World Visual and Performing Arts

Farewell to Thee!

2011-08-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

It has been another wonderful iteration of World Visual and Performing Arts! You Summer 2011 folks did so well and I had such a lot of fun sharing all kinds of arts with you. What a lot of ground we covered, eh?

As per last class, I'll leave you folks on here as authors, so you can feel free to post anything artsy you like whenever you like, even though the official class is over, along with the previous two ladies from last summer. That's the beauty of having class partially on a public blog, eh?

But officially, this blog will be pretty nearly inactive 'till the next World Visual and Performing Arts class (taught by me) happens. Thanks, Internet, peace out!

~Prof. Jenn

Banksy Documentary

2011-08-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Sure, class is over, but that doesn't mean we can't still notice and appreciate the World Visual and Performing Arts around us!
Check out this documentary on very-modern street artist Banksy.

The Antics Roadshow - An Incomplete Guide To... by CasseTrop

Christo and Jeanne Claude

2011-08-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

I am super excited about this. I've been following the progress for years, as this was underway long before Jeanne Claude passed away. It's finally a go. I don't raft or kayak, but if you do, please post pics!http://www.westword.com/2011-08-11/culture/christo-over-the-river?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_medium=email

Completely Resistible You Gallery

2011-08-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

What a great job you all did performing at the Noname bar Tuesday! Here's a gallery of your greatness (that doesn't show your greatness as the lighting was too dark for my camera. Really, really good job! ~Prof. Jenn

This is it!

2011-08-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well folks, tonight's the night.

I have been receiving your up-to-date emails re: your work on your project and status, etc. and I can't tell you how psyched I am to see the finished product in public! You guys did such good work all through the quarter and I can't believe it's over already!

A couple reminders:

I'd highly recommend meeting early tonight if you can, to run your tech. You have quite a few props, costumes, and set pieces and as I always say, the more tech you have, the more chances you have that they'll go wrong. BTW, if anything does go awry, DON'T PANIC! Just keep going and know you've got a great script and great performers performing it. It sounds like you guys have had good rehearsals already, though, so no worries.
Manlin is in charge of collecting all your reflections, etc. into the PROMPT BOOK, which she'll then hand in to me tonight. Remember that you have your entries as your role in the process, and also as an actor in the production, to complete. All told, you'll probably be giving around 4-5 pages of writing and/or pictures (not counting the full script, which needs to be included too). If you have any questions about the prompt book and what goes in it, see your Guidelines and/or ask me.
I'll probably get to the NoName bar a little early, to get a good table. I may take a few cellphone pictures, but this is mainly meant to be a live theatre project, so if you want more elaborate recordings of it, conscript a friend to film it for you.
Your Final Research Paper is due the 11th, the last official day of the quarter. Again, this is your basic 10-12 page research paper, on any topic which you'd like to cover from class.

Have a great day, and I'll see you tonight! ~Prof. Jenn

All about the ART.

2011-08-05T21:02:00.000-07:00

Art and Therapy makes me think of Yoga and Taiji (great pole, is a Chinese cosmological term for the "Supreme Ultimate" state of undifferentiated absolute and infinite potentiality, Taiji is best known in the West from the name Taijiquan or T'ai chi ch'uan).
I’m not pretty sure about if these two activities belong to art category or not, but when somebody is doing that, it will attract more people to stop to appreciate this kind of performance. While, on the other hand, they are also the way of therapy.
What I want to emphasis is, Yoga and Taiji have two different spirits and concepts, personally speaking. Yoga, as I used to learn it for one year, it encourage people to stretch their bodies as much as they can, twist their bodies or reach their extreme points. Like the article said, “the other way to work with control is through the idea of letting go”. As my personal experience, when I meet the physical problems like I cannot stretch my arms or legs to some certain points, I'll try to release a deep breath to let body relax a little bit and stretch it simultaneously. It does work out! Also, Yoga tells people to release their souls and to “forget” or relax their whole bodies through inside to outside. While, Taiji is more like a “defense”. It teaches people how to combat hard tactics with soft tactics, and Taiji can adjust breath of inner body. Most Taiji followers in China are old folks.
These two activities both can quiet people down if they keep practicing.

I gradually realize that, poetry is such important to kids in America that people would like to teach the next generation as an elementary class. I’ve experienced two times about kids learning and performing poetry after came to Denver. At first time, I thought it was just like an expo or some outdoor activity for kids. But, when I started learning the culture, I find out that poetry is like an art education in school for most of the kids.
Frankly, it really shocks me. I cannot believe that people in US have such a passion on this type of sensitive art genre. And at the same time, I feel a shame of my country’s culture is being ignored among my generation…
In China, parents just want their children to be outstanding in every aspect. They rarely or almost don’t care of if their kids really enjoy the whole process of learning arts or other classes. Pushing kids to learn more and to be excellent from other kids is what most parents’ expectations in China today… We have a marvelous poetry culture for a long, long time… But that only appears in the textbooks and the exams. No one really care about if this culture could be distributed to the next generation, and kids, they care about more is if they can get a better grads from school.
I like the saying that poetry is the way to express yourself no matter if English is your first language or not. Sometimes, language can be a tool to help people imagine and build a scene. While, sometimes, they are just a special rhythm. Letting kids play with words in their early age is a smart and beneficial method to cultivate the ability of self-education.
I hope or I wish, in the near future, Chinese people will realize their loss and pick it up immediately.

