Arts & Bodies

BioArt Exhibit: BioArtography

The University of Michigan Center for Organogenesis unites scientists from many fields who work together to study organ growth, function and disease.  The goal from these studies is to design new and effective ways to treat disease and repair damaged organs.  In the course of this work, we use the microscope and special stains or “colors” to look at tissues for changes that could affect our health.  These tiny biological structures are often beautiful and we share them with you here as “Bioartography”, a fascinating combination of art and science.

All images have been submitted to the Center for Organogenesis from Faculty, Research Scientists, Postdoctoral & Predoctoral Fellows, Graduate and Undergraduate Students.  All proceeds support research training at the University of Michigan, Center for Organogenesis.  For more information, please contact the Center for Organogenesis at 734/936-2499 or rpintar@umich.edu.  To view all images, visit the Bioartography website at www.bioartography.com.

The Olimpias: Cripple Poetics

Presented by Petra Kuppers, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature, Women's Studies, and Theatre & Dance, and Neil Marcus, an independent artist from Berkely, California.

In this presentation, performance artists Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus share Olimpias disability culture work, woven around poetry and dance. The Olimpias is an international project-based artist collective led by Petra Kuppers, and focused on disability culture work, community arts and performance research (www.olimpias.org).

The book Cripple Poetics: A Love Story (2008, Homofactus Press) is a collaboration between Neil Marcus, Petra Kuppers, and photographer Lisa Steichmann. In 2008/9, Petra and Neil went on long tours in Australia and Europe, engaging disability artists, and discussing (and shaping) the outline of contemporary international disability culture(s). In this performance, they will share some of Cripple Poetics together with award-winning Olimpias videos, including the Butoh piece "water burns sun" and the dance/poetry/video "Tiresias."

Read a commentary in the Michigan Daily from a student in Petra Kuppers' current "Medical Visions, Medical Performances" class.

“Disability Aesthetics”

Presented by Tobin Siebers, V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor

The topic "Arts & Bodies" inevitably raises questions such as, "Whose bodies?" "What kind of bodies?" "What bodies does a culture envision when it thinks about 'art'?" Tobin Siebers, author of eight books, including Disability Theory (U-M Press, 2008), addresses these questions and others in his Monday evening talk. "What I am calling disability aesthetics," Siebers writes in his seminal, eponymous article, "names a critical concept that seeks to emphasize the presence of disability in the tradition of aesthetic representation. Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body— and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty—as the sole determination of the aesthetic. It is not a matter of representing the exclusion of disability from aesthetic history, since such an exclusion has not taken place, but of making the influence of disability obvious. This goal may take two forms: 1) to establish disability as a critical framework that questions the presuppositions underlying definitions of aesthetic production and appreciation; 2) to establish disability as a significant value in itself worthy of future development."

The Dance of Suzanne Farrell: Creating with the Body

Legendary ballerina Suzanne Farrell, founder and director of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, will discuss her art with U-M Professor of Dance and noted dance historian, Beth Genné.

Ms. Farrell was the last and arguably greatest muse of revolutionary choreographer George Balanchine.  Balanchine was inspired and challenged by Farrell’s extraordinary dance intelligence, her sensitivity to music, her passion for dance, and her ability to push established boundaries to try new and innovative ways of using the body.  Working together, Farrell and Balanchine helped to create truly modern American ballets that are landmarks in the field and still inspire contemporary choreographers. 

Ms. Farrell also worked with one of modern European ballet's innovators, Maurice Béjart, who was equally but in different ways inspired by Ms. Farrell and her distinctive ways of moving.

Illustrated by film clips from Ms. Farrell's career, the talk will focus on how the dancer uses her body in a creative collaboration with the choreographer to create new works, and to re-inhabit and revivify old ones.

Offered in partnership with the University Musical Society.

Arts & Bodies: the Poetry. Reading organized by Linda Gregerson

Linda Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature. Professor Gregerson curates this program of contemporary poetry about humans' relationships with and reflections on our beautiful, perfect, weak, and fickle bodies, read by the authors:

Amy Carroll, Assistant Professor of American Culture and Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature
Julie Ellison, Professor of American Culture, English, and Art and Design
Laurence Goldstein, Professor of English Language and Literature
Linda Gregerson, Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English and Professor of English
Tung-Hui Hu, Assistant Professor/Postdoc Scholar-MSF, English Literature and Language,
Susan Hutton, Susan Hutton received her MFA from the University of Michigan and held a Wallace Stegner fellowship in poetry at Stanford University. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including Poetry, FIELD, and Ploughshares, and have been reprinted on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily.
A. Van Jordan, Professor of English Language and Literature
Megan Sue Levad, Assistant Director, MFA in Creative Writing Program
Thomas Lynch, Adjunct Professor of English Language and Literature
Raymond McDaniel, Sweetland Writing Center and Lecturer in English Language and Literature
Thylias Moss, Professor of English Language and Literature and Professor of Art and Design
Benjamin Paloff, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Macklin Smith, Associate Professor of English and Director Academic Program
Keith Taylor, Lecturer IV in English Language and Literature and Intermittent Lecturer in Biology, Biological Station
Gillian White, Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature

