April Live in Performance
Performing in LA, Producing Projects Around the World
AMP sends greetings from Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Edinburgh...
Newsletter March 2009
Producing, Performing, and Building Community
Sign Up
Quick Links

Hello!

I've been doing a bit of behind-the-scenes work on AMP in the last few months, and though that's still in progress, I thought I'd send greetings from Los Angeles, and bits of news from AMP and its members. Our first Featured Member of 2009 is April Hava Shenkman, about whom you can read and see more below (that's her just above). April has contributed a piece about working as a performance artist in L.A. Also contributing are theatre director Matt B. Wells of Los Angeles, arts organizer Federico Hewson of Amsterdam, and arts organizer Andrew T. Crummy of Edinburgh (or nearby). Read on for more on what you can do with AMP, and a few things going on in today's art world.

* You can now embed your videos in blogs and other content on the AMP website. Login and post embedded YouTube clips of your performances and other things you want to share.

* All of your posts now go directly to AMP's front page. Post a blog, upload a song, embed a video - the best way to make yourself known to the AMP community is to share your work, as well as post opportunities you can share with others in AMP's Art Classifieds. It's still all free.

* If you meant to donate to AMP but just forgot - or finally feel like you have 2 extra dollars, or euros, or pounds, or rupees - send it to AMP via PayPal, being sure to direct the donation to pluginamp@gmail.com. You can also mail donations to AMP: Artists Meeting Place, P.O. Box 292198, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 90029

* AMPer Chiara Viscomi in San Francisco is working to put together an AMP event for some time this summer. If you are in the San Francisco Bay area and would like to help, please email Chiara at iridescentlotus@yahoo.com.

* AMP is partnering with GYST-Ink, an artist-run company providing information, technology and solutions created by artists for artists. GYST-Ink's software and services aim to streamline the business aspects of an art career, saving artists money and freeing up more time for work in the studio. Spearheaded by Cal Arts professor, renowned artist and curator, and AMPer Karen Atkinson, GYST-Ink has been the leading resource for professional practice, art advice and art business services in Southern California for over ten years, and helping thousands of artists from all over America get on the road to career success. GYST2.8 guides artists through every aspect of developing a professional career. From cataloging an entire inventory of work, to writing an artist statement, to planning for retirement, GYST helps artists get organized, make critical decisions and tackle important projects. GYST2.8 is recommended by The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Otis College of Art and Design, Fractured Atlas, Cal Arts, Side Street Projects, and Chicago Arts Resources. Learn more about GYST-Ink here, and enter AMP's Affiliate discount code - AMP0901 - here and you'll get $20 off of GYST2.8 software.

* New opportunities are constantly being posted in AMP's Art Classifieds. Click here to view them all. About 25 have been posted in the last month, including

among many others. Check in frequently, as new opportunities are posted regularly.

* Visit AMP on Facebook.

* The big news around the world, for artists and everyone else, is the economy. Here's a fascinating piece from the USA's National Public Radio (NPR) on how artists might transform a neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. Unbelievable that one can now buy a house there for $100 (for the time being), and great to see some new potential for artists rejuvenating their local community. So often there's something amazing that can be built with creative use of existing resources.

Matt Wells
Some words from AMPer Matt Wells, Founding Artistic Director of needtheater. He is a theater director, producer, and actor living in his hometown of Los Angeles.

I'm wading through all of these financial reports here at the Arts Center where I work.

Same basic results you always see: people aren't going to see straight plays, arts funding is declining, theaters are closing, arts centers are shuttering their doors.

I can get lost in the minutiae and I can get paralyzed by the stats, but once I get up from my desk I'm going to trudge my ass over to the theater where I work and get ready for another show.

I've written before that art is not a business, it's a vice. It may be helpful in some circumstances to speak of it as a business, but it's very dangerous and short-sighted to think about it that way.

Some other basic truths I'm going to try to stay mindful of this year:

An arts group is not a corporation.

Art is not a product.

An annual budget is not an accurate measurement of a arts organization's health.

