(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – The House Is Open, a temporary exhibition of performance and installation, will take over the Fisher Center at Bard College from Thursday, November 20, 2014, through Sunday, November 23, 2014. This unique event, featuring six major American artists working at the intersection of the visual and performing arts, poses the question: What might happen if a performing arts center temporarily reimagined itself as an art museum?

Gideon Lester, director of theater programs at Bard College and curator of the exhibition notes: “The visual arts world has increasingly been inviting performance into its museums and galleries. The House Is Open is briefly and playfully reversing that trend: a major performing arts center is transforming itself into a site for installation. We’re curious to see what we, the public, and the exhibition’s artists will learn from this experiment.”

For one weekend only, The House Is Open inverts the performer-in-a-museum paradigm by borrowing the relational and curatorial strategies of the visual arts world to transform the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts into a temporary art museum. Viewers will discover installations and performances in parts of the building not normally open to the public, and experience as many pieces as they wish over the weekend with a single admission pass.

The exhibition, presented by Live Arts Bard (LAB), the Fisher Center’s residency and commissioning program, in collaboration with Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), features works by artists leading the development of hybrid practices that transcend conventional categories of theater, dance, performance, visual art, installation, music, and film. Fifteen performances will take place from Thursday, November 20 to Sunday, November 23. Each installation will be open at non-performance times during exhibition hours.
Exhibition hours are:

Thursday, November 20 from 5–10 pm (free preview)

Friday, November 21 from 2–10 pm

Saturday, November 22 from noon – 10 pm

Sunday, November 23 from noon – 10 pm

 

The exhibition includes:

Jack Ferver/Marc Swanson | Chambre (World Premiere / LAB Commission)

Choreographer, writer, and performer Jack Ferver and visual artist Marc Swanson MFA ’04 collaborate on a hybrid performance and art installation inspired by Jean Genet’s iconic play Les Bonnes (The Maids). Chambre is a sometimes farcical, sometimes savage, contemporary exploration of otherness, gender, celebrity, and the class divide. Commissioned by Live Arts Bard, the project was developed in residence at Bard, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Watermill Center.

Installation on view in Theater Two during exhibition hours

Performances: Thursday, November 20 at 8 pm; Friday, November 21 at 4 pm; Saturday, November 22 at 7 pm; and Sunday, November 23 at 7:30 pm

 

Ralph Lemon | Scaffold Room (New York Premiere / LAB Co-commission)

Acclaimed choreographer and curator Ralph Lemon melds performance, visual art, music, and text in his new work Scaffold Room, an inquisitive hybrid “lecture-performance-musical” that refracts ideas and images of black female personae in American pop and contemporary art culture. Co-commissioned by Live Arts Bard and the Walker Art Center, the project premiered at the Walker in September 2014.

Installation on view in Sosnoff Theater Backstage during exhibition hours

Performances: Friday, November 21 at 6 pm; Saturday, November 22 at 1:30 pm and 9 pm; and Sunday, November 23 at 5:30 pm

 

Jennifer Monson/iLAND | Live Dancing Archive

Jennifer Monson’s newest work is a visceral exploration of the dancing body as a physical archive of experience and place. Compiled from more than a decade of dance-based environmental research, Live Dancing Archive draws from video documentation of Monson’s past performances in addition to improvised scores. The project premiered at The Kitchen in 2003 as a solo work, and was presented in a new iteration with dancers Niall Noel Jones and Tatyana Tenenbaum at New York Live Arts.

Installation on view in Sosnoff Theater Stage during exhibition hours

Performances: Friday, November 21 at 8 pm; Saturday, November 22 at 3:30 pm; and Sunday, November 23 at 3:30 pm

 

John Kelly | Escape Artist Redux

While rehearsing a theater show based on the life of the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio, a stressed-out performer has a catastrophic trapeze accident. Stranded on a gurney in a hospital room with a broken neck, he escapes and finds refuge in the images that flood his mind—the sinners and saints, the prostitutes and gods—that populate Caravaggio’s paintings.

Installation on view in Resnick Studio during exhibition hours

Performances: Thursday, November 20 at 6 pm; Friday, November 21 at 10 pm; Saturday, November 22 at 5:30 pm; and Sunday, November 23 at 2 pm

 

Tad Beck | Double Document

Tad Beck’s visual art works are exercises in reading the body in athletic, choreographic, and erotic contexts, often displacing movements and gestures from one of these arenas to another. Double Document hybridizes the traditions of portraiture and performance documentation in a series of photographs that collapse multiple photographic and performative moments into a single image. The series includes images of Rashaun Mitchell, Vicky Schick, Silas Riener, K. J. Holmes, Miguel Gutierez, Neal Beasley, Michelle Boulé, Kyle Abraham, and Diane Maden, among others.

