were also created to stimulate uninhibited musical expression.

The early happenings and actions of the 1960s were associated with intellectual freedom and reform. The exhilaration of experimentation declined during the decade and in the 1970s new critical forms of art emerged which associated sound with surveillance and censorship.

This exhibition explores both the optimism and the anxiety that was to be found in the experimental zone of art and music.

Curated by David Crowley and Daniel Muzyczuk

Artists: Walerian Borowczyk, Collective Actions, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Szábolcs Esztényi, Bulat Galeyev, Milan Grygar, Zofia & Oskar Hansen, Zoltán Jeney, Milan Knížák, Grzegorz Kowalski, Zygmunt Krauze, Komar & Melamid, Katalin Ladik, Jan Lenica, Dóra Maurer, Henryk Morel, Vladan Radovanović, Józef Robakowski, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Bogusław Schaeffer,Cezary Szubartowski, László Vidovszky, Krzysztof Wodiczko

http://calvert22.org/exhibitions/show/955/sounding-the-body-electric-experiments-in-art-and-music-in-eastern-europe-1

Seen: The Act of Killing

Incredible film.

'War crimes' are defined by the winners.

Bruce!

Toril Johannessen

http://www.toriljohannessen.no/

IAIN BAXTER& / Adam Chodzko @ Raven Row

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.E._Thing_Co.

http://www.barnism.com/2009/12/15/n-e-thing-co/

http://www.ravenrow.org/current/

Francis Alÿs: Guards

Francis Alÿs: Guards (2004-5)

Available to watch in full until the end of Armed Forces Week, 24 - 29 June 2013

Guards
Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Rafael Ortega and Artangel

64 Coldstream guards walk separately in the City of London, unaware of one another’s route. The guards wander through the City looking for one another. Upon meeting, they fall into step and march together. When a square measuring 8 by 8 guards is built, the complete formation marches towards the closest bridge. As they step on to the bridge, the guards break step and disperse. These instructions form the basis of the film.

Brazil

SO GOOD.

Open-source Architecture

Down with design elitism - power to the people!

Miranda July on Strangers

Miranda July on Strangers from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Martin Parr

John Whitney-Matrix III (1972)

Seen: Reality @ ICA