Author Archives: fefifolios

CTSA Awards the 2021-22 Research & Innovation Grants

The Research and Innovation Advisory Committee (RI Committee), composed of a faculty member from each CTSA department, awarded the following proposals for the 2021-2022 academic year:

Deborah Oliver, Associate Professor, Art ($8,000 Faculty Prize): The Art of Performance @ UCI 7th Edition. An annual event dedicated to experimentation in live art co-founded by Oliver and Professor Jenkins in 2015. This project fosters dialog, pedagogical connections, and engagement between cutting edge visiting performance artists and inter-disciplinary artists with undergraduate students, through performances, workshops and conversations.

The Grand Prize Winner

Associate Professor Deborah Oliver has been a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, Department of Art since 1998, where she teaches Performance Studies and New Genres. In 2015, Oliver co-founded “The Art of Performance in Irvine,” an annual performance event dedicated to experimentation in live art, which takes place at the xMPL, Experimental Media and Performance Lab at UC Irvine. This project fosters dialog, pedagogical connections, and engagement between cutting edge visiting performance artists and inter-disciplinary artists with undergraduate students, through performances, workshops and conversations.In it’s 7th edition, this annual series presented Sound House (Everyone is Working) in Spring 2022.

Sound House centers on a series of tasks that shape the sound in the room. These tasks, executed by the ensemble (including lead artists) manipulating objects, controllers, lights, walls, Bunraku-like puppets, live-feed video, and projection, emerge from our interest in the daily routines of Minuteman Missile technicians, who work in hidden underground launch facilities operated by the US military since the 1960s. The performative effect is one of focused activity, like in a NASA control room. Live-mixed projection amplifies tasks and provides an immersive environment for the audience. Eight modular walls (3.5’ tall) are embedded with microcomputers, sensors, and speakers that communicate wirelessly. Codes generated by performers and puppets are sent to the speakers, signaling instructions to the performers, arranging the walls, and constantly shifting the physical space. A feedback loop between the walls and microphones housed inside the puppets tracks their movement to provide rich sonic material. Using only the sound in the room, this feedback emphasizes the puppets’ interactions with their environment. The tasks of coding, listening, and inspecting mirror the technicians’ routines in this performative durational performance.

Image: Sound House (Everyone is Working) is a multidisciplinary durational performance conceived by composers John Eagle, Cassia Streb, and interdisciplinary artist Janie Geiser and developed in collaboration with an ensemble of puppeteers, video and lighting designers, musicians, and performers.

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Deborah Oliver’s ‘Irrational Exhibits’

How do you view art? Do you view it through the screen, on the wall? Does your art touch you? And this isn’t meant emotionally. Does your art reach out its hands and place its skin against yours? Does it breathe? Does it look back at you as you stare? Does it force you to move your body because everything around you is in motion?

When most people think of art, they think of objects removed from the physical self — whether that is film, painting, sculpture or sound. There is a fourth wall removing the observer from the thing one wishes to interpret, creating distance. That distance is comfortable and familiar because the viewer knows how to deal with the piece, which is something frozen and inanimate. Continue reading

LACE PRESENTS “Irrational Exhibits 10th Anniversary: Mapping the Divide”

Opening Performance: June 3, 2017 7-9PM
Exhibition Dates: June 4-10, 2017
Closing Performance and Reception: June 10, 2017 4-6 PM
Curated and Produced by Deborah Oliver

Featuring Artists: Zeina Baltagi, Michael Bizon, Claudia Bucher, Jarred Cairns, Juan Capistran, Reanne Estrada/Chistina Rhee, Nathalia Fagundes, Janice Gomez, Adele Han Li, Steve Irvin, Curt LeMieux, Thinh Nyugen, Cindy Rehm, Lara Salmon, Eduardo Sanchez, Alexander Smith, Freddy Villalobos, Sichong Xie, and HK Zamani. Continue reading

LA Weekly: Irrational Exhibits 9: Reports from the Field

By Catherine Wagley

Sixteen artists will present new work all at once this week at “Irrational Exhibits 9: Reports from the Field” at LACE. Part of a series launched in 2001, “Irrational Exhibits” are conceived as live group shows. The artists perform at the same time, some all evening long. Liz Nurenberg, who makes seductive conversation pieces meant to be worn by two people at once (maybe you put your heads into a soft sculpture, so that you face each other), will perform. So will Liz Young, who’s made oversized stuffed animals and videos about taxidermy.

LACE PRESENTS “IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS 9: REPORTS FROM THE FIELD”

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May 24, 2016

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions presents Irrational Exhibits 9: Reports From the Field on June 8, 2016 at 7:00 p.m.

The one-night event features live art curated by Deborah Oliver and includes works by Claudia Bucher, Ryan Bulis and Brian Black, Kent Anderson Butler, Marsian De Lellis, Monica Duncan and Samantha Mohr, Kristina Faragher, Janice Gomez, Flora Kao, Curt LeMieux, Juan Meneses, Thinh Nguyen, Liz Nurenberg, Nancy Popp, Bradford Chan Prairie, Lara Salmon, and Liz Young.

Sixteen new works will be presented in this one night only performance exhibition centering on the artist’s “constructs” of our rapidly changing social landscape and reflecting their “reports from the field” in a new millennium reality. This is a real time event.   Explore the artwork while performance actions are taking place. Observe how artists describe and comprehend shifting realities, whether social, political or personal. How do we, as artists, negotiate these shifts as they arise? How do we stay connected within a confused cultural fabric? How do we function in an increasingly dense physical environment?

Tickets are $10. Discounted tickets for students/seniors are $8 w/I.D. Tickets will be available at the door.

Read more about Irrational Exhibits 9 by clicking here.

Follow Irrational Exhibits on Instagram – @irrationalexhibits

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