The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS)

Schedule and Musicians Announced For
Welcome Inn Time Machine
Over a Dozen Micro Concerts in Motel Rooms
Touring LA’s Experimental Music History
At Welcome Inn in Eagle Rock
Presented by SASSAS
Part of Pacific Standard Time Performance & Public Art Festival
Sunday, January 29, 2012

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) will transform Eagle Rock’s Welcome Inn into a six-hour tour through key moments in LA’s experimental music history with Welcome Inn Time Machine on Sunday, January 29, 2012.  Over a dozen concurrent micro concerts will transform individual motel rooms into venues for installations and live performances allowing key moments in Southern California sound and music history to be experienced simultaneously and sequentially in a single location. Welcome Inn Time Machine runs from 4:00pm to 10:00pm. The event is free.  The Welcome Inn is located at 1840 Colorado Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90041. For more information on SASSAS and this event please call 323-960-5723 or visit http://www.sassas.org/welcomeinn.

Welcome Inn Time Machine revisits works created between 1949 and 1977. The duration of the event is derived from the 1963 premiere performance of John Cage’s Variations IV at UCLA, which was six hours in length. Among the more than 40 works included are John Cage’s Variations IV, Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D., Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations, The Los Angeles Free Music Society’s Pyramid Headphones, James Tenney’s Postal Pieces, and David Ornette Cherry and poet Kamau Daaood will revisit Something Else, The Music of Ornette Coleman.  In addition to presenting historic works, SASSAS is commissioning two new works based on existing fragments and documents. The Calder Quartet will premiere a new work derived from Arnold Schoenberg’s Entwürfe zu einem Streichquartett [Draft of a String Quartet] (1949) and choreographer Anita Pace will re-envision Merce Cunningham’s Field Dances (1963) as part of a presentation of Variations IV.

Welcome Inn motel in Eagle Rock

Welcome Inn Time Machine Micro Concerts –

The Calder Quartet, Untitled
Based on: Arnold Schoenberg, Entwürfe zu einem Streichquartett [Draft of a String Quartet] (1949)
Composer Arnold Schoenberg moved to the United States in 1934 and soon settled in Los Angeles. During his time in LA, he wrote such notable pieces as the Violin Concerto (1942), A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) and Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte (1942). In addition to this and numerous other works he wrote while in Los Angeles, several were unfinished upon his death in 1951, including the Draft of a String Quartet from 1949.

- Performance times: 6:30pm, 7:30pm 8:30pm
- Location: Balcony
- Performers: The Calder Quartet [Benjamin Jacobson (violin), Andrew Bulbrook (violin), Jonathan Moerschel (viola), Eric Byers (cello)

Free Jazz: Something Else! based on Something Else!!!
Los Angeles was the home for several seminal free jazz recordings including, Something Else!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman recorded February 10, 1958 at Contemporary Studios, Ornette’s first recording under his own name.  In addition to Coleman (alto sax), the album included Don Cherry (trumpet), Don Payne (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums).   David Ornette Cherry (the son of Don Cherry) and poet Kamau Daaood (who founded the World Stage Performance Gallery with Billy Higgins) revisit this recording along with other important free jazz works that originated or were recorded in Los Angeles.

- Performance times: 4:30pm, 5:30pm
- Location: Balcony
- Performers: Kamau Daaood (vocals/spoken word), Justo Almario (alto sax), Roberto Miguel Miranda (Bass), Don Littleton (Drums), David Ornette Cherry (piano)

John Cage, Variations IV (1963)
Variations IV is intended for any number of players producing any sounds by any means, “with or without other activities.” The score consists of seven points and two circles on a transparent sheet. The sheet is cut into nine small sheets. One of the circles is then placed anywhere on a map of the area where the performance is to take place. Then the rest of the sheets are dropped anywhere on the same map and straight lines are drawn from the first circle to the seven points; if a line intersects or is tangent to another circle, the same procedure is applied to that circle. Performers do not need to confine themselves to a performance of the piece during the entire performance and are free to engage in any other activities at any time. The duration of Welcome Inn Time Machine is derived from the 1963 six hour-long premiere performance of Variations IV at UCLA.

