Inspired by Spike Lee's controversial movie Bamboozled and Mel Watkins's book On The Real Side: From Slavery to Chris Rock, Camille A. Brown's Mr. TOL E. RAncE celebrates the humor and perseverance of the black performer while examining stereotypes that still dominate popular Black culture. Brown employs comedy, live original music, animation, theater and poignantly retrospective dance vocabulary in this very personal work, which also addresses the issue of tolerance - looking at what black performers have tolerated in the past and the forms of modern-day minstrelsy we tolerate today. Blending and contrasting the historical with the contemporary, this work seeks to engage the community in a dialogue about where we have been, where we are and where we might want to be.
MUSIC/FILM
Sam Green and Yo La Tengo's The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, Tuesday and Wednesday, April 9 and 10, 7:00 P.M. and 9:00 P.M. each night Tickets: $25
The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller traces the career of the twentieth-century futurist, architect, engineer, inventor, and author - an early advocate for design and architecture's ability to tackle issues of sustainability and conservation, and to stimulate radical societal change. Drawing inspiration equally from old travelogues, the Benshi tradition, and TED talks, director Sam Green narrates the film in person and cues images from a laptop, while legendary indie-rock band Yo La Tengo performs their original score.
EXHIBITION
Chantal Akerman's Maniac Shadows
April 12 - May 11, 2013
Opening reception: Friday, April 12, 6:00 P.M. - 8:00 P.M.
Exhibition Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 12:00 - 6:00 P.M.; Saturday 11:00 A.M.-6:00 P.M. Curated by Tim Griffin and Lumi Tan
FREE
Playing on entwined relationships of presence and absence, legendary Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's latest installation features video shot at her residences in different countries. During the exhibition's opening day, Akerman will be recorded in The Kitchen's second-floor space reading from her story My Mother Laughs. This video will join the others, introducing a kind of psycho- geography for domestic settings at once near and far.