presented by The Kitchen and Sarah Lawrence College
As part of the Summer Institute, The Kitchen presents three public talks in which artists working at the forefront of site and performance speak about their work.
All talks are at 7pm. Tickets are $12 ($25 for all three) and can be purchased through the Kitchen box office. There is no charge for Summer Institue students.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, internationally known for their large-scale works of art,
will discuss the details of their works-in-progress: The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City,
and Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado. For The Gates, (slated to be completed
in Central Park in February, 2005), 7500 free hanging saffron colored fabric panels, suspended from the
horizontal top part of 7500 gates, will follow the edges of the walkways and will run perpendicular to the
selected 23 miles of footpaths in the park. For Over the River, fabric panels suspended clear of and high above
the water level of the Arkansas River in Colorado will follow the configuration and width of its changing course.
Elise Bernhardt, Executive Director of The Kitchen, invites four artists whose site-specific performances have had
a profound impact on their surrounding communities to show filmed excerpts of their work and discuss their creative
process. The panel, which is entitled Performances in Public Space: Four Distinct Aesthetics and Strategies, includes
Martha Bowers, whose community-based projects in Red Hook have aided in the urban renewal of that neighborhood;
Stephan Koplowitz, whose large scale works with dancers have transformed the windows of Grand Central Terminal and
the grand steps of New York buildings; Tamar Rogoff, whose Ivye Project involved a village in Belarus that was forever
changed by the Holocaust; and Mary Ellen Strom, whose collaborative projects have included video projections on
everything from grain silos to the mountains of Montana.
Acclaimed multimedia artist Vito Acconci will address his move from performance to installation to architecture in a talk
entitled Performing Architecture. After working with performance art and video in the late 60's and early 70's, Acconci
crossed over into architecture and landscape design, and in 1988 started the Acconci Studio, an architecture and design
office. The Acconci Studio has recently completed an artificial island in Graz, an adjustable gallery in New York, and a
clothing store in Tokyo, and is currently working on a skateboard park in San Juan and a spiraling-ramped house in Calamata.
