February 16, 2010

SUSHI Performance and Visual Arts Presents Family Matters

A visual arts exhibition in conjunction with a dynamic series of multidisciplinary events

San Diego, Calif. –Family Matters introduces Sushi’s audience to a group of artists who reflect on the esoteric legacies of the avant-garde through work that is formally – if paradoxically – influenced by popular entertainment.

On view from Thursday, March 4 through Saturday, April 24, the exhibition brings a range of expression similar to that of a young person coming to terms with his own family history – harsh criticism, misty-eyed sentimentality, perverse parody, and nuanced understanding all abound. SUSHI’s viewer is presented with a range of experiences stemming from the personal stakes these artists have in the often revolutionary, always transient moments that make up the history of the avant-garde.

Curated by Brian Goeltzenleuchter, artists and performers featured in Family Matters include:

• The Cedar Tavern Singers will compose pop songs about such avant-trivia as the Futurist Manifesto and Robert Smithson’s iconic earthwork, Spiral Jetty.
• San Diego-based new media artist Lisa Hutton makes dada nonsense poems the subject of her multimedia animations.
• Andrew Kaufman plays the role of artist-as-amateur-magician in his Kiss series, which pays homage to the lineage of sculptors, from Constantin Brancusi to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who have made work based on the subject of the kiss.
• Lauren Tyler Norby’s project Altruism confounds the notion of benevolence in art and cultural activities that involve gifting.
• Dutch artist Oscar Prinsen takes on the persona of a self-help guru who erects playground sculpture (for adults) that comically institutionalizes many of the themes of early performance art.
• Iowa-based artist, Donna Stack embraces the feminist legacy of using soft, gendered materials in a series of profanity-laden, hand-stitched welcome mats that would make Martha Stewart blush.

Event Programming

Family Matters is conceived as a visual arts exhibition and a dynamic series of special events programming, including music concert, film screening, panel discussion, and urban interventions.

EXHIBITION RECEPTION: March 5, 6-9PM

MUSIC CONCERT – March 6, 8PM

The Cedar Tavern Singers will play a live concert at Sushi featuring tracks from such albums as Songs for a Dead Hare and We Are Making Art. The band will be available after the concert for Q&A.

FILM SCREENING AND PANEL DISCUSSION – March 12, 8PM

Nepotism and Other Character Flaws is the title and sole requirement for this evening of artist-made films. Four artists from the Family Matters exhibition are charged by curator Brian Goeltzenleuchter to develop a film series comprised of “artists, friends, and/or colleagues to whom you owe something or from whom you want something.” Extending the theme of “family matters” and opening the typically derogatory concept of nepotism up for debate, this evening promises lively discussion between audience and panelists.

Panelists include: Lisa Hutton, Andrew Kaufman, Lauren Tyler Norby and Donna Stack

URBAN INTERVENTIONS – TBD

Dutch artist Oscar Prinsen will revise his role as evangelist and spokesman for his Institute for the Wandering Man in a series of interventions on the streets of Downtown San Diego. Encouraging all whom he meets to pause from secular concerns to engage in a therapeutic conversation with him in his trademark sculpture, Prinsen will draw further interest to Sushi’s role in the Downtown community.

An integral part of the West Coast cultural landscape, SUSHI earns national acclaim for the San Diego arts community and for almost 30 years has provided a forum for artists to reflect the rich diversity of its multifaceted ethnic, cultural, sexual, and personal backgrounds. Sushi’s office and performance space is located at 390 Eleventh Ave. at J St. in downtown San Diego. Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Friday 1 – 6PM. For more information on the shows and tickets, visit http://www.sushiart.org or call 619.235.8466.

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Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.

- Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1955)

Dave Ghilarducci’s artwork investigates perception on an everyday level, often using popular technology as the subject and object of artistic inquiry. Circle of Complication is an electronically mechanized sculpture designed to make drawings reminiscent of those made by a child using a Spirograph toy. In Ghilarducci’s work, however, the drawings are made at large scale using a program designed to produce a series of random operations.

