Forum Lounge: robbinschilds, I came here on my own
5 pm Happy Hour
7 pm Performance
Moving towards more conceptual themes in their new work, the New York-based robbinschilds draws from an archetypal allegory known as “Man Alone”, which the duo encountered during their residency in New Zealand. Through video installation and performance, robbinschilds exchanges the “man” with “woman” in a feminist reworking of the estranged mythic tale.
ADMISSION IS FREE
Forum Lounge is a series of free, performance-based events that reflect CAF’s mission to sustain and encourage the artistic process by presenting art in the form of exceptional music, dance, video, and other multi-media to our community. The series encourages experiences with unique performance pieces ranging from the theatrical to the avant-garde that are normally found only in large metropolitan venues.
Having been described as “resistant to easy reading” in a recent review of her solo exhibition at the Jane Deering Gallery, Joan Tanner is an artist whose work reaches a degree that few Santa Barbara-based artists have reached. Like her creative energy, her concepts are bold and witty. Being inspired by such themes as spatial contradiction, archetypal geometric forms, and raw material, her work spans more traditional mediums as well as newer, multi-media formats. She has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, including the Otis College of Art and Design and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work is in such collections as the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities in Los Angeles, CA, and Harvard University Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA.
ADMISSION IS FREE
The smART Talks program serves to increase awareness of local artists through a series of three annual lectures by Santa Barbara-based artists. The series, begun in 1996, was created in honor of Helen Rosenberg, mother of Susan Rose, and grandmother of Julie Weiner, and honors artists who live and work in the Santa Barbara area.
5 pm Happy Hour 7 pm Performance Referred to by the Los Angeles Times as "an utterly engaging performer," Davy Rothbart, a frequent contributor to National Public Radio's “This American Life,” will read hilarious and heartbreaking excerpts from his acclaimed magazine Found, and essays from his book My Heart Is an Idiot.
ADMISSION IS FREE
Forum Lounge is a series of free, performance-based events that reflect CAF’s mission to sustain and encourage the artistic process by presenting art in the form of exceptional music, dance, video, and other multi-media to our community. The series encourages experiences with unique performance pieces ranging from the theatrical to the avant-garde that are normally found only in large metropolitan venues.
Special thanks to: Endever Music Productions, Santa Barbara, CA; Franciscan Inn, Santa Barbara, CA; KCSB, Santa Barbara, CA; National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC; Paseo Nuevo Shopping Center, Santa Barbara, CA; Santa Barbara Independent, CA; and Warbler Records & Goods, Santa Barbara, CA. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
Weaving autobiographical text through live narration, as well as photographs from the archive of Intersex pioneer Lynn Edwards Harris, Zackary Drucker inserts her own unfiltered commentary of Harris’ brilliant and mostly unseen contributions to the world, while addressing the intersection and parallels of her own experience as a “gender con-artist.” This performance is recommended for mature audiences.
Categories:
Tags: Lynn Edwards Harris, Zackary Drucker, Forum Lounge, performance, art
Thursday, April 5, 7 pm Pre-performance Happy Hour, 5 pm
Suddenly Summer Somewhere is a duet that follows the relationship between two performers, Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass, who embody quirky, fallible, and familiar characters. This whimsical dance theater piece is set to live recordings of the Rat Pack and blends deadpan comedy, space-devouring choreography, and awkwardly strenuous partnering. Barnes’ work slips between comedy and tragedy as the performers struggle along their journey together.
Monica Bill Barnes & Co. will be performing at Center Stage Theater at 7 pm. We invite you to arrive early and join us for a pre-performance Happy Hour starting at 5 pm at CAF, featuring La Tour Wine, music by Warbler Records, and an opportunity to peruse the exhibition Flights from Wonder.
