8th Annual Transmodern Festival

Rebecca Nagle’s guide to TRANSMODERN 2011

sandytri — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:56:24 +0000

Transmodern this year is epic. It’s sprawling. And with nearly 200 artists it’s a little overwhelming. Below is a little guide, a small sample of some our events to help people navigate the festival.

If you are into film/video art:

For the program “Projections” Lexie Mountain has curated a powerhouse of video art including works by blackmoth.org, Hermonie Only, and Exploding Motor Car to name a few. Even more crazy than the line up is the location. You can see projections in the abandoned store front of the old Charles Fish and Sons on Eutaw Pl and Franklin St Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8pm to midnight.

You’ll also want to check out Mediations on Thursday 6-9pm at MAP, 218 W Saratoga. Stephanie Barber has put together an evening of video mixed with live action. Be sure to meet Xavier Leplae who biked here from Wisconsin! After Mediations, head downstairs to the 14K Cabaret to see Nancy Andrews new film Behind the Eyes are the Ears.

Music:

Two very special bands will be sharing Floristree’s stage on Friday night. Electric Junkyard Gamelan is an orchestra of homemade instruments from garbage. Mucca Pazza is a 30-piece rock and roll marching band. If you are on Howard Street around 10pm you might catch them marching on their way to the Floristree show.

If you’re in the listening mood, but want something more low key, visit “Soundbed in the Phantom Elevator” curated by Twig Harper. The phantom elevator will be open 8-12pm Friday and Saturday nights at Floristree.

And it goes without saying that you don’t want to miss Baltimore’s psychedelic soul powerhouse CELEBRATION on Saturday also at Floristree.

If you are into puppets and object theater:

“Travesty at Hand: Poupées, Toupees and Dummies“ takes place at The 14Karat Cabaret on Friday night at 8pm. An evening of puppet-master manipulations, featuring film, performance, digital device, high drag, low drag, hand-cranks and puppets in all their guise and glory. Expect the dis/embodied and the rearranged, the estranged and deranged, the fragmented and extended body object in all its splendor. Featured artists include LA’s Marsian de Lellis, Philly’s Puppet Tyranny, Baltimore’s Sarah Jennings, films by Martha Colburn, new media by Anna Frants, the Brechtian inflections of Marianne Ross and Possibilitarian Puppet Theater.

Interactive:

If you’re looking for active participation, nothing could get more active than Rooms Play. The Copy Cat Theatre has once again organized their epic 30-room adventure-play, in which you the viewer are the main character. Each room is its own interactive performance, leading you through a similitude of American immigration. At the Whole Gallery in the H & H building Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

You will also want to grab a burrito and pitch a tent at campcamp Friday and Saturday night in Current Gallery’s back lot. The interactive campground of installations and performances include Jaimes Mayhew, Kelley Belle, Liz Enz and Cubside Cafe.

At Pedestrian Services Exquisite, you will be able to participate in a love parade, spiritual revival, May Pole celebration, and guided walking tours. Happening outside around the H & H building on Sunday afternoon and FREE!

Dance / Movement:

Bill Shannon has perfected break dancing and skate boarding on crutches. His movement based work challenges people’s notion of ability, disability and gravity. He will be performing Friday night at Floristree and on the street!

Claire Cote has organized the best of Baltimore’s dancers, musicians, video artists, sewers and cultural doers to present the epic video game dance Power Moves Forever Quest. With original costumes, choreography, music, video and set Power Moves takes Mario to the next level.

Now, Then presents four genre-defying artists at the edge of dance. At the 14K Cabaret on Thursday and at the 5 Dimension Friday and Saturday.

Outside:

What makes 2011 Transmodern new and different is that we have taken the format of our festival to the streets. Not only is Transmodern taking over the H & H Building, Current and MAP, but we are also inhabiting the streets and spaces in-between. The streets of West-side downtown will be activated with parades, murals, DJ’s, installations, store front projections, food trucks and more!

Visit the 400 block of Howard Street to see 8 new murals by 6 local artists. The Howard Street Mural project is transforming the boarded up block into an outdoor art show.

