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From Superflat to Anime Network to Toypunks
Toy punks is a documentary film covering the converging worlds of
Japanese toys, fashion and punk rock. Via location shooting around the
globe, Toypunks spotlights several top Japanese fashion designers, toy
makers and artists illuminating the fact that most of these
influential creators find deep roots in DIY, punk and outsider
attitudes. Several top US artists and toy makers are included in the
discussion, revealing profound parallels between their lives and those
of their Japanese contemporaries.
Video Salon: From Superflat to Anime Network to Toypunks
Sunday, August 17, 1 pm
Hosted by Chris Nelson
Free Admission
Location: 1524 Sul Ross (Aurora Video Library)
Join Chris Nelson as he discusses his journey through Japanese
character culture and digital media creation, From Superflat to Anime
Network to Toypunks. Nelson shares his unique experience in the
interaction between American and Japanese pop culture, from branding
and launching a cable channel devoted to Japanese animation, to
directing a documentary focused on Japanese designer toys and punk
rock. Reservations are encouraged, but not required.
Party Like A Rock Star
Presented by Planned Parenthood.
Get your tickets now.
Tamarie Cooper show
I took this off of Catastrophic Theaters website.
| The Tamarie Cooper Show - Tamarie’s Back |  |
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| Written by Richard Jason Lyders-Gustafson | |
| Sunday, 08 June 2008 11:13 | |
 The Tamarie Cooper Show - Tamarie’s BackTAMARIE’S BACK! The Catastrophic Theatre presents the world premiere of Perhaps no other person in Houston theatre history has shared more - or more intimate or embarassing - details of her life on stage than Tamarie Cooper. And Houston audiences love her for it. The Tamarie Cooper ShowWith her spectacularly popular Tamalalia series, Tamarie has spoken, sung and danced about her high hopes, her irrational fears, her wacked out dreams, her love life, her sex life, her unfortunate dating history, her unfortunate drug history, her love of bacon and her ass. But a lot’s changed since the last time you saw Tamarie - she’s not the cocktail queen of regrettable hookups anymore. She got married, she bought a house and now she’s contemplating motherhood. The Tamarie Cooper Show finds the 37-year-old Tamarie embarking on a brand new adventure as she tries, in her inimitable fashion, to negotiate her new-found domestic bliss. In this world premiere musical extravaganza, Tamarie plays herself and she shares the stage with Catastrophic favorites Kyle Sturdivant as her husband Zach and Walt Zipprian as her dog Rue. Daniel Adame, Noel Bowers, Tiffany Couser, Jaime Flowers, DeWitt Gravink, Christian Holmes, Richard Lyders, Jennifer Mathieu, Karina Pal-Montano, Charlesanne Rabensburg, Brandy Robichau, Karen Schlag, Jenni Rebecca Stephenson and Cary Winscott round out the cast. The Tamarie Cooper Show features new songs by Anthony Barilla, Kevin Blessington, Tamarie Cooper, DeWitt Gravink, Jennifer Mathieu, Keith Reynolds and Cary Winscott with musical direction by John Duboise and vocal direction by Chris Bakos and Cathy Power. The orchestra features Chris Bakos, Kevin Blessington, John Duboise, Andrew Lienhard, Jeff Miller, Lisa Nixson, Cathy Power and Kirk Suddreath. The show is designed by the Catastrophic/Stages dream team of Jodi Bobrovsky (set), Kirk Markley (lights) and Chris Bakos (sound). All About Tamarie Tamarie Cooper has been performing her entire life. Originally trained in dance, she began working in theatre at HSPVA and helped to found the Infernal Bridegroom company in 1993 where she worked for fourteen years. Best known for her original Tamalalia series, she is a seasoned actor, director, designer and choreographer. In additional to her original work (Tamalalia’s 1-10; 20 Love Songs), Tamarie directed the IBP productions of Rhinoceros and Uncle Vanya and demonstrated her versatility as an actor starring in productions of Big Death and Little Death, Hide Town, Microscope Maintenance and Repair, Medea, Baal, Symphony of Rats, Meatbar, Actual Air, A Soap Opera, Phaedra’s Love, We Have Some Planes, In the Under Thunderloo, Action/Chicago, Happy Days, Fucking A, Edmond, Roberto Zucco, Marie and Bruce, Harm’s Way, In the Jungle of Cities, Threepenny Opera, Last Rites, Camino Real, The Cherry Orchard, Jack/The Future is in Eggs, Eddie Goes to Poetry City, Guys and Dolls and Woyzeck. National trade magazine Stage Directions named her among the “top ten theatre makers under 30″ and she has received various “Best of Houston” awards from The Houston Press for her performances and her original work. Reserve Early and Often! The Tamarie Cooper Show opens Thursday, June 19, at Stages Repertory Theatre (3201 Allen Parkway) and runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm through July 19. Tickets are $20 Thursdays, $25 Fridays and Saturdays. Or join us on Wednesday, June 18 for food, drinks and an exclusive sneak peek preview party with Tamarie and the cast. Preview tickets are $50. For ticket information, call the Stages box office at 713-527-0123 or visit www.stagestheatre.com |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 08 June 2008 18:37 ) |
Modern Dance Sightings on the Big Range
A Big Range of possibilities, ideas and spirit distinguish Houston’s summer festival of modern dance at Barnevelder Movement Arts Complex. The sixth annual Big Range Festival opened its three-week run on Friday May 30 with the first of three main stage programs that feature works by both national and local choreographers.
