SAT JAN 23rd, 7-9pm
Olympic Sculpture Park
2901 Western Ave, Seattle, Washington 98121
‘Before You Were Born and After You Are Gone’
The first in the series of Art Encounters at the Park – SAM Olympic Sculpture Park Winter Weekends
Event is free and open to the multi-generational public.
RSVPs requested: visitsam.org/winter
#SAMWinter
Mandy Greer and Alice Gosti join together to dip into their already flowing works-in-progress to offer a forum for play, experimentation and connection -reinforcing communal bonds, that in uncertain times seem tenuous, but like love, must be activated to remain strong.
Immerse yourself in the flux of works being built around you, your hands joining others in the present moment. This evening event is an aggregation of durational performance and multi-media immersive installation, workshop and laboratory, exploration and game; where teaching becomes ritualized movement and making as choreography. Play becomes research that upends the hierarchy of audience and artist, adult and child.
A multi-generational performance company of professional and non-professional performers guide you through a labyrinth of cyclical and gentle prompts, tasks, connections and gift exchanges based on ritual childhood games, craft projects, and childlike urges. Through this, learning and teaching others becomes a way to test our ability to open to others around us, and the physicality of handwork accesses the immediacy of the communal instinct.
Set against an abstracted environment of mountain and sea, that seeming permanence is rendered in the soft contours of raw fibers reclaimed from the domestic sphere. The hard rock and crashing waves become both a metaphor for our inner world, familial tensions and release, and the site of social and political flux and upheaval.
Both artists meet at the desire to examine the physical and psychological weight of the connections we have and need with other living beings. The threads that bind us to each other in responsibility are represented by the weight of the child in society, either abandoned or carried by all.
Through carried weight, this project functions as a reminder that the human community has always been on the move, that burdens have always been shouldered as humans have thrown their fragile bodies to the mercy of the natural world, crossing sea and land passes to seek peace and a way to just live. And how we choose to care or not care for each other is one of the heaviest burdens we bear.
Greer and Gosti both work to make the invisible visible, through both political and poetic metaphor, whether it be the buried inner life or putting front and center the experiences of those pushed to the margins. Join us and immerse yourself in exploring the invisible and mysterious bonds of being human.
More info on Facebook Invite. Join and spread the word!
Performers include:
Brit Karhoff
Emma Klein
Wyly Astley
Paul Margolis
Hazel Margolis
Callaghan Crook
Eila Crook
Mandy Greer 