Summer Salon Series 2011

Economy and Social Consumerism

In response to this year's Summer Salon Series theme–What does a city need?– the evening of July 28, 2011 will consider the idea of Economy and Social Consumerism.    

The following is a detailed list of the evening's events and participants:

Each visitor to the Museum between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. will receive a handout on W.A.G.E.

*Please note that due to unforseen travel complications, Sandra and Ben Doller will not be reading tonight, as was originally scheduled.  We hope to bring them back sometime this summer.*

5:00 – 9:00 pm: Brian Goeltzenleuchter and Katharine Whitcomb will present Smelling the city, an olfactory artwork that will be present at each remaining night of the 2011 Summer Salon Series.  This project juxtaposes a poetic text printed on a fragrance blotter against an artist-made scent into which the blotter is dipped. Upon request, Summer Salon patrons receive a blotter which is lightly scented and highly transportable. The blotters become points of personal reflection and conversation pieces.

This project will take place in the Museum's Lower Rotunda.

5:00 – 8:30 pm: Giuseppe's Restaurant will offer a no-host bar with beer, wine and light snacks.

The bar is located in the Museum's Lower Rotunda.

6:00 – 7:00 pm: Art Making Activity: Miniature Chairs  Join Museum Educator Amy Briere for an art making activity inspired by our Gustav Stickley exhibition that's fun and engaging for all ages and skill levels.

This activity takes place in the Museum's IMAGE Gallery.

7:00 pm: Jaroslaw Kapuściński presents Intermedia Recital, featuring four works for piano. Kapuściński creates media compositions, in which projections of videos and computer-generated graphics are controlled as he plays piano. Abstract or figurative, lighthearted or political, his material is meticulously woven into a contrapuntal texture of sounds, images and words.  At the heart of it lies a concern with clarity - a paradox: what is inherently multidimensional and complex, is presented through a lens of unity and simplicity.

For a complete list and description of each of the four works in this presentation, please scroll down to the end of this listing.  The concert will last approximately 40 minutes.

This presentation will take place in Gallery 18.                                  

8:30 pm: The Border Corps presents Mexus Sexus Fluxus (a performance art psycho-drama in ps6yx psycles)

This presentation will take place in the Museum's James S. Copley Auditorium. The performance will last approximately 35 minutes.

Program notes for Intermedia Recital

MONDRIAN VARIATIONS (video, 1992, 10 min)

The art of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) is known for its pure abstraction and ultimate simplicity. It seems so close to music that the artist himself described it with such terms as counterpoint, rhythm, syncopation or harmony. Inspired by musical variation form the video transforms, deconstructs and reconstructs five of Mondrian's paintings in three movements: Moderato, Lento andBoogie-Woogie.

CATCH THE TIGER! 2.0 (2001, 10 min)

“Eenie meenie, minie, moe…“

Counting out is a practice familiar to children on all continents. It consists of short whimsical rhymes that are spoken or sung, often in repetitions. The piece consists of several such rhymes, though instead of text we hear melodies played by the pianist and see digits changing within numbers as if enchanted by the music.

OLI’S DREAM (2008, 7 min, poetry and collaboration: Camille Norton)

Oli’s Dreamis a playful collaboration between music and writing, between a piano keyboard and a typewriter keyboard, and, above all, between a composer and a poet. When composer Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and poet Camille Norton began talking about the rapport between music and poetry, they discovered that as children they had shared the same dream, the dream in which a piano becomes a typewriter and in which a typewriter becomes a piano. Oli’s Dream is therefore an experiment in synaesthesia, an attempt to fuse the temporal modes of music with the spatial and temporal domains of words. In the process, the audience finds itself in the presence of a perceptive, purely aware being, Oli, who creates himself through his encounter with words. Words here make and unmake themselves from the outside in or the inside out, transforming themselves as they discover their own direction in time. As Oli’s Dream unfolds in the interstices between listening to sound and reading letters on a screen, it moves into the additional spatial, visual, and temporal dimensions of live performance, enacted here by the composer at his piano engaging in a call and response with letters and words appearing and then pulling themselves apart on a screen.

JUICY (2009, 10 min)

Fruits and music have a lot in common. Both can be geometric and bright-colored but even when arranged in formal compositions they are never truly abstract. Anchored in visceral sensations, they can evoke emotions or associations of taste and smell. Even the simplest melodies or commonest of berries can make strong impressions. At times, both can be sensuous and juicy.