Robert and Shana Parke-Harrison Show

Photographers Robert and Shana Parke Harrison continue to pursue, with absorbing psychological and sensory effect, the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations—the work has a powerful impact both visually and viscerally.

Meditations on our arts, our bodies, our connections to the earth, the Parke-Harrison photos are not to be missed.

See their website.

Art Under the Microscope: BioArtography Quilts

This unique collection of art quilts is inspired by scientific photographs taken by researchers at the U-M Center for Organogenesis. In the course of diagnostic research, the microscope and special stains are used to examine tissues for alterations in structure or function that are characteristic of health or disease. The beauty of the photographs of these tiny biological structures, which is a fascinating combination of art and science, inspired this series of quilts by the Washington DC group, Fiber Artists @ Loose Ends. This traveling exhibit, sponsored by the Society for the Arts in Healthcare in partnership with Gifts of Art and the Center for Organogenesis, aims to honor these scientific research efforts, enrich community spaces by bringing the arts into everyday life and raise public awareness about the importance of the arts in healthcare settings. Two of the quilts in this series will be previewed along with BioArtography images at the Duderstadt Gallery, U-M North Campus from Sept. 28-Oct. 16, 2009.

Jerry Schwiebert, “Everything is Moving”

As thoroughly as they study their instruments or lines, top performing artists study how to use their bodies to heighten the audience's experience of their art.  This lecture-demonstration takes you "behind the scenes" to learn some of the basics of body movement for performing artists.  Audience volunteers will join the instructor onstage for body manipulation, partner with other audience members in exercises, view themselves on live video, and participate in entire-audience explorations.  Physical expression by Jerry Schweibert, faculty in movement in U-M's School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and author of the forthcoming book, Everything Is Moving.

“The Red Shoes,” a screening and conversation with Daniel Herwitz, Angela Kane, and Peter Sparling

A great cinematic classic, "The Red Shoes" dramatizes a ballerina's torment as she is torn between an all-consuming devotion to her art and the promise of erotic passion and lifelong love. In no form are the body and artistic expression more intimately wed than in dance. Enjoy a screening of this unforgettable film, followed by a conversation with Daniel Herwitz, Professor of the History of Art, Art & Design, and Philosophy, and Director of the Institute for the Humanities.

Daniel Herwitz has written widely in philosophical aesthetics, avant-garde art, architecture, music and film, most recently in his book on the phenomenon of the star icon and her joint creation by film, television, tabloid, the star/celebrity system and consumer culture (The Star Icon, Columbia 2008). He directs the Institute for the Humanities and is Professor in Comparative Literature, Philosophy, History of Art, and adjunct in Screen Arts and Cultures. He also holds tenure in the Faculty of Art & Design.

Angela Kane, Professor and Chair of Dance in the School of Music, Theatre, & Dance

Peter Sparling, Thurnau Professor of Dance in the School of Music, Theatre, & Dance and Artistic Director of Peter Sparling Dance Company

“The Two Journeys of Jacques Lecoq” Film Screening and Discussion

Jacques Lecoq brought a new understanding of the role of movement in theatre when he transported what he’d learned in his original field – athletics – to the acting class. Lecoq’s physical approach to acting was highly influential, moving such students as Geoffrey Rush, Julie Taymor, Simon McBurney, and Yasmina Reza and influencing actor-training world-wide.

Malcolm Tulip, a student of Lecoq’s and faculty in U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, will host this screening of two 45-minute documentaries about Lecoq’s life and methods. "Les deux voyages de Jacques Lecoq" ("The Two Journeys of Jacques Lecoq") were filmed by Jean Noel Roy for the French television program La sept ARTE. In them, Lecoq is show talking of his work and inspiration and working with his students. Actors and directors such as Dario Fo (Accidental Death of an Anarchist), Arianne Mnouchkine (Theatre du Soleil), Luc Bondy (Opera and stage Director), Simon McBurney (“Complicite”) and many others testify to Lecoq’s influence on their work. Tulip will lead a Q&A discussion after the screening.

The film is in French with English subtitles.

