An Arcade Project

I was a mover in Elise Nuding's movement/archaeology site specific exploration of the Arcade, in downtown Providence, in November. It just confirmed for me that I want to be performing more, moving more. The whole process and performance was documented on her blog: anarcadeproject.blogspot.com/

Introducing the SKULL KINGDOMS (a post mortem?)

About a year ago my sweetie Sam Holland and a mutual friend of ours (brilliant local artist musician producer mystic who shall remain nameless by choice) decided to start a band. The name is more forboding than most of our sound. So far, anyway. There are five of us, give or take, depending on the project. Most of us are untrained, and identify first as writers or visual artists. Our time playing together occurred mostly in the lovely reverb of the little bridge in India Point park, which is technically part of the east bay bike path. There were bucket drums, guitars, bass, cello, recorders & voices and an instruction: impriovise, listen as you play, go from soft drone to fuller sound and back. This description is written in past tense because we have not played together in sometime. The sound was loose. Perhaps at some point I'll post a clip of it...

This spring, I was interested in doing a couple of projects and I didn't want them to be solo ventures. They were of the art/ritual/installation/participatory sort and I thought working collaboratively would bring the energy necessary to pull them off and keep them interesting. I got the group nod to use the Skull Kingdoms name, and various members stepped forth to participate in their own ways.

Working collaboratively with what in the end were two friends from childhood who know me and who i know (or some earlier versions of them/me) rather intimately. Working together or beside eachother in what for all of us are almost always solo acts that we might even tend to think of as ritual rather than art making was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Even just being in each other's presence daily, speaking on the phone and acting (or not acting) as a team... feeling eachothers rythems and patterns and flow was SO Different, so new, so informative and Transformative. Not everything that came of the project was good, I think we'd all agree on that. But we can't say we didn't learn.

The project I'm most refering to is our Wooly Fair Pod, which we called the Den of Divination. In the end we each worked very differently, flt through envisioning the space and occupying and performing the space differently. Wooly's theme was To The Moon, and in a strange way our pod was like a tent on the frontier- one where scavanged remainders of objects from the home planet were treasured for their relationship to our deepest sense of place... It bacame our cave for medetation, our alter for prayer, our fiery performance space. Alchemy was the goal. There were places for written reflection, there was an invitation to do your own devining--- let your eyes and sense travel the tent. notice where they settle, to what they are drawn. Nothing is a cooincidence. From this, what can you learn about yourself and your current state? Outside was a wild party, but inside, party goers dropped to their knees, rearranged the fountain, fell quiet and still. I was astounded.

Some Images, here: http://s1137.photobucket.com/profile/skullkingdoms/uploads#!cpZZ1QQtppZZ20

Through My Eyes: Brown's 2011 Festival of Dance, Stuart Theater

For some reason i like to write about dance

Here's what I got down tonight:

Enter Comma Prepare is not a minimal dinner party but rather a social event, gone mechanized… Like any good film about drugs I found the dancer body/mind state to be contagious. "Is that what -yes sometimes thats what- I'm like" runs through my head. It is almost a simon says with audio instruction, video projection, tables and well dressed Brown students. Dancers follow prompts like robots, only they each interpret 'left arm back' a little differently, and when malfunction or overload occur, they shut out the input by masking face with hands. Although somewhat silly and alyrical, Enter Comma Prepare has an eery familiarity.

Another modern work by the Dance Extension starts with sound continues with action linked to sound like a code. But the tight correlation quickly disintegrates. Also humorous at moments and grey in mood, Ms. Sokolow and her dancers direct attention to subtlety with ease: the sound of fingernails tapping, and chin protrusions. Not your typical dancers-on-chairs-piece, associations with flopping fish gasping for air, and alien-amphibian frogs are as organic as it gets.

Watching first and reading later, I felt Overlay was certainly a collaborative exploration of related movement by pairs or groups of dancers. Apparently it was. It's irony was much appreciated.

INTERMISSION

Enter muse, chaos, goddess Kali and all her fullness. When a work credits three individuals and one theater troupe with "conception, choreography, text, music and direction" you can assume there will be a lot going on. Indeed. There were puppet makers, an aerial coach and a masquerade coach. Some viewers will need coaching too. This being my second experience of a Michelle Bach-Kubali premiere, I was as prepared as one little human could be.

Advice to viewers: Don't work too hard to follow a 'story' though it may be presented as such at first. Instead let the presence of the story simply lead you in. It will give way to the conviction of the performers and the emotional/elemental -dare I say alchemical shifts swarming around you.

If you try for the story you get something like this: boy in civil war corresponds with younger sister or sweetheart? dies of typhoid fever. girl and her doll morn. live in haystacks? turn witchy. Doll escapes or gets stolen. Then tells us her side- tortured servitude as comfort giver (slap cuddle slap). From there it is sexual, animal, dark chaotic and amorphous. Choreography is fast and emotional, a landscape of individuals, hearts beating wildly in all directions, a pack of beasts prowling.

What is certain is this: Luna Rise was a massive undertaking which clearly and generously embraced collaborative process as a method of investigation. The live music was awesome, and the entire cast and crew were dedicated with a willing-to-go-there-not-knowing-if-theres-even-a-there-there attitude. No doubt, inspiration and deep inquiry can be this messy, and this beautiful.