Installation on view in the Theater Two Lobby from October 15 until mid-January

 

Nature Theater of Oklahoma | Empire!

In a characteristically impossible-seeming project, Nature Theater of Oklahoma creates a video animation inspired by Andy Warhol’s 1964 silent, black-and-white film Empire. All eight hours of Warhol’s static shot of the Empire State Building will be recreated as an animation through a public project in which anyone can submit hand-drawn, index card-size images of the Empire State Building, which become the basis of the animation. The portion of the project completed to date will be on view, and viewers may contribute their own drawings.

Installation on view in the Theater Two pop-up café during exhibition hours

 

The House Is Open is organized by Gideon Lester, director of theater programs; Bob Bursey, senior producer; and Caleb Hammons, associate producer.

The House Is Open is the featured project of the third season of Live Arts Bard (LAB), the multidisciplinary commissioning and residency program of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. A laboratory for professional artists in theater, dance, and performance to test ideas and develop new projects, LAB invites a number of artists and ensembles to be in residence on Bard’s campus. Begun in 2012, past LAB resident artists include: Annie Dorsen, Miguel Gutierez, John Kelly, Joanna Kotze, Jack Ferver, Neil Gaiman, Aaron Landsman, Sarah Michelson, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Amanda Palmer, Goeff Sobelle, Nilaja Sun, and Robert Woodruff, among others.

BOOKING DETAILS

Weekend Admission Passes are $30, or $10 with any student ID.

Thursday, November 20 is a free preview, but reservations must still be made for specific performance times that day.

Admission passes are valid for the duration of the exhibition and include admission to all performances, with reservations required for specific performance times.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts is located on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, situated on the east bank of the Hudson River in the beautiful Hudson Valley, about 90 miles north of New York City. Amtrak service is available from New York Penn Station to Rhinecliff, about 9 miles south of Annandale. Total travel time by train or car from New York City is less than two hours.

RELATED EVENTS

Colloquium: The House Is Open

Join Gideon Lester (director of theater programs, Fisher Center), Paul O’Neill (director of the graduate program, Bard CCS), and Lia Gangitano (founder, Participant Inc.; faculty member, CCS) in conversation with the artists featured in The House Is Open.

Wednesday, November 19 from 6:30-8 pm at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies.

Free and open the to the public

Artist Talk: Tad Beck in Conversation with Bill Arning, director, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Saturday, November 22 from 12:30-1:15 pm

Open to all weekend pass holders

SCHEDULE BY DAY

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Artist Colloquium at 6:30 pm at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies

Thursday, November 20, 2014 (FREE PREVIEW)

Exhibition open and installations on view from 5 – 10 pm

John Kelly | Escape Artist Redux performance at 6 pm

Jack Ferver/Marc Swanson | Chambre performance at 8 pm

Friday, November 21, 2014

Exhibition open and installations on view from 2 – 10 pm

Jack Ferver/Marc Swanson | Chambre performance at 4 pm

Ralph Lemon | Scaffold Room performance at 6 pm

Jennifer Monson/iLAND | Live Dancing Archive performance at 8 pm

John Kelly | Escape Artist Redux performance at 10 pm

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Exhibition open and installations on view from noon – 10 pm

Artist Talk: Tad Beck in Conversation with Bill Arning from 12:30 pm to 1:15 pm

Ralph Lemon | Scaffold Room performance at 1:30 and 9 pm

Jennifer Monson/iLAND | Live Dancing Archive performance at 3:30 pm

John Kelly | Escape Artist Redux performance at 5:30 pm

Jack Ferver/Marc Swanson | Chambre performance at 7 pm

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Exhibition open and installations on view from noon – 10 pm

John Kelly | Escape Artist Redux performance at 2 pm

Jennifer Monson/iLAND | Live Dancing Archive performance at 3:30 pm

Ralph Lemon | Scaffold Room performance at 5:30 pm

Jack Ferver/Marc Swanson | Chambre performance at 7:30 pm

The exhibition and all performances take place at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, located at 60 Manor Avenue, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504. For travel directions, please see: http://fishercenter.bard.edu/visit/directions/