An aesthetic of mechanization has informed over a century of art making, including, but not limited to the Futurist’s infatuation with machines, Jean Tinguely’s self-destructing kinetic sculptures, and Roxy Paine’s industrial painting and sculpting machines. Such art often considers industrial technology’s modes of production and distribution in relation to vital social and cultural issues. One recurring issue that seems to draw renewed interest as our economy has shifted its base from industry to service to information, is the notion of work and the necessity of citizens to redefine their relationship to the changing nature of the work they do. As technology changes, so do the paradigms we use to understand the world and our place in it.

Dave Ghilarducci is interested in the developmental aspects of play. In Circle of Complication he seems to inquire about how play offers a means of assimilation into a changing world. By simulating the Spirograph’s iconic geometries he points to an era of play – during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s – in which toys like the Spirograph relied on the developmental aspects of play to reinforce a set of values related to culture and technology.

Now, some thirty years later, and living in the wake of a bygone era’s technological paradigms, we watch this mechanized sculpture dutifully produce an ink drawing over the course of twenty minutes. It offers a stark contrast to our mental image (or personal experience?) of a child absorbed in the spontaneous discovery of his or her Spirograph creation. We consider how, through play, children acquired both aesthetic and kinesthetic awareness of geometric forms. This awareness, no doubt, acted as a seductive precursor to the complex mathematics – technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids – that many of those children would later learn govern these curves.

Drawing machines and sculptures that mechanize the process of art making are not new to art of the last sixty years. Typically such machines flaunted a disregard for traditional artistic skills while making the provocative claim that a machine is capable of making art. Ghilarducci makes no such claim in Circle of Complication. For Ghilarducci, the artwork is the machine, which is, in fact, an impeccably crafted kinetic sculpture. That the sculpture produces drawings does not immediately bestow upon the drawings the status of art. Rather the drawings function more as artifact. Through the process of making a drawing, the artwork reveals the complex math that governs the drawings’ creation. For their part, the drawings function as a synecdoche of sorts that stand in for the often transparent relationship between play and learning.

-Brian Goeltzenleuchter, Curator

Biography

Dave Ghilarducci was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He currently lives and works in Escondido, California. He studied engineering and physics at University of Illinois at Chicago. After graduating, Ghilarducci worked as an engineer, developing a range of culturally substantive objects – from rockets to Palm Pilots. He left the engineering world in 2006 to work fulltime as an artist. Ghilarducci’s work is often interactive and engages viewers while reminding them of the various and often transparent ways technology is used to manage interactions. Although still quite early in his career, Dave Ghilarducci’s work has garnered critical validation. His work has been exhibited at Track 16 Gallery and Oceanside Museum of Art, and later this year at Art Produce Gallery.

Check out the video taken briefly during the installation on Wednesday, February 3: Circle installation

RV parks sprouted throughout the Sunbelt and became “winter homes” for the retired. Today, during the fall and winter, the populations of many small towns in the Southwest increase significantly as retired individuals escape the inhospitable cold and rain in search of a warm, dry climate. Some communities experience a several hundred percent increase in their population during this period. Nationwide, 9 to 13 percent of individuals over the age of 60 spend at least four months away from their self-described “permanent home,” for a total of 6 million individuals nationwide.

Although designed as a temporary travel home, the RV has also become primary residence for many people of limited means. By the early 1950s the RV and travel trailer industry began producing cosmetic shells to hide the mobile features of the trailer – the wheels, axles and tow-hitches. Instead of emphasizing mobility, these shells were designed to evoke a set of conventional values common to postwar US domestic architecture. Due to the discrepancy in construction, materials and craftsmanship between mobile homes and permanent houses, mobile homes quickly acquired the stigma of being low class. Even today, mobile home parks, or “trailer parks” evoke stereotypical images of uneducated “trailer trash.”

However, RV culture is far from a static social-economic dichotomy. In fact, the RV is currently being repurposed by both contemporary architects and D-I-Y cultures seeking to transgress conventional notions of home in favor of self-sufficient or  “off the grid” living.