The programs are so varied and interesting that this critic challenges anyone to come away without having found something that would speak to them. With two shows left this weekend and the annual Buffy awards on Sunday, there is still a chance to either prove me wrong or get a little nourishment for your heat-soaked art-seeking soul.
Program C featured guest artists from Austin Leslie Dworkin and Kent De Spain. Spain’s “Stream” was a solo for performer Tom Truss set to excerpts from the poetry of Charles Bukowski spoken by Truss as he danced. Bukowski’s lines crudely pop and simmer; they communicate in new ways when diffused by the fluidity of dance. Spain combined the rawness of the text with a compelling movement palette, and the frailty and difficulties we all suffer seeped through along with subtle wit and humor. A writer who honestly laid out his flaws and weaknesses, along with his infinite shame and shamelessness, for the world in his writing, Bukoswki’s was well-portrayed by Truss who performed the choreography with skill and yet still gave us a sense of the character.
Dworkin, whose strong work always uses interesting music, filled the space as she morphed her waiting shapes to the sounds of John Zorn. Fueled and driving, Dworkin angled, snapped and fell, bursting with energy that fuses with her score. The juxtaposition of figures at the end gave us an unexpected and emotional jolt, once again showing that the sweet simplicity of bodies walking on the stage can give us something of meaning when well handled.
Other highlights from The Big Range Festival included a dazzling performance by Suchu Dance Company at the close of program A. Suchu premiered Jennifer Wood’s “Hedge” which they will also perform at Jacob’s Pillow next week. Jennifer Wood is a choreographer who has developed her own unique melting-switching-flipping-fluidly careening through-space style that distinguishes her work and makes her dances so engaging to watch. Her company expertly lives and breathes her choreography on the stage creating a dynamic that is electric. As ”Hedge” opens with eight dancers in rows moving on one side of the stage, there is care in the placement, the echo of shapes, and even in the costumes as pure line and color conjure a delight for the eye. This is art that can hold its own anywhere so kudos to them for exporting their fine work to the world famous Jacob’s Pillow Festival next week.
Program A also included choreographer Leslie Scates’ exploration of the effects of the onslaught of the cosmetic industry on women. Scates is one of those performers who is always interesting to watch on the stage, even if she is standing still. A specialist in improvisational dance, she exudes an integrity of intention that communicates in her choices of movement.
Another highlight from A was choreographer and performer John Stronks touchingly cleaning up the stage as part of his dance, enhancing the feeling that the audience is viewing a festival whose choice of programming and works were created with great care.
Kara Hearn - A Problem of Courage
Memory plays a colossal role in how people think about, define and understand themselves. It is the place that contains the mosaic of our lives and allows us to give meaning to existence. Kara Hearn understands this and uses memory as a sort of philosophical starting point in her art. In A Problem of Courage, the artist presents several pieces that serve as meditation aids to a transcendence of self through a peeling away of memory. The results are challenging and at times, baffling, but overall, Hearn’s ability to question remains earnest and heartfelt.
None of the works in the show are titled and no list of works was available. A short essay in four parts was supplied and this may or may not have a literal reference to any of the work in the show. In the essay, Hearn speaks about such topics as “The benefits of being lost” and “A word on leaking,” a paragraph discussing the artist’s grandmother’s gradual slip into dementia. This document can be seen as a sort of commentary on the work in the show, rather than an explanation. This strategy works well when Hearn’s work begins to unfold in the space.
The first piece consists of a small pile of rocks placed unpretentiously in a pile near the wall. Upon inspection, it is revealed that they are painted shades of off white, some glossy, others matte. There is no discernable purpose of the painting of the rocks. They speak of neither earthworks nor meticulously recreated found art. They are just there, taking up space in a manner in which can only be divined by the person who placed them there. This fact becomes important later on in relation to other works that convey more of a sense of purpose, but less presence.
