As Unstable As – Presented by the Kranzberg Arts Center
A survey of contemporary electronic and performance art in Saint Louis, organized by Kevin Harris.
This exhibition will use the Kranzberg Arts Center to unify the too often divergent presentation practices of sculpture and performance. The three very unique, controlled environments of the Kranzberg will be utilized to host:
A live multi-sensory environment of video and light, controlled by improvised and composed sound.
A performance art piece reconciling a confrontational exchange of language, emotion, and sound.
A group show of artists displaying work of video, mechanics, optics, sculpture, and performance documentation.
Theater: The theater room will be transformed into a living environmental performance, supporting a symbiotic relationship between sound, audience movement, and video synthesis. Chad Eivins and Kevin Harris will perform the next iteration of their ongoing experiments into creating multi-sensory environments. Using analog video synthesizers, mixers, and feedback loops, they will share, process, and re-process video signals before projecting them throughout the room - injecting live feeds from the audience and sounds occurring in the room to create unpredictability and instability.
The video generators will be controlled, first, by a quadriphonic sound composition by Kevin Harris. The finale of the evening will see the video projections controlled by the latest creation from Saint Louis circuit designer Mike Murphy (aka Dr. Mabuse). Murphy will perform a live sound improvisation on his newly created sound synthesizer known as, the dome.
Studio: The second performance of the evening will be a cabaret multimedia presentation by the psychological sound performance group, Perverted (William Gass, Lara Dempsey, and Rick Wilson).
Perverted exist somewhere between the comically mundane and the ideas and feelings we only wish we could repress. Using language as a way to simultaneously heal and disrupt, they reveal the complicated relationship between mass communication and pure private emotion.
Gallery: The Craft Alliance space will be used to exhibit the following:
Michael Meihaus - Polariscope # 5, 2014 - 8mm film to digital video, light polarizing polypropylene.
Wonder Koch: Anti-Social Practice, 2014 - "swooper" flag pole, tarpaulin, rayon; text by Tom Petty
Young/Old Border Fantasy (for MacArthur), 2014 - Fabric
The Emergency Seduction of George W. Bush, 2006 - Video
Brett Williams: Brett Commercials, 1996-2000 - Video/Performance documentation.
Marianne Laury: My bitch would jump through hoops to score with me, 2012 - Video/Performance documentation.
Leanna Kaiser – Forget me not, 2014 - Slide projection, artificial flowers, fishing line.
Zachary Zimmerman – Eclipsing, 2014 - analog feedback loop, motor, and radial diffraction lens.
Cole Lu – Furby, 2013 - Rewired electronic toy, toddler wagon/walker, birch.
Dactylology, 2013 - Dactylologic robotic hand, single-channel video
Sound: Kevin Harris
Video: Kevin Harris and Chad Eivins
Performance by Mike Murphy, aka Dr. Mabuse
Video by Kevin Harris and Chad Eivins:
The Dome, a new synthesizer by Dr. Mabuse used in this performance.
