What is Conscience?

Open Floor brought you documentary photographer and filmmaker Jackie Renn, who presented her work What is Conscience? The show consisted of Ms. Renn’s work over the past eight years regarding first amendment rights during a time of war. The show also expanded into today’s GI resisters and or conscientious objectors, who have been court martialed and jailed for speaking out and standing by their beliefs. Many of these individuals have gone to prison and are listed on human rights watch lists as "prisoners of conscience."

What is Conscience? invites its audience to interact and question their actions and attitudes towards war. Ms. Renn’s book, Portraits of Conscience : Celebrating the First Amendment During a Time of War 2002-2007, was nominated for a 2008 Robert F. Kennedy book award. In the book Ms. Renn states, "People who demonstrated in the streets were either ignored by the media or found their numbers under reported in ways that weakened protesters' efforts and undermined their messages and presence. In the case of these images my hope is to inspire, empower, and encourage others to take part in speaking your truth." This Open Floor also featured guest speakers, Gerry Condon President of Greater Seattle Veterans for Peace, and Larry Ebersole of Amnesty International Washington State. For more information regarding this event visit jackierenn.tumblr.com.

Syllogism

The theater-of-the-absurd one-act dramedy Syllogism, written and directed by emerging playwright La-Tonia Denise Willis, is a contemporary deconstruction of the lives of three lost souls compelled to perpetually revisit the tragic situations and circumstances surrounding their institutionalization.

Henry Silence, #8 of the Silence Project

Hearing the art and seeing the music,  Jay Hamilton, Susie Kozawa, Eric Lanzollita, Michael Shannon, Esther Sugai, Kestrel Wright and others performed, accompanied,  and explored the Henry sonically.

W3AVE

S3A presented "W3AVE," a program that brought together 18 Seattle urban artists for a live collaborative art session at the Henry Art Gallery for April’s Open Floor.

The artist line-up included: Ego, Stacey Rozich, Augie Pagan, Weirdo, Solace, John Osgood, Kevin “Sensei23” Sullivan, Zach Bohnenkamp,CASH, Ninjagrl, 179, Joe Vollan, Mat Savage, PaperMarbleS, Jeremy Gregory, Justin Hillgrove, Mike Capp & Mike Gardner.

The artists were divided into six teams of three. Each artist came with a 12”x16” canvas that they have already started to work on, then they swapped their canvas with each of their team members and contribute to their canvases while the audience watched. By the end of the event, each team had three completed collaborative pieces. In addition, DJ EMC and the Acid Unicorn dropped contemporary beats, cooking up an engaging blend of dance grooves and known and loved favorites – from yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Toy-Box Trio

Described as "New Classical Music with a Carnival Flair," the Toy-Box Trio was founded in early 2007 by classical composer Harlan Glotzer while studying at Cornish College of the Arts. Concertina, toy piano, and tuba combine to create a sonic landscape evocative of dusty old music boxes and haunted carnivals. The Toy-Box Trio is committed to approaching time worn ideas and concepts from unexpected, untraditional, and rarely used angles, as well as providing a light and fanciful sonic atmosphere.

Images courtesy of FTC

The Telephone Project

UW Student Poetry Collective Stray's president Brittany Dennison presented a series of adaptations entitled the Telephone Project. A multimedia riff on the game of Telephone as well as the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse, the project included twenty-five artists and writers who transposed each others’ works, in order to explore the transformations that took place.

Brittany gave the first artist the task of interpreting a poem by Owen Curtsinger into an artwork, which the next participant then translated into a poem. The contributors repeated this process until all twenty-five were exhausted. Open Floor brought you snapshots and discussion of the various end-results.

Jillia Pessenda's performance, Force Feed, dissects the messy matter of a breaking relationship stuck together by circumstance (through text, sound and movement). Two performers, physically bound by a green garden hose, twist, fight and plunge towards the unknown in this physical and linguistic romp on loving & UN-loving. This piece was influenced by the performance space, and played out in/around audience members.