- Performance time: continuous, 4:00pm – 10:00pm
- Location: Rooms 11 and 25
- Realized by: Scott Benzel and Dave Muller

Anita Pace, Field Activity, 2012 (inspired by documents describing the performance of Merce Cunningham’s Field Dances, 1963)
Cunningham abandoned the traditional collaborative process among choreographer, composer, and designer while liberating his dancers from hierarchical symmetrical patterns, allowing the audience the choice of where and at whom to look. The possibilities for choreographic invention appeared limitless. Field Dances was originally performed as a part of the UCLA premiere of Variations IV. Choreographer Anita Pace revisits this work, using Cage’s description of Variations IV – 'samsara', 'the turmoil of everyday life' – as impetus for the movement gestalt.

- Performance times: 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm
- Location: Rooms 11, 25 and adjacent stairway
- Performers: Anita Pace, Michelle Lai

Instrument and telephone from Bob Wilhite in Concert, A Telephone Concert, 1975 (Photo credit: Gary Bedyer & Jerry Byrd)

James Tenney, Postal Pieces (1965 – 1971)
The Postal Pieces are a series of 11 indeterminate scores composed between 1965 and 1971. Called Postal Pieces because they were printed on post cards (or as Tenney referred to them, “score cards”), most of the works were produced for the first time while Tenney was teaching at CalArts between 1971 and 1976.

SASSAS has a long connection with Tenney—he was an advisor to the organization from the time it was formed. Additionally SASSAS worked with him on two concerts during his lifetime – a performance of his own works in 2001, which included Having Never Written a Note for Percussion and a performance of several early works of John Cage in 2002. As a part of the 2009 Anniversary Concert, SASSAS presented Tributaries: Dedicated to the Memory of James Tenney, which included both Having Never Written a Note for Percussion and Koan among other works.

“To some extent, he was the ultimate Western composer. He approached each new piece as an adventure, with the goal of discovering original territory and, if need be, taming some theoretical musical beast or acoustical bugbear.”  Mark Swed, in Tenney’s obituary for Los Angeles Times in 2006.

- All eleven Postal Pieces will be performed.
- Location: All works in Room 8 unless otherwise noted

A Rose is a Rose is a Round (1970)
- Performance time: 4:00pm (Balcony)
- Played by: Jessica Catron, Julia Holter, Adrian Tenney

Beast (1971)
- Performance time: 4:30pm
- Played by: Dave Tranchina

Koan (1971)
- Performance time: 5:00pm
- Played by: Andrew McIntosh

Cellogram (1971)
- Performance time: 5:30pm
- Played by: Eric Byers

Swell Piece #2 (1971)
- Performance time: 6:00pm
- Played by: Matt Barbier, Jessica Catron, Jeremy Drake, Andrew Macintosh, Dave Tranchina

August Harp (1971)
- Performance time: 6:30pm
- Played by: Jane Grothe

Having Never Written a Note for Percussion (1971)
- Performance time: 7:00pm
- Played by: Danny Holt

For Percussion Perhaps, Or (night) (1971)
- Performance time: 7:30pm
- Played by: Julia Holter

Swell Piece #3 (1971)
- Performance time: 8:00pm
- Played by: Matt Barbier, Andrew Bulbrook, Danny Holt , Julie Holter, Andrew McIntosh, Nick Terry, Andrew Tholl, Dave Tranchina

Maximusic (1975)
- Performance time: 8:45pm
- Played by: Nick Terry

Swell Piece (1967)
- Performance time: 9:30pm (Balcony and across site)

Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations (1971)
Leaving the Bay Area to accept a teaching position at the University of California, San Diego, Pauline Oliveros began learning about meditation. This interest created a shift in her own musical composition in which she began focusing on the significance of long tones. By 1971, Oliveros had collected a number of meditations and published them together as Sonic Meditations. These sonic explorations, open to anyone who wished to participate, were rooted in ancient musical forms that precluded the listener focusing on the healing power of Sonic Energy and its transmission within groups. Each meditation is an activity conceived to assist in making, imagining, listening and remembering sounds. The meditations exist as text giving the participants activities to do and think about over an indeterminate period of time.

- Location: Room 22
- Performers: Jessica Catron, Jeremy Drake, Adam Overton, Elana Mann

Sonic Meditations (1971)
IX. The Greeting
- Performance time: 4:45pm

XXV. Your Name – The Signature Meditation
- Performance time: 5:15pm

X.  (no name)
- Performance time: 5:45 PM

I. Teach Yourself To Fly
- Performance time: 6:15pm

XV. Zina’s Circle
- Performance time: 6:45pm

VIII. Environmental Dialogue
- Performance time: 7:15pm

III. Pacific Tell
- Performance time: 7:45pm

XII.  One Word
- Performance time: 8:15pm

XVII. Ear Ly
- Performance time 8:40pm

XVI. (no name)
- Performance time: 9:00pm

Bruce Nauman, Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. (1969)
Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. exemplifies his practice of incorporating boredom, exhaustion, and the superimposition of unlike systems into art and, in this case, music. In an interview with Willoughby Sharp, Nauman stated: “I wanted to set up a problem where it wouldn’t matter whether I knew how to play the violin or not. What I did was to play as fast as I could on all four strings with the violin tuned D, E, A, D. I thought it would just be a lot of noise, but it turned out to be musically very interesting. It is a very tense piece.” The D.E.A.D. tuned violin will be played for approximately 2 hours over the course of the event.

