Please post and pass along!!
For Immediate Release:
Subliminal History of New York State
Community Art, Video, and Music Project Along the Erie Canal this June &
July
Contact: Carrie Dashow or Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, 917 821 - 7024,
[log in to unmask]
Please visit our press room to download pictures and songs:
http://subliminalstate.org/site/contact-us/press-room/
Artist Carrie Dashow and shape note singer Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg will
bring their touring community art, video, and music project, the Subliminal
History of New York State (SHNYS), to six towns and cities along the Erie
Canal this June and July, including: Troy, Rome, Palmyra, Lockport, Lily
Dale and Schenectady. In each location SHNYS mixes myth, history, geology,
shape note singing, and storytelling and will involve singing and video
workshops, culminating in an event including a community made video
installation, storytelling, and participatory singing.
During their week-long stay in each location, Carrie will collect stories
about the community, writing them into poems for which Jesse will compose
shape note songs. Meanwhile, Jesse will lead shape note singing workshops
open to the public for the admission price of a handful of local twigs!
teaching the new songs and the basics of shape note singing. Carrie will
also lead a video workshop in in which invited local participants use 12
synchronized video cameras to capture the essence of their town while each
moves through the city.
Each stop will culminate with a two-channel video installation followed by a
participatory performance featuring storytelling and shape note singing in
which everyone participates. The performance will be open to the public
provided they bring along a handful of twigs. Twigs combined from tour
locations will be woven into a map of New York's waterways.
The two-month-long tour will follow New York's "route of progress" up the
Hudson River and west along the Erie Canal, ending at Lake Erie. At each
stop, SHNYS will work with historians, geologist, and locals for under one
week to delve into local lore, write poems and songs, lead workshops, create
a video installation, and stage a participatory performance.
Subliminal History aims to uncover geographical features and built
environments as powerful agents capable of manipulating New York's human
inhabitants. Diverse sources are woven together to form a story of New York
that is truer than true: "a better history than what I have written," says
Judy Berdy, President of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society from
earlier performances of Under Island, the first chapter in SHNYS.
³The land has stories to tell and it tells them through people and
buildings,² Carrie said in recent NYSun article on the project. The goal,
says Jesse, is to uncover a story of New York that "peeks under the rug,"
drawing on history, myth, feeling, intuition, assumption, gossip, and
geology. Gary Shapiro from the NYSun says of Carrie and Jesse ³They are
explorers of space and time, investigating the human connection to the
landscape over time.² New York is the site for this exploration due to its
significance as a cultural and transportation hub, and since, not
coincidentally, it is our home.
A primary expressive vehicle for the subliminal history is shape note
singing, an invigorating community singing tradition that passed through
upstate New York in the early 1800s. Now more than 200 years old, shape note
music has endured because it is easy to learn, open to people with all kinds
of voices, and is contagiously fun. At a shape note singing, participants
sing for themselves, not an audience. The music features raw harmony,
driving rhythms, and full-throated, full-volume, enthusiastic singing.
Shape note singing was first spread through New York by itinerant singing
masters who traveled around the state, teaching "singing schools" and
selling tunebooks containing songs they often wrote as they went. In the
SHNYS, Carrie and Jesse become modern-day itinerants, bringing their
Subliminal History to the towns and cities they visit, teaching workshops
and holding a culminating performance before moving on to the next tour
stop.
Description of a singing workshop can be found here:
http://subliminalstate.org/site/subliminal-history-of-new-york-state/shape-n
ote-singing-schools/
The 2 channel video installation, called the ³13th Screen² features another
way to gather subliminal information of the town via 12 invited members from
the community chosen because of their diverse relationships to the town.
Each participant will be taught remedially how to shoot video and instructed
to wander around town shooting their view. Views will be synchronized and
shown at the same time with a computer program that selects individual shots
based on a code each of the camera people shoots by. This selection is
projected separately as the final 13th screen: an amalgamation of
viewpoints.
The Subliminal History of New York State will be keeping a blog of the tour
on their website and will be streaming the Finale performances through
Free103point9. Eyebeam (541 West 21st Street, NYC) will be showcasing in
their gallery a computer to access the tour complete with a live printer
where the tour can print directly to the gallery from the road (Opening May
31). Documents from the tour will be on view at Eyebeam at a show opening in
September. There will be a kick-off party for the tour at the Tank on May 31
at 9:30 PM (279 Church Street, NYC)
The SHNYS is supported by the New York State Music Fund, established by the
New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, The
Tank, a space for performing and visual arts in New York City, the
Experimental Television Center and the New York State Council on the Arts,
and by the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Arts Center of the
Capital Region.
PAST PERFORMANCES/ OUR HISTORY:
Carrie and Jesse have done several performances using Ms. Dashow's stories
combined with Mr. Karlsberg's compositions. Together they Co-Direct the
Society for a Subliminal State.
http://www.subliminalstate.org
The Subliminal History of New York State has been performed on Roosevelt
Island in NYC, at PS1/MOMA in Queens, Gigantic ArtSpace (NYC), The
Contemporary Artist Center (North Adams, MA) and in the Widow Jane Mine of
Rosendale, NY.
Video documentation, songs from the Under Island chapter of SHNYS, related
articles, and high resolution photos of Carrie and Jesse and past
performances of SHNYS are on the Society's web site at:
http://subliminalstate.org/site/contact-us/press-room/
BIOS:
Director of Subliminal History and Video Workshops:
http://www.dashow.net
Carrie Dashow is a New York City based interdisciplinary artist working
between performance and video. She holds a an MFA in Integrated Electronic
Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a BFA in Video and
Performance from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been
exhibited at venues internationally and locally. Ms. Dashow is a Part Time
Professor of New Media at Purchase College.
Composer and Leader of Singing Workshops:
http://www.silversand.org/
Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg is a composer and shape note singer who lives and
works in Troy, NY. He has an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a BA in Music and Philosophy from
Wesleyan University. His work has been performed at shape note singings
throughout the northeast and exhibited at venues and festivals regionally.
Jesse is an active member of the shape note community.
TOUR DATES:
Troy, NY, June 8-12
June 10: Singing Workshop 4-7 at Rensselaer County Historical Society.
June 11: Singing Workshop in Troy NY, details TBA
Performance, June 12, 8 PM, Sanctuary for Independent Media
Rome, NY, June 13-17
Workshops TBA
Performance, June 17. Location TBA.
Palmyra, NY, June 18-22
Workshops TBA
Performance, June 22 Palmyra. Location TBA.
Buffalo/Lockport, NY, June 23-28
Singing Workshops at Rustbelt Books in Buffalo and Buffalo and Erie County
Historical Society
Performance, June 28, Niagara County Historical Society, Lockport, NY.
Lily Dale, NY, July 9-13
July 10 and 12 Singing Workshops: Azur Room in Maplewood Hotel, Lily Dale
Assembly
Performance, July 13, 8 PM, Fire Hall, Lily Dale Assembly
Schenectady, NY, July 16-21
Workshops TBA
Performance, July 21, Schenectady Museum
|
