Help Kickstart Liza Wade Green's Hill House Mine

photo by Carrie Leonard

HILL HOUSE MINE is a dance/theatre work set in five rooms and the backyard of a midcentury modern home in the hills of Los Angeles, CA. Part haunted house, part live installation, HILL HOUSE MINE takes the audience on a journey through each room of the residence and explores a world where the fantasies of childhood become truth and the realities of loss are buried. The story follows a family coping with two tragic deaths. As the audience travels through the house they meet different family members and piece together a puzzle of death, dance, memory, and time.

Six performers from New York and Los Angeles use movement and text to bring the characters to life as they connect to the house’s architectural details. Hidden passageways, plastic-covered furniture, an expansive sloping yard, and a claw foot tub all add to the eerie backdrop for this interactive experience. Brick and mortar give way to the home’s memories and dreams, while the performers awaken its ghosts and rumors – all giving voice to a family in transition.

HILL HOUSE MINE is specifically for the midcentury modern home that hosts Summercamp’s ProjectProject in the neighborhood of El Sereno, Los Angeles and will be performed on August 19 and 21, 2011.

The site-specific work is written and choreographed by Brooklyn-based theatre artist Liza Wade Green in collaboration with six performers from both coasts.
Here’s where you come in!

By donating through this handy Kickstarter page, you’ll help HILL HOUSE MINE become a reality and receive some great rewards in the process! Your donation will help cover artists’ stipends, rehearsal space rental, travel expenses, and costumes, as well as video, audio, and other technical elements of the show. Please help this bi-coastal collaboration come to life!

Really? Yes, Really.

. . . and now, a few images from -

The Real Show (title pending)

In Goatspace: Somersault by Xu DaRocha

 Photographs by Sean Dungan

Untiitled #1 by Sean Dungan

Untitled Sculpture #2 & #3 by Carly Steward 

Open Arms organized by David P. Earle

Open Arms

Videos by Karen Lofgren and Miwa Matreyek

Untitled (designation pending) by Sergio Torres-Torres

Summer Prop by Jill Newman

Pretty Vacant IV by Steven Bankhead

Aireoke with Master of Airemonies, Björn Türoque!

Photo by Kristy Baltezore

Photo by Kristy Baltezore

Photo by Jean-Paul Bondy

Photo by Jean-Paul Bondy

Photo by Jean-Paul Bondy

Photo by Jean-Paul Bondy

Photo by Jean-Paul Bondy

Photo by Jean-Paul Bondy

Immersion Program: somewhere between the dust and the light

Opening reception Friday, November 13 from 7-10 PM with music performance by Métal Rouge

Immersion Program: somewhere between the dust and the light from Summercamp ProjectProject on Vimeo.

Summercamp's Project Project presents Immersion Program: somewhere between the dust and the light, a video exhibition featuring works projected on the ceiling by James Boulton, Spencer Douglass & Gustavo Herrera, Matt MacFarland, Kayo Nakamura, Telefantasy Studios, Kai Vierstra, with Tarra Stevenson from Reading Radio in Guestroom. Music by Métal Rouge. Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera, and Janice Gomez.

The Lost Artworks, an ongoing project by Matt MacFarland, addresses the interdependence of opposing terms such as success and failure, life and death and tragedy and comedy.  The series investigates cliché comedic tropes as a reminder of our humanity and vulnerability. Undertaking mortality through humor MacFarland's work acknowledges that no matter what we do, everything is futile, insignificant and simultaneously significant because we will not be around for long.  Spencer Douglass and Gustavo Herrera's video, American stars and Mars, is an interpretation of the classic Neil Young album American Stars and Bars- specifically the photograph on the album cover. The video activates this still image in an exploration of excess and the 'morning after'. The morning after a night a week a month a year of heady indulgence and blind consumption.

Telefantasy Studios is dedicated to the creation of realms full of alternate realities populated with extravagantly and exactingly created beings. Creators, Jennifer Juniper Stratford and Christine Adolph, explore the theme of fantasy and memories of forgotten futures in their most recent series The Multinauts via an innovative mix of creature and miniature model making with 2D animation.  Episodic story lines follow three heroes through time and space as they battle The Norks, a mutant empire hell bent on creating chaos in a post nuke universe.   In contrast, Kayo Nakamura pairs subtle movements with sentimental songs  to create poetic moments out of unassuming situations.

James Boulton's staccato animations isolate and collage together real world images with patterns, sounds, and drawings.  Using a vibrant saturated palette, Boulton's video alternates between optically blending and clashing sounds.   Kai Vierstra's Hammering Nails also uses manipulation of audio.  As a loose continuation of  his father’s wave research with MIT/Lincoln Laboratory’s group 38 “Air Defense Systems”, Viestra experiments with slow and low frequencies that could induce a bodily reaction indicated by the lycanthropic phenomenon.

In addition to the multiple timed video screenings,  Tarra Stevenson of Reading Radio will address a different analog(ue) realm of the time based program by utilizing the natural ebb and flow of reading aloud.