- Location: Room 4
- Played by:
- 5:00 PM: Ben Jacobson
- 6:00 PM: Andrew Tholl
- 7:00 PM: Andrew McIntosh
- 8:00 PM: Melinda Rice

Currents Series at the Theater Vanguard (1973 – 1978)
Theater Vanguard presented regular performances of experimental music, theater, film, animation and performance art. Located in the former Stage Society Theatre on Melrose in West Hollywood, The Vanguard provided a nurturing environment for LA performing arts as well as a much-needed venue for local and international artists. Currents was a regular program of electro-acoustic music at the Vanguard, founded by composer Barry Schrader in 1973 and continuing through 1978. It was the first regular presentation of electro-acoustic music in the U.S.

This installation will feature works by Pierre Schaeffer, Louis and Bebe Barron, Barry Schrader, Carl Stone, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Michel Chion, Warren Burt, and Ilhan Mimaroglu as well as ephemera from the series.

- Performance time: continuous, 4:00pm – 10:00pm
- Location: Room 17

- Pierre Schaeffer, Etudes des bruits (1948)
Etude aux chemins de fer; Etude aux tourniquets; Etude violette; Etude noire; Etude pathétique
- Vladimir Ussachevsky, Sonic Contours (1952)
- Otto Luening & Vladimir Ussachevsky, Incantation (1952)
- Louis & Bebe Barron, score from The Bells of Atlantis (1952) with Anais Nin reading her poem The Bells of Atlantis
- Vladimir Ussachevsky, Piece for Tape Recorder (1956)
- Ilhan Mimaroglu, Bowery Bum (1964)
- Mel Powell, Analogs (1966)
Analog I; Analog II; Analog III; Analog I
- Michel Chion, Requiem (excerpts) (1973)
Dies Irae; Libera Me
- Warren Burt, for Anne, who broke my heart (1974)
- Carl Stone, Sukothai (1977)
- Barry Schrader, Lost Atlantis (excerpts) (1977)
Introduction:  The Pillars of Hercules – The Great Harbor; The Destruction of Atlantis – Epilogue:  “…and Atlantis shall rise”

Robert Wilhite, Bob Wilhite In Concert (1975)
In 1975, Bob Wilhite created his first musical sculpture – a unique one stringed instrument. As a gesture to establish the object and provide it with a provenance, Wilhite gave two concerts heard only via the telephone.  Wilhite placed display advertisements in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle announcing both performances. Patrons who phoned during the specified time periods heard a short instrumental played live on the one stringed instrument.  Both concerts were performed at his Los Angeles studio. The on-site audience at the Eagle Rock event will access Wilhite’s live performance by calling his motel room from another room in the motel.

- Performance time: continuous, 4:00pm – 10:00pm
- Performer: Robert Wilhite
- Location: Room 6
- To access performance phone 310-739-5773, day of show only

The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), Pyramid Headphones (1976)
The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), the banner heading of a loose collective of experimental musicians founded in the early 1970s, have had immeasurable influence on the spread and evolution of noise and avant-garde music and DIY culture over the past almost 40 years. In July of 1976, Le Forte Four, one of the earliest groups in the collective, created an installation at the Brand Library Art Center in Glendale, California, which consisted of forty-four black, pyramid-shaped, stereo headphones, with lights on the top, through which were played an audio collage entitled Box Your Ears (which was released in 1976 as part of the double LP LAFMS: Live at the Brand).  This installation recreates the original utilizing the twelve extant original pyramid headphones.

- Performance time: continuous, 4:00pm – 10:00pm
- Location: Room 16

Members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society Testing Pyramid Headphones, 1976. (Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen)

Credits –
Welcome Inn Time Machine is produced by Cindy Bernard in collaboration with Jessica Catron and the SASSAS Board of Directors.  Project curators are Cindy Bernard, Scott Benzel, Gregory Lenczycki, Renee Petropoulos, Joseph Potts, and Dawson Weber.

Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival –
Los Angeles was a key international birthplace of performance art. Engaging the innovative spirit of that period and LA’s vibrant contemporary art scene, the Performance and Public Art Festival will transform Southern California over eleven days (January 19-29, 2012) during Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. Featuring more than 30 major performances and large-scale outdoor projects, the festival will include new commissions, reinventions, and restagings inspired by the radical and trailblazing public and performance works that were created by artists during the Pacific Standard Time era. Performances and projects will be located at institutions and sites throughout Southern California, in close proximity to more than two dozen Pacific Standard Time exhibitions.

The festival is organized by the Getty Research Institute and LA > < ART; support is provided by the Getty Foundation. http://www.pacificstandardtimefestival.org

SASSAS –
SASSAS (The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that serves as a catalyst for the creation, presentation, and recognition of experimental art and sound practices in the Greater Los Angeles area.  Inspired by the resonance that occurs when experimental music is combined with unconventional performance environments, SASSAS seeks to foster new collaborations and improvisation to spark further exploration in the field. The organization is supported in part through grants from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Good Works Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. http://www.sassas.org

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For more information, images, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

(Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen)

The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) will transform Eagle Rock’s Welcome Inn into a six-hour tour through key moments in LA’s experimental music history with Welcome Inn Time Machine on Sunday, January 29, 2012.  Over a dozen concurrent micro concerts will transform individual motel rooms into venues for installations and live performances allowing key moments in Southern California sound and music history to be experienced simultaneously and sequentially in a single location. Welcome Inn Time Machine runs from 4:00pm to 10:00pm. The event is free.  

For Immediate Release:

LOS ANGELES, CA – December 13, 2011 – The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) will transform Eagle Rock’s Welcome Inn into a six-hour tour through key moments in LA’s experimental music history with Welcome Inn Time Machine on Sunday, January 29, 2012.  Over a dozen concurrent micro concerts will transform individual motel rooms into venues for installations and live performances allowing key moments in Southern California sound and music history to be experienced simultaneously and sequentially in a single location. Welcome Inn Time Machine runs from 4:00pm to 10:00pm. The event is free.  The Welcome Inn is located at 1840 Colorado Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90041. For more information on SASSAS and this event please visit http://www.sassas.org or phone 323-960-5723.

Members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society Testing Pyramid Headphones, 1976. (Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen)



Welcome Inn Time Machine revisits works created between 1949 and 1977. The duration of the event is derived from the 1963 premiere performance of John Cage’s Variations IV at UCLA, which was six hours in length. Among the more than 40 works included are John Cage’s Variations IV, Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D., Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations, The Los Angeles Free Music Society’s Pyramid Headphones, James Tenney’s Postal Pieces, and David Ornette Cherry and poet Kamau Daaood will revisit Something Else, The Music of Ornette Coleman.  In addition to presenting historic works, SASSAS is commissioning two new works based on existing fragments and documents. The Calder Quartet will premiere a new work derived from Arnold Schoenberg’s Entwürfe zu einem Streichquartett [Draft of a String Quartet] (1949) and choreographer Anita Pace will re-envision Merce Cunningham’s Field Dances (1963) as part of a presentation of Variations IV.

Welcome Inn Time Machine Micro Concerts –


Arnold Schoenberg, Entwürfe zu einem Streichquartett [Draft of a String Quartet] (1949)
Composer Arnold Schoenberg moved to the United States in 1934 and soon settled in Los Angeles. During his time in LA, he wrote such notable pieces as the Violin Concerto (1942), A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) and Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte (1942). In addition to this and numerous other works he wrote while in Los Angeles, several were unfinished upon his death in 1951, including the Draft of a String Quartet from 1949. The Draft will be the generative source for a yet to be titled new work by the Calder Quartet.

Los Angeles Free Jazz Tribute
Los Angeles was the home for several seminal free jazz recordings including, Something Else!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman recorded February 10, 1958 at Contemporary Studios, Ornette’s first recording under his own name.  In addition to Coleman (alto sax), the album included Don Cherry (trumpet), Don Payne (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums).   David Ornette Cherry (the son of Don Cherry) and poet Kamau Daaood (who founded the World Stage Performance Gallery with Billy Higgins) will revisit this among other important works that originated or were recorded in Los Angeles.

