OPEN SPACE

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Music, dance, performance, crafts projects, art exhibitions, poetry readings, last Saturday’s Kahlo-themed MAPP free-for-all evening started with René Yañez’s: Pasión por Frida Frida Kahlo lookalike contest at Galería De la Raza, which meant the rest of the night you were running into Fridas all over the place. I admit I liked the boy-drag-Frida(s) best:

But of course there were many beautiful others:

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Megan Brian described the audition: “At 5:30pm the doors of the Galeria opened and Fridas came streaming in. The diversity of Fridas was clear: all ages, races and genders seem to identify with her. Applicants ranged from a child welfare worker to artists. One applicant who came in drag said the motivation to dress up as Frida is that she is “fierce and ruling!” Others noted her as role model: a strong woman who embodied a passion for life mixed with pain, love and a sense of urgency. One applicant wrote that she was here “because we are all Frida”; another simply signed her application form with a kiss. René Yañez said he was not looking for person who looks just like Frida, but rather a Frida that emanates a feeling and captures peoples’ hearts.

After about an hour of portrait-taking and auditionee interviews, Nidhi Singh took the stage. Singh (with self-described inner “techno-global-India Frida that needs to be expressed,” performed first as traditional Frida, in iconic garb, delivering witticisms to the crowd. Then she removed her flowing skirt and added a blazer, proceeding to cut off her long black hair by the fistful, all the while staring straight at the audience with a challenging look in her eyes.” (Flickr sequence of the whole performance here.)

And, wow. Violeta Luna’s Embedded Frida? Aimee Friberg (who took all the photos you see here) adjectivized her best: a tantalizing, suffering/pleasuring Frida, embedded and processional through the streets of the Mission. Four performance stops, each more fantastic than the last:

The crowds? Everywhere along the way, it was like this:

And then there was the whole Tony-Labat-in-the-back-of-the-Rolls situation:

(he was handing out ‘want ads’ for his upcoming SFMOMA I WANT YOU project)

Congratulations, and thanks, to the MAPP, Violeta, Rene, Tony, Frank, the Red Poppy Art House, and all the many Fridas and artists and onlookers along the way.

(all photos: Aimee Nicole Friberg. Her superb MAPP Flickr set here.)

Posted by Suzanne under News | Tags: Frida Kahlo, Live Art, MAPP, Rene Yanez, Tony Labat, Violeta Luna, why wasn't I riding in the Rolls

This Saturday night, August 2nd, SFMOMA is joining The Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) in a street-level, neighborhood arts extravaganza celebrating the work and life of Frida Kahlo.

During the early years of the SFMOMA, and the reign of founding director Grace McCann Morley, museum forays into the city were the rule rather than the exception; I have to say I’m very excited this is happening again now. If you’re not already familiar with the MAPP, it’s a lively bimonthly neighborhood arts and cultural event that transforms garages, backyards, studios, gardens, and local businesses into make-shift arts and performance spaces, “where daily life meets artistic innovation and expression.” An international collaboration of over 60 artists, MAPP events take place the first Saturday of every month in the Mission, beginning with family art activities (painting, circus, storytelling, music) during the day, followed by a full evening of exhibitions and performances.

This weekend’s MAPP has a special Frida Kahlo focus & an SFMOMA collaborative aspect: the museum is presenting two artist projects as part of the night’s events:

Violeta Luna, Embedded Frida: Procession and performance through the MAPP circuit; musical accompaniment by David Molina with John Ingle. Building on a long-standing performance piece, Violeta Luna’s Embedded Frida moves the now-archetypal Kahlo figure through the streets of the Mission. At various stations, Frida will leave her sickbed/palenque to enact the conflicting histories-of gender, nationality, modernity, and Mexicanidad-that she has come to represent. The procession will start at the Brava Theater at 9 p.m., with performance stops at New Door Ventures and the Red Poppy Art House along the way.

ALSO!!
René Yañez’s Pasión por Frida: Frida Kahlo Lookalike Model Search
Galería de la Raza, 2851 24th Street, 5:30 p.m.

Rene Yanez and his Frida Look-alikes c. 1992

In the spirit of the tableaux he created for the Mexican Museum’s 1992 exhibition Pasión por Frida Yañez will enlist four to five models over the age of 18 to enact Frida Kahlo paintings or moments in the artist’s life. These living scenes will be presented at SFMOMA on Sunday, September 28, the closing day of the museum’s Frida Kahlo exhibition. Auditions at Galería de la Raza will be conducted in the order of arrival, starting at 5:30p.m. Please come dressed as Frida Kahlo, already costumed and with makeup.