Across from the rocks hangs a framed photograph depicting a plywood wall with a photograph pinned to it. This photograph within the photograph perhaps once depicted a figure standing against a wall, however there is a cutout where the figure (?) once stood, so interpretation is again stymied. There is enough shape recognition to piece together an absent presence, but this again, is really rooted in nothing more than guesswork.
Two more adjacent photographs hang together, suggesting a diptych. They depict angles, found and suggested. The first is of a long piece of thin wood fit against the corner of a room, its shadow completing a triangle of darkened space. The other shows a triangle made of tape (think of those folded paper footballs kids make to flick through a finger goal post) gently resting between two nails protruding from a wall. Both of these images are very modest, but closely cropped so that there is a sense of intrusion about them. This sentiment is pervasive in Hearn’s work; a lowbrow aesthetic pushed to a place that is somewhat intrusive, too personal by way of an abstract immodesty. In other words, the work comes off as awkwardly personal when there is not really any reason to think so.
Perhaps the most intriguing piece in the show, consists of a projection playing in the corner of the space. A fifth of the image is projected onto one wall, the rest stretched into the adjacent corner giving the projection a 3 dimensional feeling. The video consists of a balmy sky passing by in real time. A tiny telephone pole in the lower left corner helps to scale the video. A sound recording of street noise accompanies the piece. Occasionally a bird or plane will fly by, giving an odd transparency to the illusion of the sky “box”. It is as though a small rectangular piece of the sky has been placed in the corner of the gallery. This work somehow also conveys a sense of being lost. There is so little grounding in the “grounded” projection (placed at floor level), one wonders about the import of terms like sky and earth, figure and ground.
The other two works in the show are video pieces that incorporate Hearn’s corporal self in a way that evokes both humor and pathos. In three small wall mounted video displays, the artist has filmed herself and others. In the first panel, Hearn wrestles with a non-figure, an actor that has been digitally blackened out to match the black background. The overall effect is that the artist is having a heated struggle with either her self or with the space itself. The next monitor shows various slumbering figures in repose. They toss and turn in a somniferous manner, occasionally and abruptly getting up, but then quickly replaced by another body at rest. The third monitor shows (the same) procession of bodies limply hanging in the arms of the afore mentioned non-figure. This video triptych could contain any number of meanings and associations. It is a strange mix of personal situations exposed in a rather enigmatic methodology, making for an awkward ensemble.
The final work of the show is a long video of various scenes playing on a TV monitor in the corner with three headphones supplying the soundtrack. In these videos, Hearn herself plays numerous characters: two spatting lovers, a family of three that hits a cow (played by Hearn) in on a darkened drive, a fed ex counter employee and waiting patrons, etc. The video is an exercise in self-exploration via role-playing and mirror associations all affected by the artist. This work is in one regard, the most personal of the entire show, and yet somehow, by the plethora of characters being played by the artist, the least. Some of the vignettes are humorous in a sort of ham-fisted kind of way, others more poignant.
In all of the works, Hearn seems to be asking the question of how it is we contend with the constantly changing roles we all play in our lives from one moment to the next. Memory links us to ourselves, but what links memory to us? Somehow a pile of painted rocks may contain the key to that question, or it may just be a pile of rocks. The photograph with the hole cut out of it was somehow worth taking a photo of, or was it? Is the document implicit in an affirmation of that question or not? It is an unsettling place to be to have to face these questions, even in a gallery setting. Hearn finds this existential grappling worth delving into, and curious viewer may agree.
-Garland Fielder
Through June 14th; diverseworks.org
Comics and Grassroots
The Museum of Printing History opens Comic Books: a Visual Journey June 12th May 14 - August 16. Join in on a gallery tour June 20th at 6:30 with Richard Evans. The exhibition presents an illustrated excursion through the development of a uniquely American art form. From their inception during the Great Depression, comic books have been a source of entertainment, wonder, derision, and controversy. What started out as a low cost experiment has grown into a huge, multi-media cultural mainstay. See the transformation of comic books, from their humble beginnings, World War II patriotism, ’50s horror and violence, and the return of the superhero, through today’s wonders of art and packaging.
Also opening is Texas Grassroots: Botanical Prints by David J. Webb. These large scale monoprints, printed directly from the plant specimen, represent the nexus of art and science. Up to 44” in length, these prints are evocative of Asian brush painting in their simple strokes and elegant forms. These grass prints, titled by the grass genus and species names, represent a scientifically precise visual record of botanical specimens.
Keiji Haino
Nameless Sound Presents the first ever Texas performances by Japanese icon of underground music Keiji Haino on June 21 and 22.
“Keiji Haino (灰野 敬二 Haino Keiji) born 1952 in Chiba, Japan, and currently residing in Tokyo, is a Japanese musician whose work has included rock, free improvisation, noise, singer-songwriter, solo percussion, psychedelic, minimalism and drone styles. He has been active since the 1970s and continues to record regularly and in new styles.”