Métal Rouge was formed in 2006 by Helga Fassonaki and Andrew Scott in Auckland, New Zealand with no aim but to open themselves to the spontaneous psych tonalism running through the underbelly of popular music like a vein of pure lightning.  Birthed from the rich history of New Zealand underground they began to mold a sound comprised equally of the forward motion of ecstatic jazz and the drugged stasis of NYC loft minimalism circa ’66.  Using electric guitar, vocals and amplified santur as their primary instruments, they forged a new vocabulary of unrefined free spiritual music. Relocating to Los Angeles, they toured the US, adding lap steel and pedal steel to their arsenal.   Drummer/Trombonist Caitlin M. Mitchell joined in 2009, bringing with her a night/day spectrum ranging from pure brass drone through to aggressive free rock. 

GO BIG or GO HOME

Hello all,

We're getting ready for our last summer outdoor exhibition of the season and and these artists are going big or going home. Come and check it out on Sunday, August 30th from 5-8pm with Falcon Eddy providing some sweet sounds. Check out the details below.

Peace out,
J, E, & F

Summercamp's Project Project
3119 Chadwick Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032

Opening reception Sunday August 30th from 5-8 pm with music performance by Falcon Eddy
Exhibition runs from August 30 through September 13th.
Hours by appointment, please contact summercampprojectproject@gmail.com

Summercamp's Project Project presents GO BIG OR GO HOME: big ass sculpture show, an outdoor group exhibition featuring works large in scale and in scope with Melissa Manfull in Guestroom. Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera & Janice Gomez.

Interested in an agave plant from the neighborhood that had rotting fruit stabbed through its top spikes, Kristi Lippire's sculpture combines local plant forms made of papier-mache and steel rods to emphasize humor and danger. Richard Haley investigates the interface between the body and objects and the extent to which these relationships produce the self in an attempt to locate the corporeal self in a postindustrial culture. Objects as literal manifestations of these relationships between body and object – the podiums that we speak from, the crutches that we lean on, the flagpoles that we articulate nation through. By replicating and intervening into natural systems like tide patterns and tree growth, Haley imposes a man-made logic onto resistant natural, futile technologies intentionally call into question the whereabouts of agency among human and natural bodies. Breathing new life into a 99 cent store toy, Lorraine Cleary Dale's humourous sculpture questions concepts such as fear, change, chance, and the deep desire for recovery; while also exploring greater environmental issues the world faces today. The question remains can we as a culture or as individuals retain a hopeful and positive outlook when the stakes are down?

Don't Put Nothing in It, Unless You Feel It, by Nicole Antebi,is a recreation of Darwin's two by three foot weed garden used for experiments in the natural selection of plant species. The project elaborates on the experiment to include readings by the poet, Amaranth Borsuk, and experimental sounds of Clay Chaplin and others using sound and language as a way of beckoning plants to the surface. Another work dug into the ground, El Sereno Jaw by Josh Callaghan, is composed of 16 concrete teeth of a lower jaw set in the dirt like gums. Will Long offers unexpected experiences by altering the mundane identity and function of everyday materials. Through ductwork with audio components installed on the hillside, Long broadens the viewers perspective regarding the built environment. Jason Manley's work references ornate, fluorescent Hollywood signs and vintage Las Vegas billboards, where the context of advertisement is changed to a platform for poetic prose. The text addresses the here and now, and is intended to stimulate awareness to place, breaking the monotony of corporate sameness, and merging the boundaries between personal and public.

And as a compliment to GO BIG OR GO HOME, Melissa Manfull's drawing and its accompanying potential space satellites will be featured in Guestroom. Interested in the surface of concrete as an opaque barrier, Manfull's drawings are based on soviet modernist architecture, specifically the disintegrating Palaces of Culture. Cold and sedate, using concrete as the primary material, these palaces were created as places of leisure run by the corresponding trade unions and government to promote various forms of art and culture. Manfull's satellite drawings embody the absurdity of the palaces, where their intention and design are in conflict. This conflict also exemplifies the reality of modernity; new designs undermining the proposed idealism.

Slick is almost here!

Opening reception Sunday July 26th from 5-8 pm.

Exhibition runs from July 26- August 9th.

Hours by appointment, please contact summercampprojectproject@gmail.com

Summercamp's Project Project presents Slick, an outdoor group exhibition, to engage, reinforce and deny the definitions of finish fetish, too cool for school and the sly trickster.

Emilie Halpern will be exhibiting a new video recently shot in the woods of New Hampshire during the artist's residency at Macdowell Colony. Also on view is Solar Music Box (2004-2007), a music box that plays whenever the sun shines on it. In the music box the tuned steel comb is from the song The Way We Were, and the revolving cylinder with pins is from Candle in the Wind. The two elements combined create a completely new musical composition. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Ryan Lamb attempts to examine reality at the basest levels, from scratch. Relying more on investigation than expression, Lamb uses observation of the ordinary observed by extraordinary means. Providing an experience similar to the creative act itself, rather than offering them the mere residue of that act.

