Track 16 Presents
“The
Murder of Becky”
One-Night Only Performance Installation Theater
By Lauren Hartman and Curt LeMieux
Saturday, April 23, 2005
The Installation Continues Through Saturday, May 7 |
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Track 16 presents
Lauren Hartman and Curt LeMieux’s “The
Murder of Becky,” a silent
performance play based on Edison’s
1903 electrocution of Topsy
the Elephant at Coney Island. Unlike
traditional theater, visitors
to this play will wander through
a sculptural landscape piecing
together live interconnecting
scenarios, face to face with
artists whose quiet performances
shift from a slow emotional
burn to unpredictable moments
of action. And unlike
stage plays, this one evolves
over time. You can stay
for it all, or simply part
of it. Known for performance
collaborations that range from
the raucously bizarre to tenderly
crafted works of silent theater,
Hartman and LeMieux combine
large sculptures made of refuse
with theatrical lighting, sound
and artists-turned-actors who
activate these strange and
symbolic environments. The
one-night only performance
takes place Saturday, April
23, 2005 from 8:00pm – 10:00pm. The
installation is on view in
the gallery for two weeks,
from April the 23rd through
Saturday, May 7, 2005. Tickets
for the performance are $10.00
and can be purchased in advance
by calling 310-264-4678. Please
visit Track 16’s site
at archive.track16.com for
more information.
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“The Murder of Becky” is
a two-hour continuing performance.
Entering Track 16’s cavernous
front gallery audiences will immediately
notice environments for two performers.
One, a massive workman, sits in numbed
fury on blocks of ice before a wispy
IV tube that, like a medicinal icicle,
steadily drips bourbon into a tin
bucket. A second laborer made vacant
by abuse stands nearly breathless
mustering the courage to embark on
a finger dance of an obscure sign
language. Moving on, visitors
soon encounter a huckster in jockeys
mesmerizing an impressionable boy
with the miracles of science: the
bobby pin, lint and Coca-Cola strong
enough to eat through the bones of
a bird. Elsewhere, a metrosexual
tipples a glass of red and indexes
the audience on an iMac, carefully
noting height, size and distinguishing
features. Finally, Becky’s
wreckage is evident. The elephant
in this exhibition is a mess of downed
scaffolding, lumber and trash, her
head deflated and bent on the ground.
Dangling from above, minor topiary,
tightly wrapped in blinking Christmas
lights hangs sovereign, a symbol
of language and progress. In
a second gallery, a tall curio cabinet
filled with visceral and earthy smells
sits in the darkness. During the
course of two hours, the performance
changes, sometimes subtly, sometimes
dramatically. What audiences
will see depends on when and for
how long they are present, as they
can come and go at any time. In
this, as in many such performance
works, the rewards of patience are
great.
Hartman and LeMieux have invited
five artists to perform in “The
Murder of Becky.” Artists
featured include Mark Rucker, director
of the cult classic Die! Mommy! Die!
and innumerable stage shows from
the Arena Stage, American Conservatory
Theater and South Coast Repertory
Theater. Belgian-born visual/performance
artist, Simone Gad has been performing
and exhibiting her painting/collages
nationally and internationally since
the early 1970's. Among her
recent exhibitions are Bowery Poetry
Club (NYC), The Dollhaus Gallery
in Brooklyn, and Matthew Marks Gallery
(NYC). L2Kontemporary Gallery
in Los Angeles represents Simone
Gad. Ed Pelissier video and performance
works have been featured at LA Freewaves,
Track 16, and The Wedge. The
amazing Robert Jacka has appeared
in a number of Hartman and LeMieux’s
performances, noted for the transfixing
intensity of his concentration. Young
filmmaker and performance artist
Patrick Kennelly brings delicacy,
ferocity and risk to his performance
and film works.
Entering into their pieces, one
immediately senses boundless time
for contemplation as the play’s
surrounding narrative unfolds, a
welcome feeling in an era of drive-through
lattes and multi-tasking. Fusing
political and spiritual concerns
with humor, Hartman and LeMieux’s
performance works are dense with
a poetic mystery that comes from
the long hours the two spend mining
the layers of their subject matter.
Although LeMieux is trained as a
sculptor and Hartman as a theatrical
artist, they cross disciplines in
their collaborations with each contributing
to every aspect of the show. Their
most recent collaboration, “I
Still Have Needs” was presented
as part of Irrational Exhibits show
at Track 16 in 2004 following their “The
Girl Was Saved” at L.A.C.E.
in 2003.
Co-founder of Crazy Space, an experimental
performance and visual artspace in
Santa Monica, Lauren Hartman has
a reputation for making thought provoking
performance works as much as for
presenting mass performance group
shows that range from the orgiastic
to the altruistic, often involving
over twenty contributing artists. These
include works such as “Fairy:
A Mass Human Installation for Transcendence” (with
film and stage director Mark Rucker,
who also appears in “Becky”), “The
Winter Museum,” “Mania
For Coleslaw”(with performance
artist/choreographer Carol McDowell), “Give
and Take” and “Lesbian
Bordello.”
In addition to working on “Becky,” Hartman
is curator of “Defense: Body
and Nobody in Self-Protection,” an
interdisciplinary visual art exhibition
opening April 2, 2005 at the University
of California at Riverside. Featuring
new works by William Pope.L, Coco
Fusco, Lida Abdullah, Sue deBeer,
ESPO and Eddo Stern, among others,
this timely and controversial exhibition
explores the American “culture
of fear” from the perspectives
of those who have historically been
bodily secure within our borders
and those who have not. The
exhibition will open with an educational
panel and run through May 7, 2005. Hartman
is a graduate of UCLA and CalArts.
Her works have been shown at Track
16, the Museum for Jurassic Technology,
Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin),
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
(L.A.C.E.), Highways Performance
Space, New Image Art, and Side Street
Projects, among many other venues.
Curt LeMieux blends formal drawing
elements with sculpture and assemblage
to create intimate object-drawings,
large-scale site-specific drawings
and installation performances that
combine line, light, and lived experience. The
resulting situations are dense with
psychological impact and scenario. In
addition to his art practice, LeMieux
had worked with and curated exhibitions
of work by developmentally disabled
artists. LeMieux’s works
have been shown at the Santa Monica
Museum of Art, Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions (L.A.C.E.), Track 16,
Highways Performance Space and Luna
International in Berlin. He holds
an MA degree in sculpture from the
University of Wisconsin at Superior
and an MFA degree in drawing and
installation from the Claremont Graduate
University in Claremont, California.
Track 16 is noted for presenting
risky political and performance works,
including Ruben Ortiz Torres, and
Manuel Ocampo, readings by Mary Woronov
and Michael Tolkin and performance
works by Johanna Went and Clam. The
gallery is located in Bergamot Station
at 2525 Michigan Avenue, Bldg C-1,
Santa Monica, CA 90404. Gallery
hours are Tuesday through Saturday
from 11:00am – 6:00pm. Please
call 310-264-4678 for information
and reservations.
For more information or to interview
the creators Lauren Hartman and Curt
LeMieux please contact Lynn Hasty
at Green Galactic at 323-466-5141
or lynn@greengalactic.com.
To read a
review of the event with installation
photos goto: http://www.socal.com/articles/1606-61.html |
