October 10, 2011
The Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley is sponsoring the symposium “SITUATED: Time-Based Art and Neighborhood Ecologies” on October 10, 2011, organized in part around the premier at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts of red, black & GREEN: a blues, a collaboration between Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Theaster Gates, and Michael John Garces. ARC Director Shannon Jackson was commissioned by YBCA to write an essay on the piece, in which she explores many of the issues that will be taken up at the SITUATED symposium:
“Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s red, black & GREEN: a blues (rbGb) is a multi‐disciplinary performance experiment. It mixes visual art, spoken word, choreography, theatre, and film in ways that expose the boundaries that still exist amongst these art forms; its composition is an aesthetic act that integrates ritual, critique, and community engagement at once. Now there is a great deal of fine work out there that aspires to similar goals. In this early 21st century, those of us who try to keep tabs on the creativity of contemporary artistsfind them blurring boundaries of all kinds. Choreographers are siting their work in museums as often as theatres; sculptors are organizing interactions instead of creating objects; and videographers are creating installations in spaces other than the cinema. Meanwhile, much of this work aspires to social engagement with this cross‐media mixing, searching for new ways to activate viewers and mobilize communities. Let’s think about what this crossing means. But let’s also think about rbGb in particular, and about how its making and its dissemination prompt a recalibration of what we think collaboration can be…” READ THE FULL ESSAY at:http://www.ybca.org/sites/default/files/page_files/20111013_rbgb_ritetoheal.pdf