Saturday, September 1  |  7:30pm
The Fridge

http://tinyurl.com/TAINTpt1
#TAINTpt1
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Promotional trailer for TAINT, Pt.1 shot and edited by Patrick Hale.

You ready to see our TAINT?

Click the pic and let us know.

Hundreds of our closest friends mobbed Pleasant Plains Workshop last Friday, where the Pink Line Project hosted a reception launching their release of limited-edition prints (and T-shirts) of the controversial piece Jorzal created for our guerrilla gallery show at Occupy DC this past winter.

[Photos by Rachel Eisley for Pink Line Project.]

We had a [Cherry] Blast performing at the Lightbox in Anacostia on April 21.

Armando Lopez-Bircann, along with partner Katie Macyshyn, accompanied the crowd from atop platforms during the DJ sets that night. They motivated the crowd through dance and performance. Both represented Shinto Kami spirits of the cherry blossoms in a Kabuki inspired style, accented by wearable art objects. GoGo-like dancing was mixed with Kabuki Mie poses.

Vaunita Goodman developed and choreographed …Nowhere I’ve Never Been Before, examining environmental influences, culture, and ideas, while asking the question: Who’s in and who’s out? This performance included dancers Shakaya Mcfarland, Sylvana Sandoz, Mona Xochitl Avalos, Stefani Thomas, and Nia Malika Davis — in addition to a live featured collaboration with 40 female drummers from Batala — explored how outside experiences, both natural and manmade, bring about conflicts which challenge us to thrive in an ever-changing environment.

Dancer/choreographer Jasmine Heiss worked with artist Chukwuma Agubokwu to utilize the fragility of paper to manifest a sense of “markedness” when her dancers came into contact with one another. The piece they developed involved several performers and buckets of water that the dancers used to “wash” their hands and limbs as gestures toward the experience of “stripping down” or “casting off” some of the essential identities that we inhabit, which sometimes ultimately contribute to an experience of isolation.  The movements were a visual manifestation of the ways in which encounters both mark us, and leave those that we interact with “marked” — symbolized by the dancers with wet hands touching her partner, resulting in part of the costume coming away on her body.

Amulya Mandava orchestrated the artistry for her collaborative multi-disciplinary performance piece and worked with artist Joseph Hale, who created a giant plywood “canvas” wall in the middle of the Lightbox where a dancer performed while paint was sprayed out of fire extinguishers onto the canvas behind her to create a lasting piece. The concept behind this is demonstrated how the media and artists constrain each other and provides negative space to work in, coupled with the idea of the creation of visual art as a fundamentally physical endeavor (which is often forgotten by those who just see the finished work), and of dance as visual art (choreographers think so much about lines and creating 2-D images of the body for an audience, which is often forgotten by those who see dance as just movement-oriented).  Before that, a team of dancers choreographed by Amulya emerged from the crowd and took to platforms scattered through the warehouse, performing to “Ima Read” by Zebra Katz.

Finally, closing out the set of our performances, Antoine Lee led Charlotte Barnette and Long Nguyen in DANCED. Antoine created choreography that turned Cherry Blast into a high school prom — on acid. Drawing from personal experiences, exposed the palpable energy that is present during high school social events.  His dancers personified the awkward and exciting energy that is the product of the intimate social interactions that make our adolescents memorable, to say the least. Charlotte performed a solo in the  middle of the dance floor while Antoine and Long gazed at her from the stages on both sides of the space before a duet was formed that transitioned into a trio of movement in unison, concluding with three simultaneous solos. At the end, Charlotte climbed to the front of the stage and dived into crowd-surfing the audience. I have talked to the other choreographer about the use of other dancers for this part.  The dancers then took signs (that said things to encourage the moment and rabble-rousing) and threw confetti to the crowd for additional hype, set to music by DJ Robin Bell. In closing, the dancers brought out a massive parachute into the crowd, where revelers danced under it and popped beach balls.

This past Saturday night on April 21, Cherry Blast IV took over the Lightbox in Anacostia — and the Vagabonds were there.  Our massive creative team reached across several different platforms to create a multidisciplinary performance piece centered around dance, but enveloping the visual arts and music as well.  The context of this year’s Cherry Blast was specific to the pieces in total, and we aimed collectively to enhance and engage the viewers’ experience of this annual arts extravaganza while pushing the boundaries of our own respective mediums into something that challenges our own perceived artistic limitations.

