Calendar

CalArts, Staircase by McBean Parkway off ramp

CRITICAL STUDIES: A participatory installation wherein objects will be placed and/or substituted with other objects. We will place a few small objects and invite participants to exchange these objects with other objects.

CalArts, Roy O. Disney Music Hall

MUSIC: Fusion of Indian and electronic music, featuring experiments from students in Worl Music and Music Technology programs.

REDCAT: French philosopher Claude Lefort’s oeuvre developed over a period of six decades until his passing in 2010. His notions of "power as an empty place" and "the modern dissolution of the markers of certainty" have become radical and liberal democracy’s obligatory reference, as well as an unparalleled knot of intellectual confluence. For this panel discussion, Bernard Flynn of the New School for Social Research and Claudia Hilb of the Universidad de Buenos Aires debate Lefort’s phenomenological style and legacy as a political theorist and literary critic. With an introduction by CalArts’ Martín Plot and followed by a Q&A, the discussion is presented as part of a two-day symposium on The Aesthetic Character of Politics in Hannah Arendt and Claude Lefort. Read more

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CalArts, Tatum Patio

MUSIC: Nery Kim (Piano), Ben Levinson (Bass), and Caliber Cleveland (Drums) will perform a live set of original music on the Tatum Lounge patio.

CalArts, Coffeehouse Theater

THEATER: A one-act comedy with minimal set.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

F200

ART: “Since 2006 Connie Butler has been Chief Curator of Drawings at MOMA, New York where she has organized major exhibitions including, "On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century" (2011); "Greater New York" (2010) at MOMA PS1; 'Paul Sietsema: Figure 3" (2008); and "Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave" (2008). She is currently researching the first North American retrospective exhibition of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark which she will co-organize for MOMA in 2014. Prior to her work at MOMA, Butler was Curator at The Museum Contemporary Art, Los Angeles where she organized the critically acclaimed international exhibitions, "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution," (2006) and "Afterimage: Drawing Through Process," (1998) as well as numerous one person exhibitions with artists including Amy Adler, Jessica Bronson, Lewis Baltz, Rodney Graham, Kay Rosen, Robert Smithson (co-curator) and Eric Wesley. Butler has published widely on the subject of contemporary art including, most recently, "From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows 1969-1974," (Afterall, 2012) and "Defining Contemporary Art in 200 Pivotal Artworks," (Phaidon, 2012) and was the editor of "Modern Women: Women Artists and the Museum of Modern Art," (MOMA, 2010).”

• http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/110/638

CalArts, Sharon Disney Lund Dance Theater

DANCE: A dance concert of work choreographed by guest artists, faculty, MFA2 and BFA4 students, and performed by the Next Dance Company.

Purchase tickets:

Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 8:00pm

Friday, May 3, 2013 - 8:00pm

CalArts, Tatum Lounge and Patio

CRITICAL STUDIES: The Slag Manifesto is an ongoing paracuratorial project in which participating artists create a manifesto and then degrade, obscure, or destroy it prior to, or through the process of, its dissemination. The aggregate of individual ruined manifestos comprises The Slag Manifesto as a whole.

With works by Emma Kemp & Daniel Wroe, Danielle Bustillo & Nick Arehart, Clay Kerrigan, Joey Cannizzaro, and Christopher Cole and performances by Vidisha Fadescha, Joey Cannizzaro, Patrick Ballard & Nathan Bockleman.

CalArts, F100

THEATER: The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Coffeehouse Theater

THEATER: An integrated media live performance consisting of live music, video and theater.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, E407

THEATER: This show is a dance show in collaboration with a lighting designer and live musicians.

CalArts, E407

THEATER: The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

Live Arts LA, Los Angeles

DANCE:

CalArts celebrates Laurence Blake's 30th Anniversary of teaching excellence on Saturday, May 4. The program features new choreography by:

• Colin Connor (Faculty)
• Arianne MacBean (MFA 99)
• Laura Gorenstein Miller (BFA 92)
• Travis Reinfried (BFA 06)
• Stephanie Zaletel (BFA 12)
  and
• Cherise Richards (MFA 11). 

Proceeds from the event will be directed in honor of Laurence Blake to support student scholarships in The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts.

Purchase Tickets

Questions? Please call Natalie Metzger at 661.291.3046.

