Automata's Cantastoria
While everybody's talking about new media, Janie Geiser and many of her friends are returning to old media. "I just taught a course at CalArts on cantastoria," Janie said recently. Cantastoria? "It's a traditional form that goes back to cave drawings," she explains, noting that it was prevalent in Italy in the Middle Ages as an example of popular entertainment combining songs and large painted panels. "It's a form I really love," says Janie. She and her frequent collaborator Susan Simpson will revive cantastoria this Saturday night at the Velaslavasay Panorama as part of their activities with the nonprofit organization Automata, which they founded in 2004 as a way to unite their disparate activities and interests.
The evening will mark the beginning of the "Sight Unseen" series focusing on work that, for various reasons, doesn't get shown much. The event will include Jordan Biren and his project All That Passes Before You, Already in Ruins, which features video landscapes accompanied by live storytelling, as well as Perry Hoberman's project Denial Clinic, which combines 3-D projection and drawings, as well as Perry singing songs about about "frustration, loss and self-deception." But what makes these things so special? Janie's ability to create intense experiences using older media is nothing less than uncanny. She and Susan presented their own project Frankenstein (Mortal Tales), as an Automata event a year ago. It was described by the artists as "a miniature spectacle" but that might be too unassuming a term. Frankenstien combined exquisite flat puppet characters pushed and pulled by skinny sticks on black thread, a small proscenium set, dramatic lighting, beautifully painted backdrops, two short films, live music and six performers to tell the melancholy tale of a man who in trying to create life instead crafted a tragic, murderous monster.
The experience for viewers? Intense. And small but at the same time overwhelming. You had to lean forward to see and hear everything in the diminutive world, and you had to fill in lots of blanks, seeing emotions on unchanging puppet faces, for example. Maybe it was because the project elicited that kind of engagement that it was so thrilling. I don't know. But I do honor the pair's ability to create some of the most visceral media experiences out of entirely humble means. And I do get excited when I see another Automata event scheduled. Look for more Sight Unseen events this Spring.
the details
Automata at the Panorama:
Live film/performance works:
Jordan Biren's All That Passes Before You, Already in Ruins
Perry Hoberman's Denial Clinic
Saturday, December 13 at 8 p.m.
At the Velaslavasay Panorama
1122 West 24th Street
Information: 213-746-2166
Tickets $12 ($10 Students, Seniors, and Panorama members)
Purchase tickets here
or call 1-800-838-3006