For more information about all the events scheduled on August 2, visit the MAPP site, or stop by the Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom Street at 23rd) on the day of the event to pick up a map of event locations.

Free! and open to the public
Family Mapp: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
MAPP special project “Frida Was Here”: 7 p.m. to midnight

Posted by Suzanne under News | Tags: Frida Kahlo, Frida Lookalikes, Live Art, Rene Yanez

After this weekend’s second installment of Fritz Haeg’s Animal Estates weekend workshops, I’m finally starting to get what Fritz’s project is about. This workshop was Animal Client 4.2: The Peregrine Falcon. There was a Peregrine model home/habitat on display in the SFMOMA Visitor Education Center, and a Peregrine-Falcon lecture by Allen Fish, from the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory . (Among other things, we learned that the female peregrine is almost twice the size of the male peregrine, and this fact of the natural world has been termed, yes, REVERSE SEXUAL DIMORPHISM. Feminist poet-types, go after that.)

After the lecture we all went downstairs to the Schwab room for an animal-sound experiment organized by Carson Bell, “Curatorial Specialist” at the California Library of Natural Sound at the Oakland Museum. Carson had thirteen boomboxes set up around the room and a specialized system wherein on the count of three (plus “GO”), thirteen volunteers pushed thirteen play buttons, and were treated to a surround-sound-scape of conversation from the animals Fritz’s project focuses on: Peregrine Falcon, California Quail, and California Sea Lion. (Nota bene: no salamander sound. The little guys don’t get around much and thus I suppose haven’t got much to say).

So. What on earth is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art doing with an animal workshop series on the weekends and a geodesic tent in the Education Center? Frank Smigiel, associate curator of public programs, & the guy responsible for bringing Fritz Haeg here for the month, describes Fritz’s projects thus: His many event-based projects re-imagine everyday space, and the activities incumbent upon it. The answer, for me, on Sunday, was about what happened among the small clusters of people we convinced ought to come into the Schwab room to push buttons on all-but-extinct sound-playing machines: little tiny listening and talking and laughing communities. Grown-up sized people and less grown-up sized people.

Someone working the information desk in the Atrium told me that, on hearing the sounds of happy animals emanating from the Schwab room Sunday afternoon, a visitor approached and said, “It is very irresponsible of you to have sea lions in the museum!”

It’s worth noting that Animal Estates appears as part of a new “Live Art” programming series. More like experiments or propositions than a performance series, Frank’s Live Art @ SFMOMA program explores new intersections among visual, performing, and public art. It particularly seeks out artists who re-imagine seemingly vernacular forms (like the education workshop) so as to foster new relationships among artists, viewers, and public space. In other words, look for more of the same in months upcoming.

NEXT WEEKEND: Client 4.3: California Quail. Presentation and model home building with Alan S. Hopkins, Golden Gate Audubon Society; and an animal movement workshop with Terre Parker and Taira Restar from Anna Halprin’s Sea Ranch Collective.

Posted by Suzanne under Miscellany | Tags: Animal Estates, Fritz Haeg, Live Art

So, um, there’s a giant tent in the Koret Visitor Education Center. It’s the San Francisco Headquarters of Fritz Haeg’s Animal Estates project, & I’ve been looking forward to its arrival for months, thinking it was going to double as Nap Headquarters when the going got tough over in the cubicle. As you can see, however, mesh windows all around provide glorious sweeping views (of the Education Center), but a rather limited sense of privacy when it comes to staff naps on the sly.

Yesterday afternoon was the first of Fritz’s “Sundown Schoolhouse” workshops (they’re happening every Sunday in July). This one was focused on Animal Client 5.1: The California Slender Salamander. There was a talk by Michelle Koo from the California Academy of Sciences (I learned that the Slender Salamander, besides being a creature without lungs, is almost entirely sedentary: in all of its lifespan an individual salamander moves only a few square yards), and a garment-making workshop with Feral Childe. If you’d been around, you’d have been able to make yourself (or your kid) a Slender Salamander suit (”hoodie”):

[It was actually a lot of fun. More pictures are here.]

And, there’s been some strong critique of Fritz’s project in the comment box here. In my case, the jury’s still out; I’m very curious about the social aspects of the work and have been thinking about the role of this particular project in a museum or education context. Come down and see what you think; as I say there are Animal Estates workshops happening all month; I’d love to hear more from others as it all unfolds. This Sunday upcoming is Animal Client 5.2: California Quail. The workshop is ‘animal sounds’, with Carson Bell of the California Library of Natural Sounds. There will be sea-lion interactions on tape, and a boombox experiment will have participants using tape & CD boomboxes to create a synchronized soundscape of animals-in-the-wild.

Posted by Suzanne under News, Opinion | Tags: Live Art