FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: "HOUSE BOUND" PREMIERES APRIL 13
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- UPDATED MARCH 16, 2008
photos and artist bio links follow
"HOUSE BOUND" DELIVERS UNUSUAL, IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE FOR INTIMATE AUDIENCES
Works Corps artists create a one-day "kinesthetic salon" of art, food, performance, and installation premiering April 13 at Performance Works Northwest's Alembic series. SPACE IS LIMITED TO FIFTEEN AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS PER PERFORMANCE.
PORTLAND -- You are fêted, fed, and lulled to relaxation. You move through installations and films, connect with performers in intimate spaces. Then the walls start closing in.
Welcome to the house that Works Corps built. "House Bound" is a kinesthetic salon of installation and performance with roving audience participation, in which five women artists investigate the tension between solo and connectivity, individual and relationship, freedom and claustrophobia. Audiences will experience the show at Performance Works NW in Southeast Portland as part of the new experimental series, Alembic. Space is extremely limited, and reservations are strongly recommended.
"A slideshow about secretly wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater," is how Emily Stone describes her performance. Known for her dance and theatre work for presenters including PICA's TBA festival and On the Boards in Seattle, Stone will deliver a performative lecture about caretaking, the body as a domestic space, and "the wild territory of freedom and claustrophobia that exists in our own backyards."
Writer Nora Robertson, a recent finalist for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, will perform a monologue delving into "the underbelly of interdependence." Her character, Charlie, is described as "a charmer, a cocktail waitress with an alarming habit of chucking her boyfriend’s records out the window."
Performer and choreographer Lilian Gael is the show's producer. She invites audiences into the dreamlike "attic" of the show's "house," which is defined by a kinetic installation of walls. The walls are the work of visual artist and letterpress printer Clare Carpenter, who covered them with wallpaper she printed. She says the walls are "imbued with the residue of stories from within a WWII housing project."
Interdisciplinary artist Tiffany Lee Brown, co-editor of PLAZM magazine and director of the non-profit art and literary project 2GQ, will explore fertility and creativity with a site-responsive installation, film, and video. Brown, who also works as a restaurant reviewer, will feed the audience. She says, "The breaking of bread and sharing of wine are indispensable rituals of community, the source of metaphorical and literal nourishment."
Ticket price includes hors d'oeuvres and drinks. Tickets cost $15 in advance or $20 at the door; a limited number of discount tickets are available for $10 advance. For reservations, contact housebound@2GQ.org or 503 475 2306. Performance Works NW is located at 4625 SE 67th Avenue; various show times occur April 13 between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. "House Bound" is co-presented by 2GQ, a project of the non-profit organization 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts.
Portland-area businesses and organizations making "House Bound" possible include the restaurant 3 Doors Down, The Cooley Gallery at Reed College, P!x Patisserie, Plazm magazine, New Seasons Market, Oregon College of Arts & Crafts' Georgiana Nehl, Oh Baby lingerie, Applied Plastics Machining, chiropractor Bruce Chaser at Hawthorne Wellness Center, Julianna Rowe at Windermere Cronin and Caplan Realty Group, filmmaker Vanessa Renwick and the Oregon Dept of Kick Ass, Alan Ransenberg at Alchemy of Design, Bitch magazine, the back room, Steve Fritz Photography, Sadie Byington at Eclipse the Salon, Zeb Andrews Photography, and Emily Robertson, associate attorney at Parsons, Farnell & Grein. Works Corps would also like to thank donors Karim Aladdine and Leonie North, Reva Basch, Robert Bumstead, Paul Carpenter, Jude Haug, the estate of Dorothy and Joseph Kurfirst, the Ozer-Gortikov family, James Pierce, and Howard Robertson.
More information about the show—and ongoing updates from the performers—may be found online at 2GQ.org.
###
EVENT LISTING/SUMMARY:
"House Bound" by the artists of Works Corps:
Emily Stone, Nora Robertson, Lilian Gael, Clare Carpenter, & Tiffany Lee Brown
April 13, 2008 at Performance Works NW, 4625 SE 67th Avenue, Portland, 97206.
Various showtimes, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. — Reservations strongly recommended.
Advance tickets $15; day of show, $20; some $10 discount tickets available. At BrownPaperTickets.com. Volunteer opportunities available.
www.2GQ.org
housebound@2GQ.org
+1 503 475 2306
"House Bound" is part of Alembic, a series of performance experiments co-
produced with Performance Works NW; co-presented by 2GQ, a project of 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts.
PHOTOS:
www.2GQ.org/housebound-images.html
BIOS
Tiffany Lee Brown (www.magdalen.com) integrates various artistic and literary media to explore relationship, ritual, the American West, and the meaning of "home." Author of A Compendium of Miniatures, she co-edits PLAZM magazine and is the editor/director of 2GQ. She has performed for Wordstock, PICA, Performance Works NW, and the Enteractive Language Festival; her writing appears in Utne, Bookforum, Tin House, Portland Monthly, Wired, and Bust, among others. Most recently, her music and spoken word pieces appeared on the compilations Women Take Back the Noise and the newest CD from Gargoyle, a literary journal. Willamette Week calls her "a publishing and performance powerhouse."
Clare Carpenter (tigerfoodpress.com) is a letterpress printer and book artist living in Portland, Oregon. She is the proprietor of Tiger Food Press, which produces limited edition books, broadsides, and ephemera often using her own writing to create mostly fictional narratives. The themes that pervade her work are urban myths, historical subjects, and the meaning of place in peoples lives. This year, she created installations and presentations for Portland Art Center, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Pacific University, and the group show Construct/ReConstruct at Cathedral Park Place. Eugene Weekly recently described her work as “sly.”
Lilian Gael is a performing artist working with movement, environments, elusive sentiment, and sound. The first piece in her rituals for a new America series, titled "Revery/The Kitchen Project," was performed at Oregon College of Art and Craft for audiences of one. Two new pieces from this series were shown as part of 2GQ's six-week Public Works series at the Someday Lounge. At Performance Works NW in 2007, Lily was a house performer for the I Love PWNW Valentines fundraiser, cut her hair in The Richard Foreman Festival, and curated the final Sunday installment of Holy Goats.
Nora Robertson (www.solanova.us) writes fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays, which have appeared in such publications as Portland Monthly, Redactions, 2GQ, and Plazm. Her recipe poem, “How to Boil an Egg,” was nominated by Redactions for the 2007 Pushcart Prize. Her spoken word performances have been spotted in the Public Works multidisciplinary performance series curated by 2GQ, the Enteractive Language Festival, and in Phase One: Words + Music. She lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches high school English and ESL by day.
Emily Stone is an interdisciplinary artist who makes dance, devised theater, and installation art. Her work has been produced in Seattle and Portland by Performance Works Northwest, Portland Art Center, Conduit, Velocity, On the Boards, SFADI, 10 Tiny Dances, defunkt theater and PICA's TBA Festival, among others. As a performer, she has co-created works with Sheri Cohen, Beth Graczyk, Corrie Befort, Tahni Holt, Angelle Hebert and Philip Kraft, and Linda Austin. She performs and directs for her company Salvage Yard, with fellow Lewis and Clark College alum James Moore.
