THUR. JAN. 7, 2010, Showings at 7PM & 8:15PM Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace FREE
Remember The Amazing Animated Jukebox Vol. 1?
Tune in for Vol. 2 packed chock full of wicked awesome animated tracks
compiled by Ted Mills! Starts at 7 PM sharp and rewinds for a second
time at 8:15 PM!
Kick the New Year off right with the second
installment of the Amazing Animated Jukebox. Curated by local filmmaker and writer Ted Mills, the Amazing Animated Jukebox Vol. 2 screens videos from Menomena, N.A.S.A. featuring Kool Keith and Tom
Waits, Death Cab for Cutie, Birdy Nam Nam, Lemon Jelly, Royksopp,
Azeem, The New Pornographers, and many more. Don’t miss your fix of the
latest wave in animated eye candy ranging from old-school 2-D line
drawing to computer graphics and those that negotiate the subtle levels
in between!
Funding and support for the ‘09-‘10 Forum Lounge season is generously
provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Make Studio, and
the Franciscan Inn. Official media sponsors: the Santa Barbara
Independent and KCSB 91.9 FM. Forum Lounge is presented in association
with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s First Thursdays.
THUR. DEC. 3, 2009 , 7 PM Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace FREE
Quebec-born artist Julie Lequin explores the construction of identity through role-playing and props, oftentimes with humorous results. A participant in CAF's exhibition Unusual Behavior, Lequin will present a performance piece related to her newest video work in progress Top 30.
Funding and support for the ‘09-‘10 Forum Lounge season is generously provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Make Studio, and the Franciscan Inn. Official media sponsors: the Santa Barbara Independent and KCSB 91.9 FM. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s First Thursdays.
Curator Note:
Julie Lequin's work blends theatrical unconvention, humor and pop culture in such a seamless, inventive manner that I immediately knew that I wanted to include her piece, Car Talk, in the Unusual Behavior exhibition at CAF. To compliment the show, I asked Julie to present her work in progress, Top 30, as a performance art piece for the Forum Lounge series. In addition to her filmmaking, Julie is a prolific sketch artist who prepares her films by creating paintings and drawings to lay out her work, scene by scene. This urge to draw and record her own history has greatly informed Top 30, a project in which Julie documents every year of her life until age 30. Using her charming drawings and humorous narrative, Julie pieces together the many places, emotions and thoughts from the past and accompanies them with a soundtrack of an actor (playing her) who sings one song that indicative of that particular year. The result is a poignant travelogue of sorts that focuses on the minute details of her life to form a revealing portrait of the artist.
Forum Lounge: Bruce McClure, Projector Performances
THU. NOV. 5, 2009, 7 PM Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace FREE
Using an array of modified 16mm projectors, film loops, and guitar pedals, Bruce McClure's work challenges cinematic conventions. His performances have enraptured audiences at the Whitney Biennial in ’02 and ’04 and multiple times at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and have garnered him the 2008 Alpert Award in the Arts.
Funding and support for the ‘09-‘10 Forum Lounge season is generously provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Make Studio, Endever Music, and the Franciscan Inn. Official media sponsors: the Santa Barbara Independent and KCSB 91.9 FM. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s First Thursdays.
Curator's Note:
I first became of aware of Bruce's projector performances at Light Industry, a film and media space in New York. Since most of my curating happens online, I do a majority of my research by visiting other organizations who present similar work. Bruce seemed a perfect fit for Forum Lounge: his work has been highly regarded by institutions like the Herb Alpert Award Foundation, for which he won a prize in 2008, and he presented a new perspective on the presentation of film and sound based on its cinematic roots. Bruce's performances incorporate the thrill of experimentalism with the specificity of a film mechanic as he translates the physicality of filmmaking into an experiential phenomenon. As a result, his work is not for the faint of heart;in addition to the flashing, throbbing lights the projectors give off, sound is a crucial element in Bruce's work. Loud is an insufficient description; thundering pulsations more aptly conveys the intensity of his work. But after you have settled into the experience, the physical shock of the visual and audio components melt into a meditative effect, where the performance becomes the background to a surprisingly introspective moment.
THU. OCT. 1, 2009, 4 PM Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace FREE
Photo by Sarah Clark
Inspired by a love for bikes, city cruising, critical mass, costumes, silliness, and things that inflate, Aeolian Ride is a mass participatory bicycling performance with a sense of humor. This is special outdoor collaborative event that has been performed in cities across the world. Afterwards, all are welcome to join the riders and volunteers at CAF to view video footage of the event.
Co-sponsored by the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition and WheelHouse.
Funding and support for the ‘09-‘10 Forum Lounge season is generously provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Make Studio, and the Franciscan Inn. Official media sponsors: the Santa Barbara Independent and KCSB 91.9 FM. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s First Thursdays.
Curator's Note:
Aeolian Ride was the lovechild of a new romance between CAF and the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, a local organization dedicated to promoting and advocating for cyclists in Santa Barbara. Jessica's piece was brought to my attention by a good friend, Don Lubach, who has been following her site-specific performance rides with rapt appreciation for the last few years. When he voiced his dream to one day bring her project to Santa Barbara, I jumped on the opportunity, as it seemed the perfect chance to meld two diverse cultures--visual arts and cycling--of our local community.
Jessica has been producing Aeolian Ride incities worldwide for the last couple of years with great success. Inspired by her own love of the two-wheeled transportation, her childlike enthusiasm and whimsical aesthetic seemed perfectly suited to a mass bicycle ride past Santa Barbara's beautiful beachscapes. As a collaborative performance art piece, I was particularly excited to include Aeolian Ride into this year's Forum Lounge series because it captures both the spirit of working together to make art and the joy of riding. Despite some logistic challenges determining the course of the ride through Santa Barbara's downtown area, we successfully gathered over 50 people outiftted in Jessica's handmade blow up costumes, pedaled them past surprised onlookers and finally met back at CAF to view footage of this mass performance piece. And what a site to behold it was.
