X marks the spot
By JAMES D. WATTS JR., 09/29/2002
Above: Images from three installations and a performance (Clockwise from top left): "The Obstructional Process of Self-Realization" by Mark Guilbeau and Rian Kerrane; "The Razor's Edge" by Tom Pershall; "The Opening Paragraph" by members of the Lawrence Video Collective; and Miriam Ait-Houmerach Hammani's "I May Not Know Your Language But I Do Know Your Heart."
Below: From top: Denise Uyehara demonstrates the effects of "Shredding Light"; Oliver White reports "Live from the Womb"; Miriam Ait-Houmerach Hammani searches for ". . .Heart"; and Tulsa boy George Martin, New Genre Festival master of ceremonies, serves one of his many personae. All photos provided by Living Arts of Tulsa
New Genre Festival X crosses the cutting edge of art
Ten years ago, a group of Tulsa artists put together a weekend of exhibits and performances in a building near the corner of Main and Brady streets.
Called Cafe de Luna, the event was designed to be a showcase of the variety of contemporary art created in the city.
But it was also a not-so-subtle protest of the policies of the people then in charge of the city's annual Mayfest celebration, which that year had shut out most hometown artists.
A decade later, that anarchistic little show has grown into one of the city's most eclectic cultural events, presenting local, regional and national contemporary artists creating work that cuts across artist disciplines, that mixes media with wild abandon, and that opens the city's collective eyes and minds to new sights and new ideas.
The 10th annual New Genre Festival -- or New Genre X, if you prefer -- will spread out over the city from its nucleus at the Living Arts Space, 308 S. Kenosha Ave., just east of downtown Tulsa beginning Thursday and continuing through Oct. 6.
The festival will feature performances, installations, video showings and master classes that will allow patrons to experience new ways of creating works of personal expression, whether vicariously, actively or both.
On the visual front, New Genre X will feature three installations, all of which will open to public at 5 p.m. Thursday.
The Living Arts Space will be the site of "The Opening Paragraph," a 12-channel video installation work created by the members of the Lawrence (Kan.) Video Collective.
Each of the 12 video artists were given the same audio track (a 5-minute abstract electronic piece by Mark Campbell titled "Oopens Fire"), and created a video for it.
The 12 works are to be played back simultaneously.
This exhibit will remain on display through Oct. 24.
Artists Mark Guilbeau and Rian Kerrane will take over the Alexandre Hogue Gallery at the University of Tulsa for "The Obstructional Process of Self- Realization."
Louisiana native Guilbeau and Irish-born Kerrane collaborate on an environmental piece that addresses the increasingly complex, interconnected world, by challenging the viewer to "find" his or her self in the physical and psychological space they create.
The piece will remain through Oct. 12.
The Tulsa Artists Coalition is the sponsor of the third installation, "The Razor's Edge," which will be on display at the Sager Warehouse, 116 S. Elgin Ave. This work Tom Pershall attempts to reflect the internal changes that have taken place in Americans' daily lives, ideas of security and the freedoms we may be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it.
It will remain on display through Oct. 31.
The four performance artists will each give two performances in the course of the weekend.
Tulsa native Oliver White, now living in Walla Walla, Wash., will present "Live From the Womb," at 8 p.m. Thursday and 10 p.m. Friday at the Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth St.
A combination of installation and performance art, White's piece involves him broadcasting live from his "mother's womb," with him being "birthed" by the time the evening is over.
A discussion session will follow each performance.
Two very different artists will share the Nightingale Theater stage at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Myriam Ait-Houmerach Hammani, an Algerian-American artist from New York City, will open the evening with "I May Not Know Your Language, But I Know Your Heart," a piece that combines chants, projected 3-D animation and original music by Jan Wobesky to sketch the story of a woman seeking and discovering the connections that link people together.
She will be followed by "Looking at the Movement of People Working," a piece for computer- and guitar-generated music and film projection by composer and performer Phill Niblock.
The award-winning performance artist and writer Denise Uyehara, praised by Entertainment Weekly as "Serious but hilarious, she strips away performance-art pretenses while gleefully subverting her audiences expectations," brings her Fearless Hair Theater to New Genre X with "Shredding Light: The Best of Denise Uyehara."
The piece features excerpts from some of her recent works, including "Big Head" (about the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and drawing parallels to modern concepts of "the enemy"), "Hello (Sex) Kitty" (a satiric look at the many permutations of modern love) and "Maps of City and Body," in which Uyehara draws lines over her body, using the marks to tell the stories of a wide range of people, from a Jewish woman with a concentration camp tattoo, to a Hispanic woman biker, to Uyehara's own grandmother and her fiery suicide.
Uyehara will perform 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Lafortune Theater of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Third Street and Cincinnati Avenue.
The final event of New Genre X will be the "New Video Matinee" featuring the best works from the prestigious Dallas Video Festival.
It will be presented 2 p.m. Sunday in the Williams Conference Room at the Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S. Rockford Road.
Many of the participating artists will conduct master classes during the weekend.
Niblock will lead a class in "Minimalism in Music: Demonstration and Talk," 2 p.m. Wednesday in Tyrrell Hall on the University of Tulsa campus, near Eighth Street and Evanston Avenue.
Kerrane and Guilbeau will discuss ways of "Liberating the Imagination," 4 p.m. Thursday at TU's Phillips Hall, Fifth Street and College Avenue.
Hammani will give a demonstration and talk about "Poetry and Animation" at 8:45 a.m. Friday at Riverfield Country Day School, 2433 W. 61st St.
Uyehara will conduct a workshop titled "Our of Your Mind, Into Your Body," beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Living Arts Space.
Individual tickets to the performances are $12 per person, $6 for students.
Admission to the Video Matinee is $7 adults, $6 students.
There is no admission charge to view the installations or attend the master classes.
Tickets are available at the door, although reservations are required for both Uyehara performances.
A festival pass, giving the bearer access to all activities, is $45, and may be obtained by calling Living Arts at 585-1234.