Faculty and Staff News

Arts Division

Houghton back from sabbatical

Ed Houghton returns as Dean of the Arts on July 1, 2006 after taking a sabbatical during the winter and spring quarters. The Division of Arts wishes to convey sincere thanks to Music professor Leta Miller for serving as Acting Dean during this time.

Miller says that she plans to devote much of her recaptured time to researching her new book on music in San Francisco from the Earthquake to World War II. "I expect to be spending a great deal of time at archives in San Francisco and Berkeley examining historical documents on the city's musical life in this period," she says.

Art

UCSC faculty will be featured in MAH’s Plein Air Affaire

Three UCSC faculty members and a recent UCSC Artist in Residence will be among the featured artists in the Museum of Art & History’s Plein Air Affaire 2006. The Museum of Art & History (MAH) expects to host more than 40 local and guest artists in an outdoor Plein Air art competition, exhibition, and sale in downtown Santa Cruz on July 8 and 9. The UCSC contingent includes Charles Prentiss, recent artist in residence; Noah Buchanan, Art lecturer; and Art professors Frank Galuszka, and Jennie McDade.

More than 150 paintings of Santa Cruz and the California Central Coast area will be exhibited in the plaza in front of the museum. Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum and authority on California impressionism, will judge the pieces and award a total of $5,000 to artists.

MAH will preview the event with a free, outdoor theater presentation on June 30 from 8 to 10:30 p.m. In OFF THE WALL @ MAH: A Sneak Preview, the museum wall will become a canvas where images of artists, their work, and their thoughts on the creative process are projected. For more information, visit www.santacruzmah.org.

Two-woman show makes West Coast debut

“Exposed: Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art” — a two-woman show featuring Elizabeth Stephens, performance artist and UCSC associate professor of Art, and Annie Sprinkle, performance artist and former porn star — made its West Coast debut at the CounterPulse Theater in San Francisco in June. The multimedia performance art piece, which is an important part of the seven-year project “Love Art Laboratory.” explores lesbian courtship, artificial insemination, queer weddings, breast cancer and more.

“Love Art Laboratory” was born when Sprinkle and Stephens fell in love and decided to make a seven-year commitment to explore, generate, and share their love through art. The couple kicked off the project on December 18, 2004 with a wedding in New York City, where they vowed to become one another's official "love art collaborators," as well as committed domestic partners. The ultimate goal is to promote peace and equal rights.

“Exposed,” which has already been performed in Glasgow, Scotland, and Austin, Texas, continues to evolve along with the artists’ lives. After its West Coast debut, the performance will travel to Vienna, Austria. The show is directed by Neon Weiss with technical design and live sound-scape by Sheila Malone. For more information, visit www.loveartlab.org.

Watts book featured on NPR’s ‘Day to Day’

The May 25th edition of the NPR program “Day to Day” featured a story about the recently released book “Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Filmore Jazz Era.” Published by Chronicle Books, the book is by Lewis Watts, a UCSC Art professor and photographer, and Elizabeth Pepin, a photographer, public television producer and former manager of the historic Fillmore Auditorium. The “Day to Day” audio archive and a brief article are available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5430278.

“Harlem of the West” chronicles the jazz scene in San Francisco’s Fillmore District during its heyday through archival photos and oral accounts. In the 1940s and 1950s, the eclectic, integrated neighborhood was hopping with two dozen nightclubs and music joints in its one square mile. The jazz scene vanished abruptly due to redevelopment in the 1960s.

Gwynn interviews Indian painter

Melissa Gwynn, assistant professor of Art, interviewed Indian painter Anjolie Ela Menon at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga last month. Gwynn, who earned her M.F.A. at Yale University in 1989, specializes in drawing and painting.

Film and Digital Media

Daniel to participate in digital media exhibition, symposium

Sharon Daniel, associate professor of Film & Digital Media and Digital Arts and New Media, will participate in ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge & the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art.

Daniel will present “Public Secrets: information and social knowledge.” This symposium paper discusses the phenomenon of the “public secret” in the context information culture and presents strategies for using information technologies to unmask such secrets. Daniel’s presentation will reference an online audio database of statements by incarcerated women and injection drug users, which reveal the secret injustices of the war on drugs, the Criminal Justice System and the Prison Industrial Complex.

Daniel’s “Palabras,” an interactive exhibit of videos created in a series of workshops at cultural centers in two impoverished shantytowns in Buenos Aires and in a workshop in San Jose, will also be on display. During the workshops, participants used inexpensive digital video cameras and custom-built web applications that allow them to edit, tag and publish videos documenting their daily lives. The workshops focused on strategies for collective self-representation using software designed to allow participants to discover relationships and make connections between their personal stories. Michael Dale, Carlos Trilnick, Cecilia Velasquez Traut, El Envion at Villa Tranquilas and Fundacion Crear Vale la Pena in Buenos Aires also contributed to the project. For more information, visit http://palabrastranquilas.ucsc.edu/.

ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge & the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art runs August 7 to 13 at various locations. For more information about the festival and symposium, visit http://01sj.org.

Hastie, Stamp co-edit special issue of ‘Film History’ journal

Film and Digital Media associate professors Amelie Hastie and Shelley Stamp co-edited a recent special issue of “Film History.” The "Women and the Silent Screen" issue of the journal included a selection of the best essays from a conference the pair organized at UCSC in 2001. The publication highlights the contributions women made to early cinema as filmmakers, screenwriters, theorists, critics, performers, producers, laborers and moviegoers.

Sack contributes to ‘ELSE/WHERE MAPPING’

Warren Sack, associate professor of Film & Digital Media, participated in the recently released “ELSE/WHERE MAPPING — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories.”

Warren Sack participated in and generated images of a “virtual roundtable” for “ELSE/WHERE MAPPING.”

Published by the University of Minnesota Design Institute, “ELSE/WHERE MAPPING” features 40 essays by U.S. and European historians, designers, cultural critics, geographers and social scientists. Edited by Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, the book is a scholarly anthology on techniques and contemporary applications of mapping. It was designed by Deborah Littlejohn.

Sack participated in the book as one of eight experts in a “virtual roundtable” focusing on issues concerning mapping conversations. He also contributed a number of “conversation map” images generated from transcripts of online discussions. Two of those images were generated from the “virtual roundtable.”

Vazquez’s work featured in 2 installations over summer

The work of Gustavo Vazquez, assistant professor of Film & Digital Media, will be featured in two installations this summer.

“GLANCE Utopian Garden,” by filmmaker Vazquez and composer Guillermo Galindo, will be featured at ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge & the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art, from August 7 to 13. The performance installation is an impromptu symphony of audio and visual material that features computer-activated sensors and mechanical devices that will produce a rotation of sounds and images gathered by the artists. The sounds (composed and recorded) and video interviews will reflect the ethnically and culturally diverse communities in the South Bay. The project will be presented as an installation and one performance.

Vazquez’s work will also be featured in “Chicano Now: American Expressions – Chicano Encounters” at the deYoung Museum from July 22 to October 22. “Chicano Now” is a 5,000-square-foot interactive multimedia exhibit that opened to the public in December 2001. Produced in collaboration with actor/entertainer and art collector Cheech Marin, the exhibit comprises original video performances, original murals, musical performances and a wide array of hands-on displays.

“Chicano Now” will run in tandem with “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge as Collected by Cheech Marin.”

History of Art and Visual Culture

Thangavelu lecture details traditions of Telangana

History of Art and Visual Culture lecturer Kirtana Thangavelu presented “Motivated Genealogies: The Painted Scrolls of Telangana” in early June. The lecture was based on Thangavelu’s ethnographic research on the ritual and storytelling traditions of Telangana in the state of Andhra Pradesh in South India.

Thangavelu has been a lecturer in UCSC’s History of Art and Visual Culture department for the past six years. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She also has a B.F.A. from Maharaja Sayajirao University and an M.F.A. from Visvabharati University.

Music

Beal’s new book chronicles German views on American music

The University of California Press recently published a book — “New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification” — by Amy Beal, associate professor of Music. “New Music, New Allies” documents how American experimental music and its practitioners came to prominence in the West German cultural landscape between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. Beginning with the reeducation programs implemented by American military officers during the postwar occupation of West Germany and continuing through the cultural policies of the Cold War era, this broad history chronicles German views on American music, American composers' pursuit of professional opportunities abroad, and the unprecedented dissemination and support their music enjoyed through West German state-subsidized radio stations, new music festivals, and international exchange programs. For more information, visit http://go.ucpress.edu/Beal.

UC Santa Cruz wins international Telly Award

“New Dimensions in Classical Guitar: Mesut Özgen and Friends in a Multimedia Performance” earned a bronze award in the Entertainment category. It featured a multimedia concert of innovative guitar works by Music lecturer Mesut Özgen, accompanied by video from Film and Digital Media assistant professor Gustavo Vazquez; interactive computer images by Music lecturer Peter Elsea; and lighting design by Theater Arts assistant professor David Cuthbert. The program aired last year on University of California Television (UCTV).

UCTV is a 24-hour channel that broadcasts the best in educational and enrichment programming from the campuses, national laboratories, and affiliated institutions of the University of California. It is available in over 16 million households nationwide via cable television, direct broadcast satellite, live Internet webcasts, video-on-demand archives, and audio and video podcasts.

Marsh tours with David Grisman Quintent

Music lecturer George Marsh, who has been a drumset and rhythm teacher at UCSC for 22 years, has been touring with the David Grisman Quintent over the last year. He is also featured on the recently released CDs “Homage” and “Game/No Game.” To hear samples of his work, visit http://mutablemusic.com/releases.html.