During Thursday night’s load-in of our pop-up Seeing Red show (currently on exhibition at the Arena Stage in conjunction with their play Red) artist + VESTIBULE Co-Conspirator Adrian Parsons took a moment to talk about the abstract installation he created, as well as the artistic inspiration he gleans from the late Mark Rothko.

Check out the work of our entire collective of artists, including other Co-Conspirators like DECOY and Peter Krsko of Albus Cavus, on display now at the Arena Stage through Sunday.

Listen to local artist Rodrigo Carazas Portal, one of the Vagabonds of VESTIBULE, talk about his latest piece Antigone — on exhibition now at the Arena Stage as part of our latest guerrilla gallery deployment entitled Seeing Red, in which our crew of artists reinterprets iconic work by Mark Rothko.

Announcing our latest guerrilla gallery deployment — a specially-commissioned exhibition titled Seeing Red, hosted and commissioned by our friends at the Arena Stage.

The Arena Stage is currently home to Red, a play that drops you squarely inside the world of painter Mark Rothko and sets your heart pounding. At the height of his career, Rothko struggles with a series of grand-scale paintings for New York’s elite Four Seasons restaurant. When his new assistant challenges his artistic integrity, Rothko must confront his own demons or be crushed by the ever-changing art world he helped create.

Under the creative direction of Vagabond Joseph Orzal, we’re proud to have brought together our collective to reinterpret Rothko through the varied perspectives and media of over 15 local DC-area artists, including:

• 181
• Adrian Parsons
• Cortney Mohring
• Darryl Bennett
• DECOY
• Deshaundon Jeanes
• Jacqueline Levine
• Janelle Ortiz
• Joseph Hale
• Justin Poppe
• Margo Elsayd
• Peter Krsko
• Rodrigo Carazas Portal
• Sarah Coombs
• Stephen Crouch

The show opens tonight and will remain at the Arena Stage throughout the weekend.

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[All photos by Liz Gorman]

This is what democracy looks like.

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Photographed by Joshua Yospyn for TBD.com

WHAT        #OccupyDCart exhibition curated by VESTIBULE, featuring artwork created by DC street artists who collaborated with Occupiers on determining their message(s) and visually interpreting it through art

WHERE      McPherson Square, at the southwest corner near the entrance at 15^th & I Streets NW 

WHEN        Live deployment of guerrilla gallery modules at 12:30 p.m. this Friday, December 30

WHO          VESTIBULE, a DC-based art collective including Adrian Parsons, Josef Palermo, and Joseph Orzal

VISUALS    Fifteen (15) temporary mobile exhibition modules constructed to host 750 square feet of wall space

Washington, December 27, 2011:  VESTIBULE, a local art collective, is building fifteen (15) temporary mobile exhibition modules for its “guerrilla gallery” – which the group plans to use to pop-up unannounced art shows at various locations throughout the District.  The first and only pre-announced show, #OccupyDCart, opens in McPherson Square this Friday at 12:30 p.m. with an exhibition of artwork created by DC street artists who collaborated with Occupiers on taking the signs, banners, and other materials used in communicating their messages and reinterpreting them into a cohesive social protest art aesthetic aligned with the ethos of the Occupy movement.

“It’s like having a mini-Occupation throughout the city,” promises local performance artist, hunger striker, and VESTIBULE collaborator Adrian Parsons.

“It took me a while to really get a feel for what they [the Occupiers] as a community are feeling,” says VESTIBULE’s Joseph Orzal, who recently spent two weeks connecting with activists at both Occupy encampments at Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square in an effort to better understand their cause and message.  “I think, from some of the people I’ve talked to, the idea of having a concrete aesthetic attached to any movement is really important,” Orzal adds. “So people are open to us redoing all the signage [featuring] an array of slogans and mantras that the Occupiers requested.”

The VESTIBULE guerrilla gallery opens this Friday, December 30, at 12:30 p.m. in McPherson Square and will remain onsite for for about a week before it starts popping up in front of iconic DC landmarks, high-traffic areas, and select corporate offices. Follow @VESTIBULEdc on Twitter for the latest updates on the guerrilla gallery and visit http://tinyurl.com/OccupyDCart to make a donation that provides arts supplies, transportation of the guerrilla gallery structures, and other needs associated with this project.

Download the PDF of our media advisory

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[All photos by Liz Gorman]