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MOBIUS ARTISTS GROUP
AT BOSTON CITY HALL
Mobius Presents CONCRETE ACTIONS in HEROIC ENCOUNTERS:
Artists Respond to Boston City Hall
The Mobius Artists Group is pleased to announce Concrete Actions,
an evening of site-inspired original works responding to the striking
concrete modernist design of City Hall and the democratic ideals that
continue to animate it. Commissioned by The Mayor’s Office of Arts and
Culture, City of Boston as part of the HEROIC ENCOUNTERS Series, Concrete Actions will
unfold on Thursday, May 25th at Boston City Hall, from 5-9 p.m.
Thirteen Mobius artists will activate the interior of the building
through a diversity of media. The civic landmark will be transformed
through aesthetic experimentation in interactive performance art, video,
installation, sound and movement.
Recent
shifts in our current national political landscape and challenges to
core values of inclusion have revived civic engagement in local
democratic processes and institutions. It is therefore an appropriate
moment to celebrate the architectural legacy of Boston City Hall, opened
in 1969. The building’s innovative design reflected the architects’
ethical commitment to active public involvement and access to city
government, as Mark Pasnik, Chris Grimley, and Michael Kubo emphasize in
their book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston that inspired the HEROIC ENCOUNTERS Series. Against this background, the Mobius Artist Group is honored to create Concrete Actions as part of the series.
As a collective event, Concrete Actions
aptly marks the Mobius Artists Group return to Boston after a
productive 5 years in Cambridge. Now in our 40th year as an artist-run
organization, our legacy of accessibility, affordability and
collaboratively generated experimental work in all media across artistic
communities parallels the strong public commitments that inspired the
design of Boston City Hall and continue to revitalize it.
El Putnam presents Digital Bru(i)t, a
video that interplays visual and aural confusion in an attempt to
convey the complexities and challenges of maneuvering human engagement
with politics through digital technology. The work incorporates
excerpts from The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762).
Jane Wang presents two works, Signs of Our Times III, a video slideshow of imagery from 95 artists and 21 composers reflecting the connecting theme of signage, and Concret concret, a duo of free-standing abstract wire sculptures, one of which she will knit live, in the main lobby of Boston City Hall.
James Ellis Coleman presents Always Room for You, a visual art work exploring the scope and inclusion of the life histories of individuals as recorded in government documents stored in government repositories.
Joanne Rice and Tom Plsek present 42.3604° N, 71.0580° W, a sound/performance which explores the various sonic possibilities offered by the interiors spaces of several levels of Boston City Hall.
Sandrine Schaefer presents ESCALATE/DE-ESCALATE, a durational performance art piece sited on the escalators between the lobby and lower levels of Boston City Hall that explores notions of agreement and challenges ways time is experienced and perceived between bodies sharing space.
Daniel S. DeLuca presents Public Satellites: Telstar 20 BCH, an experimental communications platform designed to engage the public around City Hall. Through the use of semiotic lures PST20BCH will capture and relay human transmissions from the public in real time.
Jesse Kaminsky presents Aposematism, an inflatable sculpture work made of brightly colored, printed and sewn tyvek material that will enhance the ground space with an anemone-like shape.
Margaret Bellafiore, Mari Novotny-Jones, and Anna Wexler present MILK & LICENSES, a performance and installation work using three defunct services windows in Boston City Hall. The piece explores concepts of sanctuary in our present moment by transforming the windows' original function.
Sara June presents Solid Formation, a durational movement and installation work that experiment with the notion of protection and architecture through the intersection of three elements: building, boundary, and human body.
Facebook Event Page : https://www.facebook.com/events/1671810483123463/
Photo is by Jeffrey Montes - Creative Commons 2.0
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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On the occasion of Concete Actions, the Roberta Orlando's work will take part in Signs of Our Times III by Jane Wang. More info here.
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