CalArts, E400

THEATER: The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, F100

THEATER: Staged mini concert.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, A404

MUSIC: Blubber Humm is a performance of metal on flesh.

CalArts, XBox

THEATER: The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

D300 Gallery: Graphic Design Program Exhibtion

D301 Gallery: Graphic Design Program Exhibtion

L-SHAPE Gallery: Art Pilot's Exhibition

MAIN Gallery Perimeter: Theater Portfolio Review

A402 Gallery: Art & Technology MFA 1 Exhibition

LIME Gallery: Art & Technology MFA 1 Exhibition

MINT Gallery: Art & Technology MFA 1 Exhibition

CalArts, F100

THEATER: A 20-30 min piece about the reasoning and conditions of life.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Coffeehouse Theater

THEATER: I will be presenting a concert reading of a new jukebox musical featuring pieces of Shakespearean dialogue and songs by new musical theater composers.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Clarks Field

THEATER: The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Coffeehouse Theater

THEATER: Stage adaptation of the animated musical, The Artistocats.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Bijou Theater

FILM/VIDEO:

James Benning will present El Valley Centro.

El Valley Centro (1999, 90 min., 16mm) is the first film of the California Trilogy, including Los (2000) and Sogobi (2001).

El Valley Centro - James Benning
Released 2000
by Caroline Koebel

Comprised of 35 two and a half minute shots, James Benning’s 16mm experimental documentary El Valley Centro (2000) presents a curious taxonomy of California’s Great Central Valley. In the process it frames a tug-of-war between the land and the uses humans find for it: natural wonders—and their demise into wasteland, agribusiness and corporate cattle ranching, tract housing and anti-drug billboards (“where meth goes violence follows”), water, nuke and wind energy. This is a place where some people are and others are not, but the geography imaged here is the singular vision of one visitor to the region.

“Benning takes from his travels what nobody has to give...only what he in turn can share as his reflection on the land. In his quest—equipped with Bolex camera and Nagra recorder—to order the world he comes upon (such as “an oil well fire with flames high into the sky”), Benning argues that sheer contemplation of place (or more specifically, understanding of self in relation to non-self, in terms of how we perceive ourselves within and apart from our surroundings) is a spiritual, political and also ethical act. The knowledge gained from such observation must either be willfully denied or acted upon.” The film, in its 35 scenes, conveys not so much how a given geographic (and sociopolitical) zone can be dissected for evaluative purposes but rather how the land buckles against imposed standards and rebukes monotony with a wilderness of difference. Benning’s remark about El Valley Centro, “landscape is a function of time,”2 underscores that place is relative and that meaning is not static.

Patience (and/or incredible good fortune) is key to the filmmaker’s presence in the environs. A landscape of wetlands, featuring competing asymmetry and balance as curves contrast with the horizon line, is an alluring composition—the sense of being able to step into the frame and keep moving into the distance dramatic. The scene appears to be the way it is and seems like it will remain the same—the viewer sensing nothing lacking—when waterfowl rise from the water’s surface en masse. The snow geese fly toward the camera, leave the frame and eventually re-enter and return to the same spot on screen they were before.

The camera’s perfect stillness here and everywhere allows for the deliverance of such magic. The proximity of Benning’s oeuvre to still photography and early cinema and the wonders of an inventor such as Méliès is manifest here in his radical departure from such convention. Likewise, he is worlds apart (and millions of dollars away) from entertainment cinema: no explosives, i.e., ignite the flight of the snow geese nor are they the effect of CGI.

The rare shot is more theatrical, introducing the possibility of being staged for the camera. The film’s 14th scene features cowgirls practicing for a rodeo: one pins, and on cue releases a goat so that the other approaching on horseback can rope and subdue it. The action repeats, and an intricate rhythm is established. It is here that I’m cognizant of the mutual admiration between Benning and Sharon Lockhart, i.e., in Goshogaoka (1998) her stationery camera on the mesmerizing movement of the girls basketball team choreographed based on their training drills.

In a few scenes Spanish figures prominently on the soundtrack, and there is no mistaking that the field workers and grape pickers of American agribusiness are migrant laborers from Mexico. Perhaps if more followed Benning’s lead and observed where food comes from in the first place, then a decade after El Valley Centro the scapegoating of “illegals”—in the face of the “Great Recession”—for the country’s economic woes would be seen more widely for the ruse it is.

