Performance Art at AthFest

One week from today, GMOA will sponsor a work by performance and new media artist, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, as part of the AthFest lineup at the Rialto Room at Hotel Indigo, Friday, June 25. I couldn’t be more excited!

She’s now an assistant professor of studio art at Vanderbilt, but I first met Amelia when we were both in Austin for grad school. It was during a studio visit for a show I was curating for UT’s Creative Research Laboratory in 2007, and I was immediately taken with both the sophistication and accessibility of her work. I chose to include her video installation, Backup, which you can read about on her website (the essay first appeared in the catalogue for my show, Interchange, An Exhibition in Three Parts, and then as an entry for Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York).

For AthFest, a performance seemed most relevant, and we decided on a piece she recently debuted at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Square Dance/Round Dance is an audience-interactive performance that references Winger-Bearskin’s unique cultural heritage with elements of traditional American square dancing and American Indian round dancing, combined with mysterious celestial lights and a dance club atmosphere. Her work often seeks to reveal the hidden support systems of arts and entertainment industries by investigating the parts that usually go unnoticed. In other words, she makes us see our world anew. For this performance, flashlights will be given to half the audience, who will then be given instructions in a manner akin to a square dance. Those who shy away from participatory art should not fear; we’ll need spectators, too.

If you’ve got an AthFest wristband, it’s free. Wristbands are available online (click here) for only $15, or at any number of stores around town. If you don’t have a wristband, you can also pay a cover at the door ($8 or $5 for Friends of the Museum—just show your membership card). The lineup also includes Wilma (9 p.m.), Caroline Aiken (10:30), and Lera Lynn (11:15). Amelia is on after Wilma. Please note that the Rialto Room only allows people 21 years of age and up, but I hope to bring Amelia back sometime during the regular school year, when we’ll feature something for all ages. We've also got a table at KidsFest, so stop by downtown on Saturday to make your own toy guitar!

The Porch

The Hotel Indigo's music venue, the Rialto Room, will be the venue for a new Athens-based talk show, The Porch, hosted by our own Paige Carmichael (ex-Friends president) as well as by radio host Liz Dalton, singer-songwriter Marty Winkler and executive director for the Junior League of Athens and the Taylor Grady House Jennifer Wootton. The first taping will be held tomorrow (Tuesday, November 17), with doors opening at 12:30 p.m. It's free, but RSVP is required for entry, so call 706.286.1700 if you're interested, and they'll let you know if they still have space.

Here's a longer description of the show from the promo email:

Initially showcasing front porches of Madison, Georgia, The Porch is a weekly half-hour talk show videotaped before a live audience. The pilot will be broadcast several times in November and December on the University of Georgia€'s commercial TV station, WNEG, before the series goes into production in January and becomes a weekly staple of the station’s schedule.

Starring Athens locals Paige Carmichael, Liz Dalton, Marty Winkler and Jennifer Wootton, the format of The Porch will be familiar to anyone who has watched The View or Live with Regis & Kelly. The show’s interests, concerns and guests will exclusively reflect Northeast Georgia in a way that no TV talk show, national or out of Atlanta, ever has. Like the southern institution from which it takes its title, The Porch will be a place for seriously casual conversation about anything and everything of interest to its regional constituency, from fashion to flu shots, from politics to party-planning. The series will also showcase the region’s diverse wealth of music, arts and crafts.

Each installment of The Porch will feature interviews with one or more guests. Athens-based caterer, historic preservationist and raconteur Lee Epting will be the pilot show’s primary guest. But half the fun of the show will be the four co-hosts just talking among themselves off the cuff.

The Porch is a production of TerraVision in association with The Rialto Club, Hotel Indigo and WNEG-TV, which is owned by the University of Georgia and operated by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.