John Cage, Variations IV (1963)

Variations IV is intended for any number of players producing any sounds by any means, “with or without other activities.” The score consists of seven points and two circles on a transparent sheet. The sheet is cut into nine small sheets. One of the circles is then placed anywhere on a map of the area where the performance is to take place. Then the rest of the sheets are dropped anywhere on the same map and straight lines are drawn from the first circle to the seven points; if a line intersects or is tangent to another circle, the same procedure is applied to that circle. Performers do not need to confine themselves to a performance of the piece during the entire performance and are free to engage in any other activities at any time. The duration of Welcome Inn Time Machine is derived from the 1963 six hour long premiere performance of Variations IV at UCLA.

Field Activity, 2012 (inspired by documents describing the performance of Merce Cunningham’s Field Dances, 1963)
Cunningham abandoned the traditional collaborative process among choreographer, composer, and designer while liberating his dancers from hierarchical symmetrical patterns, allowing the audience the choice of where and at whom to look. The possibilities for choreographic invention appeared limitless. Field Dances was originally performed as a part of the UCLA premiere of Variations IV. Choreographer Anita Pace will revisit this work, use Cage’s description of Variations IV – ‘samsara’, ‘the turmoil of everyday life’ – as impetus for the movement gestalt.

Bruce Nauman, Violin Tuned D.E.A.D., (1969)
Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. exemplifies his practice of incorporating boredom, exhaustion, and the superimposition of unlike systems into art and, in this case, music. In an interview with Willoughby Sharp, Nauman stated: “I wanted to set up a problem where it wouldn’t matter whether I knew how to play the violin or not. What I did was to play as fast as I could on all four strings with the violin tuned D, E, A, D. I thought it would just be a lot of noise, but it turned out to be musically very interesting. It is a very tense piece.” The D.E.A.D. tuned violin will be played for approximately 2 hours over the course of the event.


James Tenney, Postal Pieces (1965 – 1971)
The Postal Pieces are a series of 11 indeterminate scores composed between 1965 and 1971. Called Postal Pieces because they were printed on post cards (or as Tenney referred to them, “score cards”), most of the works were produced for the first time while Tenney was teaching at CalArts between 1971 and 1976. The scores are: Swell Piece (1967); A Rose is a Rose is a Round (1970); Beast (1971); (night) (1971), Koan (1971), Swell Piece #2 and Swell Piece #3, 1971; August Harp (1971); Cellogram (1971); Having Never Written a Note for Percussion (1971) and Maximusic (1975).

SASSAS has a long connection with Tenney—he was an advisor to the organization from the time it was formed. Additionally SASSAS worked with him on two concerts during his lifetime – a performance of his own works in 2001, which included Having Never Written a Note for Percussion and a performance of several early works of John Cage in 2002. As a part of the 2009 Anniversary Concert, SASSAS presented Tributaries: Dedicated to the Memory of James Tenney, which included both Having Never Written a Note for Percussion and Koan among other works.

“To some extent, he was the ultimate Western composer. He approached each new piece as an adventure, with the goal of discovering original territory and, if need be, taming some theoretical musical beast or acoustical bugbear.”  Mark Swed, in Tenney’s obituary for Los Angeles Times in 2006.

All 11 Postal Pieces will be performed.

Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations (1971)
Leaving the Bay Area to accept a teaching position at the University of California, San Diego, Pauline Oliveros began learning about meditation. This interest created a shift in her own musical composition in which she began focusing on the significance of long tones. By 1971, Oliveros had collected a number of meditations and published them together as Sonic Meditations. These sonic explorations, open to anyone who wished to participate, were rooted in ancient musical forms that precluded the listener focusing on the healing power of Sonic Energy and its transmission within groups. Each meditation is an activity conceived to assist in making, imagining, listening and remembering sounds. The meditations exist as text giving the participants activities to do and think about over an indeterminate period of time. 10 of Oliveros’ 25 Sonic Meditations will be presented.


Currents Series at the Theater Vanguard (1973 – 1978)
Theater Vanguard presented regular performances of experimental music, theater, film, animation and performance art. Located in the former Stage Society Theatre on Melrose in West Hollywood, The Vanguard provided a nurturing environment for LA performing arts as well as a much needed venue for local and international artists. Currents was a regular program of electro-acoustic music at the Vanguard, founded by composer Barry Schrader in 1973 and continuing through 1978. It was the first regular presentation of electro-acoustic music in the U.S. This installation will feature works by Pierre Schaeffer, Louis and Bebe Barron, Barry Schrader, Carl Stone, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Michel Chion, Warren Burt, and Ilhan Mimaroglu as well as ephemera from the series.