Malcolm Tulip (Assistant Professor Dept. of Theatre and Drama/School of Art & Design) studied 1982-1984 at the École Jacques Lecoq: Mime, Movement & Theatre,  with the world-renowned teacher Jacques Lecoq.
As an actor and director Tulip attempts to combine the strategies of the choreographer, the sculptor, the architect, the gymnast, the anthropologist and the clown to the disciplines of the writer, the philosopher, and the psychologist. He is a keen observer of movement both in the human animal and in all its manifestations in the natural world. Tulip also engages these approaches in his work as a solo performer primarily as a modern clown. 

India: A Light Within - photography exhibit

The bodily experience — textures, sights, sounds, and smells — of life in Calcutta in 2007 are evoked through the photography of award-winning Carnegie-Mellon faculty member Charlee Brodsky, and the prose and poetry of writers Zilka Joseph and Neema Bilpin Avashi. These contemporary photos and meditations are juxtaposed with a series of photos, "The Dance of Hands," which captures the expressive range of hand "mudras" in the ancient art of Odissi dance. Renowned dance master Sreyashi Dey performs Odissi dance live in this space on Friday, October 30.

Nicholas Delbanco Lecture, “Lastingness: The Art of Old Age”

We take for granted, mostly, that youth is an advantage for basketball players and ballerinas; it's not so clear, however, that artistic prowess need lessen in old age. Those painters, musicians, and writers who pursue their craft in "sunset years" have something to report on that the prodigy cannot address. Late style is Delbanco's subject, its losses and gains, and how in a world where more artists live long we chart the arc of time. If "Bodily decrepitude is wisdom," as William Butler Yeats suggests, of what does that wisdom consist?

Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature and Professor of English at U-M.

Michigan Chamber Players Halloween Concert

A Musical Equation:
Pan-demon-ium = MCP
Presented by the University Musical Society

For its 2010 Halloween Concert, MCP has selected a set of moving, amusing, thought-provoking chamber works about bodies – bodies possessed, bodies dead and undead, bodies bolted together. 

Works include:

Franz Liszt — The Second Mephisto Waltz Piano 4 hands (1880) 
William Bolcom — Graceful Ghost for Violin & Piano Rag (1979) 
Jon Deak — Lucy and the Count...Love Letters from Transylvania
H.K. Gruber — Frankenstein!!, a pan-demonium for chansonnier & ensemble after children's rhymes (1976-77)

Performed by faculty in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, including:

William Campbell, Diana Gannett, Kathryn Goodson, Joe Gramley, Sandra Jackson, Christopher Kendall, Jeffrey Lyman, Louis Nagel, Amy Porter, Mary Ann Ramos, Stephen Shipps, Logan Skelton, Adam Unsworth, and Stephen West.

India - A Light Within Dance Performance and Reading

For a description of the exhibit of photos by Charlee Brodsky, see October 27.

Master dancer Sreyashi Dey performs traditional Odissi dance as well as contemporary Indian choreography in the context of the compelling photos of Calcutta in 2007 by award-winning photographer Charlee Brodsky.  Zilka Joseph reads poetry and prose inspired by her own childhood in Calcutta, and the lives captured in Brodsky’s lens.  Space is limited for this rare event, so arrive early.

Body Music Mini-Festival

The Body Music Mini-Festival celebrates body music traditions from around the world by bringing together national, regional, and campus groups to perform and teach diverse body music traditions.  Keith Terry performs and emcees an afternoon of performances and workshops that will end with an open mic.

Full Information here

Lunch & Body Music Workshop with Keith Terry

Have you ever wondered how artistic expression can be channeled into other facets of your life, both work and play?  Come witness internationally-renowned artist Keith Terry talk about and demonstrate how the tenets of body music are applicable to every-day tasks that we all encounter in the home and in the boardroom, including team work and leading, public presentations, relationship management, and confidence building. The event will consist of a brown-bag lunch and an interactive workshop, so get ready to get down! Free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided.

Hosted by Arts Enterprise

Arts & (Incarcerated) Bodies

Bodies are incarcerated everywhere, in many ways – in jails, illness, war zones, dangerous neighborhoods, dangerous families – with emotional, psychological, intellectual, physical, and spiritual effects on the individuals incarcerated. What role do the arts play when bodies – people – are incarcerated?

Can engagement with the arts help undo some of the effects of incarceration? Can the arts help the unincarcerated (or less incarcerated) view the more incarcerated differently, help us think more clearly or compassionately about types of incarceration, and effects? Can the arts bring home how each member of any society is implicated in the incarceration of other citizens?How might incarceration affect the art-making of the incarcerated – both process and product?

Join us for an unforgettable evening of performance, exhibition, and conversation about these and other questions with three consummate artist/activists who have worked with the variously incarcerated for decades.

