RedShift at Body Implement

photos by James Prinz

I created RedShift Party Hats in leather and feather for "Body Implement" at Nick Cave's Sound Suit Shop in Chicago's South Loop, November 2010. There's a narrative behind these hats which begins 13 years ago with a magazine tear sheet and the performance "Mercuria" by Lynn Book and Theo Bleckmann at "Here" in New York. I designed the costumes for these two vocalists who embodied more content than I've ever cloaked. Please see the clip...

This is a story about the infinite in the everyday, when invention interrupts intention with fluid generosity.

Fuller

Ready-made glow in the dark Oxford cloth, thread, pencil pleating, drapery hooks, aluminum rods, plastic sliders. Dimensions variable (appx 8' x 14')


Sustenance: 337 Singleton, Dallas TX , September 2009

An exhibit of site specific installations.

Organized by Stephen Lapthisophon and Anne Lawrence

For this exhibit I made a curtain of glow-in-the-dark fabric on a north facing wall of the Sustenance exhibit site. The primary source of light to this space was an entry door to the west. The random opening of the entry door charged the material over unmeasured intervals of time. The curtain, just by hanging there, supported a metabolic process, absorbing and emitting light, consuming and expelling light. The gathering of the curtain was a drawing process to create a fluctuating fullness containing pockets of space and darkness in each fold.


Here are some images from my research trip to Berlin: photos

Loie Fuller's Radium Dance

Link to Sustenance exhibit

Art Lies Review

In Ridicule Of Spectacle

Experimental Sound Studio: Project Space, February 2009
 
This was a performance, drawing session, and photo shoot to bridge the disciplines of art and dressmaking through the act of modeling.  To develop this piece, I investigated the idea of being tarred and feathered, the alchemical symbol of the blackened mirror, and butoh performance images.  The  visual narrative took on a textural layer with writer Sara Levine's prose poem "In Which the Seamstress Speaks."  I am continually interested in how personal identity can be shaped through material interactions, and enjoy rearranging fairy tale outcomes to escape set orders.


The result of this project is a series of hand made look books for RedShift, one of which is in The Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection.

There's a fine line between self-reflection and self-voyeurism.  

Look beyond the red dotted swatch for details...

See more photos here

A poem by Paul Shullenberger in response to "In Ridicule Of Spectacle"

party hat central calling
elusive tassels’ nonesuch
numinous graffiti hotline:
does a stitch in time throw
clocks out of whack?

wear your words lightly
if they float you’re there
grains of sand are feathers
through foo stints as hair

stutter-dance with doodles
peripherally lensed
landscape’s scalp massage it
grab knead twang the air
--for kristin mariani



Many thanks to Carol McCurdy, Ella Stauber, David Ettinger, Sara Levine, Adam Vida, and Alex Inglizian

The Palimpsest Project

Spoke, Chicago April 26 - May 23 2010

This was a collaboration with re[public] in/decency to create an environmental and performative chalkcloth "palimpsest" to trace the intricate relationships between the physical body, transgenerational memory and landscapes of belonging. The chalkboard and chalk cloth are metaphoric contemporary incarnations of the historical palimpsest, a manuscript on parchment which has been effaced to make room for later writing, but of which antecedent traces remain. By enlarging and collectively engaging in the rite of inscribing and re-inscribing personal narratives, unique and powerful (individual and collective) connections are made, engaging in an accessibly expressive and socio-cultural dialogue.

See More Photos Here

Images from Memory Excavation, Pop Up Art Loop, Chicago May 6, 2010
Photos by Day Still

Chalk - video by Jeroen Nelemans from Kristin Mariani Frieman on Vimeo.