ACTUA 1 constructs an event that both happened and did not. An exercise in futility and concentration, the piece is named after Actua One, a lost film from the May ’68 uprisings. Performers pace restlessly in the main gallery, as they spout slogans for a missing revolution. Actors propel themselves out of stagnation and boredom through complex object procedures and mental tasks. Speeches, music, activities, and radio are projected into the gallery’s back room via video cameras and microphones, where the audience can watch from a comfortable distance. The action is both intimately proximal and telepresent. ACTUA 1: an absent performance for five performers—the soldiers from Godard’s “Les Carabiniers” performing Allan Kaprow on public access.
A new performance piece from Object Collection
Written by Kara Feely and Travis Just
Performed by Eric Magnus, Tavish Miller, Daniel Allen Nelson, Deborah Wallace, and Travis Just
Object Collection comprises theater director and playwright Kara Feely and composer/performer Travis Just. Since their founding in 2004, the group has been authoring, directing, and performing large-scale productions conceived as multi-media operas, performance installations, and evening-length concerts. Coming out of traditions of the experimental performing arts, the group’s background includes substantial involvement with the work of Robert Ashley, Christian Wolff, and Richard Foreman, though they cite equally as influences the Volksbühne Berlin, John Cage, the Situationists, and Swiss-German visual artist Dieter Roth. Superfluities Redux/George Hunka states: “Object Collection is a rarity, marrying cutting-edge new music with cutting-edge theatrical performance practice.” BOMB called Object Collection’s adaptation of Automatic Writing “precedent-setting”, and Time Out has praised Object Collection as “new music wunderkinder”. Composer Robert Ashley – “I hope this is the future.”
Object Collection’s work has appeared at a variety of theaters, concert venues, galleries, art spaces, and festivals, including Performance Space 122, Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Arts Center, Incubator Arts Project, Prelude Festival, Ontological Theater, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room (New York); Podewil/TESLA, KuLe, REM/Reihe Elektronischer Musik (Germany); Loop-Line, SuperDeluxe, Urbanguild, Art Space Tetra (Japan); 15febbraio, Phoebe Zeitgeist Teatro, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and Art Basel (Miami). Recent projects include “New York Girls” (2012), a live, staged adaptation of Robert Ashley’s “Automatic Writing” (2011), “Innova” (2011), “The Geometry” (2010), “Problem Radical(s)” (2009), “Gun Sale” (2009), and “FAMOUS ACTORS” (2007). Their texts and scores have been published in the journals PLAY a Journal of Plays, Antennae, and the Japanese imprint “futow”. Object Collection will premiere a new opera “No Hotel” at the Incubator Arts Project in September 2013
Dates + Time
May 16–18
8pm
Admissions
$15 at the door
Reservations at info@objectcollection.us
Location
The Main Gallery
51 Bergen St.