SUBLIME

A Performance Art series curated by SAWCC

DUMBO Arts Festival
September 28–29, 2013
Saturday–Sunday, 12-6 pm
The SAWCC street hub @ 100 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Experience the sublime in its beauty and terror in this engaging and interactive performance art series presented by SAWCC. You can unravel tales inscribed on a 216 foot long sari; seal your fate or fortune by sparring with the Gods, Karma, and Lady Luck; and even get bullied by Lady Liberty. Ordinary text messages, architecture that is worn on the body, and immersive iPod narratives will transport you to realms of precious wonder, delight, and pathos.

Curated by Shelly Bahl, Sunita S. Mukhi and Jasmine Wahi.

For photos and video of the performances, go here!

Performances

Sublime Virtue
By Monica Jahan Bose

Saturday, September 28: 12 pm, 4 pm (2 hours)
Sunday, September 29: 12 pm (2 hours)

Sublime Virtue references both Draupadi, the mythological eternal virgin married to five brothers, and Bose’s grandmother, who was married at age seven. Speaking to women’s rights over their bodies and access to education, the performance involves a bed outdoors and wrapping/unwrapping the artist’s body with a 216-foot sari covered with writing by Bangladeshi women.

Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and activist whose work includes painting, printmaking, performance, and advocacy on women’s issues. She is collaborating with twelve women from Katakhali, Bangladesh on an art and advocacy project, Storytelling with Saris. Katakhali is Bose’s ancestral village, on an island disappearing from climate change.

Sublime Structure
By Ruby Chishti

Saturday, September 28: 12 pm, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm (15 minutes)
Sunday, September 29: 12 pm, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm (15 minutes)

Ruby Chishti stands still in several locations wearing her sculpture with open windows where inside and outside meet and cross. By transforming the sculpture into something wearable, this hand stitched building structure becomes a witness to history, and it also represents a desire to live and assimilate across cultures.

Ruby Chishti was born and raised in Pakistan now lives and work in New York. Her work exudes a universal pathos as it speaks of gender disparities in light of personal experience and traditional belief. Her ability to transform humble materials is consistently visible through her oeuvre, distilling psychologically complex narratives into life-sized representational forms.

Random [Fortune] Generator
By Anjali Deshmukh

Saturday, September 28: 12–6 pm (ongoing)
Sunday, September 29: 12–6 pm (ongoing)

Do you believe in fate, or do you believe you make your own with the ingredients you’re given? In this game, a section of the street is turned into a game board of events where you decide. Players walk away having written a work of micro-fiction and/or with a set of powerball numbers to play for the next draw.

Anjali Deshmukh makes visual systems and processes that generate subjective, creative, or random outcomes coded with specific metaphors. Sometimes the outcomes are paintings or images, sometimes they are stories, and sometimes they are lottery numbers.

Texting Scrolls
By Swati Khurana

Saturday, September 28: 12–6 pm (ongoing)

With a red cigarette girl style tray, Swati Khurana walks around and elevates passersby’s SMS messages from the banal to the sublime. By transcribing the text onto vellum and tying the scroll with a sacred red thread, an ephemeral message is transformed into a precious object.

Swati Khurana was born in India and raised in New York where she currently lives and works. Her videos, collages, drawings, sculptures, and installations mine personal narratives and explore immigrant issues with a focus on gender, popular culture, and the seductive promises made by rituals.

Shrimati Liberty Is An Awesome American!
By Sunita S. Mukhi

Saturday, September 28: 12–6 pm (ongoing)
Sunday, September 29: 12–6 pm (ongoing)

Are you as awesome an American as the resplendent Shrimati Liberty? Can you rightfully take your place here in the land of the free and home of the brave? Be prepared to answer her pointed questions. Or face the consequences. As a recent convert to the US, she is armed and ardent.

Sunita S. Mukhi’s performance works are on women’s power and the redemptive quality of the arts. As a story-teller, she has composed, refurbished, and performed tales from Asia for young audiences. In the summer of 2012, she played the lead in Pan Asian Repertory’s production of Rangoon to rave reviews.

KARMALYMPIC CHALLENGE
By Roshani Thakore

Saturday, September 28: 2 pm, 3:30 pm, 5 pm (1 hour)
Sunday, September 29: 2 pm, 3:30 pm, 5 pm (1 hour)

Reach the ultimate sublime state in 15 minutes or less with the KARMALYMPIC CHALLENGE! Participants compete with an actual sacred god in a series of three absurd physical challenges for a chance to win a free ticket to eternity. Winners take ALL!

Roshani Thakore received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts. In an attempt to examine the concept of identity in the global twenty-first century, her collages, sculptures, and interactive installations explore aspects of movement, time, and space in relation to Hindu philosophy and the immigrant experience in America.

#E4LD
A collaborative project between Project For Empty Space and The Other Theatre

Sunday, September 29: 12:30 pm, 2:15 pm, 3:15 pm, 5:15 pm (30 minutes)

This project is part of an ongoing interdisciplinary experiment developed by The Other Theatre, where architecture, performance and film collaborate. It asks us (the audience) to reverse the traditional spectator-performer dynamic so that the public becomes the creator of the art. It also asks us to look at space as influencing our capacity for heroic and personal expression.

Project For Empty Space is an ongoing series of public art interventions, started in 2010, by Jasmine Wahi and Meenakshi Thirukode. The mission is to bring contemporary art to abandoned and/or unusual urban spaces. The Quebec based The Other Theatre, was founded in 1991 by the artistic director Stacey Christodoulou, and also includes architect Enrique Enriquez and writer/ director, Tamara Scherbak.