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  • Art Now: Tim Miller: PERFORMANCE! BODY! SELF! A performance, lecture & rant

    Free and Open to the Public

    Internationally-acclaimed solo performer Tim Miller is known for his charged performances that tackle challenging social issues, including the culture wars, performance of identity, and queer strategies for the future. Miller shares fierce and funny performance excerpts and speaks about how performance can be used to embolden communities and connect people with one another.

    “Tim Miller sings that song of the self which interrogates, with explosive, exploding, subversive joy and freedom, the constitution and borderlines of selfhood. You think you don’t need to hear such singing? You do! You must!”  – Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America

    Bio: Hailed for his humor and passion, Tim Miller’s solo performances and workshops have been presented all over the world. He is the author of the books SHIRTS & SKIN, BODY BLOWS, and 1001 BEDS. His theater works have been published in the play collections O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance (1998) and Sharing the Delirium – Second Generation AIDS Plays and Performances (1993). Miller has taught performance in theater departments at UCLA, Cal State LA and NYU. He is a founder of Performance Space 122 in NYC and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA.

  • Art Now: Hasan Elahi – Tracking Transience – an Artist Talk

    Free and Open to the Public

    Hasan Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist working with issues in surveillance, privacy, migration, citizenship, technology, and the challenges of borders. An erroneous tip called into law enforcement authorities in 2002 subjected Elahi to an intensive investigation by the FBI and after undergoing months of interrogations, he was finally cleared of suspicions. After this harrowing experience, Elahi conceived “Tracking Transience” and opened just about every aspect of his life to the public. Predating the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program by half a decade, the project questions the consequences of living under constant surveillance and continuously generates databases of imagery that tracks the artist and his points of transit in real-time. Although
    initially created for his FBI agent, the public can also monitor the artist’s communication records, banking transactions, and transportation logs along with various intelligence and government agencies who have been confirmed visiting his website.

    Elahi’s work has been presented in numerous exhibitions at venues such as SITE Santa Fe, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sundance Film Festival, and at the Venice Biennale. Elahi has spoken to audiences as diverse as the Tate Modern, American Association of Artificial Intelligence, International Association of Privacy Professionals, TED Global, and the World Economic Forum. His work is frequently in the media and has appeared on Al Jazeera, Fox News, and on The Colbert Report. In addition to receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, his awards include grants from the Creative Capital Foundation in 2006 and Art Matters Foundation in 2011. In 2014, he was Artist-in-Residence at Shangri-La/Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art and in 2009, Resident Faculty at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is currently Associate Professor of Art at University of Maryland, roughly equidistant from the CIA, FBI, and NSA headquarters.

    See attached photo. Image credit: E. Brady Robinson

  • Art Now Visiting Artist Sheryl Oring: I WISH TO SAY

    Free and Open to the Public

     Performance
    11:30am-1:30pm, Rebecca Stafford Student Center

    Artist’s Talk 4:30pm,
    Club Dining Room

    After typing more than 2,500 postcards to the President from dozens of campuses and other locations around the country, Sheryl Oring’s I WISH TO SAY is coming to Monmouth to engage students in discussions about politics and social change.
    Oring sets up a pop-up public office on campus–complete with a manual typewriter–and invites students to dictate postcards to the next President.

    Sheryl Oring’s work examines social issues through projects that incorporate old and new media to tell stories, examine public opinion and foster open exchange. Oring’s work has been shown at Bryant Park in New York City; the Berlin Wall Memorial; the Jewish Museum Berlin; the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, CA; the San Diego Museum of Art; as well as in major festivals such as Encuentro in São Paulo, Brazil, the Art Prospect Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Art in Odd Places in New York City. She recently completed a large-scale public art installation at the San Diego International Airport and currently works as an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Oring is the recipient of grants from Franklin Furnace and Creative Capital. Her forthcoming book Activating Democracy: The I Wish to Say Project is due out in Fall 2016 from Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press.

  • FILM SCREENING & FACULTY LED DISCUSSION: REBIRTH OF A NATION BY PAUL D. MILLER AKA DJ SPOOKY

    To create his film Rebirth of a Nation, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, remixed D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic film The Birth of a Nation. His re-telling of this overtly racist story depicted in the Reconstruction-era United States hurtles Griffith’s images into the 21st century. The original film was based on a novel and theater play by Thomas Dixon entitled. By applying DJ technique to cinema, Miller’s new film parallels, deconstructs and remixes the original. He likes to think of it as “film as found object” in the same sense that artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol and David Hammons, among many others, have fostered creative investigations into the idea of found objects, cinema and “appropriation art.”

    The event will feature a discussion led by Monmouth faculty from a variety of disciplines. Including: Johanna Foster (Sociology), Walter Greason (History), Mark Ludak (Photography) and Brook Nappi (Anthropology). The first half of the film will screen starting at 4:30 p.m. Faculty will lead a discussion in the middle of the event, and the second half of the film will follow until 6:45 p.m.

    Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is an established composer, multimedia artist, and author. He travels around the world performing solo, with chamber groups, and with orchestras, while giving talks at prominent universities, museums, and conferences. His DJ Mixer app has seen more than 12 million downloads and in 2012- 2013 he was the first artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. He is also the executive editor of ORIGIN Magazine. He’s produced and composed work for Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and scores of artists and award-winning films. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and many other museums and galleries. He has been featured everywhere from CNN to SyFy. His new book The Imaginary App, published by MIT Press, was released in 2014. National Geographic named Miller a National Geographic Emerging Explorer for 2014/2015.

