Alive From Off Center was PBS's pioneering TV series that featured experimental video and performance pieces by artists like Ann Magnuson, the Brothers Quay, Jonathan Demme, Bill Irwin, and Laure Anderson. For me, the program, which aired between 1985 and 1996, was a wonderful introduction to many avant-garde artists and filmmakers. Above is Laurie Anderson's "What You Mean We?" that first aired on September 6, 1986.
Here's a New York Times article about the episode from the time: "TV: Laurie Anderson Performs"
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This weekend I'm camping in a secret location with a bunch of nutty geniuses. Two of them are Jon Wee and Owen Morse, a comedy juggling team who work together as The Passing Zone. They're performing Saturday night, September 8, 2018, at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in St. Joseph MN, not far from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Read the rest
The Yang family make some of the most incredible soap bubbles in the world as part of their Gazillion Bubble Show in NYC. In this Wired video, Melody Yang shares some of her secrets.
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Luis Wachong is a member of Costa Rican firedancing troupe Pyrodanza. Here he does an impressive sunset routine with a series of fire-tipped props. Read the rest
Professional pianist and Steinway Artist Daniel Beliavsky and his student Charlotte Bennett agreed to perform while hooked up to an eye-tracking device that superimposes the wearer's eye movements. Read the rest
Tonight (Thursday, 3/23), San Francisco's magnificent contemporary dance company ODC launches their 2017 season that includes two world-premiere dances, live music, and reprises of Brenda Way's Walk Back the Cat and Kate Weare's Giant. Every year, ODC astounds me with creativity, freshness, and compelling narratives told through sublime motion.
Tickets available here.
More: "ODC show examines what we hold on to, through dance" (SFGATE)
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Educator/musician Annie Bosler and peak performance coach/author Don Greene provide simple tips to optimize the practice of practicing. (TEDEd)
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What happens if you allow a group of onlookers to do anything they want to you for six hours? Marina Abramovich found out in 1974 when she laid out dozens of items on a table, including a gun with one bullet, and allowed strangers to use the items on her however they saw fit. Read the rest
“I don’t feel any compulsion just to stand under the spotlight night after night unless I have something to say," --Leonard Cohen, December 1974
(Blank on Blank)
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Last week, artist Michelle Pred celebrated the anniversary of the Patriot Act by dressing up as an old-timey Pan Am flight attendant (she wore her mother's old Pan Am hat!) and handing out "Official Air Travel Replacement Knives" to people waiting for their bags at SFO (she had 50 knives, but it took more than 50 tries to give them away, as more than half of the people she approached refused to engage with her). Read the rest
Andy at the Jerx elaborates on a great way to set up a magic trick: "the peek backstage." Read the rest
On Sunday, pioneering underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger and occultist/artist/musician Brian Butler are staging their performance piece Technicolor Skull at The Regent in Los Angeles. From the event announcement:
Unleashing a 60,000 watt sound system and several tons of equipment for this special hometown performance, the duo are at the pinnacle of their powers and look forward to reestablishing dominion over these and other united states.
Artistic contemporaries and longtime friends, Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler work in a wide variety of mediums, though none perhaps more visibly than light and sound. The Regent is proud to host these two visionary artists in person to perform the newest installment of their radical project Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull. Both artists are continually pushing the limits of their aesthetic and creative capacities towards exceeding characteristically human capabilities. To witness this in a live setting is to experience one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century.
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This week on HOME: Stories From L.A.:
A roving. shifting company of dance and performance artists is nudging its audiences to think about home differently -- by bringing one-off, site-specific performances to houses, live-work spaces and tiny apartments all over the Los Angeles area. Meet homeLA.
HOME is a member of the Boing Boing Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please rate/review the show on iTunes. NEW: Subscribe to the newsletter.
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Billy X. Curmano, from Winona, Minnesota, plans to spend 24 hours on a bed of nails (and a pillow of tacks) later in March. To prepare for the big sleep, the painter, sculptor, and performance artist pounded hundreds of nails into plywood in his workshop. (It actually looks more comfortable than a few Airbnb's I've booked.)
"It’s always a good time for a nap, Curmano believes, but our frenetic society doesn’t see it that way. That’s too bad, because it could save serious energy in the form of switched-off electronics."
"Winona artist Billy X. Curmano challenges boundaries in art, life" [Winona Daily News] Read the rest
Viennese artists Annika Hakala and Lisa Looping of HoopioSis perform mesmerizing choreography using LED hula hoops. Be sure to watch in HD. Read the rest
Tomorrow night, San Francisco's pioneering contemporary dance company ODC will premiere a new work inspired by famed sculptor/environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy with live music by experimental cellist and loop musician Zoë Keating, likely familiar to Boing Boing readers from previous BB posts, or her appearances on Radiolab and Who Killed Amanda Palmer. For this piece, titled "boulders and bones," ODC artistic directors Branda Way and KT Nelson took choreographic inspiration from the ever-transforming landscapes of art and nature. The visual context of the dance comes from a time-lapse film by RJ Muna shot during the seven-month installation of a Goldsworthy sculpture at private location north of San Francisco.
Performances of "boulders and bones," along with several other works, will be held through March 30. Tickets are available here. Boing Boing is delighted to share the special video below from a "boulders and bones" rehearsal, along with another stunning photograph of dancer Natasha Adorlee Johnson by RJ Muna.
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A group of dedicated disciples of bOING bOING contributor Robert Anton Wilson are orchestrating a stage production of RAW's "Comsic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati," a fantastic memoir of high weirdness that had a massive influence on my own life. Leading the charge is Daisy Eris Campbell, whose father adapted RAW's The Illuminatus! Trilogy for live theater in the 1970s. The Daily Grail has the scoop: "Pulling The Cosmic Trigger"
In other news... Fnord. Read the rest
