Practical Theater

2008-05-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

International Pastimes: Ricardo Valentim & Tirdad Zolghadr
A project by Bosko Blagojevic and S.C. Squibb

3pm Sunday 18 MAY 2008
347 W. 36th St (betw. 8+9th ave) New York NY

Running time is aprox. 50 minutes.
A Q&A with the artists will take place after the screening.

The temptation to anthropology arrives by way of an ostensibly complicit silence. In the translations of moments, motions, forms and bodies into narratives of people and history, silence persists. The constitutive insufficiencies of this language are in this sense both catalyst and climax. Thus this transfer is not, as has been supposed, merely violent -- rather it is specifically destructive, a targeted demolition of possibility in return for a progressively impoverished self-knowing. Having built the world in glass we can see forever, only.

Ricardo Valentim's The World Must be Upside Down is a three-part film program that sets a lobotomized anthropology loose on a normalizing, amnesiac culture. Comprised of two films authored by the artist that function like raw documentary film footage, and a third found film, the program sets in motion certain frictions between a displaced strategy of representation and its subjects.

Tirdad Zolghadr's Tropical Modernism is a short video about the fate of the Iranian Left in the wake of the 1979 revolution. Told by Dr. G Rahati, a member of the Iranian Leftist intelligentsia, the narrative is assembled solely from video footage shot by the subject himself. This method, championed by certain anthropological filmmakers working in Africa, is used by Zolghadr to elliptically trouble the nature of his own investigation.

Ricardo Valentim (born in 1978 in Loulé, Portugal, currently living and working in New York) received his undergraduate degree in anthropology at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon, and his M.F.A. in visual art at the School of Visual Arts, New York. His exhibitions include Film Festival at e-flux at unitednationsplaza, New York (2006), Contrabando curated by Carolina Grau at Luísa Strina Gallery, São Paulo (2006) and Art Statements at ArtBasel38, Basel (2007). Valentim has recently started a new series of works comprised of lectures including Growth and Culture at Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon (2008) and is producing a new project for Manifesta7, Trentino Alto Adige, Italy.

Tirdad Zolghadr is a freelance writer and curator based in Berlin. He has curated events in a wide range of venues, writes regularly for frieze magazine and other publications, and is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine. Zolghadr is also a founding member of the Shahrzad Art & Design collective, the co-director of several documentary films, and has published his first novel "Softcore" with Telegram Books London (now available in German and Italian). He is currently teaching at the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College NY, and curating the long term project "Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie" with Nav Haq.

Pictures from Halloween Horror

2007-11-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

Some pictures from our Halloween Horror show. Everyone had a blast.

Stay tuned for information about the next Practical Theater - scheduled for December 16th.

Yomul Yuk

BALTIMORE CHAINSAW CLUB, WITH TUXEDO LAUGHINGGAS

Kyle came as a Pirate Flag!

Halloween Horror - This Sunday

2007-10-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Sunday October 21, 2007 8-10pm prompt
Ignivomous presents: Halloween Horror
a Screen++ event
as part of the Practical Theater Series
@ Abingdon Theater Arts Complex
312 West 36th Street, in Manhattan NY
$FREE event (like the spirits though there also will be unfree spirits to
cloud your vision of the night)

Featuring -
Vampiric Videos/Frightening Films:
Skull and Blackberries + Punkin Guts - by Eric Ostrowski
the gibbering horror of howard ghormley - by Steve Daniels
Dual Ghoul - by Nate Boyce
Vile Bodies - by Inju Kaboom + Steve Schitz
Small World + Nature Channel - by Angela Perrone + Neal Snyder
Slomo Horror - by Raphael Cohen
Monster's Vertigo - by Jesse Johnson
The Isle of the Dead - by Miss Liz Wendelbo, Lisa Skogh, + Monica
Hellstrom

Phantasmal Performances:
BALTIMORE CHAINSAW CLUB, WITH TUXEDO LAUGHINGGAS (with vile video)
DPRK (Blakeula)
Yomul Yuk (6 feet under earth music)

Spooky Soundscapes:
Sons epeurants d'Halloween V1
Mudboy (Hungry Ghosts)

Apparitional Art:
Mummy, Cyclops, Fleshface, Wolfman, and 3 surprises - by Sto

Ignivomous: Halloween Horror

2007-09-06T11:09:00.001-07:00

Practical Theater is pleased to announce the Call for Submissions for the next chapter in the screenings series: Halloween Horror, presented by Ignivomous.

Halloween Horror will take place on October 21st, 2007 at the Abingdon Theater Arts Complex's June Havoc Theater. To submit work for consideration please see the Call for Submissions below.

Ignivomous is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that presents, nurtures, and develops new genres, art forms, media and extremes of expression.

*******Call for Entries*******

Ignivomous presents: Halloween Horror as part of the Practical Theater Series.

Ignivomous is calling for submissions of videos and films for a Halloween themed festival.

Selected entries will be screened on Sunday, October 21 at the Abingdon Theater Arts Complex's June Havoc Theater located at 312 West 36th Street in Manhattan.

Movies can be produced in any medium but submissions must be made in a digital format on a mini-DV tape or DVD.

Maximum length is 20 minutes and all entries must be received by Monday, October 8. This is a receipt deadline, not postmark deadline.

There is no entry fee.

Entries should include:
Title, Duration, Production Date and Credits, Contact Information (address, phone, email, website), and a brief (50 word maximum) Synopsis.

Mail submissions to:
Ignivomous
PO Box 1135
New York, NY 10116

Email: ignivomous[at]yahoo.com with any questions.

Pictures from Together at Last

2007-08-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

All around a great evening. The theater was packed, Dara Birnbaum answered a few questions, and it was great working with Bosko and Kevin. We were a bit limited photographically, but here's what we have:

This was in the black box theater. Screens were mounted facing each other.

This Sunday, "Together At Last"

2007-07-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

This Sunday at 8pm Practical Theater will host "Together At Last: A Contemporary Presentation of Historic Video Works," a free, one-night relational exhibition of historic works from the 1970's. Represented artists include John Baldessari, Joan Jonas, Vito Acconci, Martha Rosler, Dara Birnbaum, and Valie Export.

The screening will be held in the black box theater at Abingdon, 312 W 36th Street between 8th and 9th aves. For more information please visit http://abstractedlabor.com/t/

"Together At Last" is a Kevin Barry and Bosko Blagojevic project.
Practical Theater is a production of the Abingdon Theatre Company