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San Francisco, CA 94105
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Event and Calendar Listing: Art Exhibitions/Photography/Film
Contact: Nina Sazevich, Public Relations
415.752.2483
nina911@pacbell.net
Photo credit: Zach GrossJuly 25, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Nina Sazevich, Public Relations
415.752.2483; nina911@pacbell.net
I feel I am free but I know I am not
The audience is the show in this generative exhibition and series of participatory performance events at SF CameraworkSeptember 4 - November 1, 2008
Two free opening events: Thursday, September 4 and Thursday, October 2 from 5-8 pm
Other performance events take place at various times throughout the exhibition
SAN FRANCISCO-- This fall, SF Camerawork invites the public to become the art in I feel I am free but I know I am not. Through a series of participatory multi-media performance events and ongoing interactions in the gallery, this dynamic exhibit evolves as artists and audience collude to turn SF Camerawork into a participatory space and to blur the boundaries between art maker, viewer and media. The exhibition, curated by Chuck Mobley, includes a number of significant new performance works commissioned specifically for this project by artists Roger Sayre, Tim Sullivan, Guillermo Gómez-Peña with Violeta Luna and colleagues from La Pocha Nostra, Second Front, and Oliver Herring with multiTASK. Photographs and video created during the performance events will be exhibited in the gallery with an online component.
The audience and their experiences form the crux of this exhibition. The art works presented depend upon the viewers’ active participation, and as they interact with each work, the projects grow to amass new photographic and digital images related to the encounter, forming a cumulative record of viewer experiences.
The exhibition’s opening will be launched with a series of multi-media performance events in which the audience participates as performers with the artists. Thereafter, the artists will perform periodically at the gallery on a rotating schedule throughout the run of the exhibition.
Roger Sayre
Sitting: One Hour Portraits
On view: Sept 4—Sept 27
Sittings by appointmentSayre’s installation consists of a large pinhole camera and a chair with an upright headrest, akin to those used by 19th Century daguerreotypists to immobilize the sitter's head during lengthy exposures. Visitors who enlist to engage with the contraption sit still while facing a mirror and are 'on exhibit' for the duration of a one-hour exposure. The resulting 16 x 20" portraits will be added to the exhibition to examine the intertwined histories of photography and performance and their impact on the individual. In the words of the artist, “Sitting is as much about the participants' collaboration and perseverance as it is about the actual portraits that result.” Those interested in participating should sign up on SF Camerawork’s email list online at www.sfcamerawork.org to receive notices about sitting opportunities.
Roger Sayre works with elemental aspects of photography such as light, illusion, and prolonged exposures or alternate means of exposure. He earned a Master of Fine Art from Pratt Institute in 1991 and is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY. His work has been exhibited at venues including The Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, MD and the Aldridge Museum of Contemporary Art. He is the recipient of the Pace Summer Research Grant and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Grant.
Tim Sullivan
On view: Sept 4—Sept 27
Participatory performance events:
First Thursday, September 4 from 5-8 pm
Saturday, September 13 from 2-5 pm
Saturday, September 27 from 2-5 pmSullivan invites participants to take part in a scene that is equal parts Gilligan’s Island and Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. Visitors are encouraged to step into a rowboat set up in front of a video camera and blue screen. As the camera rolls, participants and others in the gallery can watch as the actions in the boat are merged with various pieces of film footage created by the artist, inspiring situational improvisation and performance. Visitors are free to interact with this piece at any time. Sullivan will also be facilitating public performances that will be videotaped on dates mentioned above and shown as part of the exhibition.
Tim Sullivan is a multimedia artist who lives and works in San Francisco. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004. Sullivan's work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the world including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore, Poland and Berlin. In Sullivan's work he often casts himself in a series of staged performances/self portraits that often take the form of large color photographs, film, intervention or video. His work examines issues of memory, the body, architecture and landscape, using pop culture, personal history, art history and literature/folklore as raw material.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña with Violeta Luna and colleagues from La Pocha Nostra
Performance Karaoke in Three Parts
On view: Sept 30—Nov 1
Participatory performance events:
First Thursday, October 2 from 5-8 pm Part 1, in which the audience becomes instant performance artists and paparazzi photographers
Saturday, October 11 from 3-5 pm Part 2, in which Bay Area power brokers stage their imagined performance personas
Tuesday, October 21 from 5-8 pm Part 3, in which the audience stages their favorite artworkGuillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra create what critics have described as “radical performance karaoke” events. In the hybrid realm of their interactive performance installations, radical political imagery, religious iconography, pop culture, outrageous racially-oriented costume, theatricalized sexuality and even embalmed animals mix to parody colonial practices of representation including the ethnographic diorama, the freak show, the strip joint, the Indian trading post and their contemporary manifestations.
