Events
Darsombra
Olfactory Seance
Expand your olfactory consciousness with this mysterious smell experiment. Laure Drogoul cordially invites you to a sensorial performance based on the sense of smell. This is a participatory experience complete with blindfolds, olfactory specimens and interactive media. This event is part of an on-going body of work about smell perception and memory, including an interactive Global Smell Map. (http://www.olfactoryfactory.org/)
Laure Drogoul with Joe Meduza
Capacity 30 participants
Please be prepared to be blindfolded.
The Bele Bele Rhythm Collective On-Stage
The Bele Bele Rhythm Collective is an inter-generational, diverse group of women from DC and surrounding areas who all share a passion for drumming, and will be performing tightly sewn compositions of polyrhythms on dun-uns and djembes, along with exciting breaks and contagious songs. The BBRC performs to celebrate unity and diversity, and to spread the joy and power of West African drumming to the community at-large.
Abdu Ali Live
Full of tantric, provocation, and agression, Abdu Ali, will channel vocals from the alleys of the universe, chanting over digital beats, and will be accompanied by projections of cunty, childhood, and life inspirations.
MAYFAIR
The MAYFAIR is the Transmodern Festival’s free afternoon of site-specific performances that explore the nooks and crannies of Baltimore. The MAYFAIR celebrates May Day.
May Day is synonymous with International Workers’ Day, or Labor Day. It is a day of political demonstrations and celebration, it also signals the birth of spring. It is a holiday for fertility, flowers, the goddess Flora and Saint Mary. The MAYFAIR is our day of merrymaking to celebrate re-generation, renewal and creation!
It is in this spirit, that we are presenting an afternoon of revelry featuring performance, action, music, a Love Parade and a Maypole Dance on Sunday, May 5, 2013. Expect interventions and participatory works that celebrate regeneration, sustainability and notions of creating anew!
The MAYFAIR will be located in Current Gallery’s backlot and in Tyson Alley, south of Franklin Street between Eutaw Street and Park Avenue, as well as surrounding streets in Baltimore.
The Current Gallery Backlot: 412 N.Howard St. in BALTIMORE! (around the back is the Tyson Alley)
11:00 am – Morning Exercises: The MAYFAIR Marms lead everyone (artists and friends of artists and anyone else around) in morning moves to get your bodies and spirits warmed up!
11:30 am Communal Brunch
12 – 3:30 pm – Performances and MAYDAY Market and song Circle at 2pm
3:30pm Fluid Movements 6th annual LOVE PARADE! (lineup in Tyson Alley!)
4:30 pm- MAYPOLE Celebration!!
Gallery 788 – DC vs BMORE and Out of Mind
OPENING RECEPTION: Thurs, May 2, 7-11 PM
DC vs BMORE
DC vs. BMORE is a show to kick of an initiative to help bridge the DC and Baltimore art scenes. The two major cities will only benefit from a symbiotic relationship in a number of ways. Our hope is that the idea of this union will become contagious, sparking similar action throughout the DC and Baltimore area. The show features an array of artists from both Washington, DC and Baltimore.
OUT OF MIND
Mild psychological disorders, formerly gathered under the catchall term “neurosis” have perpetually afflicted people from all walks of life. Out of Mind is an exhibition of contemporary artists that explore various states of mental distress by representing some associated neurotic actions or behaviors, such as depression, manias, phobias, schizophrenia, self-harm, anxieties etc. Many of the artists examine ways of coping with these ever-present human difficulties as well as contemporary social conditions portraying or evoking behavior that is commonly considered neurotic. The works of these artists strike chords of recognition, get at what it is to be human, and reach an existential inner core of personal experience. Their approaches to these issues are sometimes somber, debilitating, and often comic, but always thought provoking, adding to out greater understanding of mental instability and appreciation of the role that artists play in our culture.