This world within a vehicle is documented in Snowbirds, an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Chalmers. Stephen Chalmers spent a winter living in an RV in the desert Southwest, photographing people “at home” in and around their RVs, often against the iconic backdrop of the desert. Snowbirds represents a small sampling from Chalmers’ much larger portfolio of images. His photos reveal  “home” to be a flexible concept, an idea that is co-produced by the relationship between self, objects and place. Taken as a whole, the imagery offers glimpses of how identity is constructed in these mobile, domestic spaces while it points to ideologies of transience that have developed over the last century.

-Brian Goeltzenleuchter, Curator

Biography

Stephen Chalmers has been an emergency medical technician, taught gang-affected children photography, and worked as a counselor to severely emotionally disturbed children. His photography practice deals with the psychology of loss and raises questions about the nature of representation. Chalmers has taught workshops in alternative photographic processes and digital imaging, and has been a visiting artist at numerous colleges and universities. He has been contributing photographer to several books, and has exhibited throughout the US and as well as in Australia, Ireland, British Columbia, England, South Africa, and China. Stephen Chalmers earned his MFA in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University. His work can be found in several collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Light Work, Polaroid, and the Getty Research Institute. Selections from his projects and more biographical information can be seen at www.askew-view.com.

Patrick Stewart

Hello again. I know, it’s been a while. But we are back and there is lots going on at Sushi these days. Today I want to introduce you to Patrick Stewart our new Executive Director. Having sat in several meetings with him, and perhaps more telling, had a cocktail or two with him, I can tell you he is going to be a wonderful addition not only to Sushi but the San Diego arts community as well.

Patrick will be rejoining the San Diego arts community in January after finishing his tenure as the executive director of the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Atlas is a multi-faceted center whose development, program, performance, and education accomplishments have served as the leading catalytic factor in the dramatic economic and social redevelopment of a major section of Washington, DC’s Northeast quadrant. With Sushi smack dab in the middle of the burgeoning East Village, his experience in DC is quite fitting.

He brings with him extensive regional management and production experience in San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC, including work with many of San Diego’s arts organizations, The Source Theatre and the National Summer Theatre Festival in Washington, and the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture, as well as positions in television on such shows as NBC’s Will & Grace and Good Morning Miami.

In addition to his institutional leadership roles, Patrick extends organization, management and curriculum development assistance to performing arts organizations.  He currently serves as a management consulting mentor to arts organizations via the Kennedy Center’s Office of the President, and lends expertise as a board or committee member to several organizations, most notably as an advisory committee member to the Capital Fringe Festival and service on the Board of Directors of the Takoma Park Arts and Humanities Council.

Patrick has an exciting vision for SUSHI and is committed to strengthening its role as a vital center for the urban arts. Although he will not return full time to San Diego until January, he has been meeting with the Board of Directors monthly to aid in management and planning for the fall 2009 and 2010 seasons. His focus will be primarily on fund development, programming, and community outreach.

Please join me in welcoming Patrick to San Diego. I’m pretty sure he is going to make San Diego a more interesting place to be.

While you enjoy your summer, we’ll be over here. Busy planning some new explorations for the fall and a full 2nd season for the winter and spring.

Oh and if you joined us for the Red Ball, thanks! It really was a ball. And if you didn’t, be sure to watch our blog this fall when we announce the date for the next one. You wouldn’t want to miss this party twice.

Now go have a great and artful summer.

Finally found out today about some of the food we’re going to enjoy at Saturday night’s ball. JRDN, that gorgeous restaurant at Tower 23 is serving Tomato-Melon Gazpacho with Dungeness Crab and Basil Crème Fraiche. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

Our friends at Avenue 5 will be preparing individual horseradish & goatcheese crostini, with anise braised short rib. Sounds scrumptious. I shouldn’t write about food when I’m hungry….

Other donors include Sushi’s neighbor The Corner with cheeseburger sliders, Siren at Sè with asian bites, and we will be getting a preview of the new Proper Pub menu (Wine Steals new concept by the ballpark, opening this summer).

