A Reflection on Curation

Right now I’m in the midst of reading A Manual For the 21st Century Art Institution: A Room by Room Guide to the Contemporary Institution of the Future.  This section caught my eye for sharing:

The challenge offered by artists since the 1960s has been to use the gallery itself as a site of production, taking architecture, history, location or viewer as subject and object.  The commissioning of site-specific works is a high risk venture. What evolves may be successful; it may be a spectacular disaster.  It is an act of faith that can both challenge and expose practitioners.  It also positions the curator in the role of production assistant, researching and sourcing materials, negotiating permissions, working out the technicalities.  It’s exciting to enter the creative process and mirror theatre or cinema where a production is a group enterprise.

-Iwona Blazwick 

This very-much parallels my experience as Curator of Meridian Dance.  We are in the “business” of taking risks: inviting artists whose past work shows extraordinary insight and skill to create something new.  To make themselves at home in our gallery, and to see what comes of it, using the inspiration offered by the architecture as well as the work on the walls.  And to facilitate the myriad technical hurdles that must be leapt over to bring performance to a live audience.

Alexis Iammarino, Meridian’s latest Choreographer-in-Residency will be in San Francisco beginning on November 7th.  Stop by during the day (gallery hours are 10-5) to catch a glimpse of the process!

-Michelle

Iammarino interviewed by NEA

Check out this NEA video interview to hear from a unique group of artists and art administrators including innovative musician Andrew Bird, renowned painter Barbara Ernst Prey, and Meridian Choreographer in Residence, Alexis Iammarino on ways artists affect and change the communities in which they live and work.

“The practitioner/researcher cannot take for granted whether or not she/he has an independent objective reality.  Instead, I presuppose that there are and will be differing and shifting conceptual frameworks that evolve alongside the encounters I have with individuals and groups in community.

 Individuals in partnership may represent their own individualism of or in correspondence with a/the community in which they belong.

I am, my art is, a project of empowerment.”  –Alexis Iammarino

Alexis will be working closely with Meridian Gallery’s teen interns this November to create evening length performances addressing themes of the Barbary Coast’s colorful history.  Buy tickets online now!

Friday, November 18th, 7:30
Saturday, November 19th, 7:30 pm
Sunday, November 20th, 2pm

Choreography as Community Engagement

Friday, November 18th, 7:30 pm  
Saturday, November 19th, 7:30 pm  
Sunday, November 20th, 2:00 pm

Choreography as Community Engagement: World Premiere by Meridian Dance Choreographer-in-Residence Alexis Iammarino created and performed in collaboration with teens from the Meridian Intern Program.  Part of Meridian Gallery’s festival “House at 100 as a Container”, a grand celebration of the 100th anniversary of its beautiful home, the Perine Mansion, on Powell Street.

Choreographed by: Alexis Iammarino in collaboration with Meridian Gallery Interns
Curated by: Lindsay Levesque and Michelle Lynch

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(San Francisco, CA – Nov 18-20)  Meridian Gallery teams up with Baltimore based community artist/dancer, Alexis Iammarino as part of “House at 100 as a Container”, a two month long interdisciplinary arts festival (September 24th- November 26th, 2011). The festival celebrates the 100th anniversary of the home of Meridian Gallery through film, scholarly discourse, avant-garde dance, theatre, sound and some early 20th Century fun.

Community artist/dancer Alexis Iammarino calls herself a facilitator. As such, her primary goal is to impart that, “no body exists outside of its relationship to other bodies. ” By guiding people through cooperative art making, Iammarino has a truly effective way of setting a space for participants to discover themselves and each other as valuable resources. She will be in residence at Meridian Gallery for three weeks during which she will engage with and empower Meridian’s teen interns past and present as well as other at-risk youth.

Iammarino is a community artist based in Baltimore City.  She is an artist/educator with Bright StARTs Art Program at School 33 Art Center, staff at The Club at Collington Square and works with artists of Dance Exchange on projects with Baltimore City youth.  Her work addresses the interaction of multiple contexts of ‘being’ in the communities and individuals with whom she collaborates. Iammarino, is a recent graduate of the Master of Art in Community Arts (MACA) program at The Maryland Institute College Art  (MICA). She is a featured artist in the upcoming exhibition “The Hand Your Dealt” at New Image Gallery at James Madison University.

