Conversations with Culture: Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse
SPECIAL EVENT
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
Conversations with Culture
“Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse”
December 9th at 7pm
Location: Sony Wonder Technology Lab, 550 Madison Avenue (at 56th Street)
On December 9th, PS122 will host the second discussion in its new Conversations with Culture series, “Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse.” The conversation uses as its launching pad PS122 artists Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl’s workTerrible Things, a new collaborative work exploring the multiverse though personal narrative, particle physics, and a shifting “set” of 600 marshmallows that stand in for particles, potential energy, and the sub-atomic realm. Panelists will discuss the role and ramifications of contemporary performance as a mode of articulating scientific theory and expressing our human experience of the laws and mysteries of the physical universe.These events are free and open to the public and endeavor to reinsert performance into the cultural, economic, and environmental debates coursing through contemporary society, from which it has recently largely been excluded.
December 9th Participants Include
David Z. Albert, Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, Author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience and Time and Chance
Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl, co-creators of Terrible Things, which premieres at PS122 on December 4th.
DJ Spooky, creator of Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica playing at BAM Dec 2-5
Brian Schwartz, Director of the Science & The Arts program at the CUNY Graduate Center (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/sciart/) and 2009 winner of the Andrew W. Gemant Award, given annually by the American Institute of Physics to recognize significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.
Lisa D’Amour& Katie Pearl
Terrible Things
TERRIBLE THINGS is the latest collaboration between Lisa D'Amour, Katie Pearl and choreographer Emily Johnson. The piece uses stories from Katie’s life, principles borrowed from particle physics, and a shifting "set" of 600 marshmallows to explore the potential for an audience to experience a boundary-less togetherness and to ask the question: “If people come to the theater to be "transported", can we "move" them to a place where they feel the edges of their bounded self loosening?”
The performance text itself is made up of hypnotic fragments of stories from Katie's life layered on to a movement score driven by the 3 dancers moving 600 Marshmallows around the black floors and walls of the theater. The marshmallows bounce and morph like particles, like potential energy, perhaps becoming the "glue" that between the BOUNDED SELF that is Katie, and the SUB-ATOMIC REALM that makes up Katie, the room, the audience, the universe and so on. Or perhaps they are just marshmallows, in danger of being crushed and destroyed by the chaos of the tumbling wrestlers that share the space with them. TERRIBLE THINGS is performed by Emily Johnson, Morgan Thorson, and Karen Sherman, two Brazilian JiuJitsu wrestlers, and 1000 marshmallows. Featuring the choreography of Emily Johnson.
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
Conversations with Culture
“Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse”
December 9th at 7pm
Location: Sony Wonder Technology Lab, 550 Madison Avenue (at 56th Street)
On December 9th, PS122 will host the second discussion in its new Conversations with Culture series, “Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse.” The conversation uses as its launching pad PS122 artists Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl’s workTerrible Things, a new collaborative work exploring the multiverse though personal narrative, particle physics, and a shifting “set” of 600 marshmallows that stand in for particles, potential energy, and the sub-atomic realm. Panelists will discuss the role and ramifications of contemporary performance as a mode of articulating scientific theory and expressing our human experience of the laws and mysteries of the physical universe.These events are free and open to the public and endeavor to reinsert performance into the cultural, economic, and environmental debates coursing through contemporary society, from which it has recently largely been excluded.
December 9th Participants Include
David Z. Albert, Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, Author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience and Time and Chance
Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl, co-creators of Terrible Things, which premieres at PS122 on December 4th.
DJ Spooky, creator of Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica playing at BAM Dec 2-5
Brian Schwartz, Director of the Science & The Arts program at the CUNY Graduate Center (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/sciart/) and 2009 winner of the Andrew W. Gemant Award, given annually by the American Institute of Physics to recognize significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.
Lisa D’Amour& Katie Pearl
Terrible Things
TERRIBLE THINGS is the latest collaboration between Lisa D'Amour, Katie Pearl and choreographer Emily Johnson. The piece uses stories from Katie’s life, principles borrowed from particle physics, and a shifting "set" of 600 marshmallows to explore the potential for an audience to experience a boundary-less togetherness and to ask the question: “If people come to the theater to be "transported", can we "move" them to a place where they feel the edges of their bounded self loosening?”
The performance text itself is made up of hypnotic fragments of stories from Katie's life layered on to a movement score driven by the 3 dancers moving 600 Marshmallows around the black floors and walls of the theater. The marshmallows bounce and morph like particles, like potential energy, perhaps becoming the "glue" that between the BOUNDED SELF that is Katie, and the SUB-ATOMIC REALM that makes up Katie, the room, the audience, the universe and so on. Or perhaps they are just marshmallows, in danger of being crushed and destroyed by the chaos of the tumbling wrestlers that share the space with them. TERRIBLE THINGS is performed by Emily Johnson, Morgan Thorson, and Karen Sherman, two Brazilian JiuJitsu wrestlers, and 1000 marshmallows. Featuring the choreography of Emily Johnson.