Sasha Sumner
art projects
What Kinds of Energy Do You Use In Your Everyday Life?
Dear Stephanie,
Hello! Yes I am planning a
different performance for this coming October, as the theme this year
has changed. But I’d be happy to share with you the text that I
included in the Energy Shrine performance, that is if you are still
needing that. It was a mix of information from different sources,
some even from some people that I met on the street there as I was
starting to paint the wall mural. A father and son stopped there and
gave input on Einstein and physics. Absorbing or digesting
information and energy is an amorphous and organic process. The
performance was meant to provoke associative thinking, that which is
different for each spectator/participant. The text includes facts,
related tangents and written observations from different time periods-
they may seem a bit disparate when taken out of context of the piece.
I’d be very interested to read your article on ethnographies and south bronx.
Best,
-Sasha
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BIOLOGICAL LIBERTY
BIOLOGICAL LIBERTY: A RESEARCH PROJECT
In a performance/research project, subjects in a social setting were surveilled with video and observed for behavior patterns. People were invited to discuss topics on violence and the body as relating to personal experience and as well to global aggressions.
The data analysis aims to reveal a mapping of unconscious and conscious choice. The interpretation examines how perceived thought contradicts human nature.
Scrutiny of the data draws parallel to incidents where unpredictable outcome is caused by a lack of understanding human behavior, or by not being attuned to our unconscious nature. The study attempts to gain insight on why for example, we are subject to relationship breakdowns, political failures, and faulty military decisions.
Happy to be participating in the Rethinking Marxism Conference at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA with my fellow members of The Pedagogy Group.
Threeing workshop: creating
sustainable, collaborative relationships using
Paul Ryan’s techniques of engagement.
Presented by The Pedagogy Group.
http://www.rethinkingmarxism.org/conferences/2013/
Working with Simon Leung: ACTIONS!
Very excited to be participating, with video and performance, in an event by Simon Leung.
The Kitchen, center for art, video, music, dance, performance, film and literature.
Fri Sept 27 & Sat Sept 28, 8pm at The Kitchen, NYC
http://www.thekitchen.org/event/simon-leung-actions
Simon Leung: ACTIONS!
In our age of precarious work, what is the role of the “art worker?” What constitutes an “art action?” Using conventions of workers’ theater, academic conference, vaudeville, and postmodern dance, ACTIONS! gives thought to these questions by looking again at moments when “actions” were directed at the Museum of Modern Art: in 1960/70s by groups such as the Art Workers’ Coalition and Guerilla Art Action Group, when art activism was tied to civil rights and anti-war movements; and then in the year 2000, when members of the Professional and Administrative Staff Association (PASTA) at MoMA, which included curators, librarians, sales staff, editors and others, staged a four month-long labor strike. Originally inspired by the 2000 strike, ACTIONS! also returns to the recent past of the last two years, when protests in the art world by activist groups such as Occupy Museums and Occupy Wall Street Arts & Labor bring to bear the conditions of working in the art world today. Among collaborators reconsidering the intersection of art, labor, community, and politics today are union members, museum workers, activists, and artists, including Yvonne Rainer, Arlen Austin, Kabir Carter, Benj Gerdes, Sasha Sumner, Pat Catterson, Marina Urbach, Valerie Tevere & Angel Nevarez, Beth Whitney, Chris Kasper, Julian Tysh, Carina Evangelista, David Kelley, Filip Noterdaeme, Lumi Tan, Marcus Civin, Burns Magruder, Benjamin Young, W.A.G.E., and Andrea Fraser. Saturday’s performance concludes with a live discussion among participants including Leung and Julia Bryan-Wilson, moderated by Tim Griffin. Admission is based on MoMA policies in the year 2000.
