Charlotte Street Foundation

KcEMA KcEnnections brings together world-renowned artists from the region for a night of electronic music and visual art.  The February 5th concert features two movements from Daniel Asia and Kip Haaheim’s “Sacred and Profane,” with video by Janet Davidson-Hues. The texts for portions of this piece are drawn from the sayings of Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav, a leader of the Hassidic movement in 18th century Poland.  Paul Rudy will perform a variety of instruments as he accompanies tracks from his  “2012 Stories” CD series.  Rudy calls the series “a personal journey to come alive during an unprecedented time of awakening on our planet earth.”  Douglass Crockwell’s animations entitled “Glen Falls Sequence,” with a newly composed soundtrack by David Dvorin, bring a startling visual element to the concert.  Created over a nine-year period in the 1930’s, the “Glen Falls Sequence” is the result of numerous experimental and unorthodox techniques of animation, supplemented by Dvorin’s layered electronic music.

The Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA) was founded in 2007 to encourage and develop understanding and appreciation of electronic music and to create an expansive sense of community for electronic musicians and other artists in the Kansas City Area. Doors open at 7pm; $5 suggested donation at the door. UCP Studios at City Center Square, 1100 Main, 5th floor.  Read full press release. For more about KcEMA, visit http://www.kcema.net

Uncover the hilarious secret subtext of your favorite Saturday morning cartoon February 11 to March 7 in the Coterie At Night production of Spooky Dog: A Scooby-Doo-Like Mystery (Plagiarized, improvised and not for kiddies!), directed by CSF Generative Performing Award Fellow Ron Megee and performed evenings-only at la Esquina, 1000 W. 25th St. (On First Friday February 5, 6-8pm, the public is invited to a FREE sneak peak and party with the Mystery Gang. Meet the visual and performing artists and enjoy Spooky Dog’s favorite snacks and beverages. Rah Booty perform as special guests.)

The production, true to the Hanna-Barbera time period of the late ‘60s-early ‘70s, incorporates musical numbers, improvisation, and audience participation as it chronicles the uproarious and campy adventures of a dog detective named Spooky, his spaced-out hippie friend, and their gang. The teen-age mystery gang confronts criminals, but what do they do about their own burgeoning sexual desires? Or those tasty dog treats with unexpected side effects?  Or the penchant they suddenly have for busting a move?  This Coterie At Night production is PG-13 for language and sexual innuendo. Individuals under the age of 13 will not be admitted.  Spooky Dog is a co-production with the Coterie and UMKC Theatre’s professional training program.  

Tickets  are $12 for all ages; $9 for Coterie season ticket holders. Discount Deal: 10 tix for $10 each – advance phone orders only. Tickets may be purchased by calling (816) 474-6552, online at www.coterietheatre.org, at the Coterie Box Office in Crown Center, or at the door 30 minutes prior to performance time. Read full press release.

Cumulus, a multi-media, multi-disciplinary exhibition featuring select projects developed by current UCP Studio Residents, continues with the addition of new artworks and projects. New features debuting at the Third Friday opening on February 19, 6-9 pm at Paragraph, 23 E. 12th. include The Wizard Ningxt, an eccentric character embodied by Aaron Storck, who will offer stir-fry, drinks, and poetry to gallery visitors from temporary housing structure at the gallery’s entrance, and a rotating exhibition curated by Erica Mahinay within Paragraph featuring works by Storck, Caleb Taylor, Samantha Persons, Lori Yonley, Kat Dison, Luke Rocha, Darwin Arevalo, Erica Mahinay, Charlie Mylie and Timothy Amundson.

In nearby Oppenstein Park, 12th and Walnut, Elaina Wendt Michalski will debut Exit, composed of two life-size figure sculptures, based on homeless youth. Made of unfired clay, these figures, left vulnerable to the elements, are inspired and informed by Michalski’s interaction with members of Synergy Services, a youth homeless shelter in the Kansas City area.  In additionm Lori Yonley will welcome visitors once again to Give and Take, an ever-revolving collection of 5×5 collaborative drawings, and on the street Kurt Flecksing and Sean M. Starowitz will again fire up the S’mores Vending Cart, supplying a taste of campfire nostalgia and accumulating funds to award to future artists’ projects.