If you are around Transmodern Friday or Saturday night you will not be able to miss Dazzlestorm’s “Make It Rain on My Parade“. The roaming sound-garment-performance references “marching bands, beauty products, strippers and all things fabulous and disastrous in Baltimore”.

Welcoming/Compliment Fairy

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 04:37:27 +0000

Pedestrian Service Exquisite’s Professional Welcoming Fairy

Melissa “Ultra” Sharlat started playing underneath her parent’s piano at the tender age of three. One day she actually played it, and has been performing ever since. An ordained reverend and self-taught drummer, Ms. Sharlat sings with The Frontier Dentists, has performed with many fabulous bands and in several Fluid Movement extravaganzas. As a founding member of the highly acclaimed comedy/improvisation troupe, The Flying Tongues, Ms. Melissa toured the country with them and quit after she made her millions. An ordained reverend, Ms. Sharlat can officiate a non-denominational and personalized service for any occasion.

Liz Ensz

sandytri — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 02:20:39 +0000

Liz Ensz received her BFA from MICA for Fiber in 2005, when she was awarded the Gelman Travel Grant for self-directed study of patterning in architecture in Spain and Turkey. Her large-scale textile and sculptural installations address war, religion, and politics post-9-11, and have been shown across the country. She currently lives out of a backpack and will begin the Fiber and Material Studies MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall.

http://lizenszartist.blogspot.com/

Liz is Psychamore Grove at campcamp

Psychamore Grove

sandytri — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 02:18:44 +0000

Psychamore Grove by Liz Ensz is an installation inspired in part by the story of my uncle, a Vietnam War veteran. Since returning from his service he has never returned to sleeping indoors. He has been married, fathered children, but has always slept alone in a tent in their back yard, the re-assimilation into society was never quite complete.

Psychamore Grove attempts to synthesize the calm of a shady sycamore grove on a glorious sunny summer day. Colored light pours through a foliage of military surplus netting and translucent camouflage to create a chaotic canopy of light and shadow,casting a confusing composite of overlapping shapes in the image of the bright vibrant bark of a sycamore tree. The merging of service and civilian imagery is an inquiry into the psychological struggle of a soldier returning from active duty, with mundane objects, sounds, and other triggers stirring up complex emotions, hallucinations, and flashes of terror.

Black Block Terror!

admin — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:20:01 +0000

Olivia the Sea Turtle is at it again. When Olivia thinks May Day she thinks of anarchists, specifically the black block. And stereotypically she assumes that black block equals havoc and terror! Those damn anarchists! Arbitrarily ruining and destroying everything in their path! Right? Well, that’s Olivia’s impression.
Olivia plans to join the destruction by dressing in black and wrecking havoc all over town. You might catch her lighting sparklers, or randomly yelling at people. Maybe she’ll hide behind buildings and spook people as they turn the corner. She is acting out her own stereotypical impression of what anarchy is.

Black Block Terror is a project of Virginia Warwick

Virginia Warwick was born in 1982 and grew up in Frederick, Maryland where she currently resides today. After graduating from University of Maryland, she entered Rinehart School of Sculpture. While attending Rinehart she was part of the Artscape Outdoor Sculpture Competition for two consecutive years. Since graduating Rinehart she has been showing consistently.

Church of Om Boom Drum Drone

admin — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:48:51 +0000

Revival Tent by Katrina Ford

Om Boom Drum Drone

om for spirit
boom for sound drum for rhythm
drone for tonal harmonic connection
A tribal revival to cure the modern meltdown of the void, the disconnection from the energy between us, beyond culture and beyond religion. A gathering to break the barrier of language through bone and antler technology, celebrating the Magdalenian Revolution…to invoke musical and non musical energy exchange. A reconnection in a sacred environment (temple cave), through guided meditation,tonal improvisation and rhythmic psionic resonation. Aura, aural, oral, choral and vibrational chant and dance to freely interpret what the trance of communal transcendence could be. MICROCOSMIC TO MACROCOSMIC (SEE MAHARISHI EFFECT) IN THE SPIRIT OF:Haitian carnival style RA RA music Poly-rhymic shamanic drumming Dionysian hypnotic inducing rituals of dance and music Sympathetic magic through animal calls Ecstasy of whirling dervishes Carnatic and Gamelan style micro-tonal expression I hope to return the war cry with the warrior call for peace, light and love, by removing the hard shell of modern artifice and social constraint with a musical return to primal liberation in the future presence of a “now”.