The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), Pyramid Headphones (1976)
The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), the banner heading of a loose collective of experimental musicians founded in the early 1970s, have had immeasurable influence on the 
spread and evolution of noise and avant-garde music and DIY culture over the past almost 40 years. In July of 1976, Le Forte Four, one of the earliest groups in the collective, created an installation at the Brand Library Art Center in Glendale, California, which consisted of forty-four black, pyramid-shaped, stereo headphones, with lights on the top,  through which were played an audio collage entitled Box Your Ears (which was released in 1976 as part of the double LP LAFMS: Live at the Brand).  This installation recreates the original utilizing the twelve extant original pyramid headphones.

Robert Wilhite, Bob Wilhite In Concert (1975)
In 1975, Bob Wilhite created his first musical sculpture – a unique one stringed instrument. As a gesture to establish the object and provide it with a provenance, Wilhite gave two concerts heard only via the telephone.  Wilhite placed display advertisements in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle announcing both performances. Patrons who phoned during the specified time periods heard a short instrumental played live on the one stringed instrument.  Both concerts were performed at his Los Angeles studio. The on-site audience at the Eagle Rock event will access Wilhite’s live performance by calling his motel room from another room in the motel.

Instrument and telephone from Bob Wilhite in Concert, A Telephone Concert, 1975 (Photo credit: Gary Bedyer & Jerry Byrd)

Credits –
Welcome Inn Time Machine is produced by Cindy Bernard in collaboration with Jessica Catron and the SASSAS Board of Directors.  Project curators are Cindy Bernard, Scott Benzel, Gregory Lenczycki, Renee Petropoulos, Joseph Potts, and Dawson Weber.

Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival –
Los Angeles was a key international birthplace of performance art. Engaging the innovative spirit of that period and LA’s vibrant contemporary art scene, the performance and public art festival will transform Southern California over ten days during Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980. Featuring as many as 30 major performances and large-scale outdoor projects, the festival will include new commissions, reinventions, and restagings inspired by the many radical and trailblazing public and performative works that were created by artists during the Pacific Standard Time era. The Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival is organized by  LA><Art and the Getty Research Institute; support provided by the Getty Foundation. http://www.pacificstandardtimefestival.org

SASSAS –

SASSAS (The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that serves as a catalyst for the creation, presentation, and recognition of experimental art and sound practices in the Greater Los Angeles area.  Inspired by the resonance that occurs when experimental music is combined with unconventional performance environments, SASSAS seeks to foster new collaborations and improvisation to spark further exploration in the field. The organization is supported in part through grants from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. http://www.sassas.org

For more information, images, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Photo Credit: Helena Ruffin

Legendary interdisciplinary artist Rachel Rosenthal is set to introduce the world to her new improvisational theater group, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, with monthly performances starting the weekend of February 19, 2010. The name, loosely translated, means “collision or chaos” which Rosenthal describes as not what the Company does, but the process they go through to do what they do. Each monthly performance will span three nights during one weekend. All performance begin at 8:30pm. Tickets cost $20. Reservations are necessary to insure seats…For Immediate Release: December 21, 2009

Pioneering Interdisciplinary Artist Rachel Rosenthal
Introduces Her New Improvisational Theater Group
TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble

With Monthly Performances in Los Angeles
Premiering February 19 – 21, 2010

LOS ANGELES, CA – Legendary interdisciplinary artist Rachel Rosenthal is set to introduce the world to her new improvisational theater group, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, with monthly performances starting the weekend of February 19, 2010. The name, loosely translated, means “collision or chaos” which Rosenthal describes as not what the Company does, but the process they go through to do what they do. Each monthly performance will span three nights during one weekend. All performance begin at 8:30pm. Tickets cost $20. Reservations are necessary to insure seats and can be made by calling 310-839-0661 or online via Brown Paper Tickets at www.rachelrosenthal.org. The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s venue, Espace DbD, is located at 2847 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034. Street parking is available.

The Rachel Rosenthal Company TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble schedule
– start time for every performance is 8:30 p.m. –
- February 2010 – Fri. 19th / Sat. 20th / Sun. 21st
- March 2010 – Fri. 12th / Sat. 13th / Sun. 14th
- April 2010 – Fri. 9th / Sat. 10th / Sun.11th
- May 2010 – Fri. 7th / Sat. 8th / Sun. 9th
– June 2010 – Fri. 11th / Sat. 12th / Sun. 13th

The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, the latest offering in the 83-year-old Rosenthal’s remarkable career, is inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault’s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty.” Echoing Barrault’s and Artaud’s revolutionary notions about theater, Rosenthal’s performance aesthetic integrates movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences. This genre of work, total free improvisation, is completely unique. Nobody knows in advance what will happen – not Rosenthal, not Company members, and certainly not the audience. This uncertainty makes the performances psychologically charged for all involved.