If what defines being human is the struggle to make sense of the world, then the possibility of calm reflection and firsthand experience proffered by El Valley Centro is all the more beckoning in our post pre-social media consciousness. If in the connected universe we’re all everywhere together all the time at once, what’s the point of solitude—a state that arguably can subsequently but not simultaneously be shared with others?

Caroline Koebel is a filmmaker and writer in Austin.
(From program notes 10/2013 Jack H. Skirball screening series at REDCAT)

About James Benning

Benning has been dubbed a structuralist and a minimalist, but these stylistic taxonomies do not adequately describe the filmmaker’s oeuvre over 30-plus years. His early collaborations with filmmaker Bette Gordon gave way in the 1980s and ’90s to portrait films that often embraced explicitly autobiographical elements, for example, Used Innocence (1988); and to experimentations with image and text, such as Landscape Suicide (1986) and Deseret (1995). Since the late ’90s, he has embarked on a majestic series of “portraits of place,” including his hallmark “California Trilogy” (El Valley Centro, 1999; Los, 2000; and Sogobi, 2001), 13 Lakes (2004) and Ten Skies (2004). Throughout, Benning has matched a passionate wanderlust to an exacting formal rigor, mapping a multivalent American landscape that is as awe-inspiring as it is desecrated, wild as it is laden with political and historical memory. His is a cinema of attentiveness, of long takes that invite the viewer to look and listen and consider the consonances of space and time, onscreen and off.

“After completing North on Evers, I decided I would need only two criteria to keep making work. One, make films that would take me to places where I wanted to be. And two, make work that would put my life in a larger context. Both somewhat selfish reasons, but very workable,” says the filmmaker.

Born in 1942 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Benning began making films in 1970, after first studying mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This “master framer of landscapes,” in the words of film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, has worked in small-gauge film – producing, shooting and editing the films himself. With Ruhr (2009), he switched from 16mm to digital filmmaking.

His work has shown at many international venues, from festivals like Cannes, Hong Kong, Rotterdam and Sundance to museums and cinematheques including Centre Georges Pompidou, Harvard Film Archive, the Pacific Film Archive, Tate Modern and the Walker Art Center. Among his many awards are two National Endowment for the Arts awards, two Rockefeller Foundation fellowships and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. In 2007, he was the subject of a career retrospective at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna. In addition, the Museum has been endeavoring to digitally restore and preserve his work, and published James Benning, a collection of essays about his work, in 2008. He is the subject of a documentary by Reinhard Wulf called James Benning: Circling the Image (2003). Benning lives in Val Verde, outside of Los Angeles, and has taught film and mathematics at CalArts since 1987.

“[E]arlier... I was doing political work at a grassroots level. It became very apparent to me that this was something I could exhaust my life with, and I hadn’t even begun to define who I was. So I stopped doing that kind of work, and I started making films to look at my own life. At first I thought I had to make really apolitical films... but I quickly realized that my aesthetics developed forms that were somewhat radical, and that’s political in itself. To make people look at a screen different[ly] I think is a really radical position to take.... And as l made more and more films, I became much more interested in looking at different histories, and putting my life in a larger context and then politics came back into the films in a more direct way.... I still try not to be completely dogmatic with my politics, even though I think it’s quite evident that they’re fairly leftwing.” – James Benning, interviewed by Neil Young at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival

CalArts, E400

THEATER: A coming-of-age story incorporating puppetry, experimental film, and the feel of a one-person show.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Butler Building #4

FILM/VIDEO: Weichen Hsu's graduation thesis review presentation. An installation with live acoustic guitar performances.

CalArts, Main Gallery

MUSIC: 45 minutes of short, quiet pieces of music (Let the games begin).

CalArts, Main Gallery

THEATER: Movement and sound adaptation of Dr. Suess' Bartholomew Cubbins.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Chouinard Pool and BBQ Area

INSTITUTE: Student Council will host a BBQ to pass the torch to the new council members and to celebrate Spring with fellow students.

