Hillebrand Magsamen
A still image from “Accumulation,” a video by Hillebrand + Magsamen, appearing in Off the Strip.
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010 | 6:20 p.m.
The Contemporary Arts Collective’s Off the Strip: Las Vegas New Genres Festival returns this year with another round of Vegas-centric performance and video art and installations. The multi-voiced festival explores consumption, spectacle, sex, sustainability and economy by local, national and international artists presenting at multiple venues.
Call it a weekend of Las Vegas deconstructed—the Strip, the idea of the Strip, the community, politics, global intrigue and our atomic past and present. The call for art was open to anything that fell into the realm of Las Vegas, says Catherine Borg, an event coordinator. “To what permutations, we didn’t want to limit that. What are their ruminations, what do they think is applicable to Las Vegas? It’s a broad spectrum.”
Liz Hicock "Many Small Houses"
If it’s anything like last year’s inaugural festival, it will be one of 2010’s top art events.
One artist explores behavior among strangers through a cocktail waitress taking an order. There’s a guerrilla-style wedding, aka “social performance known as ‘marriage,’” and a response to Marcel Duchamp with a series of “ready-mades”—recordings that capture the auditory ambience of Las Vegas.
Some tackle the familiar. Others are more abstract. Liz Hickok’s video of suburban Las Vegas homes constructed of Jell-O shows them shriveling and drying up, then replaced by new Jell-O homes. Kristina Wong’s “Going Green the Wong Way” details life in Los Angeles without a car, an easy crossover for local audiences, commuting in the car-friendly sprawl.
The Bridge Club’s performance piece, “Music Box,” examines the escape through spectacle, which keeps our engines running here in the Mojave Desert, and the promise of the banal. Test Market promises a “humorously and furiously absurd work” with “Schadenfreude,” a soundscape that “devolves into a stage performance that melds men, machine, time and space.”
Mixed in with all of that will be pieces on crowd behavior, celebrity and excoriation of “female beauty,” the search for love and kinesthetic perception and interpretation as experienced through theremins.
OFF THE STRIP SCHEDULE
All events not listed as free are $10 ($5 for CAC members, seniors and students). Festival passes are $25 ($15 for CAC members).
October 14
• Opening reception for Off the Strip: The Atomic Body—5-7 p.m., artist talk at 6 p.m., Atomic Testing Museum, 755 E. Flamingo Road, free.
• Live performances from Test Market and Kristina Wong—7:30-10 p.m., the Thunderbird Lounge at the Aruba Hotel, 1215 Las Vegas Blvd. S.
• Nicole Morton’s “Remote Viewing Experiment #1”—7 a.m.-noon (through Oct. 16), The Beat Coffeehouse & Records, 520 Fremont Street, free.
• Installations—Sensorium Lab, Heather Sparks and Laura Smith Fillmore—Atomic Testing Museum, free, through November 3.
October 15
• Video art—Kerry Laitala’s “Glitter Gulch”—6-11 p.m., 1217 S. Main St.
• Installation—Joe Nanashe’s “3xladyx3”—6-10 p.m., Commercial Center, 953 E. Sahara Ave., suite B115.
• Video installation—“Acclimation” by Marlene Siu, Yasmina Chavez, Eri King and Javier—6-10 p.m., Commercial Center, suite C114.
• Video art—Minou Norouzi, Liz Hickok, Zach Rockhill, Joe Nanashe, Roger Beebe, Scott Stark, Hillerbrand & Magsamen, Minou Norouzi and Jeanne Jo—7:30 - 8:30 p.m., Sci Fi Center on the south side of the Commercial Center.
• “The Night Stalker”—11 p.m., Bar+Bistro @ The Arts Factory, 101 East Charleston Blvd., free.
October 16
• Live presentation—“Let’s Build a Nation,” Sara Eliassen, Carlos Castro and Jevijoe Vitug—noon-12:30, CAC, 107 E. Charleston Blvd., Suite 120, free.
• Interactive performance—“Smear and Loathing,” Diane Bush—12:30-noon, The Arts Factory, 107 E. Charleston Blvd., free.
• Nicola Morton’s “Remote Viewing Experiment” and Douglas Moffat’s “With Hidden Voice”—11 a.m.-6 p.m., The Beat Coffeehouse & Records, free.
• “Off the Strip 2010: A Community Conversation”—3-5 p.m., The Beat Coffeehouse & Records, free.
• Performance—“Marriage Proposal: A Critical Engagement,” Taylor McVay and Jordan Tynes—10 a.m., First and Fremont Streets, free.
• Interactive performance, “Can I Get You Anything Else,” Diane Dwyer—1-3 p.m., Fremont Street, free.
• Performance—“Music Box”—6 p.m, The Bridge Club, Don’t Tell Mama, 517 Fremont St., free.
• Laura Napier’s “project for a street corner: Fremont Street”—8 and 9 p.m., Fremont Street, free.
• Performances and closing party—Sister (outdoor video production), McVay and Tynes (performance) Danielle Kelly (performance), Patrick Cadenhead (performance)—7-10 p.m., Downtown Cocktail Room, 111 Las Vegas Blvd. S.
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