Forum Lounge: Daniel Barrow, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry
THU. SEP. 3, 2009 - 7 PM Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace FREE
Winnipeg-based artist and featured performer at the 2009 Time-Based Art Festival in Portland, OR, Daniel Barrow uses obsolete technologies as "manual" forms of animation by projecting, layering, and manipulating drawings on old-school overhead projectors.
Funding and support for the ‘09-‘10 Forum Lounge season is generously provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Make Studio, and the Franciscan Inn. Official media sponsors: the Santa Barbara Independent and KCSB 91.9 FM. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s First Thursdays.
Curator's Note:
Daniel Barrow has been producing his multimedia performances are pieces for major festivals, including TBA at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, where I first noticed his work. Based in Winnipeg, Daniel was the first non-US artist to be a part of Forum Lounge, due largely to the NEA grant we received to fund the program which increased my travel budget for artists. I was intrigued by one of Daniel's earlier pieces, Winnipeg Babysitter, in which he appropriated clips from Winnipeg's public access TV station in the 1980s. The result was--not surprisingly--hilarious and intimately revealing at the same time, like peeking into the window of a neighborhood garage where teenage kids practice their flailing musical pursuits.
The same sense of voyeurism informs the piece Daniel performed at CAF: Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry. Incorporating film, drawing, music and storytelling, Daniel uses a relic of art historian proportions--the overhead projector--to perform his piece, weaving a complex murder-mystery of a garbage man who traces the inhabitants of a city through their bedroom windows to create an independent phone book. Both eerily unsettling and compelling in itsdelicate aesthetic, Daniel translates the first person experience into a captivating storytelling collaboration, drawing the viewer in through the immediacy of his illustrations and the deliberate pacing of the narrative.
THUR. FEB. 4, 7 PM (with a repeat performance at 8 PM) Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace FREE
Experimental
theatre artist Susan Simpson uses intricate marionettes and unusual
film projections to create captivating performances of puppet theatre.
Simpson is co-founder of The Manual Archives, a micro theater and
exhibition space devoted to the presentation of newly discovered and
invented folklore of Los Angeles.
Funding and support for the ‘09-‘10 Forum Lounge season is generously
provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Make Studio, and
the Franciscan Inn. Official media sponsors: the Santa Barbara
Independent and KCSB 91.9 FM. Forum Lounge is presented in association
with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s First Thursdays.
Curator's Note:
Now that the Forum Lounge is in its fourth year and has built a diverse audience in Santa Barbara, I strive to maintain a similarly reflective diversity in curating. Out of the 11 performances that happen over the course of the year, my goal is to program events that touch upon the many types of performance art happening across the US and internationally. Whether these events are based in music, theatre, film, or a combination of different media, my final intent is to bring captivating and revealing performance art to Santa Barbara that is indicative of larger performance art practices around the world.
For the February Forum Lounge, I'm excited to present Susan Simpson. I first became familiar with Susan's work after seeing her listed as part of REDCAT's series. Susan is a professor of Theatre at the prestigious CalArts and is also an experimental theatre artist and filmmaker who's work has won critical acclaim, including her theatrical performances at The Manual Archives. I was first drawn to Susan's unique brand of performance art because of her theatrical background and work with puppetry, an art form that combines the narrative of theatre with complex artmaking skills in puppet craft and set and lighting design. But what I find most appealing about Susan's work is the interplay between different media as she incorporates film and imagery with the production values of a theatrical endeavor. And, by drawing up on Los Angeles folklore and mythology, the subject matter becomes even more pertinent to a Santa Barbara audience.
Click here to read an article on Susan's work in the LA Times:
Come see works by internationally renowned artists and local art luminaries beginning January 29th for the La Vie en Rose exhibition.
January 29 - February 5, 2010 La Vie en Rose: Annual Valentine's Exhibition Adrienne
Allebe, Amy Bessone, Calico Brown, Alejandro Casazi, Nicole Cherubini,
Stephanie Dotson, Jayson Eoff, Julia Ford, Tera Galanti, Servando
Garcia, Penelope Gottlieb, Carlos A. Grano, Saul Gray-Hildenbrand,
Kimberly Hahn, Jean-Pierre Hebert, Mary Heebner, Susan Jorgensen, Ann
Luther, Hugh Margerum, Carrie Maseredjian, Bob Mask, Michael Barton
Miller, Barbara Parmet, Zacarias Paul, Rafael Perea de la Cabada, Gail
Pine, Harry Reese and Sandra Liddell Reese, Richard Ross, Warren
Schultheis, Joe Shea, Dante Sigismondi, Steven Smith, Jason Sober, Kat
Trajano, Patrick Turner, James Van Arsdale, Mitchell Wright, Kathleen
Yorba, Seyburn Zorthian, and Pamela Zwehl-Burke.
A sister exhibition of couture inspired paintings by Doug Wada will be on view from Jan 27 - Feb 4 at dressed/ready .
CAF is a non-profit, non-collecting institution dedicated to exhibiting the highest quality of contemporary art while recognizing "the artists of tomorrow," and was founded in 1976 by artists and art supporters seeking a venue dedicated solely to contemporary art. What once began as a grassroots, artist-run organization with nominal funding now serves as the leading contemporary arts presenter in Central California. CAF offers its innovative education and exhibition programming to the region primarily free of charge. There is no admission fee because CAF believes that the arts should be accessible to all audiences of all persuasions. It truly is foundations and individuals from the community that keep CAF active, inspired and alive with opportunities for artists, children, and adults to experience all the visual and performing arts have to offer.