Catherine Pancake: Film Program
- Frederic Moffet
PostFace 7m
Postface examines the filmography of Montgomery Clift in an attempt to interrogate our celebrity-obsessed culture that exploits the personal downfall of stars for profit and entertainment. Clift’s personal life spiraled downward (alongside his career) after a 1956 car crash that left his face scarred and partially paralyzed. - Jesse McLean
Magic for Beginners, 2010, 21m
Magic for Beginners examines the mythologies found in fan culture, from longing to obsession to psychic connections. The need for such connections (whether real or imaginary) as well as the need for an emotional release that only fantasy can deliver are explored. It interpolates the production, proliferation, and consumption of televisual experience, investigating how this transfer of information creates a bind of complex relationships between maker and viewer. Interested both in the power and the failure of the mediated experience to bring us together, my work asks the viewer to walk the line between voyeur and participant . - Kent Lambert
Fantasy Suite 7m and Security Anthem 4m - Fantasy Suite is a meditation on mainstream American heterosexual romance featuring scenes of modern day “romance” from numerous movies, magazine advertisements and TV shows, most notably the hit ABC network TV show The Bachelor. The second film screened by Lambert, Security Anthem is an “ode to flowers, fear, potatoes, and paranoia, with a special appearance by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.”
- Ivan Lozano
Book of the Tumbler on Fire 7m
Invited to participate in an evening of artists’ lectures on the subject of “magic” organized for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art by the blog Bad at Sports, but unable to attend the event in person, John Neff and Ivan Lozano instead produced the collaborative “video lecture” BOOK OF THE TUMBLR ON FIRE. Improvised within a tripartate structure over three short editing sessions, BOOK… was assembled from a collection texts and video clips gathered from the web. Its montage technique and “look” were inspired by the wildly heterogeneous visual style of image-and-text based Tumblr microblogs. Using this approach, BOOK… presents a materialist interpretation of “magic,” concentrating less on concepts of magical cause and effect and more on the fantastic pleasures that can erupt in the embrace of impurity, polysemy and randomness. - Sade Benning
Me and Rubyfruit 5m
Based on a novel by Rita Mae Brown, Me and Rubyfruit chronicles the enchantment of teenage lesbian love against a backdrop of pornographic images and phone sex ads. Benning portrays the innocence of female romance and the taboo prospect of female marriage. This hard-to-find video work from the hugely influential interdisciplinary musician/artist Sadie Benning is shot on a Fischer-Price Pixelvision camera when the artist was a teenager. - Dani Levanthal
17 New Dam Road 8m
Leventhal presents an oddly humanizing house visit with a rough crowd. Within the film we witness trash littering the garden, weapons in the living room, and martial arts in the shared spaces of the home. Despite the aura of violence, Leventhal explores the groups comraderie and interpersonal connections in their alternative lifestyle. —- - Catherine Pancake
Kayuga (Excerpts) 10m
Rooms Fall Apart: A Serious Play
Come to Rooms Fall Apart and be ready to embark upon this journey! – Parental supervision required
RFA is not a play.
RFA is a game.
RFA is not a ride.
RFA is a trap.
RFA is not a massage.
RFA is a work out.
RFA is not a spa.
RFA is boot camp.
RFA is Serious Play
Dan Deacon with OCDJ, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Snails, Moss of Aura, and Alle Alle
Dan Deacon performs in the Current backlot Saturday night with OCDJ, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Snails, Moss of Aura and Alle Alle
Doors open at 6pm!
Breastival Vestibule
Breastival Vestibule is an installation of inflatable architecture exploring the effects of societal norms that live inside each of us, and practices of resistance to presumed limitations. The project specifically examines the practice of toplessness by women within and outside of mainstream society. 1970s feminisms gave birth to an explosion of utopian subcultures and practices. 40 years later, what does our current relationship to these movements have to show about our personal and cultural relationships to body? What does this articulate about sex and gender-based oppression and violence in the 21st Century? Breastival Vestibule attempts to engage with these topics through a collection of responses to questions posed in workshops, interviews, and questionnaires.