At SF Camerawork, the group will stage three separate performance events in which the artists will arrange tableaux vivants with the audience, manipulating the participants' body positions and adding costumes and props to their impromptu personae. As audience members join in and adopt a ‘temporary ethnic identity’, the truly political nature of the work reveals itself most strongly as participants begin to make aesthetic, political and ethical decisions on the spot. Photographers will be on hand to capture the results and images will be mounted to create a wall of photographs that grows as the exhibit continues. For the event on October 11th -- Part 2, in which Bay Area power brokers stage their imagined performance personas – La Pocha Nostra will involve invited Bay Area officials and politicians in the work.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña was born in Mexico City and moved to the US in 1978, where he established himself as a performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. In 1991, he became the first Chicano/Mexicano artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (1991-1996). Gómez-Peña's performance art often involves audience participation, elaborate costuming and other collaborators, including Roberto Sifuentes, James Luna, Violeta Luna and Coco Fusco.
Second Front
Identity Theft Virtual
On view: Sept 30—Nov 1
Participatory performance events:
First Thursday, October 2 from 5-8 pm
Thursday, October 23 from 5-8 pmSecond Front is the first performance art group in Second Life—an online 3D world where people interact in a social economy through avatars. Identity Theft Virtual is a performance installation in which Second Front members (9 people distributed internationally) will interact with gallery viewers in real life, take their pictures and gather profile information such as name, age and location through text conversation to be used in two acts of viral performance in October. Visitors to the gallery can, at any time, enter a space in Second Life created by the group especially for this exhibition, interact with an avatar and have their identities “stolen” for the two performances.
Pioneering performance art group Second Front exists only in the online avatar-based virtual reality world known as Second Life. Founded in 2006, Second Front quickly grew to include its current eight members: Jeremy Owen Turner (Vancouver), Doug Jarvis (Victoria), Tanya Skuce (Vancouver), Gazira Babeli (Italy), Penny Leong Browne (Vancouver), Patrick Lichty (Chicago), Liz Solo (St. Johns) and Scott Kildall (San Francisco). Taking their influences from numerous sources, including Dada, Fluxus, Futurist Syntesi, the Situationist International and contemporary performance artists such as Laurie Anderson and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Second Front creates theatres of the absurd that challenge notions of virtual embodiment, online performance and the formation of virtual narrative.
Oliver Herring and multiTASK
TASK Party SF
On view: Sept 4—Nov 1
Screen printing Saturdays: September 6, 13, 20 and 27 from 12-5 pm
Free participatory performance event – TASK Party SF: Saturday, October 4 from 3-9 pm at Workspace Limited, 2150 Folsom Street between 17th & 18th StreetsTASK Party SF begins with a simple task devised by artist Oliver Herring and left in an envelope becoming the catalyst for mass performance. When this first artist-assigned action is completed, participants originate their own tasks for other performers. Some elaborate upon or undo the results of previous tasks. Others require detailed actions with performers. An improvisational event with a simple structure and very few rules, TASK Party SF takes on an open structure without any limitations of size or divisions between viewers and participants. The open-ended, participatory nature of TASK allows for limitless opportunities for members of the audience to interact with one another and their environment. These works generate complex, highly social, potentially anarchic and intensely inspiring situations. A website featuring the project’s video, images, and participants’ experiences will be on view in the gallery and online. The public is also invited to roll up their sleeves with local artist collective multiTASK on Saturdays in September to create silk screen posters, t-shirts and more in preparation for the event.
Herring lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1964, he received a BFA from the University of Oxford (Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art) in Oxford, England, and an MFA from Hunter College in New York. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Task and Task-Parties have been performed in London, Paris, Philadelphia, Toronto, Seattle, and at Washington D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
multiTASK is a group of local artists working with Herring to envision and execute TASK Party SF.
All exhibitions are on view Tuesdays – Saturdays 12-5 p.m. at SF Camerawork, 657 Mission St., Second Floor. Admission to the gallery and performance events is $5.00; $2.00 for students and seniors; free to Camerawork members. TASK Party SF and exhibition opening events on September 4 and October 2 are free to the public. For more information, please call 415.512.2020.
JPG images can be requested electronically. Please contact Nina Sazevich, Public Relations, at (415) 752-2483 or nina911@pacbell.net.
About SF Camerawork
Founded in 1974, SF Camerawork encourages emerging and mid-career artists to explore new directions in photography and related media by fostering creative forms of expression that push existing boundaries. Throughout its history, SF Camerawork has nurtured artists, mentored youth and helped make San Francisco a destination for the exploration of photography as an artist’s medium. Its exhibitions are nationally recognized as a focal point for innovation, a pacesetter for new trends in the medium and a launching pad for the careers of young artists. With three galleries and an education center at its new centrally located facility, SF Camerawork is the only non-profit organization in the Bay Area with an exhibition space and educational programs focused exclusively on contemporary photography and related visual image media. It is an accessible venue for people to view exhibitions, meet artists, participate in educational programs, peruse photographic publications, and gather for lectures, screenings, portfolio reviews, and discussions.
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