Elliott Earls Residency

ICE is pleased to announce a special week-long event with visiting artist Elliott Earls.

Workshop
First session: Monday, October 15 at 3 p.m.
ICE Studio, Tanner Building room 101

Students from all disciplines are invited to participate in a workshop with Elliott Earls beginning Monday at 3 p.m. at ICE. Earls will screen scenes from his feature length film in progress “The Saranay Motel” and discuss the project with students. After discussion, willing interdisciplinary participants will be broken into small teams to collaborate on creating a scene for the film. The scene potentially will include original music, motion graphics, acting, props and set design.

Public Lecture
Tuesday, October 16 at 5:30 p.m.
Student Learning Center Room 102
Free and open to the public.

In a world gone mad with fundamentalism, fascism and fear, Elliott Earls attempts to draw parallels between the artists of the post World War I avant-garde and the present day. Utilizing his own work as a springboard for discussion, Earls highlights the critical and timely relevance of the work of German artist John Heartfield, and discusses an interdisciplinary approach to work. In a presentation replete with motion graphics, experimental film clips and music, Earls outlines a potential role for the contemporary artist that draws inspiration from the bravery of Heartfield. Earls also discusses his approach to integrating performance, music, objects and graphics into a unified and cohesive body of work.

Performance and Film Screening
Thursday, October 18
Ciné, 234 W. Hancock Ave. in downtown Athens

Performances at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
$5.00 or $2.00 with student ID
Advance tickets available at Cine box office, (706) 353-3343

Film screening at 8 p.m.
Free and open to the public.

The work of UGA visiting artist Elliott Earls will be featured in a special evening of events at Ciné, downtown Athens’ art house theater and cafe, on Thursday, October 18. Earls will perform two live sets in a program entitled “Excerpts from The Saranay Motel” and screen digital video from “Catfish” and his current work in progress, “The Saranay Motel”.

In May of 2002, Earls, in association with Emigre Inc. released “Catfish”, a 55-minute film on DVD. “Catfish” traces Earls work from the lab to the stage in a highly manipulated digital film incorporating, animation, stop motion photography, drawing, typography and live action into a seamless performance documentary. “The Saranay Motel”, begun in late 2005, is a work in progress comprised of four basic elements: a feature length digital film, art objects, a performance piece, and music.

Departmental Colloquium
Friday, October 19 at 12:20 p.m.
Room 53, Fine Arts Building
Free and open to the public.

Earls will discuss his career as a performance artist in a Theatre and Film Studies departmental colloquium.

Exhibition
Elliott Earls: Selected work from “Bull and Wounded Horse” and “The Saranay Motel”
Opening Reception: October 19, from 6 – 8 p.m.
Main Gallery
Visual Arts Building
Free and open to the public.

Objects accompany all of Earls’ work along with his music, performance, and posters, he creates works of substantial materials and finishes. On exhibition at Lamar Dodd School of Art Main Gallery will be artifacts from the processes of his two most recent projects, “Bull and Wounded Horse”, which incorporates traditional media, including two bronze busts, and “The Saranay Motel”, from which Earls exhibits large digital photographs.

About Elliott Earls
Elliott Earls first gained international recognition as a designer of digital typography in the 1990s and expanded his practice to include one-person performances utilizing interactive technology of his own design, earning a prestigious Emerging Artist Grant from The Wooster Group in New York. In 1995, Earls formed the Apollo Program, a studio devoted to experimentation with nonlinear digital video, spoken word poetry, music composition and design. Earls’ work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals around the world, and is featured in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. In 2001, Earls was appointed designer-in-residence and head of the 2-D Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. While at Cranbrook his artistic practice has continued to broaden by using film production as a method to generate digital photography, sculpture, paintings, and the music of his band, The Venomous Sons of Jonah.

The Elliott Earls Residency is supported by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, Lamar Dodd School of Art Visiting Artist and Scholar Series, Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries, Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE), and Ciné.

For more information about Earls, visit http://www.theapolloprogram.com.

Elliott Earls

Elliott Earls first gained international recognition as a designer of digital typography in the 1990s and expanded his practice to include one-person performances utilizing interactive technology of his own design, earning a prestigious Emerging Artist Grant from The Wooster Group in New York. In 1995, Earls formed the Apollo Program, a studio devoted to experimentation with nonlinear digital video, spoken word poetry, music composition and design. Earls’ work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals around the world, and is featured in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. In 2001, Earls was appointed designer-in-residence and head of the 2-D Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. While at Cranbrook his artistic practice has continued to broaden by using film production as a method to generate digital photography, sculpture, paintings, and the music of his band, The Venomous Sons of Jonah.

The Elliott Earls Residency is supported by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, Lamar Dodd School of Art Visiting Artist and Scholar Series, Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries, Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE), and Ciné.

For more information about Earls, visit http://www.theapolloprogram.com.

ICE Open House: Words & Pictures

Friday, September 28 at 6:30 PM
ICE Studio – Tanner Building Room 101

An early evening presentation of projects and social hour at ICE. Katherine McGuire will unveil “What Lies Here”, this semester’s ICE window installation. A reading by Patrick Fadely, whose poetic practice has been shaped by an interest in improvised music. Jordan Dalton demonstrates “Room-Poem”, a procedure for creating poetry over time with speech recognition software. The event is free and open to the public.

