Artipedia - Arts News

Walker Art Center

Merce Cunningham
Dance Company

Ocean
September 11-13, 2008

Rainbow Quarry, Minnesota

http://www.walkerart.org

This fall the Walker Art Center restages Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s monumental Ocean on the floor of the dramatic Rainbow Granite Quarry in Waite Park, Minnesota. This landmark statewide collaboration will surely be one of the most sensational dance projects to be mounted in the U.S. this year. Of the work, Merce Cunningham says, “Ocean was originally conceived for out-of-doors. A quarry called ‘Rainbow Granite’ seems an ideal spot.”

This underground work in-the-round dubbed “Merce on the Rocks” is the spectacular site-specific production of one of Cunningham’s most ambitious works—Ocean— involving not just the full 14-member Merce Cunningham Dance Company, but an electronic score by David Tudor, and Andrew Culver’s orchestral score (inspired by John Cage) performed by 150 instrumentalists from across the state of Minnesota who will encircle the audience at the bottom of the quarry. Acclaimed filmmaker and longtime Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas will stage a five-camera shoot of the entire production which will become a living record of this stunning work.

Ocean is structured in 19 sections according to Cunningham’s use of a chance process based on the number of hexagrams in the I Ching; there are 128 possible phrases, including solos, duets, trios, quartets, and ensembles involving the entire cast of 14 dancers. Cunningham has said: “Choreography in the round has opened up a number of possibilities, particularly in terms of directions and facings. It is not flat space, but curved . . . . Each time we go over what has been worked on, I see possibilities missed: through chance operations I try to utilize them. It is amazing to be working in the round, in reference to the space, it brings up Einstein’s work about curving space—we tend to think flat. I told the dancers: ‘You have to put yourself on a merry-go-round that keeps turning all the time.’ I use chance operations to determine where they face at each moment in a phrase. Difficult, but fascinating.”

The revival of Ocean was held on July 12, 2005, at Lincoln Center, where New York audiences saw its premiere in 1994. Because it is a monumental production, the work has been seen only in Brussels, Amsterdam, Venice, Berkeley, New York City, Belfast, Montpellier, London, Miami, and Niigata, Japan. Also, in each of these prior performances, changes to the in-the-round presentation and orchestration were made compromising the full unique multidisciplinary work. The Minnesota presentation is the only time the work has been produced in a quarry.

Coproduced by the Walker Art Center and the Cunningham Dance Foundation, with the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict and Northrop Dance at the University of Minnesota. Made possible through a generous gift of John and Sage Cowles and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces: Presenting program. Special thanks to Martin Marietta Materials and the city of Waite Park.

The Walker Art Center’s dance season is sponsored by Gray Plant Mooty.

The production was co-commissioned by the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, MN and Dance Umbrella. Major support provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and members of the Board of Directors of the Cunningham Dance Foundation.

The filming of Ocean is made possible through major support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional funds provided by The Ford Foundation and Save America’s Treasures, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service, Department of the Interior.

Walker Art Center
http://www.walkerart.org
612.375.7600

For complete information and tickets visit http://www.calendar.walkerart.org/ocean

Volume Magazine

Volume Magazine #16:
‘SOCIAL ENGINEERING’
In stores this July

VOLUME is a collaborative project by
Archis + AMO + C-Lab + …

http://www.archis.org/volume

Our society seems to be locked into a position in which the choice of the user and the voter determine our future ways of living. A disturbing forecast of a collective urban life in a giant Big Brother House looms; a material and social world in which the sensational media and its commercial translation is prevalent. Our sense of what is real and what is quality is on the verge of collapse. The practice and education of the engineers of this society is determined by short term effect instead of social responsibility. Culture is market, politics its façade and the city its stage. Instead of reviving old school high modernist social engineering or claiming here the need for an intellectual Junta, we solicit for new forms of social engineering. Where does this lead you?

Several forms of social engineering are addressed.
James C. Scott in an interview airs his fundamental critique on State driven large-scale social engineering
Desmond Kwame shows the slum removal and clearing operations in Harare and other Zimbabwean cities
Eyal Weizman describes how the Israeli military literally engineered the invisible Palestinian enemy using architectural theory as inspiration
Neville Mars displays how fear is becoming dominant in Chinese planning and how the Chinese dream is being constructed as a fortress.
Reinier de Graaf reveals in an interview OMA’s new architectural quest, namely to be an incubator of cultural resistance.
Steven Wassenaar gives evidence of how in Paris the eradication of ideals both political and urbanistic is in full swing
Michel Bauwens advocates that the ‘peer 2 peer’ concept is not simply a technology but a radical new way of democratic living.