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: Endever Music Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, La Tour Wine, the National Endowment for the Arts, Santa Barbara Independent, Therese Schweidler, and Warbler Records. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
San Francisco-based, integrated media artist and director Christine Marie breaks new ground in her performance Multiplying Spectacles. Based on the history of mirrors, her large-scale projected shadow theater performance is accompanied by a live score, incorporating video effects and 3D stereoscopic shadow work. Being intrinsically tied to ancient art forms, and metaphysical explorations of light, she creates images that invite one to remember a sense of being beyond the rational mind, where historic figures, dream sequences, and present day mix with thought processes and memory.
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
Founded in 2006, casebolt and smith are a Los Angeles-based theater duo that skirt the proverbial line between the profound and the absurd, often siding with humor and irreverence. O(h)evolves from demonstrations of what they can, can’t, and won’t do into intricate movement phrases layered with pop culture references. Speaking directly to the audience while dancing and sometimes singing, they offer honest insights into their limitations as a duet company and their fear of becoming unoriginal. The result is a fast-paced, complex and hilarious glimpse into the minds and pants of casebolt and smith.
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
Thursday, November 3, 7 pm Influential theater and film director Peter Glantz presents his multi-media solo performance, Being Impossible. With original unreleased music by Baltimore musicians Twig Harper and Dan Deacon, Glantz performs an ongoing, ever-changing show, featuring pure love, humor, colorful videos, and interstellar travel about a student’s journey to the sun. On both stage and screen, Peter has a signature whimsical visual style that combines a total commitment to fun and capturing the spirit and truth of the subject, story, or song.
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery,and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
Brooklyn-based video and performance artist Shana Moulton presents a new version of the multi-media performance I Lost Something in the Hills, first presented in May 2011 at New York’s Bard College. Moulton’s performances and videos unfold atmospheric, askew narratives that combine wry humor with a low-tech, pop sensibility. She integrates theosophical and anthroposophical theories into carefully orchestrated settings, while testing them as to their adequacy for daily life.
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
ADMISSION IS FREE
Categories:
Tags: Forum Lounge, 1st Thursday, Shana Moulton, CAF
Thursday, September 1, 7 pm Forum Lounge: Kegan McGurk, MEMORY DRAIN
Performance artists Kegan McGurk and Elisabeth McMullin use a digital magic system mixing combinations of augmented reality, computer vision, and three dimensional programming to tell stories. This interactive video projection creates an immersive reality, allowing virtual objects, characters and animations to be placed, moved and dragged around the stage. MEMORY DRAIN incorporates a live drawing technique inspired by Vaudeville theatrics where the audience is drawn into the experience through interactive animations.
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
CAF welcomes back art video jockey Annie Wharton, who has compiled a stimulating mix of short videos by artists working in the medium. The videos encompass a wide range of subject matter including hilarious slices of life; corporeal, action-based performances; stop-motion graphics; and computer-generated iconography. The artists for this series Brian Bress, Andy Cahill, Tyler Calkin, Kelly Cline, Phoebe Collings-James, Spencer Douglass and Gustavo Herrera, Zackary Drucker, Aaron GM, Jake Jones, Peter Harkawik, Micol Hebron, Justin H. Long, Clynton Lowry, Josh Mannis, Hazel Hill McCarthy III, Nikhil Murthy, Davida Nemeroff, Clover Oak, Tyler Matthew Oyer, Samuel Partal and Carrie Schrick, Carl Pomposelli, Pascual Sisto, and Mark Verabioff, were selected for their diversity of form and strength of execution. The videos run the gamut for video works being made today. (Note: these works may contain adult subject matter.)
Support for Forum Lounge 2011-2012 is generously provided by: the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
Artists Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman present a mash-up of live music, video, and staged theatrics, in a choreographed array of live shredding, extreme feedback, youtube bombardment, ecstatic dance moves, and Sunday morning cartoons. The short performance works range from absurd inspirational lectures, to musings on contemporary internet culture, to introspective meditations on metal guitar shredding technique, all couched within a lo-fi, intentionally awkward 'performance art' aesthetic. Their newest performance delves into the world of tween culture and the current obsession with the infinite hall of mirrors known as "forever young".