Really hungry now…

Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Acamonchi

James Watts

Joshua Krause

Teddy Cruz

JW Caldwell

The live auction should be most entertaining, as Vernon the Entertainer will be our auctioneer on stilts. He will walk through the Sushi space, tracked by spotlights, while guests indicate their desire to purchase a piece with numbered fly swatters. It should be unlike any auction you’ve seen before.

So what is Steampunk? It seems to be this interesting mash up of Victorian-era English aesthetic with science fiction and modern technology.

And what is Zirk Ubu? According to their web site – part circus and part mystery cult..a visionary amalgam of performance genres…fantasy, buffoonery, aerial acrobatics, surreal tableaux and burlesque vignettes.

Now imagine about a dozen of these folks wandering through the Red Ball crowd, spontaneously entertaining and engaging people. Perhaps you are starting to get a feeling for what the night will be like?

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one, so when a friend sent over this video (click on the link below) I was delighted. It shows the band playing at a wrap party with their friends from Zirk Ubu dancing it up. Better get your dancing shoes on.

Orkestra and Zirk Ubu

We are very excited to have Mark and this talented group of regional artists be a part of the Red Ball. Here are a few examples of the fantastic work you will see in the Visual Arts Gallery on June 13th.

We’ll hold the party at the Sushi space. Expect unusual entertainment from the likes of the Balkan gypsy band Wolfgang von Cope and his Orkestra Moustachio, along with members of Burners without Borders and a couple of fantastic DJs. We’re still working on the list (some cool stuff planned) so check back regularly.

We will be holding the legendary art auction, with a fun twist. There will be food, booze, photos, and a generally Steampunk Cabaret/Vaudeville Cirque feeling to the whole affair. Yes, you will need to dress in costume (I know some of you are smiling right now and some are probably thinking – uh oh) or in very festive RED attire.

Tickets are $75 per person or $125 per couple. We will have a limited number of tickets for students at $35 (ID required).

So save the date – Saturday, June 13th from 7 – midnight. Tickets will go on sale through the Sushi website on Monday, April 27th.

the country are suffering and we’re no different. And as I pointed out in my last post about PWYC, the revenue at the door is not covering our costs. So, what’s an organization to do?

Here are the steps we have taken thus far:
1. Cut every expense possible. There is no fat in that budget at all.
2. Let interim Executive Director Lynn Schuette go as we couldn’t afford to pay her. John Warner, our operations manager, was an old friend of Lynn’s and decided it was time for him to go as well.
3. Continue seeking out and applying for grants.
4. Launched our space rental program. Sushi is a great space and we need to start covering some of our overhead by renting the space when we are not using it. Click here for more space rental details.
5. We are resurrecting the Red Ball. This was Sushi’s largest fundraiser in the past and we know it can be again. I will be posting more information about this soon.
6. We are focused on growing the Sushi board. Sushi needs help in every way and new board members will help with fund- and friend-raising.

Of course, letting Lynn go was very difficult. She is Sushi’s founder. But ultimately we couldn’t ask her to work without pay. Her position was always supposed to be interim and we all knew she was going to leave, we just didn’t expect it to be so quickly.

Notwithstanding our financial issues, Sushi continues to operate on a day-to-day basis thanks largely to our two part-time staffers, Fran and Jackie, who fill every gap that shows up. One or both of them are at the office everyday between 10 am and 3 pm. We’ve also been lucky to get our former tech wizard Geronimo back with us, and he’s taking on all the operation responsibilities.

And how can you help? Sushi is an organization that exists for artists and those who love art that touches boundaries. Can you help us rent the space? Do you know someone who would donate a piece of art to the Red Ball for the auction? Can you bring more people to the shows? Have you become a member, at whatever level you can afford?

Sushi will only thrive with the support of the entire community. It does remind me of that worn out expression about raising children – it takes a village. And folks, that village is us.

Well, here’s what I know and want to share with you -

The first Fresh Sounds concert with Nels Cline & Alex Cline was a huge success! About 250 people, most of whom had never been to SUSHI before, packed in to hear the acoustic sounds of these unpredictable artists. Hope to see those folks regularly at SUSHI.

