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Community Corner

1st Biennial Festival of Performance Art and Sound Art


This event is suggested for mature audiences.

The Contemporary Arts International (CAI) is pleased to announce that its first Biennial Festival of Performance Art and Sound Art (CAI Biennial) will be held on September 7 and 8, 2013 from 1pm to 10pm at The Quarry,  CAI’s art complex located at 68 Quarry Road, Acton MA.  The Quarry includes 12.9 acres of beautiful wooded land featuring outdoor granite and kinetic sculptures, and the Red Box Building, a 7,000 square foot building containing a performance hall and two adjacent galleries.

Tickets are $20 per day at the gate, $30 for the two-day event. Advanced tickets may be purchased online at a discount price of $15 per day.

Twenty-three of the region’s leading performance artists and sound artists have been invited to perform at the CAI’s Biennial. The sound artists include Evan Ziporyn, Keith Fullerton-Whitman, Walter Wright and Andrea Pensado, Jed Speare/Tim Feeney,Ernst Karel, Reuben Son, BUMPR, Dei Xhrist and BiRdOrGaN, flandrew fleisenberg and Loren Groenendall, and Victor Lois. The performance artists include Marilyn Arsem, Jeff Huckleberry, Karen Dolmanisth, Vela Phelan, Geoffrey Koetsch, Rob Saulnier, Zach Hoffman, Jeffu Warmouth, and Ellen Wetmore.

According to CAI Board Member and organizer of this event, Geoffrey Koetsch, who is a professor of intermedia arts and advanced sculpture at The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, “Boston is recognized around the globe as a nucleus of sound art and performance art, yet these genres remain under the radar. Our goal is to spotlight a select group of the region’s most prominent artists in these media.”

Koetsch sees the CAI Biennial as a rare opportunity to bring together a first rate cast of artists from diverse enclaves of experimental activity—universities, artist’s coops, galleries, and performance spaces. 

Koetsch characterizes performance art as “real time” art actions (time is not reconstructed as it is in movies and plays with fast forwards, cuts, etc.) that are performed by the artist in-person, with or without audience participation. He says, “Performance artists work with time, space, materials and sound, to learn, discover, transform, and gain knowledge, rather than provide entertainment. I hope this event will enhance CAI’s reputation as a laboratory for new sound and performance art. For two days, at least, experimental art moves to Acton,” says Koetsch, “For those interested in these specialized fields, this is a must see event.”

Koetsch describes sound art (aka experimental music or “new music”) as the exploration of the full range of sound in human experience: electronic, sounds of everyday life, vocalizations (song, utterances, eruptions) and sounds from traditional or invented musical instruments. Sound art may be improvised or structured according to a system or chance operations, and may include harmony and melody. Sound artists strive to penetrate more deeply into the auditory world.

ABOUT GEOFFREY KOETSCH, CAI BIENNIAL ORGANIZER

Geoffrey Koetsch is a professor of inter-media arts and advanced sculpture at The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Originally a student of theater arts at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Koetsch now integrates sculpture, video, photography, and installation in his work.  Koetsch was the co-founder and director of the nationally touring Theater of Kinetic Sculpture, The Metropolitan Artist’s and Poets, and the Arts Collaborative Inc. He has produced performance events for the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, the Marcus Center for Performing Arts, Milwaukee, MassArt, Cambridge Arts Council, Fitchburg Art Museum, First Night Boston, and SoNo Arts Celebration (South Norwalk, CT).

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ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ARTS INTERNATIONAL (CAI)

Contemporary Arts International (CAI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is located at The Quarry, a 12.9-acre site at 68 Quarry Road, Acton MA. The mission of CAI is to promote sculpture and experimental interdisciplinary art in a global context through symposia, international artist-in-residency programs, performance events, and educational outreach.

The CAI Co-founders Yin Peet and Viktor Lois, originally from Taiwan and Hungary, respectively, both have extensive international experience and connections in the art world. Yin Peet is a sculptor and performance artist, who earned an MFA in sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Viktor Lois is a kinetic sculptor and sound artist whose work is displayed in the permanent collection of the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Hungary, and an entire building in the Mine Museum (Tatabanya Museum, Hungary).


At the CAI, granite and kinetic sculptures are situated throughout The Quarry, as well as in the Red Box Building, which includes gallery space, a performance stage, and a classroom. Container Man, a large-scale kinetic musical sculpture, is located in the Red Box Building. Peet and Lois perform concerts on this remarkable sculpture.


The CAI holds an open house from 1pm to 4pm every first Sunday of the month. The CAI’s New Art Archaeology Symposium, held from August 1 - 21, 2013, will be open to the public everyday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.


For more information, visit the CAI’s website.


Contemporary Arts International

68 Quarry Road

Acton MA 01720

Phone: 617-699-6401 

Email: info@contemporaryartsinternational.org

 


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