“Improvisational theater is the most difficult art form in the world. You can’t perfect your technique and there are no lines to rehearse,” says Rosenthal, “Everything happens in the moment.”

TOHUBOHU! total free improvisation pieces typically start in a similar manner; there is a group warm-up, then Rosenthal directs the group with a few words — sometimes only three or four. The words she selects reflect an idea she’s been thinking about, something related to a current event, a random verb, or perhaps instructions for the number of elements to include on stage. The studio space is darkened for a few moments. One of Rosenthal’s dogs might run by, wagging its tail, as colored lights and sound emerge from the darkness.

Sets are composed on the spot from lengths of bright fabric, boxes, and folding chairs. Props might be added in by Company members from a large backstage collection of objects that include items such as a dress form, telephone handsets, old books, a houseplant, a bird cage, an oscillating fan, fake plastic flowers, and paper bags. The Company stirs in recorded music, sounds, live music, or perhaps chanting.

These initial seeds germinate a piece. From here, the convulsive physicality of the Company begins. The members’ primal actions operate in concert with each other as well as the formal aesthetic elements of light, sound, props, and physical space. Text, which is primary, even tyrannical, in traditional theater, is absent in uniquely ephemeral TOHUBOHU! Through a mysterious alchemical process, the players act, react, and respond to surprises. They collaborate with each other, and everything around them, to create composition, form, and meaning. Since there is no established narrative to satisfy audience expectations, viewers are forced out of passive complacency as they digest what’s going on and anticipate what might happen next.

Performances function formally in space more like visual art than traditional theater, requiring the audience to actively interpret all the various elements. Results can be either abstract or realistic.

“When it’s good, it’s sublime. And when it’s bad, it can be a painful experience. Much like human existence,” says Rosenthal in a naked assessment of the art form, “Sometimes you walk away scratching your head wondering what the hell you just watched. We embrace that sort of uncertainty and chaos which is counter to highly processed culture.”

The Rachel Rosenthal Company members include visual artists, dancers, aerialists, a Cake Diva, and the operator of the Tyrannosaurus Rex model at the Natural History Museum, among others….

Franc Baliton is a performance and installation artist.

Nathalie Broizat is a French performance artist and actress. She has been featured as a soloist in Los Angeles venues such as MOCA, The Getty Center, REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, and the Electric Lodge. A former Fulbright grantee, she has been working with Rachel Rosenthal for the past five years.

Jarred Cairns is in the Studio Arts program at University of California, Irvine. He has been studying with Rachel Rosenthal for over a year.

Doug Hammett, who received an MFA from Art Center in Pasadena, blends the worlds of the visual arts and theatrical arts into works for the wall and stage. He is a past member of CoMMit, Invisible Theater, and Fauve Conspiracy, and a current member of TOHUBOHU! and YesAnd.

Alexis Hunt is a visual and performance artist currently living in Los Angeles.

New York native Nehara Kalev is a dancer, choreographer and co-founder of Catch Me Bird Dance Theater, a reality-based performance collaboration with her husband C. Derrick Jones. She has performed as an aerial dancer with Airealistic and has been featured in the acrobatic Diavolo Dance Theater. She has a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles. Kalev has been working with Rachel Rosenthal for several years.

Josué Martinez has a BA in Theater Arts and Dance from Cal State Los Angeles, studying under José Cruz González, Tanya Kane-Parry, and Hae Kyung Lee. He has performed as part of the Teatro Nueva Alma Company, Danielle Brazell’s Queer Exchange Group, and Tim Miller’s Performance Art Group. Currently he teaches theater to children and conducts story times to promote reading at the Commerce Public Library. This is his first year working with Rachel Rosenthal.

Michael Morrissey has performed across the city, from Al’s Bar downtown (Ubu da King, Exeunt, Porno), to Highways on the Westside (Last Queer Taboo, Voluptuous Madness) to The Rachel Rosenthal Company (Timepiece, Ur-Boor, etc.) and beyond… (Last Waltz, Crook.)

Craig Ng has accumulated dozens of credits in film, television, and theater. He is an award-winning Foley artist (post sound film production) currently working in animation on several Disney projects. He also brings a history of dance and martial arts to his explorations with TOHUBOHU!