Jacob Ciocci is an artist and current Eyebeam Fellow notably regarded as one third of the American art collective Paper Rad. He is also a prolific producer of music, installations, websites, and animations. David Wightman is completing his Ph.D. in music composition at UCSD, where he teaches courses on popular and contemporary music. Some of his many music projects include: Fortress of Amplitude, Powdered Wigs, and Chariots of Fire. Together Jacob and David form like Voltron in the high-NRG electronic music band Extreme Animals and have toured the country every summer for the past 8 years presenting their music, videos, and art.
Support for Forum Lounge is generously provided by: Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, the Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday. ADMISSION IS FREE
Categories:
Tags: Forum Lounge, First Thursday, performance art, sbarts, sbart
Thursday, June 2, 7 pmSanta Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
ADMISSION IS FREE
Santa Barbara-based artist,
Kip Fulbeck performs Race, Sex, & Tattoos: The Kip Fulbeck Experience, at CAF, exploring themes of diversity and America’s mixed-race identities!
Filmmaker and artist, Kip Fulbeck, traveled throughout the United States to photograph its diverse populace and asked each subject to hand-write a response to the question “What are you?” At CAF, he will present a multimedia performance that weaves together these collected stories and images with spoken word, film, photography, and pop culture to explore multiracial identity, tattoo culture, and contemporary America. There will be a book signing following the performance.
Santa Barbara-based, Kip Fulbeck received a B.A. and an M.F.A., University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA and is an Professor in Art and an affiliate faculty in Asian American Studies and Film & Media Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA. He has published numerous books including Part Asian, 100% Hapa; Permanence: Tattoo Portraits; and Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids as well as directed a dozen short films. He has been featured on CNN, MTV, and PBS and has performed at hundreds of venues throughout the world.
About the Forum Lounge Series: Forum Lounge is a series of free, unique, performance-based events, ranging from the theatrical to the avant-garde that are normally found only in large metropolitan venues, and that reflect CAF’s mission to sustain and encourage the artistic process by presenting art in the form of exceptional music, dance, video, and other multi-media to our community.
Support for Forum Lounge is generously provided by: Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
About the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (CAF): CAF is a non-profit, non-collecting alternative art space dedicated to the exhibition, education, and cultivation of the arts of our time. Celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2011, CAF is the premier venue for contemporary art between Los Angeles and San Francisco. CAF is located at the Paseo Nuevo Mall Upper Arts Terrace in downtown Santa Barbara, CA.
Curator's Notes:
Visionary filmmaker, spoken word artist and multimedia performer Kip Fulbeck spins his unique storytelling technique for this month's Forum Lounge event. A faculty member at UCSB in the departments of art, Asian American studies and Film & Media, Fulbeck truly encompasses the Forum Lounge mission to investigate and push the perceived boundaries of artmaking within categorized genres by combining photography, video, and spoken word into a fast-paced multimedia presentation. In his scholarship and artistic investigations, he consistently thrills in exposing the cultural and social stereotypes on which we build our assumptions of race, gender and sexuality. By asking his subjects "what are you?", Fulbeck not only underlines the commonalities between us all but also evokes the larger existential question "who are we?". But what makes Kip's work so appealing is that he uses popular culture--a familiar and palatable device--to appeal to our innate open-mindedness. Like the Forum Lounge program, he demands from his audience the willingness to explore and investigate our traditional belief systems and but also provides them with an entertaining and touching vehicle through which they may achieve this.
--Heather Jeno Silva, curator
Categories:
Tags: CAF, Forum Lounge, spoken word, Kip Fulbeck, performance art, sbart, sbarts
Thursday, May 5, 7 pmSanta Barbara Contemporary Arts ForumFREE
Carmina Escobar explores the concept of identity in her performance installation A White Room. Her performance is permeated with her voice, which functions as a primary instrument layered over a sonic landscape. Escobar’s work involves real-time processing of her voice to construct a narrative of the self in a space. The space is itself constructed with delayed, filtered, and sampled field recordings, found objects, and images collected over the period of a year.