Sesame Street Spoofs Spider-Man The Musical

2011-08-04T21:45:00.000-07:00

Our in-class conversation on the critical drubbing of "Spider-Man The Musical" lead me to this hilarious bit...brought to you by the letter S!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR1DdMeVqTw

Coming to MCA

2011-08-04T14:30:00.001-07:00

This show opens in November and I thought you might want to check it out!

http://www.mcadenver.org/index.php/exhibitions/West_of_Center:_Art_and_the_Counterculture_Experiment_in_America,_1965-1977

Those RSA animated lectures

2011-08-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Here's the link to all of them: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/

And here's that one from Day One about education. We mentioned it again in class recently, so I thought you might enjoy having it at your fingertips. ~Prof. Jenn

UPDATE: Look at this: it's the live lecture the animated one was based on.

and.....what did you bring?

2011-08-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

My good friend Erin was deployed to Iraq very early into the occupation. En route to the camp they were to establish, their helicopter was shot down by insurgents. In the fight that followed, Erin was stabbed by one of them. The wound was serious, but not fatal, and at 23 years old she received a purple heart. When she returned home she gave me a piece of advice I will always remember. She told me, “I came back f***ed up – but I can’t let that change my life or who I am to my family. All I can do is the be the best f***ed up version of myself I can be”. On the surface it does not seem like sage advice. After all Erin was, it could be argued, endorsing hiding her “dark shadow” under the guise of not allowing that experience to continue to affect her. Some would say the longer she waited to face her demons the harder it would be. My opinion is not that she wanted to hide her emotions from herself and her world, but rather she refused to allow them to define her. She was strong and she was vivacious and, although the experience changed her in tangible ways, she still managed to provide inspiration for everyone around her. She served a tremendous purpose to many even after her experiences in the Middle East.

In the interview with Paul Oertel he asserts that one has to be flexible because if one is too rigid then he will break when hit with a great force. I find this piece of advice, albeit more eloquent, not unlike the advice Erin gave me in 2003. He goes on to explain the differences between art as therapy and art as “art”. Art can be therapeutic, but if art is created only as a personal means of expression or healing, then it is no longer art – it loses its structure and its function and becomes personal and selfish. The Postmodernism movement and the subsequent reinvention of “art”, as the artists struggled against the “rules”, gave rise to the contemporary art currently present in American culture as well as even more self-indulgent channels such as facebook and youtube. It used to be one had to have talent and be recognized by an expert – discovered so to speak – in order to engage in a career in the arts. Today anyone can be an artist, a singer, a dancer, a poet, a novelist, a photographer or a pornographer. There are no rules – anyone can play.

(To illustrate my point I have included a link to the Rebecca Black “Friday” video for anyone that might have missed out on that tragic cultural phenomenon. The original no longer exists, but this dubstep remix is pretty true to the original.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94TZJO_PXhU

As a student of Psychology, it sounds blasphemous to acknowledge there are some things people simply need to “get over”. I do not claim that PTSD is one of them – or that people cannot find extremely useful forms of therapy through art or performance, but I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s statement. The world does not need to be a witness to your emotional catharsis because frankly it does not make for engaging artwork and most people do not care. The discovery that art, like music and dance (yes dance!), has rules is incredibly satisfying. It does not have to be perfect, but it does have to be legitimate. The moral to the story, I believe, is that personal healing does not need an audience. Art as a gift to the world, no matter how emotional the process, should come from a different place - and that cannot happen until the artist has learned to be the best f***ed up version of himself he can be.

Brook’s Rough/Immediate Theater

2011-08-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Peter Brook’s assessment that theater at its most unpolished, messy, unpredictable, experimental, and risk-taking is likely to have the strongest effect on audiences and actors. He states that “rough theater is close to the people” (p. 66) and that the absence of scenery in a production is “one of (theater’s) greatest freedoms” (p.86). Brook’s countless examples not only underline his lifetime of work in the theater but also highlight his belief that theater can be a medium in which “safety” doesn’t exist for actors or the audience and even suggests that the two could merge over time. He notes (on page 75) an intriguing example in which an especially risk-taking production featured a moment in which, after the actors on stage received applause, the actors applauded back at the audience and created an unusual and unpleasant sensation for the people in their seats watching. The “roles” that theater provides and the “safety” it promises can be broken easily, Brook suggests, as his take on Rough Theater is both intriguing and exciting in the things it suggests but also likely to scare off most audiences beforehand.

As for the Immediate Theater, Brook states early on in this concluding section that “theater is a reflection of life” (p.98). Among the many fascinating declarations and observations: Brook mentions how cinema (a record of a previously given performance) is always past, whereas theater is always in the present, as it happen in front of you in “real time” (p.99); he refers to the rehearsal process as “the blind leading the blind” and underlines the necessity of having a director who has a clarity of vision; Brook warns that performers can run into the danger of “spoiling an actor’s performance with the wrong costume” (p.102), insists that there is a “need for sincerity in performances” (p.116), humorously points out that actors have no clue what they’re doing when enacting death scenes (p. 118) and that “truth in theater is always on the move.” (p.140). Other passages that jumped out at me (of which there were many)- a recollection of the audience comfort ability fading away as actress Glenda Jackson stripped on stage during a performance, mentions of the brilliance of John Gielgud and Paul Scofield and, possibly the most intriguing and helpful observation in the book, that “a good director enables the actor, while a bad director injects a performance” (p.110-111).

Overall, Brook speaks of the need for collaboration in theater, not only on the part of the performing company, but by the audience, who must be willing to take the journey the company wants to lead them down. This is one of the most passionate and enjoyable books I’ve read on the possibilities of theater.