Next up at Fresh Sounds is Blevin Blectum, costumed live electronics performance with video by Ryan Junell. Here’s the description – Gular Flutter is slow-mo sunspots, high contrast hydraulics, Cascaded Integrator-Combing, and negative acceleration, epic sound for distressed ifrit. Now, just in case you don’t know what ifrit means (I’m sure you understand all the rest of it), ifrit are a kind of Jinn mentioned in the Qur’an. Hope that helps…The show is Tuesday, February 10 at 8 pm. I’m pretty sure I’m a distressed ifrit; think I’ll have to stop by and check it out.

This weekend, the incomparable Karen Finley will perform her latest work – Impulse to Suck. The show is a West Coast premiere and runs Thursday – Saturday 1/29-31. The admission is Pay What You Can. I must tell you what this Pay What You Can really means to SUSHI. It’s important that you know. SUSHI received a couple of grants that require performances be Pay What You Can – a noble concept that doesn’t really translate in reality.

Based on the number of seats that will fit in the space and the number of nights the show is running, the Finley show costs about $150 per seat. The underwriting of the show covers about $100 per seat. So how will SUSHI make up that additional $50 per seat? I have the feeling that with Pay What You Can, it ain’t gonna happen with cash receipts at the door. See where I’m headed with this folks? SUSHI gets kinda screwed in this scenario.

So it’s up to all us SUSHI lovers to give until it hurts. Not $10, not even the suggested $20 minimum. MORE. Even a little more will help. If you want this quality of artist in San Diego, we’re all going to have to open up our hurting little wallets and make it so.

That’s what I know folks. Catch you at SUSHI.

leslie seiters little known dance photo by Tim Richards

Then starting Thursday we have leslie seiters little known dance theater with Lux Boreal. Due to a busy life (yeah, you got one of those too?) and travel to SF for the Fancy Food Show (anyone else going?) I will miss the performance. But, I was lucky enough to attend a rehearsal yesterday afternoon so that I could get a feel for the show and share my impressions. Now, there were a lot of pieces missing – costume, lighting and full set design, but it was still really cool to watch the dancers run through the entire show.

The performance is a mash up of the Lux Boreal dance company with several of the dancers that Leslie likes to work with, plus the sounds of Margaret Noble. I had forgotten the name of the piece, which was kind of interesting when I looked at my notes as they seemed to reflect, at least a bit, what I think Leslie had in mind.

Six women and five men perform for a little over an hour and my big impressions were the sense of measuring the space around and between us; trying to get comfortable when there are objects or obstacles in our way; counting and the limitations or freedoms that can bring and groups versus individuality. I really have no idea if those were some of the ideas that Leslie was trying to convey with the piece but that’s what I got. I brought my 8-year old son with me and his comment was “they like doing antics with tables.” Very true.

I suppose the other takeaway was that I enjoyed the show, and unlike La Pocha Nostra which left me with mixed feelings about the performance, I walked away happy to have seen the dancing.

I hope that you will share your impressions. Do you agree with me? Not at all? Did you find other things that

little known dance theater with Lux Boreal photo by Tim Richards

I missed entirely. Perhaps our choreographer will weigh in at some point and give her perspective. I’d love to read that!

Oh and the name of the show? Incidental Fear of Numbers….

Thanks to Tim Richards for sharing the photos – they’re way better than mine.

We paraded down the street behind a lit up Cinderella carriage through the Gaslamp. No, we didn’t have a permit, and yes the police did finally see us and ask us to move to the sidewalk. But we were already at Sushi, so mission accomplished. It was a busy night in the Gaslamp so there were lots of people asking who we were and what was happening. It was obviously a happening.

Upon entering the SUSHI space there were a few vignettes set up with the performers for audience interaction. So I grabbed a glass of two buck chuck and interacted. And my husband caught it on his camera. So here, for the first time on the world wide web, a short spontaneous interpretive dance by Indra Gardiner. A real first. And no doubt, last.