Katherine McGuire is a graduate candidate in printmaking at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. What Lies Here will create a street level interaction with the historic Tanner Building near UGA’s north campus and downtown Athens.
http://www.thelastfewyears.com/

Patrick Fadely is an undergraduate candidate majoring in English. He will present work which oscillates between the intimate and the abstract, and which gestures toward some measure of reconciliation between lyrical and social forms of responsibility.

Jordan Dalton is pursuing an interdisciplinary major that combines courses from Computer Science, English, Drama, and Digital Media. A version of “Room-Poem” was recently installed in the entrance of the Visual Arts Building where it delighted and enthralled the masses.

Mike Essl

ICE Visiting Artist Mike Essl
Monday, August 27, 5:30 PM
Visual Arts Building lecture hall 116

Mike Essl was a partner at the award-winning design firm The Chopping Block, Inc., which he cofounded in 1996 with a fellow graduate of the Cooper Union. During his six years with the firm, Essl’s clients included Sony, Nickelodeon, National Geographic, MTV, Intel, Microsoft, Roadrunner Records, the band They Might Be Giants, and the rapper Warren G. After receiving his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Mike went out on his own and has done work for Columbia University, Chronicle Books, and DC Comics.

Essl has taught at Parsons School of Design, School of the Visual Arts, and is now an assistant professor at the Cooper Union. Essl’s work has been recognized in numerous publications and by the AIGA and the Art Directors Club. In 2003 his work with the Chopping Block was featured in the National Design Triennial. Essl was recently a juror for PDN Pix magazine as well as ID magazine’s Media Design review.

Put It In the Scrapbook

George Contini as Julian Eltinge

2005-2006 ICE Project Grant
George Contini
Assistant Professor
Theatre and Film Studies

An original one man show about the life of famed vaudevillian performer Julian Eltinge, premiered at the historic Morton Theatre in downtown Athens.

Eltinge, all but forgotten today, is one of the most colorful characters in American theatre history. At one time the highest paid performer in the United States, he earned the prestige of having his own theatre built and named for him on Broadway. His list of accomplishments on stage and early silent films are extraordinary especially considering that his talent was female impersonation. Written by and starring George Contini, a professor in the UGA Department of Theatre and Film Studies, the play traces Eltinge’s career from his first performance impersonating a young girl for the Boston Cadet Academy in 1898 through his years of international fame on Broadway and Hollywood during the 1920s to his eventual decline into debt and obscurity by 1940. Contini explains, “Put It In the Scrapbook refers to a number of things; it is the name of a song from one of Eltinges very first appearances in drag, also most of what we know about Eltinge is from various scrapbooks housed in archives throughout the country, and finally, a scrapbook serves as the entry to Julians memories in the play.”

Mr. Contini is a professional actor, director, and playwright. As a professor of theatre he specializes in acting on camera, characterization, and queer theatre and film, all of which come into play in this unique multi-media theatre piece. Mr. Contini spent four years researching and writing the play in which he recreates some of Julian Eltinge’s lost performances from vaudeville, Broadway, and film. In recent years, leading theorists in Performance and Gender Studies have been responsible for a resurgence of interest in Mr. Eltinge as he is seen as the progenitor to the gender bending performances of RuPaul, Dame Edna, and Eddie Izzard. There has never been a play written about this fascinating performer and it is hoped that this unique project will reintroduce to modern audiences a forgotten theatrical legend.

The play is constructed so that Contini plays over 20 characters throughout the narrative, sometimes playing opposite himself. This is accomplished through the use of new and archival video, animation, and other media. This particular project highlights the unique work the UGA Deptartment of Theatre and Film Studies does in combining the area of Performance with Digital Media. The research and mounting of this premiere production is the result of Mr. Contini being granted funds through ICE, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, and Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Kristin Kundert-Gibbs, also a professor in the Theatre and Film Studies Department, is serving as Director of the piece. Two former graduate students from the department are also involved; Joelle D’Arp Dunham is media designer and T. J. Greenway is set designer. Rachel Townes from UGA School of Music is Music Director and Mark Wheeler from the UGA Dept. of Dance is Choreographer. Jennie Alvernaz is costume designer.

Jondi Keane

Lanier Speakers Series Presents Jondi Keane

“From Text to Context through the Organism-Person Surround: Edgar Allan Poe, Arakawa,
Madeline Gins, and Helen Keller”
Tuesday, April 10 at 4 p.m. in Room 265 Park Hall.

“The First-Person Science of Practice as Research”
Wednesday, April 11 at 3 p.m. at ICE, Tanner Building room 101

Jondi Keane, PhD, is an arts practitioner, critical thinker and Senior Lecturer at Griffith University in Australia. For over 25 he has presented work in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia. In 1992, he was a founding member of the interdisciplinary collaborative performance group Co M-S-K. His doctoral thesis, “Arakawa and Gins: The Practice of Embodied Cognition” has led to other writings on embodiment, practice-led research and the contribution of the arts to the study of perception and action.