Paris Hurley presented a performative multimedia work that melded the interconnectivity of nouns with the concept of travel, exploring what it means to be human from a multitude of perspectives. Blurring the lines between co-existing realities, the piece pulls from universally shared experiences and sentiments inviting participants to step into a world where people are bubbles, bags travel, and unconventional body parts take precedent.

A partnership between the Open Floor crew and Velocity Dance Center, centered on their Next Dance Cinema presentation, now in its third year as a showcase for dance films by Pacific Northwest artists.

This year's selection of independent dance films was curated by Karn Junkinsmith and the evening enchanted and engaged audiences of dance and visual art lovers alike. Next Dance Cinema is part of Velocity's Next Fest NW.  For more information about Next Fest NW, go to velocitydancecenter.org.

The artists represented in Next Dance Cinema 2008 and their featured work were:

Renee Rhodes / Our Own Kind of Gravity
Paige Barnes / lie down on a road (don't get hurt
Corrie Befort / 2 Kinds of Wind
Erika Mayfield / The Cyclist
Catherine Cummings / We're Undermining and Withstanding
Kristina Dillard / For Anna
Jenna Veatch / Clementine
Yuki Enomoto / Running
Carla Barragan / Cocoon
Adam Sekuler / Merely Mouthpiece
Karn Junkinsmith / Strike
Alice Gosti / Airport Project
Megan Mertaugh / The Attic
Ricki Mason / Be Your (most attractive) Self
Nathan Vass and Rachel Randall / Green Triangle Poopy Park

Joshua Kohl of the Degenerate Art Ensemble presented a retrospective of two HUGE performances he and his Degenerates played at the Moore Theater here in Seattle. A film of the 45 piece Degenerate Art Orchestra concert (featuring compositions by Kohl, Eyvind Kang, and Jherek Bischoff) was followed by documentation of the multi-media smorgasbord "Cuckoo Crow."

The Degenerates have always pushed themselves and there audiences to new levels. Described by Wire Magazine as an ensemble that has " . . . stampeded over every artistic boundary they have found before them." The Degenerates have always pushed themselves and their audiences to new levels. Check them out at degenerateartensemble.com.

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Open Floor also presented a new composition by one of Seattle's most provocative composers and double bass players, Evan Flory-Barnes.

Having played with everything from symphony orchestras, jazz combos, hip hop ensembles, and solo bass performances, Flory-Barnes creates an original hybrid of sound that is forward-thinking and rich with intellect, variety, and enthusiasm. As likely to be inspired by Ravel as by Rakim, Evan Flory-Barns will be sure to provoke and reward his listeners.

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Lastly, composer/performer Richard Webb presented his newest collection of compositions. Richard has worked with everything from Javanese Gamelan ensembles, folk/ klezmer bands, noise outfits, to playing bass in a doom metal band. Webb will be presenting a collection of new compositions that fall somewhere between Nick Cave and electronic noise masters The Boredoms. Webb teamed up with video artist Sierra Stinson to create an atmosphere that's a whole lot of beautiful, mixed with a whole lot of "was that the sound of a vacuum cleaner?"

The show opened with Guardian Ear. Their music lives in the gray areas between composition and improvisation that combine and clash so as to create interesting textures and landscapes. With the aid of an oboe, cello, guitar and Latin and Middle Eastern percussion, Guardian Ear performed a single piece, and "weave[d] pre-arranged material and f#@$-all improvisation, all the while looking, to everyone, everywhere, really awesome."

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Paurl Walsh showcased an extraordinary electronic composition for seven speaker surround-sound titled "Upward not Northward."  This work is based on the Edwin Abbott's classic dystopian geometry novel Flatland, in which a two-dimensional main character is introduced to "the land of three-dimensions."  Walsh manifests the otherworldly experiences of the main character in the form of a multi-channel surround audio poem.

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Pierson Wallace-Hoyt's composition "Cave Paintings" is a conglomeration of field-recordings, song and tempered feedback. The rumble of cars is mixed with the sounds of kagyrra style throat singing, scraped metal, and sharp overtones. All these sounds live on a canvas of drones which are both welcoming and warm. In short, this avant-garde music excludes no one.

