Hudson Reporter Archive

Shifting perspective and energy

There are musicians who make music, filmmakers who make movies, dancers who make the right moves, performance artists who make the world into their stage. But it’s the rare collective that attempts to merge all four.
This Saturday, Oct. 6, several local artists will present “Time-Shifting,” a series of performances they describe as “an experimental video, film, performance, and live music event” at Art House Productions in Jersey City.
The show will feature live music scores by Stars Bars and Mars, set to the John Zorn movie “Treatment for a Film in 15 Scenes, 254 Shots,” a film made by Gobolux, a filmmaking collective. The Smoove Sailors, an electro-acoustic group, will also perform live while vintage film footage from the 1950s and 1960s runs on a projected screen. (The Smoove Sailors describe the music they create as “sound patterns,” by the way.) The evening will also include “Telescape,” a film-driven dance performance by Nicole Daunic and Christian Science Minotaur, “Interior Outpost,” an experimental film by Bill Brand, as well as 16mm films by Zack Lischer-Katz, and “Images in Likeness,” a video project by Jacqueline Arias.
Lischer-Katz and Arias served as the curators for Time-Shifting.

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The show’s curators insist Time-Shifting won’t be alienating or overly avant-garde.
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“Basically, the show is trying to create a connection between the past, present, and future,” said producer Greg Strid, president of Unpainted Emporium Productions. “A lot of what goes on is a continuum from the past to the present into the future. But we seem to be living in a constant state of ‘now’ where people, ironically, don’t really absorb what’s going on. A lot of times people are distracted, they’re multitasking. So, the show is trying to get people to connect what they are absorbing in the present and link that to the past.”
The performances in the show, he said, are designed to demonstrate the effect of shared experiences on the human body. Current experiences, said Strid, immediately become part of the immediate past, but most people do not take time to process this essential information.
If the concepts and line-up for the evening sound mind-boggling and a little too “out there,” Strid insists the performances won’t be alienating or overly avant-garde.
“I love experimental shows, but that was a concern of mine right off the bat,” he admitted. “I wanted to make sure the show had a broader reach and I didn’t want an artsy fartsy crazy show that doesn’t mean anything.”
For those who prefer a little separation between their artistic genres, the show will also include screenings of films that will not be paired with dance or performance, but which are more traditional. Co-curator Lischer-Katz will present some of his hand-painted 16 mm films. He shot these movies and then painted onto the film itself, which adds an interesting effect to the final image seen by the viewer. And the Smoove Sailors will perform live scores to 1950s era public service announcements.
“One of the PSAs was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency and has to do with watershed management,” Strid said. “One of the band members will give an introduction and add some contemporary context to the PSAs. So, these are some of the things that the show will include that are a little more straight forward.”
He added: “I think the Jersey City and Hudson County audience is absolutely ready for a show of this kind. Remember, this type of theater is produced regularly in venues in New York City. And our residents go into the see experimental shows of this caliber at the [Joseph Papp Public Theater] and the Brooklyn Academy of Music…It’s unique for us to have a show like this in Hudson County. But it is not unusual for our residents to see a show like this.”
He added that it is his hope to showcase the capabilities of Art House Productions as a theatrical venue, in addition to presenting the show itself.
“It’s important to provide the community an opportunity to see this type of show at Art House Productions,” he said. “It is a unique, professionally run theater and it’s one of the best equipped performance spaces in Hudson County.”
Tickets for Time-Shifting are $15 in advance through www.BrownPaperTickets.com and $20 at the door. Art House Productions is located at 1 McWilliams Place, at Hamilton Park in downtown Jersey City.

E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.

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