Table of Contents:
Planning Paradise Arjen Oosterman
Principles of Great Stories Dick de Lange
User City in a Voter World Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat

Society
Seeing Like a Society Interview with James C. Scott
Operation Murambatsvina Desmond Kwame
Engineering Trust Jan Willem Duyvendak
The Space of Experience Bill Thompson
Epistemological Attack! Eyal Weizman
Amateur as Pioneer Christian Bunyan
Disperse and Rule Justus Uitermark
The Mighty Model Gaby Heindl and Drehli Robnik
Manifesto Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat
Media Labs and Open Societies Andrew Bullen
Designing Society: Peer 2 Peer Michel Bauwens
Utopian History of Architecture

City
Up-TempoUrbanism Interview with Reinier de Graaf
Packaging Utopian Sustainability Matt Lewis
Chinese Dreams Neville Mars
Manifesto or City Interview with Pier Vittorio Aureli
Free Urbanism Jeroen Heester
Slums and Slabs Steven Wassenaar
1 in 23 Urban Think Tank
A Retroactive Lens on the Bijlmermeer Wouter Vanstiphout
Smart Governance Erik Gerritsen and Jeroen de Lange

Gaming
Who’s in Charge Arjen Oosterman
How Sim City Changed the Game of Planning Edwin Gardner
A New Arena for Collective Activisme Jeremy Hight

Dossier
Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis Office for Social Engineering

From the Volume Archive

Museum of Contemporary Arts, Grand-Hornu

Beat Streuli, Guangzhou/Cairo/Sao Paulo 08
dans la salle pont du MAC’s, 2008
papier peint/impressions jet d’encre, 520×4440 cm
Copyright: Courtesy: Beat Streuli et Galerie Erna Hécey, Bruxelles

Beat Streuli Expo
29/06/08 - 19/10/08

http://www.mac-s.be

Starting on 29 June, the Museum of the Contemporary Arts of the Grand-Hornu will host the artist Beat Streuli in its halls for a major monographic exhibition.

Since 1988, Beat Streuli has been photographing cities, city streets and the people who populate them. He uses a telephoto lens, which allows him to remain at a distance from his subjects and to catch them without their knowledge, and gives these people a look that is purely “photographic”, not idealised, without pathos. His gaze is objective, and takes life today in the great metropolitan areas into account, thus revealing its multiculturalism, for example.

For Beat Streuli, “the photographic instant approaches automatic writing”. For him it is a matter of “working without intentions”. When making a shot, he tries to remain as open as possible in order to photograph the right moment, without any control over the staging. Although he feels that his work is continuous with the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher and the new German objectivity, he nonetheless asserts a major difference from them by establishing less distance between the subject and himself. Beat Streuli tries to “construct situations where the viewer can develop a physical relationship with what is around him. He tries to give people the possibility of entering into his head, of seeing through his eyes and thus of going beyond this border between himself and the other”. The city is always present in the background, like a framework that accommodates these bodies. He sees it as a “laboratory” whose setting, always “out of focus”, highlights the person photographed anonym
ously in the crowd. After the camera shots, Beat Streuli continues his work by selecting from among numerous shots the ones that he will keep.

The presentation of the images is also essential for the artist. He is interested in the dialogue that he can create between his photographs and the place where they are exhibited. For example, he has posted photos in the advertising spaces of certain bus stops without any explanations concerning them. He has incorporated others into different contemporary architecture projects.

For the exhibition at the Mac’s, he thought through the layout of his work as a function of the specific features of the premises in order to create a route through different types of spaces and atmospheres. He responded to the monumental nature of the square hall with three simultaneous projections nine metres wide by six metres high, with the length of the hall bridge with a wallpaper covering the surface of a wall consisting of a patchwork of photographs that invite the viewer to travel the wall with a look as if in a tracking shot. For other halls with a more traditional morphology, he installs large format photos that recall painting, or wallpaper like a fresco, the people life-sized, in movement, a dance. Each hall is pervaded with a different climate and presents a different technique; Beat Streuli goes from photography to video, from one wallpaper to the next.

The exhibition, devised in close cooperation with the artist, is not a retrospective. It exhibits recent works, dating from a few years ago at the most. These works evoke human beings in the city: Brussels, where the artist lives today and to which he dedicates several rooms, and then the megalopolises to which he travels, such as Cairo, Sao Paulo and Guangzhou in the delta of the Pearl River in China.

Beat Streuli was born in Altdorf, Switzerland in 1957. He lives in Zurich, Dusseldorf and Brussels. He studied painting in Basle and in Zurich.

The MAC’s identity sheet

Director:
Laurent Busine

Address:
MAC’s
Site of the Grand-Hornu
Rue Sainte-Louise 82
BE-7301 Hornu (near Mons)
Tel.: +32(0)65/65.21.21
Fax: +32(0)65/61.38.91
E-mail: info.macs@grand-hornu.be

Opening hours:
Every day from 10 to 18.00,
except Mondays, 25/12 and 01/01.

Museum of Contemporary Arts

Department of Communication

Site of the Grand-Hornu
Rue Sainte-Louise 82
BE-7301 Hornu

Manager
Dominique Cominotto
Assistant to the management
Telephone: 00.32 (0)65.61.38.65
Fax: 00.32 (0)65.61.38.91
E-mail: communication@grand-hornu.be

Assisted by:
Maïté Vanneste
Telephone: 00.32 (0)65.61.38.53
E-mail: maite.vanneste@grand-hornu.be

Press contact:
Hélène van den Wildenberg
Caracas Public Relations
Telephone: 00.32 (0)4. 349.14.41
Mobile Phone: 00.32 (0)495.22.07.92
E-mail: hvdw@caracascom.com

http://www.mac-s.be

With the support of the Pro Helvétia Foundation