Dan Poirier is an illustrator, graphic designer, puppeteer, and performer. He has degrees in Illustration from Art Center College of Design, and Theater Arts from University of California, Los Angeles. His creative experience includes set design, live event production management, and storyboarding for animated films. Poirier has studied with Rachel Rosenthal for two years.

Pamela Samuelson has performed as a dancer, aerialist, actor, and musician in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in Choreography and Religion. She has studied with Rachel Rosenthal for nearly four years.

Joan Spitler is an artist who has performed with Rachel Rosenthal for many years. She has studied with some of the originators of performance art including Eleanor Antin, Alan Kaprow, and Jerome Rothenberg. Her artistic talents as a performer and a renowned cake designer have been featured internationally in gallery settings, onstage, and in television and film.

Mike Steckel studied fine and performance art at the University of Northern Iowa under Jeffery Byrd. He now works at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, primarily as a dinosaur puppeteer. He has been studying with Rachel Rosenthal for two and a half years.

Interdisciplinary artist/arts educator Kate Noonan is the managing director, lighting designer, and sound designer for The Rachel Rosenthal Company. She was also a Company member in a previous incarnation of TOHUBOHU! She has worked in collaboration with Mehmet Sander, The Fabulous Monsters, John Fleck, and Susan Tyrrell, among many others in the Los Angeles theater community. As a performer, she was last seen in Bill Viola’s Dense Presence, a film installation that is part of his Passions series, which had its world premiere at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. She has taught theater arts and Performance from Scratch workshops across the United States.

Rachel Rosenthal, a leading figure from the Southern California arts movement in the 1960s and 1970s, has been inspiring audiences for decades. Born into an affluent Russian-Jewish family in Paris, Rosenthal’s father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a gem merchant widely known as “The King of Pearls.” During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro by way of Portugal. After losing his material wealth to the Nazi’s, her father had to start over at age 65. In 1941, the family left Brazil to settle in New York where Rosenthal graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a US citizen.

She studied art, theater and dance in Paris and New York after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Erwin Piscator, and Jean-Louis Barrault. Her circle included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, whose Zen sensibility informed and influenced Rosenthal’s aesthetic. With this foundation, she moved West and began her theatrical career in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s as artistic director and performer for the ten-year run of the totally improvised and influential underground Instant Theatre which created Happenings that drew upon notions of chance.

In the past 25 years, Rosenthal has presented over 35 of her own original performance pieces – thought provoking works centered on humanity’s place on the planet. According to Artweek Magazine, “Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.”

Rosenthal has performed in over 100 venues around the world including documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, The Helsinki Festival, ICA London, The Performance Space in Sydney, The Whitney Museum in New York City, and Museum of Contemporary Art here in Los Angeles. The Pompidou Centre recently included her in its 2006 show Los Angeles 1955-1985. Her pioneering performances have earned Obie, Rockefeller, Getty, NEA and CAA awards, among others.

In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.

She opened her studio, Espace DbD, on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, Rosenthal presented performances by many emerging and established performance artists including Barbara Smith, Eleanor Antin, Cheri Gaulke, Alan Kaprow, John White, Joyce Cutler Shaw, Tom Jenkins, and many others. Rosenthal founded The Rachel Rosenthal Company as an educational non-profit arts organization in 1989.

Rosenthal’s new book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing!, was released this month by Routledge. DbD, or “Doing by Doing,” describes her signature method of teaching improvisational theater. In the 130-page book, Rosenthal explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in her 34-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops (currently still happening on a bi-annual basis in Los Angeles). This mix of memoir, teaching manual, and manifesto was edited by Kate Noonan (ISBN 978-0-415-55102-1, www.routledge.com). For the full press release on The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing!, see: http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/dbd-experience/

“Chance is the core of improvisation,” says Rosenthal when crystallizing the point of her teaching methods which come to life in TOHUBOHU!, “It’s about breaking down borders, opening up to the givens, activating the moment, and paying attention to what is.”

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For more information, to get on the press list for an upcoming TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater performance, photos, a copy of Rosenthal’s new book, or to arrange an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213.840.1201 and lynn@greengalactic.com

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- event details –

The Rachel Rosenthal Company Introduces
TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble

Friday – Sunday night
Feb. 19, 20, 21, 2010
8:30 – 10:00pm

The Rachel Rosenthal Company
at Espace DbD
2847 South Robertson Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034

$20
Reservations Required

310-839-0661
www.rachelrosenthal.org

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