Join us for a virtual reception to celebrate the video release of Awaiting Oblivion… and The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun to OntheBoards.tv

Awaiting Oblivion… premiered at On the Boards in 2017 and its companion piece, The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun, was shown at the Henry Art Gallery in 2018.

In collaboration, On the Boards and the Henry have co-released the video documentation of both works. On the Boards Artistic Director Rachel Cook and Henry Art Gallery Associate Curator Nina Bozicnik join co-creators Tim Smith-Stewart and Jeffrey Azevedo in conversation, exploring the history and current resonance of these two works.

ABOUT THE WORKS

Awaiting Oblivion–Temporary Solutions for surviving the dystopian future we find ourselves within at present:

     Blurring the lines between fiction and reality, Awaiting Oblivion... follows the story of AO, an anonymous street artist who has tasked Tim and Jeffrey with the creation of a performance as a way to share AO’s “temporary solutions” for existing within our collapsing empire. Inspired by creative processes developed by the '60’s Fluxus art movement, each “temporary solution” is a visual/textual poem contained in a Flux-kit (a cigar box collaged with stenciled imagery and typewritten letters). We follow Tim, Jeffrey, and AO in a flurry of street art, secret messages, and performance scores in a poetic, radical fight for survival.

The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun:

     The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun is a performative reading of Ryan Helterbrand’s work on the queer Surrealist artist and activist Claude Cahun. It centers the anti-Nazi resistance movement and poetic tactics Cahun organized with her partner Suzanne Malherbe from 1940 to 1944 on the Channel Island of Jersey under the name of “the Nameless Soldiers.” This performative reading is intended to reclaim Cahun’s all-but-erased campaign of covert anti-fascist insurrection and sabotage. It features performers Fenja Abrams, Grace Orr, and Sierra Hendrix who recite excerpts of Helterbrand’s writing while performing a tightly choreographed physical score created in collaboration with Alyza DelPan-Monley.

Following the performative reading, Nina Bozicnik, Associate Curator, facilitates a conversation with Helterbrand on his research of Claude Cahun and her engagement with avant-garde aesthetics and revolutionary politics.