    NOTE: Miller will not be present for this event.

  • Artist Talk with Chris Clavio

    Chris Clavio is an Electronic Artist and Entrepreneur living and working in Santa Fe, NM. His work explores the sublime and perception using light, sound, and interactive environments. Currently he is the Director of IT and Electrical Infrastructure Systems for the artist collective Meow Wolf.

    Clavio has shown work across the United States, most recently in Pittsburgh, PA, with Energy Flow, a project in collaboration with Andrea Polli that highlights the Rachel Carson bridge with wind-turbine powered LEDs. His current projects integrate several software platforms and various hardware configurations to create immersive and interactive environments that stimulate the senses in order to evoke the imagination and push the limits of our perceived reality.

    More info: www.clavionline.com

  • Artist Talk with Weili Shi

    Weili Shi is an artist who designs through the media of digital technologies. He creates unconventional experiences with the aim of provoking people’s consciousness. In his most recent work, Shan Shui in the World, he transformed the information of the buildings in Manhattan, NY, into traditional Chinese shan shui (landscape) paintings by a custom algorithm. This project revisits the ideas implicit in Chinese literati paintings of shan shui: the relationship between urban life and people’s yearning for nature, and between social responsibility and spiritual purity. With generative technology, Shan Shui in the World has the ability to represent any place in the world—including the city where the audience is—in the form of a shan shui painting. Weili Shi is currently a developer at Bluecadet and teaches at Parsons School of Design.

    More info: shi-weili.com

  • The Book of Ice: Multimedia Performance by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky

    Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, will visit Monmouth University to present his The Book of Ice—a multimedia performance and discussion he will stage with musicians from campus and the region. Antarctica, the only uninhabited continent, belongs to no single country, and has no government. While certain countries lay claim to portions of the landmass, it is the only solid land on the planet with no unified national affiliation. Drawing on the continent’s rich history of inspiring exploration and artistic endeavors, Miller has put together his own multimedia, multidisciplinary study of Antarctica. The Book of Ice is one aspect of this ongoing project. In this multimedia talk, Miller discusses his journeys to Antarctica, climate change, and the creation of The Book of Ice, using Antarctica-related data to create maps, graphics, sound, music, and multimedia performances.

    Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is an established composer, multimedia artist, and author. He travels around the world performing solo, with chamber groups, and with orchestras, while giving talks at prominent universities, museums, and conferences. His DJ Mixer app has seen more than 12 million downloads and in 2012-2013 he was the first artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. He is also the executive editor of ORIGIN Magazine. He’s produced and composed work for Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and scores of artists and award-winning films. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and many other museums and galleries. He has been featured everywhere from CNN to SyFy. His new book The Imaginary App, published by MIT Press, was released in 2014. National Geographic named Miller a National Geographic Emerging Explorer for 2014/2015.

    Sponsors of the event include: Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute, Honors School, Department of Chemistry & Physics, Center for the Arts and Monmouth Review.

  • The Jumpsuit Project: Artist Talk with Sherrill Roland

    Sherrill Roland began his socially engaged artwork The Jumpsuit Project in 2016 and continues to use his project to ignite conversations around issues related to mass incarceration. While a graduate student, Roland was wrongfully convicted and spent over ten months in prison. Although eventually exonerated of all charges and granted a bill of innocence, his experiences with the justice system had a lasting effect on both his life and his artistic practice. When he returned to campus, he wore an orange jumpsuit everyday up to and during his graduation ceremony, encouraging all who encountered him and his jumpsuit to address their own prejudices toward those incarcerated. Through sharing his own story, and creating a space for others to process, question, and share, he sheds light on the enormous darkness incarceration brings.

    Since graduating with his MFA from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro in May of 2017, Roland has been traveling widely to exhibit, perform, and discuss his experience and art. In 2017 the New York Times included Roland in their list “From the Personal to the Political, 19 Artists to Watch Next Year,” and in 2018 The Studio Museum in Harlem exhibited his The Jumpsuit Project, which they acquired for their permanent collection.

    For more information, see: https://www.jumpsuitproject.com/

  • Fred Astaire’s Dancing Lessons: Queer Mentors and Monsters: Multimedia Performance by Dustin B. Goltz

    What does it mean to be “part” of the queer community in 2019? Who tells you your story? Your history? Your future? This solo performance is a 70-minute multimedia, performative examination of shifting perceptions of queer male mentorship, LGBT aging anxieties, and the lingering cultural threat assigned to queer sexuality. The piece is an avalanche of pop culture, flamboyance and monstrosity—an intertextual interrogation of queer generational tensions- reclaiming a story of the monsters who refuse to die (for long), refuse to hide the histories their bodies carry, and who keep surviving through wit, camp, irreverence, and an ongoing commitment to the queer community.

    Dustin Bradley Goltz is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Communication at DePaul University in Chicago. He is a scholar and performing artist whose work examines gay aging, queer temporality, LGBTQ media representation, and personal narrative performance. His research has been published in over two dozen articles in journals, which include Text & Performance Quarterly, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. His most recent book, Comic Performativities: Identity, Internet Outrage, and the Aesthetics of Communication was published by Routledge in 2017.