Mexico City-native Carmina Escobar is a singer and multimedia artist, whose work explores opera as well as medieval, contemporary, folk, and electronic music. Experimental trends involving interdisciplinary collaborations, performance art, and multimedia are also hallmarks of her work. Though Los Angeles-based, Escobar has performed internationally in the Mexican Republic, USA, and Europe.
About the Forum Lounge Series: Forum Lounge is a series of free, unique, performance-based events, ranging from the theatrical to the avant-garde that are normally found only in large metropolitan venues, and that reflect CAF’s mission to sustain and encourage the artistic process by presenting art in the form of exceptional music, dance, video, and other multi-media to our community.
Support for Forum Lounge is generously provided by: Andrea Lang Fund, Daniel Clark, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara Winery, and Therese Schweidler. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
Curator's Notes:
For this season of Forum Lounge, I wanted to particularly focus on providing a diverse selection of performance pieces that explore a range of genres: music, theater, puppetry, dance, etc. And while the majority of Forum Lounge events rely on a multimedia and interdisciplinary format (that is, combining two or more of these genres with electronic media), there is still that distinct tie to the original form of expression. For this month's Forum Lounge, I am pleased to present Carmina Escobar, a Mexican-born artist who relies on her training in vocal performance and composition to present what she describes as a "sonic landscape"--a hyper-stylized surround sound of noise (both ambient and vocal) that relies on digital filters and improvisation. Carmina's work is greatly informed by her varied knowledge of contemporary music, opera, medieval music, folk music, and electronic music; as such, her performance spans both the traditional performing arts and the emerging technology of multimedia practices.
Forum Lounge: Eric Lindley, with Chi-wang Yang and Yelena Zhelezov, The Live-Long Day
The Live-Long Day is a collaborative musical and object play performance that traverses into bleak territory exploring the lives of submarine inhabitants who have lived underwater for generations. The
performers highlight and include techniques of theatrical and popular
music, abstract object play, experimental text, theatrical arcs of
movement, and audience relations into the story.
Eric
Lindley is an artist, writer, and musician primarily active in LA and
New York. His work explores the ramifications of scientific and social
research on personal human relationships with other individuals,
societies, and selves and has been performed internationally at venues
such as The Knitting Factory (NYC), REDCAT, and The Royal College of
Music (UK). Yelena Zhelezov is a Belarusian-Israeli visual artist and
puppeteer based in Los Angeles whose work has shown at such venues as
the Museum of Jurassic Technology and the Hammer Museum. Chi-wang Yang
is a Los Angeles-based theater director and interdisciplinary artist,
and founding member of video performance collective Cloud Eye Control.
His work has been presented internationally, including the Fusebox
Festival, EXIT Festival (France), and the San Francisco International
Film Festival.
Support for Forum Lounge is generously provided by: Andrea Lang Fund, Endevermusic Productions, the Franciscan Inn, KCSB, Santa Barbara Winery, and the Santa Barbara Independent. Forum Lounge is presented in association with the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization’s 1st Thursday.
FREE
Curator's Notes:
I'm excited to introduce writer/musician EricLindley, puppeteer Yelena Zhelezov, and theater director Chi-Wang Yang for April's Forum Lounge performance. The production originally included artist and puppeteer Katie Shook, who I met as part of Susan Simpson's ensemble last year and then invited to participate in Forum Lounge with her collaborative partner Eric. Katie--who is due to have her first child any day--passed along the project to Eric, and I'm thrilled to welcome him, Yelena and Chi-Wang (who incidentally is part of the performance ensemble, Cloud Eye Control, which includes March Forum Lounge artist Miwa Matreyek) to CAF. After Susan's intriguing performance last spring featuring an actor and object play with live video feed, I was excited to include an additional performance exploring the genre of puppetry and its many contemporary manifestations. When we think of puppetry in the traditional sense, we imagine small objects that emulate human characteristics; Eric's interpretation of puppetry is more conceptual, using abstract object play, experimental text, and music to weave a theatrical narrative that is purposely untraditional and largely metaphorical. And while this version of puppetry may delightfully unexpected, it still retains the mesmerizing power of storytelling.
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.