When the show began, Guillermo presided at the top of the catwalk, with the deejay behind draped in an American flag. And then the procession onto the catwalk began. I won’t go into all the details. Because there were many. Too many for me, but we were up at 5 am that day as hubby went dirt bike riding, so my attention span was limited. There was a dance sequence that I loved, some symbolism with people’s clothing and juxtapositions that I found powerful and lots of nudity. When I commented to my husband that I thought there was too much nudity, that it kind of lost its power after a while he looked at me sideways and said “Oh come on, that was the best part.” I guess there was something for everyone.

I didn’t understand everything he said, but I enjoyed Guillermo’s short manifestos the most. “We, who make wearable art from your trash.” “No homeland; no fear; no borders; no patriotism; no nation-state; no ideology; no censorship. We are committed to presenting a different face of America.” “We will not stop talking back.”

You can read media reviews at signonsandiego and Culture Lust (check out her great photos, they really give a feel for the evening).

My biggest takeaway was the incredible enthusiasm in the air for SUSHI. Such a diverse San Diego crowd all happy to be part of welcoming SUSHI back home. This art may not be entirely comprehensible by people like me, but we can still appreciate that it deserves a place and now, SUSHI is that place again.

What did you think? I would love to read your impressions.

You need to call this special number for this special price – 619-235-8466.

New Barbarians. Zach Gross, 2007

The scope of the evening has expanded, so I’m going to let you know what I know at this point. The guests (who should be dressed glamorously or creatively – I guess that means anything goes, right?) will be gathering at Jsix for food fit for barbarians. I’m thinking large turkey legs and hunks of meat. But Jsix always does such a great job that I’m sure they will put a delicious and humorous twist on the menu (I’ll see if I can nab that for an early preview). Following drinking and dining, the whole crowd, including the troupe of La Pocha Nostra will parade down J St. to Sushi. Everyone will walk the red carpet and head into the new space where there will be a no-host bar (I think) and mingling with the performers. The most fashionable, outrageous, creative in the crowd will be hand-picked by the performers to sit in the front row of the catwalk. So if you want front row, you know what you need to do.

The show, which I believe has a couple of acts will then commence. Following the performance (which has me most nervous – well, have you seen the photos? This is the stuff that could potentially make me fidget or worse, faint) the crowd will carry back to Jsix Bar for cocktails and no doubt a debrief on what the hell they just saw. Am I making it sound crazy? I expect no less from La Pocha Nostra. Are you in? It will be THE most incredible night in San Diego in the month of December, I guarantee it. I am definitely there. Ambivalance and all.

BTW, did you see the article about Sushi on the front page of the SDUnion-Tribune Arts section. Take a read. It tells the story well.

Beyond Theory at Sushi ©2008paulmbowers

Last weekend we celebrated the pre-opening of the visual art space at Sushi with a multi-media installation by a group of eight Serbians who were in residence in San Diego for about a week. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one and I was happily surprised. Some of the art was really engaging and I understood what the hell they were trying to convey. Of course, some I did not. But that is to be expected. That’s what this blog’s about, right?

One of my favorite pieces was Death Anniversary by Vladimir Nikolic who was running a video of a women singing at the gravesite of Marcel Duchamp (incredibly, I found a clip of it). Here’s what Vladimir told me “I paid a Balkan woman to compose a song and sing at the grave of Marcel Duchamp….this is something we do all the time where I come from…but artists will take photos of these kinds of things and because it is exotic to Westerners, they say it is art.” He’s got something on his mind. “I call this false ready made, because it is not art, it is not contemporary.” See? He’s kinda pissed. It was good.

The images here show another section of the visual art space that had cloths printed with quotes about art. It was a maze. In a corner was another video with Vladimir sitting on the floor, tossing a ring onto a cone, while two British art critics discussed what was happening. These Serbians don’t have a very high opinion of the British art scene, or of much contemporary art. They’re a pretty intellectual bunch.

There was more, about the positioning of pictures, and how all the stories have already been told and nothing is original. Some of it went over my head, but all in all, the experience of being at Sushi, experiencing art in the space and seeing people who supported it all, was encouraging.