F200

ART: “Jessica’s sculptures, photographs and installations investigate intimate points at which human intervention has changed the course of the natural world. She questions the naturalist’s, artist’s and scientist’s drive to contain and beget beauty within the landscape, whether in the cultivated ground of agriculture and in our own backyards. Sublime and haunting, the work evokes a kind of grace found within survival and diversity at a molecular level. Recent solo exhibitions include Jack Hanley Gallery, NY; Pasadena Museum of California Art; Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design; and the Torrance Art Museum. She has received many awards including a Center for Cultural Innovation Investing in Artists grant, Durfee Foundation ARC (Artist Resource for Completion) grants, a Metrolab Commission Grant, and the Bridge Residency Award from Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA.

Jessica was born in Charleston, West Virginia and grew up in the southern Missouri Ozarks and Vermont. She received a BA (1990) in Sociology from University of Missouri, MFA (1996) from California Institute for the Arts and studied at School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Jessica works in Los Angeles, where she has resided for 18 years.”

• http://jessicarath.com/
• http://www.pmcaonline.org/exhibits/75/index.html
• http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2012/09/jessicarath-apple-art-diversity.html

CalArts, Butler Building #4

CRITICAL STUDIES: The CalArts MFA Writing Program is proud to present students from the graduating class of 2013 as they read from their theses. At times nebulous, always innovative, the culminating work of emerging CalArts Writers is unique and variegated in shape, style and content.

Join us tonight as Laura, Peter and Lianna share their work, followed by a reception in The Cube.

CalArts, Main Gallery

THEATER: An ensemble movement piece choreographed and performed in the main gallery space near the stairs.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Bijou Theater

THEATER: Film screening.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, A300

MUSIC: Nicholas Baker presents works by Duke Ellington, John Bergamo and an assortment of various percussion instruments.

CalArts, Coffeehouse Theater

THEATER: A burlesque cabaret inspired by the ancient Greek (and Roman) canon.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, Clarks Field

THEATER: The Labyrinth is a monumental installation conceived by artist, Zachary Aronson. Comprised of 158 6x1’ Redwood panels that are adorned with 50 towering pyrograph portraits rendered from live models, the walls form a 64' x 40' maze-like structure. Covering every facet of human interaction, the work is not about the individual as much as it is about a community creating shared experiences. To further this point The Labyrinth will mount multiple performances spanning almost all mediums; Dance inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, choreographed specifically for this installation, Classical music performed by musicians scattered throughout, and actors traversing the space, interacting with spectators as they make their way through the structure.

“The Labyrinth” coincides with Zachary Aronson's gallery exhibition "Conversations" at The California Institute of the Arts Stevenson Blanche Gallery. The reception for "Conversations" will take place Thursday, May 9th at 8:00 pm. The show will be open for viewing from May 5th to May 11th.

The School of Theater's New Works Festival (NWF) fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute and to celebrate the talent of CalArts students. This is a festival of the students, by the students and for the students, cultivating the growth of a collaborative, fun and creative atmosphere within the CalArts community, and allowing students the freedom to play and experiment with new work where the process is valued above the end result.

The Festival encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, explorative processes, and immersive risk-taking.

CalArts, The Wild Beast

MUSIC: Premieres of three new works by Jerod Reetz, Lucia Vitkova and Adam Wolf, plus music from Bernstein's West Side Story.

CalArts, Roy O. Disney Music Hall

MUSIC: A recital featuring music by Strauss, Ives, Billie Holiday, and Jill Scott.

CalArts, The Wild Beast

MUSIC: CalArts Orchestra performs Seasons by Vivaldi, Piazzolla, Goldstein, Eagle, Vassos and Falcone.

CalArts, Roy O. Disney Music Hall

MUSIC: MFA graduation recital featuring music by many of Zirque's favorite composers and friends.

CalArts, Main Gallery

MUSIC: The 24th annual CD Project recorded at Capitol Records--Come listen and celebrate with the musicians and graphic designer. 

CalArts, The Wild Beast

MUSIC: Music Technology graduation concert featuring solo and group improvisations and a band.

CalArts, Roy O. Disney Music Hall

MUSIC: Mid-residency recital: vocals, drums, keyboard, percussion, trumpet, sax and tuba.

CalArts, Sharon Disney Lund Dance Theater

DANCE: The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance presents the final concert of the school year featuring student choreography.

Purchase tickets:

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 7:00pm

Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 7:00pm

CalArts, The Wild Beast

MUSIC: One-man tuba recital by MFA Performer-Composer Stefan Kac.

CalArts, C113

INTEGRATED MEDIA: Installation and performance involving video projections and improvised dance event.