The Hopscotch Formula
Art in Odd Places performance Oct. 2013
The Hopscotch Formula
by Susan Begy & Sasha Sumner
The public, all ages, are invited to participate in a spontaneous game of hopscotch. On a scale of 1 – 10, what is your state of happiness now? A snapshot will document your happines-self-evaluation immediately after play. The activity, which could cover an entire city block, is a playful reminder of the youthfulness hidden in all of us. Night-time video projection on the street will feature highlights.
Love Jackie video projection
‘Love Jackie’ Outdoor video projection
Ventana244 Art Space
Brooklyn, NY
northsidefestival.com/
In the 1940’s, at age 17, Jacqueline Bouvier (Jackie Kennedy Onassis) wrote a series of love letters to her then Harvard boyfriend, R. Beverly Corbin Jr.
Jackie’s letters reveal precocious and forthright notions on love and family relations. Recently the letters were sold for $13,450 when they were put up for auction by Corbin’s son.
facebook.com/NorthsideFest.
Carmen Miranda & Frida Kahlo
PHANTASMA: Carmen Miranda and Frida Kahlo
In this performance art piece, Sasha Sumner and Nadia Menco
channel the iconic figures of Frida Kahlo, Carmen Miranda,
and Billie Holiday in a contemporary setting. As living spirits
of our time, these characters engage in a series of both large
and small gestures where sense of time and place are shifted,
where the past meets the present. Music and video projections
are featured including clips from Occupy Wall St.
Brooklyn Census HQ Regime Change, Again
Census HQ Regime Change
Since last post there’s been another ‘regime change’ or ‘new way’ at the census HQ, the third since when I started. These changes have had an unfortunate trickle down effect. This means that the rules about filling out the forms have been changed again.
Whereas, initially, if we got the full, correct information from a direct home-dweller interview on the first try that was acceptable, then with the second HQ regime, maybe due to the great urgency with which to re-do the enumerating that was fraudulently done initially, see the published wrongdoings, it was acceptable just to get an apt population count from a neighbor nothing more, then on this third regime change, it’s only acceptable if the information is collected on the fourth try, regardless of whether all info was obtained on a first try, and get it done in 3 hours. That means more extra time/work- in some cases unnecessary! And more info that is not gotten because time is too short to properly collect it.
Since the Brooklyn Census debacle occurred, there has been fallout that workers and residents have suffered from. Residents are STILL pissed off for having given the information numerous times, enough is enough! This will make the next phase of the Census work (confirming specific cases) even more difficult, oh dear!
Yet, I succumb to the national zeitgeist of our times- feeling that attitude that comes from knowing employment is down. With the Census, godammit, at least it’s Work! even if angry residents give you grief. Co-workers are friendly thank you and oh, it’s a temporary job!
Fraud trickle down = more streets and more pissed off residents
More on Census…
Though we had been told that the job was finished before, actually we had to work a lot last week, to re-do the enumerating- the busy bees like me are paying for the faults of those managers that got fired I guess. I got stationed all over the place in Brooklyn, sometimes in the beautiful brownstones of Bed-Stuy and sometimes in other neighborhoods, Bushwick-Bed-Stuy like, that are wanting more. Wasn’t feeling well on the last day of pounding the pavement in the 98 degree sun, smell of urine and garbage says enough.
Was thinking though, that I really got to see how different people live, block to block changing, walking around for hours you can really see what kind of shape everything’s in. Most people just stick to a few familiar neighborhoods, of friends and events and that’s it, so, we just don’t really know this city. Brooklyn is vast!
Some residents said that they’d already given the info 4 or 5 times already and were really pissed off. The job was much more difficult dealing with angry fed up people who then refused to do it again.
Was supposed to get info on a basement address. No doorbells, just an unpainted flimsy door and an open window, very dark inside, music blasting. All I can say is Unconfirmed Illicit Activity.
At the end of the day we have to hand in our cases. Everybody has to spend at least half an hour erasing the bogus information that was written on the forms previously, and filling in any info we got. We used to meet in a community center that was nice (in photo) but it’s closed now so everybody has to meet up in McDonalds or Burger King.
Sasha Sumner 