Here’s one of the quotes that was in the maze – Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks. (Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko & Barnett Newman). I think that’s what we’re going to see at Sushi this season.

Beyond Theory at Sushi ©2008paulmbowers

From all reports, the weekend was great. The audience was enthusiastic and the show went off without a hitch (at least none that the audience knew of). Since I couldn’t be there, I am linking to a post by Francis, the designer who has done so much wonderful new work for Sushi, who was. If you attended, please share your impressions. Would love to know what you thought.

This performance is set in the round and is the second evening length project he has done in this setting. Jordan said that in our lives, we perceive information from all directions at the same time, not just what’s right in front of us. He is interested in exploring this idea in performance – having all the channels open not just focusing straight ahead.

The dancers move among the audience and this has to do with his study of kinesthetic empathy. Now this starts getting kinda deep, but stay with me. He made it understandable. Jordan says “Our bodies empathetically respond when they are near other bodies. Our reactions are different if the artist is near you as opposed to far away on a proscenium stage.” He believes that we learn from being near other bodies in a way that we don’t when they are far away.

If you are feeling the bodies flying through the air right next to you, it makes sense that your experience of the show will be quite different than if they are yards and yards away from you on a stage.

Jordan wants to move contemporary dance away from just being a visual phenomenon. He wants to communicate the actual experience of moving through time and space. He calls it “near space relationships.”

One of the coolest aspects of the show is that each audience member wears their own headset. Music composer, Andy Russ, has different mics set up to record different sounds during the show. For example, the parabolic mic will pick up individual sounds like breathing or a grunt. The boom mic will share the larger collective sounds. Andy then samples the sounds the performers are making in real time and layers that with pre-recorded piano music.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting…he has also pre-recorded the dance movements in different environments and with different numbers of people. So you may be watching them jump in front of you, but hearing it as if it were on grass. Or you’re watching 4 people but only hear the footsteps of one. It’s a hyper real experience.

And what’s also very interesting is that the performers only hear the music. They don’t hear all the other stuff that the audience does. So the performer’s experience is entirely different from the audiences’. He is trying to challenge the notions of what a communal performance is about. He wants to create disorientation within a dance performance.
I call it parallel realities (I mean aren’t we each hearing a different voice and tune from one another all the time anyway?). This really highlights that experience, doesn’t it?

Oh and the name? Well, I envision all the bodies and the breathing representing a thicket of trees. But maybe I’m way off here and Jordan will set me straight.

Anyway, there are some phenomenal special events in November and December to celebrate the new Sushi. You really should check them out.

First up is Jordan Fuchs’ show called Thicket. This is a pre-opening event on Saturday, Nov. 7 at 8 pm. I am interviewing Jordan on Monday and will share what I learn early next week. So stay tuned for that one.

Next is Beyond Theory, an exhibition of paintings, video and installation works by a group of six Serbian artists that will be showcased in Sushi’s new visual arts space. The artists are in residence for 10 days and will have performances and discussions from Nov. 22 – Dec. 20. The opening reception is Sat. Nov. 22 from 7 -10 pm. Can’t wait to interview that group.

Finally, we have the big grand opening celebration – La Pocha Nostra, The New Barbarian Collection, Winter ‘08. This group is led by Guillermo Gomez Pena and will include an intensive performance workshop at Sushi for local artists. So far, these guys scare me the most. Just look at the photo. Lynn swears Guillermo is “a sweetheart”. He’s the guy in the skirt. Hmmm.

My name is Indra Gardiner Bowers. I live in San Diego with my husband, son, various fish and one very large frog. I am a founding partner of Bailey Gardiner, a creative agency. Sometimes, I blog for dontdrinkthekoolaid. And I Twitter under the handle @bgindra.

My agency is doing pro bono creative design and public relations for Sushi. Here is the cool new logo our designer Francis developed for Sushi. I love it and will have more about the thinking behind this logo in a subsequent post.

If you want to know more, go to Facebook. I’m there too. Otherwise, just keep reading the blog. OK?