Non-stop Picture Show is a new ongoing series following the evolution of the Hollywood image. These photographs of Jennifer Juniper Stratford chronicle inspiration derived from fandom, escapism through technology, nature, and the strange effects of the media. A collection of her work is featured in Hijacked Volume One, Australia and America a new book which presents the most diverse and provocative new photography from Australia and America, published by Big City Press. Using found objects Amy Maloof communicates ideas of falsiness. Whether inspired by the weather, or an even more interesting topic of conversation, tropical mood pendulums swing between two invisible trees creating imaginary kid n' play betwixt (wo)man and arty facts.

Touch and touching, where things meet in inner and outer space, especially when those spaces collide without meeting. Cheating light tethered to its shadow, wrapping and warping. Those bodies without thickness that make things thick. Constantina Zavitsanos works in time-based sculpture using projection, simple motors, found objects, wood, glass, wax, water, motion sensors, holograms, mirrors, and video to produce un-tricky visual magic of the mechanical, optical, and tactile varieties. Her objects refer to utility and function and become defunct in real time. From expanding the frontiers of the micro and macro, to revealing the depths of the oceans and the infinity of space, Ture Gufstofson's glass opens doors to that which is not readily visible and unveils new perspectives. In Michael 2011, Michael Trefzger draws recognizable but disparate parts together in ways that depict a near future that is neither utopian or the end of the world, but more of the same.

Existing and adjusting, Los Angeles painter, Devon Tsuno, describes a city of sprawl. But it is also a massively layered city that is growing amidst an unsound ecology -- people battling for space via hostile takeovers resulting in violent concussive movements. We Angelenos, like Robert Duvall’s army officer in Apocalypse Now, breath in deeply and say “Someday this war’s gonna end…” to this environment requires, a meditative calm, with a decisive train of thought, which results in an unwavering sense of home.

And as a compliment to Slick, Malisa Humphrey's collages will be featured in the Guestroom. Humphrey’s collages combine appropriated images and personal and historical ephemera with watercolor and pencil drawings to illustrate conspiracy theories and other narratives.

Thank you all!

Thank you to everyone who helped make s(t)ay a success! It was great to see everyone forge through the heat and sweat it out together. We all had a blast tromping through the field and picking foxtails out of our shoes. Maybe we'll have some shade next time... maybe.



Goatspace: works by Sean Gall and Matt Kennedy
Photo by: Gary Schultz



Lowerfield: works by Carrie Whitney andChristian Tedeschi (pictured)
Stairs: Gina Kelly & Gary Schultz
Photo by: Gary Schultz


on the wall: Anita Bunn
Photo by Gary Schultz

More pics to come.

-Janice

s(t)ay

Summercamp’s Project Project presents s(t)ay: an outdoor exhibition

Summercamp
3119 Chadwick Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032

May 17th -June 1st 2009
Opening reception: Sunday, May 17th: 4-7PM

Hours by appointment: contact summercampprojectproject@gmail.com

The exhibition includes 10 artists whose work speaks to themes focusing on belonging to a landscape and/or moving in place. The inaugural event will be on a hillside overlooking El Sereno .

The new work of Ben Shaffer can be defined as: direct, personal, and current engagement. Shaffer has created an everyday ecosystem for Summercamp that models how the complexes surrounding us can be manipulated in order to create a different structure of interaction, sustainability, understanding, and existence. Also in response to the existing space, Anita Bunn’s video and still image continue an exploration of the act of noticing. Engaging with objects we often fail to see in the context of a sprawling urban environment and addresses an ongoing concern with the subtle shifts that occur with the slightest movement or change in perspective.

In Canned Speech by David P. Earle, a tin can attached to a long piece of string disappears into the woods. Sounds come from the other side. Something is overheard, an impossible conversation. Macha Suzuki tells real life stories about his experiences dressed up with elaborate fabrications some would call lies.

In goat space, Matt Kennedy’s half tone Xeroxes of seemingly banal landscape photographs will coexist with the abstracted landscapes and mindscapes of Sean Gall. Gall’s drawings come out of trips to Ireland to visit his mother juxtaposed with hikes in Los Angeles, as well as remembered patterns from Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasure" album cover designed by Peter Saville.

Interlacing the dialogue spoken from RW Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant, with the silent video footage of sisters, Tsubaki Yasuko and Hayashi Noriko, Julie Spielman investigates the cross-cultural relationships between women, and their susceptible nature to outsider interpretation. Gina Kelly in collaboration with composer, Gary Schultz also brings the other side of the world to the audience in a site specific sound installation using subtle details of evolution and interaction. Anntipode invites the audience into an experience outside of their own.

In the lower field, Christian Tedeschi inverts the stability of ladders, and Carrie Whitney will construct a temporary suspension in an apple tree. Through a process of trial and error, ideas of support and impulse become a physical representation.