Meridian Interns Program (MIP) is a paid internship for low-income teens aged 14-18 that integrates art-making with training in job-related skills at Meridian Gallery.  Each year, MIP provides roughly 30 youth with the opportunity to work with and learn from professional interdisciplinary artists.  MIP students organize several annual events (including their own gallery show and a Holiday Coffee House performance), publish a ‘zine for a readership of 600 youth, and maintain a blog.  MIP is supported by the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Education Program, a program that provides wages to youth as they create their own diverse working community in a safe environment while they learn art-making skills from a team of professional artist instructors.

Together, Iammarino and the participating teens will develop an evening length performance addressing themes of the 100 year-old mansion’s colorful history – including being a private residence to the famed Madam, Tessie Wall – before it became an art space. To start the conversation, Iammarino says, “I want to know from the youth, about their opinions of ‘wealth and opulence’ and the philosophical frameworks that uphold those opinions.  I’m curious about the historic Barbary Coast and how it may relate to contemporary vice industries in the same geography.”

The Meridian Gallery is a non-profit performance and exhibition space committed to increasing social, philosophical and spiritual change among previously isolated individuals and communities. The gallery assumes a tangible responsibility to explore issues and make spaces where youth and adults can access experientially a widening of the possible. The Meridian Gallery has been curating and hosting visual art, music, film, poetry, and dance events since 1989.

Meridian Dance is curated by Lindsay Levesque and Michelle Lynch, both San Francisco based choreographers and performers. They will host a discussion with Iammarino and performers following each performance.

dance@meridiangallery.org
Tickets: $10 to $20 sliding scale suggested donation
Box Office: (415) 398-7229
Buy tickets online now!

Community artist, Alexis Iammarino comes to Meridian Gallery!

The Victorian mansion that is Meridian Gallery’s home turns 100 this year!  To celebrate, Meridian is hosting a series of exciting art events.  As part of the celebration, Meridian Dance is thrilled to invite community artist, Alexis Iammarino to be our choreographer in residence!

A former San Franciscan and Meridian Intern Program mentor, Alexis is currently based in Baltimore where she does wonderfully creative and enriching work with Baltimore youth.  We are so excited for her 3-week return to San Francisco this November!

Alexis Iammarino is a native of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

My love of movement, drawing, painting, history and photography has afforded me the opportunity to pursue many life enriching artistic partnerships. Being an interdisciplinary artist is what connects me to others.

My training as a performing artist in modern dance, ballet, choreography and performance art has informed my own studio practice as a visual artist and vice versa. Work at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival with international companies, Bates College, The Merce Cunningham Studios, The Yard, Built on Stilts Dance Festival, and the faculty, artists in residence and peers at the Dance Department of Goucher College have lead me to experience as many creative processes as individuals and groups that I have encountered.

In the years since I graduated from Goucher I continued to work with a group of women with whom I established a collaborative relationship. Together we formed a choreography collective in San Francisco. The rehearsal process of choreography and collective efforts that make possible the mounting of a performance, has offered invaluable learning and inspiration to me.

This year as a Master of Arts in Community Arts candidate at MICA, I served as a community artist-in-residence in East Baltimore at Patterson High School and Dr. Rayner Browne Academy and in partnership with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and The Y of Central Maryland.

As a facilitator, I hope to impart that no body exists outside of its relationship to other bodies.

Hello, my name is Joe Review by Jaime Robles, Piedmont Post

Not just another number

The Meridian Gallery is located in a narrow, elegantly designed Victorian at Powell and Sutter streets in San Francisco. Not simply a gallery, the lively Meridian also houses a student intern arts program, a musical concert series and a dance series. This past weekend, members of the Taipei-based dance group, 8213 Physical Dance Theater, presented a series of short choreographies as a world premiere titled “Hello, My Name is Joe.”