Additional Cumulus Events:
Saturday, February 20th, 1-2:30pm: Critique dialogue led by Barbara O’Brien, Curator, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Julie Farstad, Painting Professor, Kansas City Art Institute.
Wednesday, February 24, starts at 6pm: Potluck Drawing session, Reperformance organized by Charlie Mylie (7pm), & The Four Seasons, a performance collabioration by Jane Gotch, Tim Amundson, Erica Mahinay.

Read full press release.

Sofa Kingdom in the Valley of Comic Sans, a new, site-specific installation by Kansas City based artists Timothy Amundson and Charlie Mylie, opens at Urban Culture Project Space, 21 East 12th Street, Friday February 19, 6-9pm.  It runs through March 6, 2010.

Amundson and Mylie, both artists in UCP’s Studio Residency Program, are generating “an interactive, performative space of play.” This multi-media environment is envisioned as a platform for “improvisations, cooperations, and transformations,” whereby “actors become sculptures, performative games become improvisational dance, paintings become platforms, drawings become instructions, objects become tasks, formal sculptures become architectural interventions, and viewing becomes experience.”  Over the course of the evening, such array of transformations will unfold, with such materials as wood, fabric, guitars, electric fans, fermenting wine, pedestals, lights, plants, paint, play-dough, diverse found objects, and human beings as cast as active players in a real-time theatrical event. Read full press release.

Commodity, Commotion, Communication, an installation of new work by Kansas City based artist and Urban Culture Project Studio Resident Samantha “Sammy” Persons, opens at Urban Culture Project Space, 21 East 12th Street, with a Third Friday reception on January 15, 6-9pm; artist remarks at 6pm.  

A manipulator of signs more than a producer of art objects, Persons constructs “paintings” and interactive sculptural environments  from materials drawn from her own lifetime and which signal the difference between Art and non- art identified objects—her materials palette includes house paint, vinyl letters, art books and catalogs, bendy straws, , air fresheners, life-sized Hanna Montana Stickers, highlighters, and glitter, among much else.  In part, Persons’ calculated barrage of fragments and collaged images signifies the saturation of text/media in contemporary culture. At the same time, this field of partial and re-contextualized information is meant to position the viewer as an active reader of messages rather than passive contemplator of the aesthetic or consumer of the spectacular.  Further, by appropriating traditionally gendered materials, such as 2 by 4’s, which she paints bright pink, as well as by building up the surfaces of painting with stickers, which have a long historical correlation to femininity and decoration, the artist seeks to heighten tension between masculine  support and feminine façade, destabilizing our standard readings of familiar products and materials. 

Also upcoming:  Tea Party – Conversation, an open dialogue with Sammy Persons, Kurt Flecksing, Lynley Farris, and Robert Heishman at Project Space on Wednesday, January 27, 7pm. Free & open to the public. Read full press release.

Cumulus,  opening at Paragraph, 23 East 12th, on January 15, 6-10pm, is a multi-media, multi-disciplinary exhibition featuring select projects developed by current Urban Culture Project Studio Residents. UCP’s Studio Residency Program for Visual and Performing Artists currently provides free studios for more than 30 artists and groups, who occupy studios in three facilities: Bonfils (125 East 12th Street), pARTnership Place (906 Grand, 13th floor) and City Center Square (1100 Main Street, 5th floor).

The exhibition’s call for proposals encouraged studio residents to “consider collaboration or interactivity in the making and /or presentation of the work,”  resulting in a dynamic group of proposals whose structures are inherently generous – offering room for audience participation, inviting the response of peers, and directly giving “gifts” to visitors of the exhibition. Sepecial vents on January 15 include: The Four Seasons, an interactive performance piece, 7:30-8pm, by Timothy Amundson, Jane Gotch, and Erica Mahinay that will engage and react to the gallery space; Luke Rocha’s Project Porta-Sound, which will employ analog audio/visual formats of the past to create a multi-media experience; the debut of Maura Michelle Garcia’s and Lisa Marie Evans’ video of a multi-media dance performance entitled The Little People, which addresses the reclaiming of a conscious Native identity through exploring the character and personality of the ancient Cherokee fairies; the debut of Kurt Flecksing’s Smores Vending Cart on the sidewalk outside the gallery, and a performance of new compositions by the Black House Improvisors’ Collective at 9pm. Read full press release.

