Gerard & Kelly

Going for the Jugular

Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris," 2011.

"Art is the antidote to the meaninglessness of existence."

The central line in Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, is delivered by Kathy Bates' convincing Gertrude Stein to Owen Wilson's equally persuasive nebbish Hollywood-screenwriter-turning-ex-pat-novelist, her hands strongly gripping his undeveloped shoulders. No, art is not a hack job executed by handsome hucksters jostling to keep up with the status quo. To keep a job. Or, to keep a Malibu home. No, art is the most serious of human endeavors, even when couched in comedy.  (Hemingway: Do you hunt?  Woody Allen: Only for bargains.)  

Reusable Parts/Endless Love

 

The cycle of works known as Reusable Parts/Endless Love is a project that questions how representations of intimacy and narratives of love are produced, re-produced, circulated and exchanged.

This three-part project is realized as a performance installation adapted specifically to the exhibition/performance space; a multi-channel video and audio installation; and a photographic series.

The project began when Gerard and Kelly encountered Tino Sehgal’s Kiss in an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In Kiss a man and a woman perform a slow, languorous embrace. Struck by the ephemerality of the piece and its consistent boy/girl casting, they returned a number of times to learn its choreography. Under the watchful eyes of museum guards, they spoke the couple’s movements into hidden voice-recorders. This resulted in a twelve-minute audio recording of the artists’ observations of the Kiss dancers’ movements in real time. (“His hands on her lower back…her arms around his shoulders…they turn ooooone huuuundred aaaaaaand eiiiiiiiighty deeeeeegrees.”).  Gerard and Kelly used this audio recording as a score for movement in their attempt to reconstruct Kiss with critical differences. The languorous embrace of the couple becomes a series of solo performances, with each dancer enacting both male and female roles on his own body.

Reusable Parts/ Endless Love                       

 <performance installation>

 

Gerard and Kelly, Reusable Parts/Endless Love (2011)

Performance view, Danspace Project, New York, November 2011

 

 

 

Kiss Solo                                                                                 

<video installation>

Gerard and Kelly, Kiss Solo (2011) 

Multiple channel video installation, dimensions variable

Installation view, University of California, Los Angeles, December 2011

 

 

Score in Four Parts                                           

 <photographic series>

Gerard and Kelly

Score in Four Parts (2011) 

Digital chromogenic prints mounted on museum box, 16" x 24"

 

Digital chromogenic prints, mounted on museum box, (4) 16" x 24"

 
Production Credits:

Danspace Project, New York City (November 2011): Performed by Niv Acosta, devynn emory, Yve Laris Cohen, Ryan Kelly, Todd McQuade, Roger Prince, and Jose Tena.  Scenic and lighting designer: Marcus Doshi. Costume designer: Camille Assaf. Sound engineer: Trent Wolbe. Co-production Moving Theater.

University Art Gallery, UC-Irvine (Februrary 2011): Performed by Ryan Kelly, Politeia Le, Todd McQuade, and Jose Tena. Costumes and styling by Aaron Valenzuela. Sound engineering by Trent Wolbe. Co-production Moving Theater.

Video production: Editor: Javo Basques. Camera: Eugene Wasserman.

Moving Theater's programs are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State's 62 counties. Moving Theater's 2011-2012 projects are supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Press in OC Weekly

Click for full article HERE >>

Stacy Davies of OC Weekly reviews our video Park Avenue...Shit..., part of the exhibition "Cult of the Ruin: Strategies of Accumulation" at the Universiy Art Gallery, UC-Irvine: 

"Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly transport us through the halls of history in their video installation, Park Avenue . . . Shit; I’m Still Only In Park Avenue Every Time I Think I’m Gonna Wake Up Back In the Jungle,a play on the opening lines of Apocalypse Now. The video is an exceptional split-screen trip through what appears to be a Southern gentlemen’s club circa the Civil or Revolutionary War. Hallowed halls where straight, white soldiers danced with straight, white ladies are quickly taken over by a co-ed team of performance artists of various ethnicities who prance, dance and play off the décor while an elderly woman narrates the history of the site. Far from desecrating the landmark, these young people (sometimes wearing military uniforms) are more like visions of freedom and progress transported backward from the future—and while they are no doubt visions that would have scared the beejezus out of our ancestors, they are, in fact, the very results of our forefathers and mothers giving up their lives."

 

Closing Night Performance: Feb 5

Ideological Formation (2010)

 Gerard and Kelly, Ideological Formation (2010) Performance, 20 minutes
Performance still, The Kitchen, New York, June 2010
Pictured: Jose Tena and Ryan Kelly

 

Ideological Formation focuses on the male body as a site of militarization. A surreptitiously recorded audio score notating the movements of a man and a woman kissing accompanies the choreography of three cardboard boxes: dancers reduced to mechanisms? A way to sidestep identity politics? A return of minimalism? Gerard and Kelly explore choreography as a resistance to the regimented demands of masculinity.

    

 

Production Credits:

The Kitchen, New York City (June 2010) and Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon (July 2010):  Performed by Ryan Kelly and Jose Tena

Mount Tremper Arts Festival, New York (August 2010): Performed by Ben Asriel, Ryan Kelly, and Jose Tena