Free Acoustic Concert
co-presented by The Menil Collection
Saturday, June 21 2008, 7:30pm at Richmond Hall, Menil Collection
Electric Concert (Guitar and Voice)
Sunday, June 22 2008, 7:30pm at Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex
For Information, call Nameless Sound at 713-928-5653 or go to www.namelesssound.org
Defending Democracy at the Station
Defending Democracy, features the political art of Emory Douglas, ASARO from Oaxaca and Otabenga Jones & Associates from Houston.
Emory Douglas, former minister of culture of the Black Panther Party, is one of America’s great political artists. He is the subject of a major new book, Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, published by Rizzoli, New York. Recently Emory received a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. His illustrations for the Black Panther newspaper and his remarkable posters inspired a revolutionary fervor in the African American population that challenged the corrupt system of police brutality, economic and political disenfranchisement.
Otabenga Jones & Associates is a Houston based collaborative arts organization founded in 2002 by Mr. Jones himself and his four protégés: D. Jabari Anderson, Jamal Cyrus, Kenya Evans and Robert Pruitt. They have realized important exhibitions at The Menil Collection, Houston, and at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Their works deal with African-American social and historical issues that are critical to the entire population. Their approaches range from specific art and video installations to powerful teach-ins as well as to hip hop music.
ASARO is a collective of printmakers, painters, stencil and graphic artists that has played an important role in the Democracy movement in Mexico. When the PFP, along with local police, attacked the movement on November 25, 2006, and arrested 300, murdered some, tortured others, disappeared others, etc., ASARO was the first group in the streets the next day, spray painting images of resistance. They produce extraordinary graphics that portray the people’s struggle and make their art available to all of the people of Mexico.
Defending Democracy opens June 7th at 7pm and runs through September 14th, 2008 at, you guessed it, the Station Museum, 1502 Alabama St.
The Splasher
Never underestimate the power of a can of oops paint pointed in the direction of some savvy successful street artists’ newest work. Troy Schulze’s new play, The Splasher, lets loose a can of militant art worms at DiverseWorks, with the second offering of the newly formed Catastrophic Theater.
Schulze has a penchant for gleaning juicy stories from the real world. Really, why make stuff up when you have ticking bomb world out there feeding you choice material. As a key figure at Infernal Bridegroom Productions, he contributed Jerry’s World, culled from transcripts of the cult radio guy, Joe Frank. Me-sci-ah drew from archival interviews with science fiction writer and founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. It’s downright fabulous that Catastrophic Theatre continues to nurture Schulze’s idiosyncratic talent. He’s good with found text and he’s picked a blistering hotbed of controversial events for The Splasher.
The real Splasher rose to media attention in 2006 by defacing street art with thrown paint. He hit hard and often, and at the top rung of the commercially viable street art crowd, splashing the self-confessed masterworks of Caledonia Curry (aka Swoon) and Shepard Fairey (aka OBEY). The Splasher attempts to re-invent the rules, which gets under the skin of these street righteous artists, who claim the territory as their own. Nothing infuriates artists like other artists making money. Look what happened to the late Keith Haring who dared to make a living selling T-shirts and other goods. Art and money have always made suspect bedfellows. Art as a commodity has always been a hard pill to swallow for the holier-than-thou art church. God forbid artists make a buck in this world.
The Splasher includes actual manifestos that reveal the workings of his very perturbed brain. Schulze’s own portrayal of the dark lord himself, complete with a Darth Vader-like voice is both creepy and effective. Walt Zipprian turns in a completely convincing performance as the self-important OBEY and other characters. Zipprian is a hoot defending his right to sell limited edition T-shirts at his big New York opening. Jenni Rotter, Julie Boneau, Joe Fallodori, London Ham, and Mike Switzer all add their share of punch as well.
Schulze uses a gigantic screen that helps tell a visual narrative and lends a up-close look at the Splasher’s handiwork. Tim Thomson’s superb video work charges The Splasher with a strong visual rhythm and is nicely matched by Chris Bakos’ vibrant sound design. The bare naked DiverseWorks space provides an authentic setting for both the issues and the play. The Splasher’s themes are timely and well worth putting in front of an audience. I bet many a lively chat occurred on the way home. Still, in the end, the play feels unformed, a bit rambling, and at crucial points, sketchy. A side story of Michael Fay, a kid that gets arrested in Singapore for vandalism, doesn’t quite find a home.
The Splasher ends abruptly, but isn’t that they way it goes in real life?
-Nancy Wozny
The Splasher continues until June 14. 713-335-3445. www.diverseworks.org
Check out our online only June 2008 issue!