Street Art

So this is not my first post about how I love encountering art out in the real world. be they chalk tracings of night shadows, zippers inserted into sidewalk cracks, "War" spraypainted under the "stop" on a stopsign, or signage on a subway telling you "do not fall in love" instead of "do not lean on doors". I delight in buskers and street music of most kinds. So its no wonder I loved the movie about/by? controversial/loved/mysterious British street artist Banksy. Entitled "Exit through the gift shop", the film is guessed to be the artists' own pseudo documentary turning the lens towards the art market's effect on art making and art makers. I saw it recently, long after it came out, and for me it was a kick in the pants to finish a project I started in November.

Really the inception of this field of study goes back to 2009 when I returned to Rhode Island, and started meeting with childhood friends and collaborators Alvin G. and Sam Coren. Between the three of us are writers, historians, visual artists, musicians, producers, thinkers and mystics. We wanted to do what we began calling a Deep Map of Providence. Looking at the city we loved as if looking at a living being with chakra centers, energy blocks, wounds and other stored memories. The site of a collective and personal history. We wanted to find a way - in various mediums- to explore and begin telling this history. We wrote essays and poetry and may texts that fall in between. We read histories, visited sites, and walked the streets with eyes wide open, alert to the feeling of a place. There was this idea that certain areas were places where pedestrians intuitively did not go. A sense that the highway was strangling the city and that these spots were either energy leaks, where essential life force seeped out of the city, or were energy knots where things got stuck and had no where to go. We weren't talking about traffic patterns necessarily, although they played a role in things of course. But we were observing the less visible ENERGETIC realities of certain spaces throughout the city.

We excitedly monitored the DOT website for signs of progress in the 195 highway relocation. We watched the tent cities under those bridges in fox point and the jewelery district spring up, thrive—if that can be said—and get evicted from their makeshift homes. One day in November I realized that the highway ought to have words on it. The idea of writing on the landscape has always appealed to me. My first installation had writing across a long horizontal wall and over the weeks I took to cover it, I often returned to the concept of the horizon, the line created by sky meeting land as far away as your eye can take you. To limit and to dream. We live on that line, in the thin between where the body of the earth ends and the endless space of heavens begin.

I remember New York city in the early nineties. During the 42nd street revitalization project they kicked the xxx theaters and smut out of the west side of 42nd street, between hell's kitchen and times square. When the theaters were being renovated and were tenantless, all the marquees were filled with haiku by local poets. I was so moved by the stillness of their words in the bustling city. The moment of contemplation, handed to me and every passerby like a communion wafer. In November of this year, I had just finished lettering signs for Greenwich Village's Halloween parade with Kingston artist Robert The. I decided that the highway needed some words—not any words, but some words. I wanted to start quietly, the way one might begin a conversation with a complete stranger. With curiosity. Listening as much as speaking. I called Sam. Sure enough, he had notebooks with words conceived under that bridge. I consulted another friend about typeface design. This picture is the first image of our first piece in what we hope will be a long series, or a continued conversation. I have all sorts of thoughts on these words, and would love to write about them, but more on that later. We hope to have a fruitful talk.

Call for Art

I've just built a wheel for this year's FOO FEST. This here wheel is A WHEEL of FORTUNES. That's right folks, this is your future we're talking about. And the future of every spin-inclined Foo-goer on the fateful night of August 14th.

(Here is a picture as it stands now. The arrow, the spinning mechanism, and of course the fortunes are still to come.) The wheel has 9 wedge-shaped spots for YOUR art. (That's 9 at any given time. We will be selling the pieces, so we need tons of them).

The thought is to cull from the ideas, images and language of divination in its many guises. All sorts of mysticism, science and pseudo-science may be used for inspiration. Tarot, palm reading, numerology, I-Ching, dreams, myths, science-fiction, astrology, Rorschach, you name it.

Starting at 7pm, Foo Fest audience can spin the wheel for a low low price. Their fortune is told based on the wedge of art the wheel stops on. They also get the opportunity to buy that particular work of art, if they so choose. Each artist sets the cost of their work ($30 and under, please), and keeps all but $2 of the sale cost. Participants may spin the wheel multiple times to try to land on a work they like, but their fortune will only be told once.

Details for Artists:

The size and shape of the piece is specific. You can pick up a template at AS220 main gallery, AS220 project space, Firehouse 13, RISD Office of Student Life, the Coffee Exchange, and various other spots around town. The wedges will fit on a 11 x 14 sheet of paper, but you can use any flat surface as a base. It is ok to build up (they can have some dimension to them), but please keep them under 1.5 inches thick/tall.

Due by Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
To 54 Trenton Street, Apt #1, Providence, RI 02906.

Be sure to include the following:
1. NAME of the piece, (please name it that will help in the telling of the fortune)
2. PRICE of the piece, (all work must be for sale)
3. Your name, email & phone number.

If you have ANY QUESTIONS, email me: natashamaria0@gmail.com (that's a zero at the end)

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Here is a little more about the artists, and the project:

Natasha Brooks-Sperduti & Sam Holland
Natasha Brooks-Sperduti uses the motion of her body to make site-specific sculpture and installation. Her actions trace a boundary between our tangible world and another, less visible reality. Continuing her investigation of gesture, the spiral, and the invisible divine, she and collaborator Sam Holland present A Wheel of Fortunes. They invite Foo-goers to enter into their oracular lair, open up to possibility, take their chances and spin the wheel. Each spot on the wheel is an original work of art, created by one of dozens of artists just for you, dear spinners. And like a tarot, it foretells your future. Worry not! They will help you interpret, just remember, they are only the messengers!

Natasha and Sam are Providence residents and RI natives. Sam earns a living [via interactive design]. Natasha produces community events in Providence and New York, and teaches yoga. She has shown her art locally, in New York and London, and holds a Bachelors' Degree in Studio Art from Bard College.