Based on a children’s song, in which the players push, pull and turn buttons as directed by the “boss”, the program choreographed by Casey Avaunt and Jack Sun is described as “an investigation of the overt and subtle ways humans and their bodies confront power structures. In a highly physical and emotional battle, the dancers negotiate their freedom in a site-specific work.”

True, but not really the whole story.

With three excellent dancers and choreographers, this mini group—part of a larger company in Taiwan—paces through short recognizable narratives of contemporary worker-drone life. In “It’s not too late” two workers mirror each other in repeating patterns of wiping their brows, taking notes on their palms, and diving toward bells they ring to switch on revolving lights. During short interludes, an increasingly thuggish-looking man in a suit distributes oversized bills to the exhausted, post-frantic workers. In a second sketch, “Conversation Doesn’t Work,” a couple revels in competitive parodies while engaged in short meaningless “conversations”—the wife speaking English, the husband Chinese.

Nevertheless, all the sketches are done with such absurdist humor and wry light-heartedness, that the political pill is easy to swallow. The result is less a critique of the small and large cruelties of our capitalist world than a sly nudging and a rueful glance at the limitations of our lives, a sort of we’re-all-in-this-together session of sympathizing.

This sense of mutuality is underlined by the group’s interaction with the audience, which is frequent and frequently comic. The dancers pass out playground items, from tennis balls to soccer balls, to unsuspecting audience members. Avaunt wanders through the audience trying out various articles of clothing, this time taken from those bemused audience members: a purse—“doesn’t this look good on me,” she asks—or a jacket, which she redistributes to someone else in the audience—“this would look good on you too,” she adds. Or she sits on an audience member’s lap, only to burst into tears on the woman’s shoulder. Following close behind her is Colin Epstein, who hands out money and apologies left and right.

It wasn’t all just comedy though. These are talented and skilled dancers, and each took the opportunity to display their technique: Avaunt with a percussive dance that was more reminiscent of break dancing than modern dance though it partook of both; Epstein, whose acrobatic movements were remarkably fluid and athletic; and Jack Sun with some extraordinarily graceful Chinese operatic movements that morphed into the repetitive anxieties of exercises like jump-roping.

The choreography was done in response to the print show, “In Extremis,” now on view at the gallery, with work from familiar local artists, such as Jos Sances, Doug Minckler and Rik Olson. Exquisite small etchings filled the rooms of the second floor. Black and white spit-bite aquatints by Jessica Dunne showed shadowy images of bicycles and cars on freeways, and Sarah Newton’s multi-plate color aquatints presented flashes of cityscapes at night, reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” David Avery’s etchings added a piquant touch of the whimsical and the ironic.

—Jaime Robles

 

“In Extremis” continues through July 30, at the Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell St., 
San Francisco. 
For information, call 415-398-7

This weekend!

8213 Physical Dance Theater performs, “Hello, my name is Joe” this weekend at Meridian Gallery Friday and Saturday at 7:30PM.

Showing Jack and Casey around the gallery for the first time yesterday was a treat.  The scale and alternative layout of the gallery can be either inspiring or intimidating to choreographers.  Jack and Casey didn’t even flinch.  Based in Taipei, and having performed all around the world, they have set many a dance in intimate spaces.    At dinner last night, Jack told me they performed a few days ago for an audience of 500, and he is excited about being in closer contact with his audience tomorrow and Saturday.  Each scenario breathes new life into the dance.

Typically, Michelle and I offer a choreography residency with the aim to cultivate new work that is specific to the gallery and the exhibition.  This performance is a bit of a departure in that Jack and Casey arrived only yesterday.  We have been in close contact over the past month or so, sharing photos of the exhibition and exchanging writing about concept.  “Hello, my name is Joe,” is an existing dance work that continues to reincarnate depending on the time and location of each performance.  I am eager to see how the print exhibition and the architecture of Meridian will influence their dance.  I know it will.

