PERFORMANCE ART EVENT, CURATED BY COURTNEY MALICK

Unattached: The Body’s Memory
A Night of Performance Art
Curated by Courtney Malick
(in collaboration with Margaret Lee)

Please join us as we celebrate the end of July, the closeness of performance art and wine and refreshments...

Friday, July 31, 2009, from 6 – 9pm
179 Canal St. at Mott St.

“Unattached” is the closing event for “Phantom Limb”, an exhibition curated by Margaret Lee, which explores sensations of parts of the body or psyche that are not there. “Unattached” demonstrates this phenomenon through performance art, expanding the concept to focus around various methods through which absences that are present in our lives, minds and bodies may be mended or fulfilled with alternative materials or sources. These performances express to audiences a reconstruction or reconfiguration of a physical or emotional gap, and how this new connective ‘piece’ may remain as much a part of the natural body as it may be understood as its own entity.
The body informs the mind’s memory by way of direct and initial contact with the skin --- everything that one does and everything that is done to them, occurs through the outer container of the body that is the skin. Therefore, not only does the mind remember events, feelings and encounters, but so does the body itself. At times, the memory of an absence, or a physical alternative that the absence or void is filled with, becomes an integral aspect of the body, and therefore the psyche’s identity both externally as well as internally.

Leigha Mason and Matt Whitley will perform a piece entitled, “Surgery Against Real Limbs”, that draws references from the advent of pedicles, a network of living flesh tubes, used for early medical reconstructive surgery during World War II, as well as the educational model of public, audience attended operations. Leigha Mason is currently a BFA student at Parsons School of Design. Originally from California, she is living and working in New York. Matt Whitley is an artist, poet and false medical worker living in New York City. His character in “Surgery…” and in other projects, ‘Doctor Dust’, has been expanding the architecture of the body for centuries. Within his operating theater he continues to mutilate Adonis, and elevate the mutable form.

Joseph Keckler will be telling a story, in the form of a song. The story itself is a memory of a tale that was read to him as a child. Joseph Keckler is a singer, monologist, and interdisciplinary artist. He has appeared in various traditional and experimental operas and plays, holds a BFA in painting from the University of Michigan, and trained operatically under George Shirley. His work has been presented at such venues as the Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco MoMA, La MaMa, Wiemar New York and HERE Arts Center among many others. He has received rave reviews in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, Time Out New York, Next Magazine, Gay City News, Irish Theater Magazine and SPIN Magazine.

Whitney Vangrin and Shawn Jeffers will collaborate on a mimed performance entitled, “Gun Play”. Their stage fight refers to the visible and
non-visible elements of social combat. Whitney Vangrin is currently a BFA student at Parsons School of Design, utilizing video and performance to explore concepts of ritual, nostalgia and memory. She has participated in various group shows, most recently at Death By Audio and at Parsons, and is currently an attendant in Roman Ondak’s, “Measuring the Universe” performance installation at MoMA. Shawn Jeffers is currently a BFA student at Hunter College, working primarily in painting.

Many thanks to Margaret Lee and Mari Spirito for making this event possible, and all of the performers, whose work I truly admire.

For further information please contact Courtney Malick, at cimalick23@yahoo.com.