The Book

admin — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:38:06 +0000

This performance is based around a book. The book consists of a few pages of sewn-in journal writing. In the generally normal writing style I’ve taken I go on to describe various ridiculous ways to convey a message, like printing sentences on billboards or have a novel spread out like an accordion. These explorations of words, images and art consume my life to the extent that the borders are impossible to build between them. In this light, I compare my devotion to the book to my grandfathers devotion to his Islamic practice.

The Book is a performance by Deniz Olcay.

My name is Deniz Olcay. This is a Turkish name.I am half Turkish.
When I was born in New Jersey, on May 28, 1991 my parents gave me this name
so that in America I can be a like a ”Denise”, while still having a Turkish name.
I’ve regretted always not learning Turkish, but somehow I began to study Italian.
I saw that misunderstandings and flaws in communication are so sly that even
the two engaged are unaware of it. This notion sunk deep within me, and
without any desire of controlling of it, my life and explorations all lean
towards my desperation of knowing how a language has changes the mind, the body
and any relationship.

The Memory of an Idea

admin — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:53:46 +0000

I will lay out a mat that I have woven and assigned spaces to and cast a series of objects upon it. This series of objects in conjunction with the allotted placements on the mat determines the fortune told to the participant. My goal with this method is to help the participant recognize thoughts that they may have already been having through chance and random happenstance and provide some clarity to their own inner thoughts.

The Memory of an Idea is a performance of Catherine Yard

Catherine Yard is a Medium, a Leather Crafter, a Weaver and a Trapeze artist hailing from Trenton, New Jersey. She has developed a method and ideology of weaving where she see’s the loom as a portal between worlds and as a place to manifest materials from other worlds.

Katrina Ford

admin — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:42:15 +0000

Katrina Ford is a musician, multimedia artist and spiritual facilitator based in Baltimore Maryland. Current projects include Celebration, New Age Music for Cats, Church of Om Boom Drum Drone and Psionic Priestesses.

Let’s Take a Walk

admin — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:44:22 +0000

Let’s Take a Walk is a project of Marie Christine Katz

Let’s Take a Walk will gather visitors of the Transmodern Festival with others from all over the world, via Twitter, for a “group walk” throughout sites of the PSE event. Walking together while apart.
Festival goers are invited walk alongside me as I provide basic walking directions (for instance, Walk 30 steps and turn right Turn left, then look above you). Our public procession will also include a “town crier” to relay our steps to the twitter followers and a drummer. I will be wearing a knitted overskirt that unravels with each step, leaving a physical trace of our path.
During this time, far off participants receive the “tweet” messages on their cell phone devices, providing the series of walking/viewing directions that we are following at the festival. Everyone will be encouraged to film their journeys, whether at the festival or from other parts of the world, and send their footage to me. Eventually I will compile the videos as an installation that shows our walking in different places but all tracing the experience of our walk throughout Baltimore’s mid-town.

http://letstakeawalkmc.blogspot.com/2011/01/lets-take-walk-images.html

Marie Christine Katz is a multi-media artist, born in Sierre, Switzerland, living in NYC since 1985. Her study and love of theatre and performance led her to combine art and performance to create work using various forms of expression and materials from paper, fabric, threads, metal wire, human hair, glass and wax to text, performance art, sound and video. Recent group exhibition include Cheminement at the Galerie Duque&Pirson in Brussels, Belgium. Personal Geographies at the Hunter College/Time Square Gallery ExitArt in New York City, The Culture Project’s IMPACT Festival in New York City Wooloo’s New Life Berlin Festival in Berlin as well as The Women Artists’ Biennale, Seoul, Korea.