Image
A dancer dressed in white standing on a white rectangular cube in front of white theatrical fog in a black box studio.

Telepathic Improvisation

Boudry / Lorenz
Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 7PM
Theater

“Challenging the idea of images as mere depictions of (political) actions, this filmed performance speaks about productive tensions between the fantasy of an action and the action itself.” — Alhena Katsof and Mason Leaver-Yap on Boudry / Lorenz’s Telepathic Improvisation

Boudry / Lorenz present their film Telepathic Improvisation produced at EMPAC in Spring 2017.

Boudry / Lorenz’s film, Telepathic Improvisation, takes as its starting point the late Rensselaer Professor Pauline Oliveros’ 1974 score of the same name. However, the audience for this filmed performance is not only called upon to telepathically communicate with the performers (as is the case with Oliveros’ original score), but also to communicate with the other elements on stage, from the theatrical lights to a group of autonomous white boxes that glide across the stage.

The film is bookended by two monologues: the Oliveros score, and a 1969 text by German revolutionary Ulrike Meinhof that prescribes resistance in the face of global capitalist oppression. Telepathic Improvisation attempts to disrupt historical narratives surrounding agency and action by elevating the technical, non-human actors to the equal status of their human counterparts.

Main Image: Production Still, Telepathic Improvisation in Studio 1. (2017). Photo: Mick Bello / EMPAC.

Dates + Tickets

Time-Based Visual Art
Performance
Commission
Telepathic Improvisation
Boudry / Lorenz
Thursday 28
7:00 PM
September 2017

Season

Curator
Production Credits

Telepathic Improvisation is presented as part of a year-long series of major presentations Everybody talks about the weather… We don’t by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz in the US, co-curated by Alhena Katsof in collaboration with the Walker Art Center’s Moving Image Commissions, Minneapolis; EMPAC / Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy; Participant Inc., New York; and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). 

Funding

This project is produced in partnership with the Goethe-Institut New York and generously supported by the Bentson Foundation, Service des affaires culturelles - Canton de Vaud, and ProHelvetia.