WIND IN THE BAMBOO - Layers of Japan Music and words intertwined in a one-hour program of traditional haiku (in English and Japanese) and the sounds of the koto* and shakuhachi**, presented by Seattle's own Duo En.***

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Tilla Kuenzli also presented a selection of her experimental costume works by way of subtle dance performance; more of her work was on display at Seattle University's Lee Center for the Arts in a performance by the Maureen Whiting Company, Myth of Us, which opened May 30th.

*    The koto is the official national instrument of Japan. It is a thirteen-stringed classical instrument with a history of over a thousand years. It is about six feet long, made from Empress Tree (Paulownia) wood, and is hollow, with a sound hole underneath. It is called a "dragon" instrument because of its shape. The strings, once made of silk, are played with three ivory picks on the right hand, and the left hand is used to change the pitch and create various effects and ornamentations. The music is closely associated with the love of nature found in traditional Japan. It originated in China.

**    The shakuhachi (bamboo flute) has a Zen tradition in Japan. It is an end-blown flute with five finger holes and an oblique mouthpiece carved into the end of a piece of madake bamboo. With a focus on breath control and a single tone, it has been used as an instrument of meditation since the 13th century in Japan and today its hauntingly beautiful natural sound is used in classical and contemporary music of all kinds. The name "shakuhachi" derives from its length -one shaku, eight sun (ichi-shaku hachi-sun) - about 1.8 feet long. The shakuhachi and the koto have been played together since the Edo period (1603-1868) in Japan.

***    Elizabeth and John Falconer of Duo En studied at Waseda University and then resided in Japan for over 12 years, studying Japanese language and music. Elizabeth is a licensed koto master and holds a BA in Japanese Studies from the University of Oregon, an MA in Japanese Pedagogy and a PhD in International Education from the University of Iowa. John holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of Oregon, an MA in Russian Literature and an MFA in Translation from the University of Iowa. They now reside in a suburb of Seattle, where they actively record, perform, and compose. Their music has been used in film and television and their recordings have received international acclaim. Their long-term experiences in working with various audiences and their love of Japanese culture combine with their unique creativity to make their programs remarkable and memorable.

Robert Campbell took us on a tour of his recent video work, and presented his show at 911 media arts center in Seattle: yellow.  He and the audience discussed the considerations of this recent work, hormone-altering chemicals found in plastics and the other contaminants present in our habitat.

His video "Delta of C15 H22 04" is presented below, in partnership with ONSCREEN magazine (a publication of 911 media arts center).

Ryan Finnerty read to us from his 'zine, Post is the Most. Listen here:

For more information on the zine and the press Ryan runs to support it (the Obvious Child Press), see his myspace page.

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This month also featured a presentation by Ellie Lum, co-founder of R.E.Load Baggage, Inc. She described the history of her business, beginning as two people sewing things together in an art studio in Philadelpha. She also discussed her take on the handmade products industry, R.E.Load's place in the industry, and the business model she has embraced:

"Recently, i put an ad on Craigslist looking for stitchers to work off site, but still in seattle, helping us make frame pads and accessories. I got a lot of responses from women that used to make stuff for JanSport, and Nautica, and tons of other companies that were based out of the northwest that all lost their jobs once Bush dropped the embargo and all of that production went to china, around 2000. So, there is so much skilled labor in this country that is not being taken advantage of, because it's so much cheaper to produce out of the country.

"There's only so much you can do . . . even though we produce this product the way we do, we still have to charge more than what all of us and our friends can afford.

"Part of the reason that i think it's really important to produce things in this country is because the environmental laws in this country are better . . . i thnk that if we're going to consume these things, we should see the problems that we create, in our communities, and monetarily support our communities . . . "

carlos esparza presented a "speakering," (like a screening, but for music) of prepared electronic music. A discussion followed regarding the place of "pop music" in the art world, and the notions of presenting it in a such a formal manner, in a darkened theater. listen to a sample (called "looking") here: