Jung-eun Kim, dancer and choreographer, leads Pennsylvania’s protest against the war by participating in the Freedom of Information 2008
Dec 28th, 2008 | By Steven Weisz | Category: Dance StoriesIn response to the continuing U.S. led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, choreographer Miguel Gutierrez has invited artists from across the country to perform Freedom of Information 2008 : a 24 hour performance/protest/ritual of continuous movement improvisation performed while blindfolded and ear-plugged, which is intended as a contemplative act of solidarity with those displaced by the wars.
This action takes place over the last 24 hours of 2008, from midnight to midnight of December 31st. It ends with the ringing in of the New Year. At present, there are 29 artists participating in Freedom of Information 2008. Each artist will perform the action in her/his respective state and during the 24 hours that correspond to December 31st in his or her time zone. Miguel Gutierrez originally performed Freedom of Information alone on December 31, 2001, in response to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. This time, inviting artists from across the country creates a nationwide, synchronous event.
Freedom of Information 2008 involves staying in one room for the duration of the event. Moving continuously for 24 hours throughout the space of her/his choosing in a sensory-deprived state, the performer meditates on the dislocation and disorientation of those who do not have the basic right of being safe for the duration of a single day, who instead must be continuously on the move because of the threat of violence.
Freedom of Information 2008 is free and open to the public in each of the venues that the artists have selected. Throughout the 24 hours, people are invited to come and go as they please, watching the participating artist as they attempt to fulfill the simple but rigorous demands of this action.
For more information on the preparations and locations for this event go to:
http://freedomofinformation2008.blogspot.com
The Pennsylvania artist performing Freedom of Information is Jung-eun Kim (aka je)*. She will be at the Studio 34 from 12 midnight on December 30 – 12 midnight on December 31st. Studio 34 is located at 4522 Baltimore Ave. in West Philadelphia ( http://www.studio34yoga.com)
Jung-eun Kim aka je was born in Seoul, Korea. She is a choreographer, dancer, video artist and web designer. She holds a MFA in Dance from American Dance Festival/Hollins University. As a video artist, she has worked with Lisa Race, Sarah Skaggs, Jane Comfort& Co., Thomas F. DeFrantz/SLIPPAGE and the American Dance Festival. As a dancer, she has worked with Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins, Antonietta Vicario, Yvonne Meier, Christina Zani, Kathryn TeBordo and map dance collective. Her work has been shown include: Race and New Media Conference at SUPERFRONT (New York); Current Gallery (Baltimore); paraphrase/NEXUS at CRANE ARTS, SWAP/MEET, Current at Mascher Space Cooperative and Studio 34 (Philadelphia). She was invited to be a Guest Artist in Residence at Dickinson College in the Fall 2008.
More on the artist at www.jekim.org
As seen in the New York Times…By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/arts/dance/30prot.html?_r=1&ref=dance
Across the Country, Dancing in Solidarity for 24 Grueling Hours
For those of you at a loss as to how to see out the old year and break in the new, here is a suggestion: How about watching someone, blindfolded and wearing earplugs, move continuously in one space for 24 hours? How about doing it yourself?
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In 2001, above and below, Mr. Gutierrez performed it alone. (Fritz Welch drew on the wall.)
As of Monday afternoon there were still 19 spots open in “freedom of information 2008,” organized by the choreographer Miguel Gutierrez in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The work consists, ideally, of an improvisational solo by a participant in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; the solos will be performed in the 24 hours that constitute Dec. 31 in each location, starting at 12:01 a.m.
Mr. Gutierrez, 37, will represent New York at the Barn in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This is not his first foray into endurance art but an expansion of “freedom of information,” which he performed by himself in 2001. Reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan and what he described as “this Bush thing of just creating a state of terror,” he followed his gut.
“I just had a strong instinct to be moving,” Mr. Gutierrez said recently in his Brooklyn apartment. “The idea of what it is to be a refugee or a person who’s disrupted by an armed conflict is so terribly abstract to me, really. I had to create some sort of thing that created a very weak, perhaps, but somehow partial analogue to understanding what that is.”
The original “freedom of information” was a physically and emotionally intense experience for Mr. Gutierrez. Video documentation gives a sense of this: toward the end, he resembles a marathon runner pushed far beyond his limits of endurance and into a trancelike state impressive, even on tape, for its rawness and vulnerability.
Small blooms of movement, like the flick of a beautifully pointed foot morphing into a shuffling walk with arms extended, evoke all manner of troubling narratives when done by an exhausted, blindfolded man. His white T-shirt becomes dirty and torn; the walls of the studio take on a faint red patina, as Mr. Gutierrez repeatedly slides against them in his red sweatpants.
Still, Mr. Gutierrez is all too aware that he cannot know what refugees endure. He emphasized that he was not attempting to equate, even indirectly, his willed action with forced suffering.
“What I can be direct about is a sense of solidarity with the other artists who are doing this, and this, at least, notion of a shared commitment to saying, ‘We will take these 24 hours together to go through some intense state of contemplation,’ ” he said. “I’m inviting people to consider displacement and war. I am sure a ton of other things will enter people’s thought processes: about their lives, about death, about life, about all kinds of things. And that’s exciting to me.”
Mr. Gutierrez’s sense of communal purpose is evident on freedomofinformation2008.blogspot.com, which he created to document the work and to allow viewers to follow many participants through Ustream.tv channels. Some of the soloists were recruited by Mr. Gutierrez; others he has never met.
Their comments reveal motivations both shared and diverse. The Massachusetts representative, Jesse Zaritt, talked of his deep ties to Israel. Brianna Skellie, who will perform in Hawaii, wrote in an e-mail message: “Whenever I tell people about the event I talk about how soldiers, fighting for a cause they may or may not believe in, often without the luxury of feeling secure or being able to stop and relax, are also important to remember.”
Marissa Perel, the Illinois representative, roomed with Mr. Gutierrez in 2001 and watched much of the original performance. In a phone interview, she spoke of the various political ramifications she saw in the shared action, and of how the resistance she had encountered to the work from Chicagoans underlined for her its importance. She hypothesized that many people, especially in the city where President-elect Barack Obama lives, were eager for a “quick fix” and wanted to be done with problems they associated with President Bush’s tenure.
But Ms. Perel also spoke of a very particular motivation. In 2001 she shattered most of the bones on her right side when she slammed into a tree while inner-tubing in the snow. When Mr. Gutierrez invited her to perform, she said, she was eager, but scared that her body would fail her. She deliberated until October, when, she said, “I sat down with myself and just said, you survived so many things with your body that probably you’re going to be able to do this.” Participation for her is as much an act of celebration as of protest.
Ms. Perel’s solo, to be performed in her home, will be open to the public. Others, like Mr. Zaritt, who also watched the 2001 work, are opting for invited guests only. But he is asking many more people to keep him in mind throughout New Year’s Eve, creating a sort of audience of wakefulness.
“What dance does best for me is promote a kind of awareness, a kind of sensitivity and a kind of consciousness about the body,” he said of his reason for participating. He also talked about the sense of helplessness that he and many of his peers feel as artists confronting sweeping geopolitical conflicts.
“How can dance be a factor in this crisis, in determining some kind of action or solution in the face of this trauma?” he asked. “Part of me thinks dance can’t do this.”
“And then,” he added, “the rest of me is saying, dance is my lens, so it has to be the way in which I approach creating anything in response to this. And that’s exactly what Miguel teaches and performs.
“In a way he’s saying dance can’t do anything for the world. Yet everything he does with his teaching and work says the opposite, which is: Dance can change us, and then we can change the world.”
Miguel Gutierrez will perform “freedom of information 2008” starting at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday at the Barn, 257 North Henry Street, No. 3, Greenpoint, Brooklyn; freedomofinformation2008.blogspot.com. Admittance throughout the 24 hours of Dec. 31 is free.