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.)  

Human Directional (2011)

Gerard and Kelly, Human Directional (2011)
Performance, 10 minutes
Performance still, UCLA Warner Graduate Art Studios, June 2011 

Human

Directional

An empty

space. A man

appears in

uniform. He spins

a sign that is

not there. On his

entrance, music

is heard, music

he listens to

when he spins

signs as part of

his line of  work.

Another man

enters, also in

uniform, and

spins a sign,

also not there.

He stands in front  

of the first and

 faces the same

direction.

Different music is

heard as he enters,

on top of the music

already playing.

This is the music

the second

man listens to as he

spins signs for work. A third man enters and stands in front of the other two.

Ditto with spinning invisible sign and ditto with music. A fourth, a fifth,

a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth man enter, each man’s

“entrance music” added to the others’. They stand,

spinning signs that are not there,

in the formation of an

arrow pointing to

nothing

.

 

Untitled Performance Stills (2011)

Gerard and Kelly, Untitled Performance Stills (2011)
Inkjet print, 14" x 80"
 

Installation, Warner Graduate Art Studios, June 2011.

 

 

Elizabeth Taylor, 1933-2011

Andy Warhol, Blue Liz as Cleopatra (1963).

R.I.P.

Back to the Future: Trisha Brown at DTW

Babette Mangolte, Watermotor (1978). Performed and choreographed by Trisha Brown.

“Back to Zero,” the title Trisha Brown gave to a cycle of works that includes two of the dances on this program--Foray Forêt (1990) and For M.G.: The Movie (1991)--seems fitting for this moment, in Brown’s practice and perhaps more generally in contemporary art (inclusive of dance), of retrospective beginnings. The uncanny and productive thing about this temporality of looking back as a way of moving forward is its potential to unearth discoveries on supposedly well-trodden ground.

For the past three years, Brown has devoted herself to restaging many of her early works. In celebration of her company’s fortieth anniversary, the 2010-2011 season features performances of works not seen in New York in decades—from the restaging this past fall at the Whitney Museum of American Art of Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970), a task-based equipment piece whose title says it all, to the re-creation of Roof Piece(1971) this coming spring at the High Line. Tonight’s performance marks the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s debut at Dance Theater Workshop.  And for the first time, Watermotor (1978), a signature solo indelibly linked to Brown’s own body and movement style, will be performed by someone other than the dance’s maker.

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

UCLA Open Studios!

We presented an hour-long performance as part of the UCLA Department of Art Graduate Open Studios on December 4, 2010. Two performers “literalize” a 12-minute audio score, a denotation of the choreography of Tino Sehgal’s Kiss. The  score describes a man and woman slowly moving through the mechanics of a continuous embrace. Our re-performance translated this “kiss” into a set of choreographic directives, enacted as literally as possible. Performed five consecutive times in blindfolds, the two performers made the description of an erotic encounter between a man and woman an exercise in automation and autoerotics, avoiding any physical contact between them save the occasional, unavoidable bumping into.

Performed by Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly. Photos: Kelly Kleinschrodt.

Shame on National Portrait Gallery

Still from David Wojanoricz, A Fire in My Belly (1987).

I was driving in my car today, just after sunset on the West Coast. Rushing from Home Depot back to the studio as Brennan and I are putting the final touches on our work in preparation for grad review and open studios this weekend. I was struck with deep sadness and anger when NPR reported that the work A Fire in My Belly, a 1987 video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz, had been removed from the current exhibition "Hide/Seek" after House Republicans derided the work as "anti-Christian" in response to an 11-second image the artist includes in the video of a crucifix covered in ants.  Still processing a response. A response is mandated.

Installation including David Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly, UCLA Graduate Open Studios, 2010.

Upate: In response to the National Portrait Gallery incident, Brennan and I screened David Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly (1987) as part of our contribution to the UCLA Graudate Open Studios on December 4, 2011...within four days of the censorship. Special thanks to the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University for making this screening possible.

    -R.K.

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