Even though “Hello, my name is Joe” was not created in relationship to the print exhibition, I can see many rich overlaps.  For one, this is the busiest exhibition I have seen at Meridian so far.  There are prints of all shapes, sizes, and colors everywhere.   8213 Physical Dance Theater can match the intensity unlike most dance companies.  They use costuming, props, voice, and a mix of music that shares the bold and colorful nature of this exhibition.   The performers have a theatrical presence that is very engaging and unique to their style.

Anther tie is the social political statement of the dance and the prints.  Touching on power structures and unjust treatment of lower economic brackets and minority groups, 8213 Physical Dance Theater illustrates a man who is dehumanized by his repetitive and mechanical job duties.  Historically, prints have been an effective tool for freedom of speech and expression.  The prints on the walls surrounding this performance are a reminder of how we all have a distinct voice, and we all want to be allowed to express ourselves.

I look forward to sharing this smart and talented dance company with all of you.  Don’t forget to buy your tickets in advance- house capacity is limited.

Also, check us out in the San Francisco Bay Area Guardian’s weekly picks section.

Hello, My Name is Joe

July 15 &16, 2011 7:30pm

An evening of performance at Meridian Gallery inspired by “In Extremis: Prints Monumental, Intimate and Encompassing,”  a visual art exhibition featuring work by over 30 artists and artist collectives.  Choreography by: 8213 Physical Dance Theater, from Taiwan.

Curated by: Lindsay Levesque and Michelle Lynch, Meridian Dance

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(San Francisco, CA – July 15 &16, 2011) Based in Taipei, Taiwan, 8213 Physical Dance Theater presents a world premiere investigating the overt and subtle ways humans and their bodies confront power structures.  A highly physical and emotional battle, the dancers negotiate their freedom in this ass-kicking site-specific work.

Teaming up with Taipei-based dance company, 8213 Physical Dance Theater, Meridian Dance presents, Hello, My Name is Joe, an evening of site-specific dance that responds to the current exhibition “In Extremis: Prints Monumental, Intimate, and Encompassing.” The Meridian Gallery has a long reputation of programming cutting-edge music, film, and dance events.

Remember the old children’s song, “Hello, My Name is Joe,” where the protagonist is asked by his boss to push, pull, and turn buttons?  Its a fun song for kids, using repetition, and gestures- but the song is a story of a man being completely controlled by his boss, and asked to do repetitive, thoughtless motions until his entire body is a machine: a metaphor for power structures that can de-humanize. That authority present in our daily circumstances is a microcosm of the power that controls us on a larger scale. When inequalities between nations, cultures and races are deconstructed, the core discovered is often power and control.  8213 Physical Dance Theater questions human relationships to these overarching forces through humor, irony and movement.

The work draws inspiration from the exhibition, “In Extremis: Prints Monumental, Intimate, Encompassing.” The exhibition is composed of a mix of prints that are tiny – calling for an intimate relationship with the viewer, and large – demanding attention from across the room.  Pushing out from the environment of an installation into the wider world is the focus of political printmakers. The longstanding democratic function of prints in the public sphere is presented through political prints made for the specific concerns of the moment, for wide distribution, or for street actions. A new series of political prints focusing on the US/Mexico border wall and another series created by the San Francisco Print Collective that focuses on the so-called “Secure Communities” initiative of the Federal Government are two of examples of political prints in the exhibition.

The Meridian Gallery is a non-profit performance and exhibition space committed to
increasing social, philosophical and spiritual change among previously isolated individuals and communities. The gallery assumes a tangible responsibility to explore issues and make spaces where youth and adults can experientially access a widening of the possible. The Meridian Gallery has been curating and hosting visual art, music, film, poetry, and dance events since 1989.

Meridian Dance programing is curated by Lindsay Levesque and Michelle Lynch, both San Francisco-based choreographers and performers. They will host a question and answer following the performance.

Please note: high-res images are available through Michelle Lynch at
dance@meridiangallery.org

Media Contact: (415) 398-7229
dance@meridiangallery.org
Tickets: $10 to $20 sliding scale (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Box Office: (415) 398-7229,
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/180475