Informal Urbanisms: The Production of Space in the Developing World on Wednesday, January 6, 6:30 pm at la Esquina, 1000 West 25th Street KC MO, is a provocative public program organized by Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, founding partners of AGENCY, a design and research practice in NYC. 

The evening includes a screening of the feature-length documentary film Garbage Dreams: Raised in the Trash Trade, which follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, a ghetto located on the outskirts of Cairo that is home to 60,000 Zaballeen (or Zabbaleen), Egypt’s “garbage people.” 10% of proceeds from Garbage Dreams’ tour will go to the Spirit of Youth Association, a non-governmental organization of Zaballeen, which runs The Recycling School profiled in Garbage Dreams.

After the screening, Kripa and Mueller will host and moderate a panel discussion concerning emerging conditions in disadvantaged and marginalized urban populations around the world. Panelists include Toby Lunn, Mechanical Engineer; Maureen Lunn, Southtown Foundation / MA International Studies (University of Kansas);  Andrew Mikhael, RA, LEEP AP; and Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller of AGENCY, who will also present recent architectural and infrastructural proposals. Read full press release.

Read coverage on Green Dream Living.

Frontier is a solo exhibition of recent work by Louisiana based artist Jeremiah Ariaz. It opens at UCP’s la Esquina, 1000 West 25th Street, with a reception on December 4, 2009, 6-9pm, and remains on view through January 7, 2010.

The exhibition features a new three projection video installation, Frontier, which was filmed in rural Kansas.  Shot by three cameras aligned side by side, the piece presents a panoramic view of open sky and prairie, amidst which the artist attempts to “run West” for a duration of 24 hours.  As one quickly realizes that the figure, dressed in blue jeans and cowboy hat, is making no progress but rather running in place, the work becomes both a quiet meditation on the land and a portrait of unfulfilled desire.  The adventure-seeking, possibility-laden American call of “go West young man” is here answered with futility and exhaustion, with the outcome of his action being a scar carved in the earth. The show also features Shadow Root, an installation of drawings, color photographs (presented as slide projections), and sculpture that  considers the Santa Fe trail, the people who travelled it, and the larger ideas that it represented.

Read full press release.

CSF’s Urban Culture Project  continues its collaboration with the Kansas City Electronic Arts and Music Alliance (KcEMA) by presenting KcEMA Newbie Commissions, a concert of new works on Saturday, December 5, 7:30pm at la Esquina, 1000 West 25th Street. Doors open at 7; admission is $5.

Inaugurating its electronic commissioning program, KcEMA commissioned three Kansas City area composers relatively new to the electronic medium - Zhou Juan, Caroline Miller, and Yaun Peiying -  for Kansas City based performers Jedd Schneider, tenor voice, and Brad Baumgardner, bass clarinet.  In addition to these new works, the concert includes pieces by Jorge Sosa, Scott Blasco, Tim Eshing, and international award-winning composer Jason Bolte.

The Newbie Commissions program features three World Premieres.  Jedd Schneider will perform Zhou Juan’s That night, 195 people were killed, a response to the violence that took place on July 5th in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, where the composer was born, and Caroline Miller’s setting of John Donne’s sensual Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed.  Brad Baumgardner will perform Peiying Yuan’s Fractal Excursions, a piece structured around the inspiration of fractals.  Read full press release.

CSF’s Urban Culture Project is thrilled to be hosting Let’s Paint TV, a live internet television show starring Los Angeles-based artist and cult phenomenon John Kilduff.  Begun as a public access television show in Los Angeles and now a YouTube sensation, Let’s Paint TV stars Kilduff, who paints, blends drinks, answers phone calls, and completes a variety of other tasks — all while wearing a suit and running on a treadmill.

Let’s Paint TV will be taped and streamed live (at www.letspainttv.com) from Urban Culture Project Space, 21 East 12th Street. Open to the public, live shows are Tuesday November 17 through November 24, from 6-7pm each day. Each show will feature an array of local talents as guest stars. Third Friday, November 20 features a reception from 6-9pm, with a special live show at 9pm.  Read full press release. See the schedule of daily guest stars!