Theater Arts

Beal receives grants to develop performance work

Dance lecturer Tandy Beal is the recipient of two recent grants in support of the research and development of a new performance work, “HereAfterHere: the afterlife project.” The James Irvine Foundation in partnership with Dance USA has awarded Beal a $20,000 Creation to Performance grant, a prestigious award given to California directors/choreographers to create new work. She also received a grant from Theatre Bay Area, an organization dedicated to strengthening and promoting the theater community in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In her innovative project, Beal will invite the public into the exploration of our concepts of what happens after we die. For this project she will use both a downtown booth for video interviews as well as a website in order to engage the public in a conversation about the afterlife. Beal says the project is a natural evolution for her as she continues to probe the interactions between art and community.

An evening-length work, “HereAfterHere” will combine Beal’s long-term investigation of dance, visual narrative, circus, text, and music to make a rich mosaic of both contemporary and traditional concepts of the afterlife. The performance will explore a number of fundamental questions about what happens after death:

How are we transformed when we long for a paradise?
Where is it located?
Who dwells there?
What are the accommodations like?
Why is it exclusionary?
Why might it be for eternity?
How do we get in?
And what’s the price of admission?

Beal has had long, productive collaborations with many artists. Her long-time musical director Jon Scoville will be creating the score, Evan Parker, who was Beal’s lighting designer for 30 years, will design the work. "HereAfterHere" will be created over the next 18 months. It will premiere at the Henry J. Mello Center for Performing Arts in Watsonville.

In other news, Beal was named one of the four Dance Icons of the West by the San Francisco Performing Arts Library. For the project, which was underwritten by the National Edowment for the Arts, the organization is producing a documentary on Beal’s life and work that will be shown next year in San Francisco.

Martinez attends Fulbright anniversary celebration in Peru

Alma Martinez, assistant professor of Theater Arts, participated in a 50th anniversary celebration for the Fulbright Commission in Peru. The event was held at the U.S. Embassy in Lima on May 10.

Alma Martinez (left), assistant professor of Theater Arts, pictured with J. Curtis Struble (University of California, Berkeley, 1974), the U.S. Ambassador to Peru.

Martinez received a Fulbright Scholar grant to conduct research and lecture at La Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima during the 2006-2007 academic year. She is working with Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, one of the oldest and most important popular theater companies in Latin America. She also is lecturing on the subject of the interconnectivity of Teatro Chicano in the United States and the New Popular Theatre (Nuevo Teatro Popular) in Latin America.

Foley to curate Indian puppet exhibit

The Porter College Faculty Gallery will host a display of Indian puppets curated by Kathy Foley in the fall of 2006. The exhibit is part of her work on the collecting and research of UCLA's Mel Helstein who left his research papers including translations, puppets, and field notes on work in A. P. and Karnataka to the UCLA Fowler Museum. Foley's research is funded by a grant from the Arts Research Institute.

In other news, Foley performed the wayang golek rod puppet story of how Islam came to Java at the University of Washington and the Northwest Puppet Center in Seattle in March 2006. In July, her exhibit on Southeast Asian masks will open at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta.

Jannarone’s Special Research Grant to fund residency in Paris

Kimberly Jannarone, assistant professor of Theater Arts, won a Special Research Grant from the UCSC Committee on Research to fund a three-month residency in Paris in the fall. During her stay, Jannarone plans to attend seminars, conduct research, and finish a book about experimental theater theorist Antonin Artaud.

"Artaud and His Doubles" focuses on the writings of Antonin Artaud in the context of intellectual history in the between-wars era in Europe. In the book, Jannarone is situating Artaud's envisioned theater — The Theater of Cruelty — in the 1930s and 1940s resurgence of counter-Enlightenment thinking, mysticism, and cultural change in the context of mass culture, alienation, and fascism. According to Jannarone, the book will be the first to consider Artaud's major work, “The Theater and Its Double,” in the most important and most neglected context of his work: the between-wars era in which the rise of the crowds, spiritual malaise, and reaction against modern European society flourished. Through this lens, the book examines the aesthetic and political implications of idealized freedom, engineering crowds, and totalizing visions of life and culture.

In addition to writing while in France, Jannarone will continue her ongoing research at the Bibliothèque Arsenal and Bibliothèque Nationale. She will also be working at the Centre de Recherche sur l'Histoire du Theatre (CRHT) de l'Université Paris IV Paris-Sorbonne. The Centre de Recherche focuses on theater and the history of its aesthetic and philosophical thought, centering on dramatic theory and reception. The grant will allow her to make use of the Centre's Bibliothèque Dramatique, take part in its regular lectures and symposia, and work with the faculty at the Centre who are concentrated in theater history and the modern era.