STROPHE, an interdisciplinary arts organization founded by CalArts classmates Laura Vena, Janice Lee and Joseph Milazzo (MFA 08), encourages artists to explore linguistics and language in their respective disciplines. Next Saturday, Aug. 1, in Los Angeles, the STROPHE event Everything Bends: An Improvisatory Evening of Demonstration, Performance and Conversation shows how improvisation is intrinsically entwined with art.
Says Milazzo, a Dallas-based artist:
As curators of Everything Bends, our goal is to achieve a better understanding of the how improvisation might work in an interdisciplinary context. In order to do so, we hope to arrive at some responses (if not outright answers) to certain questions. What, from the artist’s point-of-view, is essential in improvisation? How can artists, writers, musicians, etc. make use of these essentials in their own practice? Most crucially, how can an improvisatory bent find expression in a discipline or metier that otherwise appears to be unaccommodating? Specifically, what is uniquely improvisatory in acts of reading and writing?
Some of the performers and artists taking part in the evening include: Poet and CalArts faculty member Douglas Kearney (MFA 04), musician-composer Ryan Tanaka (MFA 07), artist Brian Moss (MFA 94) and soundscape artist Dennis Moser with additional installations/performances by Stephen Van Dyck (MFA 09), Daiana Feuer (MFA 07), and musicians Dennis Gonzalez and Yells At Eels.
Everything Bends: An Improvisatory Evening of Demonstration Performance, and Conversation
Bandit Gallery
1549 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
Saturday, Aug. 1 / 7 pm
$5-$10 suggested donation