Buzz Alexander – U-M Professor of English, is Founder and Member of the Prison Creative Arts Project, which has engaged thousands of Michigan prisoners in writing and the plastic arts since 1990. Buzz and Janie Paul curate the Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners.   For more information

Jon Deak – Associate Principal Bassist with the New York Philharmonic since 1973 and a prominent composer of contemporary chamber pieces, Jon Deak also commits himself to helping students in New York’s most troubled schools express themselves through musical composition.
Read an interview with Jon Deak about the N.Y. Philharmonic’s Very Young Composer’s Program
Listen to Jon Deak talk with NPR about the Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea

Janie Paul – U-M Professor of Art & Design and Social Work, Janie Paul is a member of the Prison Creative Arts Project and a co-curator of PCAP’s annual Exhibitions of Art by Michigan Prisoners.  Professor Paul has dedicated much of her life to bringing art-making opportunities to adolescents and adults in Michigan’s prisons, and to underserved students in the Detroit Public Schools.  For more information

Queer Art and Censorship after the Culture Wars

The “culture wars” that erupted over arts funding in the 1980s and 1990s were all about bodies in art –   the depiction and deployment of bodies and of sexuality in artistic works.  Sometimes religious symbols were also in play (most memorably, perhaps, in Andre Serrano’s “Piss Christ”); always, however, religious beliefs and attitudes were at issue, whether or not their role was blatant or claimed. 

USC art historian Richard Meyer, author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford, 2002), addresses some of the ongoing effects of the culture wars on arts funding, sexuality, and religion.  Meyer will consider several queer artists whose work has been censored since the late 1990s in local and state contexts, and will address the suppression of sexually explicit art from within the gay and lesbian communities and from without.

Following Meyer’s presentation, Professors Holly Hughes, Carol Jacobsen, Petra Kuppers, and Robin Wilson will respond.

Richard Meyer is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Director of the Contemporary Project and the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate at the University of Southern California.   He is the author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford University Press: 2002), and co-author, with Anthony Lee, of Weegee and Naked City (University of California Press: 2008).  Last year, he curated “Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered” for the Jewish Museum in New York and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.  With Catherine Lord, he has just completed a survey text titled Art and Queer Culture, 1885-present which will appear in Phaidon’s “Themes and Movements” series.

Arts & Bodies ArtsLab

The ArtsLab is an intensive, experimental, experiential exploration of the interrelationships between human arts and human bodies worldwide. Faculty and students from Architecture; Art & Design; Engineering; English; Kinesiology; Music, Theatre & Dance; and Psychiatry have collaborated using disciplines as diverse as robotics, movement "fingerprint" analysis, and charcoal drawing to create a set of unforgettable experiences. Free and open to the public, the ArtsLab takes full advantage of the sophisticated multi-media capacity of the black-box Video Studio.
Space is limited: register early.

For more information on each session: ArtsLab

Sleight of Hand: How Bodies Fool Minds

Penny Stamps Lecture Series: Jamy Ian Swiss

"Magic" is a performance art in which the body's role is often underappreciated. "Sleight of hand," "legerdemain," and "prestidigitation" — all terms for performance magic — point to the role of the hand in fooling the mind. And in fact, mastery of sleight of hand requires relentless physical practice comparable to that required to master a musical instrument. But like all performance artists, magicians use their full bodies, both as a property of performance, and in the service of deception and illusion.
According to Penn and Teller, master magician Jamy Ian Swiss "makes one understand what a terrifying art form pure sleight of hand can be." But in this original and surprise-laden presentation, Swiss provides a behind-the-scenes view of the ways in which the magician employs the entire body electric to determine what we see.

For more information about this speaker and others, visit the Penny Stamps Distinguished Visitor Series site.

Keith Terry and Slammin All-Body Band Concert

Using any surface for its rhythmic possibilities, Keith Terry "claps his hands, rubs his palms, finger-pops, stamps his feet, brushes his soles, slaps his butt and belly, pops his cheek, whomps his chest, skips and slides, sings and babbles and coughs, building his music out of a surprisingly varied register of sounds and clever rhythmic variations" (Village Voice).
A percussionist/rhythm dancer whose work encompasses music, dance, theater, and performance art, Keith Terry brings together an artistic vision that defies easy categorization. As a trained percussionist and self-defined "body musician," Terry explores, blends, and bends traditional and contemporary rhythmic, percussive, and movement possibilities. This special performance for families will leave every member of the audience creatively exploring new sounds that they can generate with the oldest instrument in the world — the human body.

Family concert 7:00–8:00 pm, $10.00 and under!
Presented in collaboration with the University Musical Society.