Money comes third, if at all, in the list of Things You Need To Get Something Done. First is the good idea, second is a group of people to help, third is money for resources or just the resources themselves.

All right.

Sometimes it's good to put it down in black and white. Helps clear away some of the clutter.

On a related topic, this below is Feingold, a wonderful theater critic, writing in NY's the Village Voice about eight years ago, an essay titled "Your Future, My Past":

...the theater has a future, in our geography as well as in our souls. Technology built the big retail chains that have taken over so much real estate, and technology, via the Internet, is slowly weeding them out of it. Soon the realtors will be eager to welcome us back into their vacant, spacious storefronts. At the same time, millions of desk-locked, glazed-eyed Web workers will be flooding the streets, desperate for unplugged, un-downloaded human experience. We had better be ready for them. We had better know our history, our mission, our tradition, our means for reaching audiences, and our justification for addressing them. We must be ready to speak as the theater has always spoken, to any and all comers. What stories we tell, and how we tell them, will be the meaning of the next millennium, long after the DVD drives and MP3 players have ceased to work.

And I'm reminded again that having faith means not only believing the impossible will occur, but believing it's the only possible thing that can occur.

We're going to get this city back, one arts center at a time.

This post is revised from a John Clancy posting.

here.
April Hava Shenkman
April Hava Shenkman, a Los Angeles Performance Artist, received a B.A. in Theatre from The University of La Verne on a four year acting scholarship. During her undergraduate studies, April performed by invitation at The International Theatre Festival in Mostar, Bosnia, where she spent a summer residency. She received a Post-Grad Acting certificate from The Guildford School of Acting in England, where she spent a year.

Traveling extensively in Europe, April has been greatly inspired by European arts & cultures. She studied & performed with Rachel Rosenthal & Co. in Los Angeles from 2004-2007. April has been creating new performances in Los Angeles since 2002, including full solo & ensemble productions, and performs regularly at various venues throughout Los Angeles.


For more about April, including information on upcoming appearances, please visit: http://www.AprilHavaShenkman.com & http://www.myspace.com/AprilHavaShenkman

Read below to see what April has to say being a performance artist in Los Angeles.

April can be directly contacted at AprilHavaShenkman@gmail.com
by April Hava Shenkman

I stand at the front of 2009, thrilled to be where I am, doing what I'm doing - performance art in Los Angeles. I often ask why I have chosen Los Angeles - or has Los Angeles has chosen me? Los Angeles has recently revealed herself to be the perfect plateau for new performance work. Los Angeles is an open invitation begging those who dare to wake her up, shake her up, and alas, make her up. This city re-invents herself with every creation birthed inside her. Perhaps it is this that gilds this city as the emporium of dream makers.

Live performance in Los Angeles breathes between the cracks of glamorous Hollywood, and exists somewhat privately & secretly. A performance artist may wonder where the division is drawn, and why a choice must be made between the two mediums. To me, it's always been a part of the same art - the art of human expression. The only difference is in instruments to facilitate the act. Therefore, I don't find it peculiar to practice live performance in a city whose most famous- and infamous - medium is film. If anything, my appetite is whetted to do more live art; embellishing the integral humility exposed in the root of the art of performance itself. Our society doesn't often present an opportunity to remove the mechanics of being, leading the ritualistic structure of existence to overshadow any hopes for freedom, both in art and life. Isn't that why we practice & experience art - to taste freedom?

My performance art is all about just that: freedom, especially from pretense, through raw exposed moments of un-defined cultural activity. Avant-garde performance work immediately makes it permissible to practice freedom in art, begging of the artist to enter the work, as if for the first time, expressing what it is to be alive. The human experience is a fantasia of poetry & mystique. I choose to celebrate this mystique, and allow the performances to have a language of there own. Therefore, I choose not to translate my performances. Art is loud enough on it's own, and quite transmittable. Its multi-sensory mode of communication holds none of the reservations stunned by tongue and cheek. It's pure, and unbiased on how it is received. There is no need to speak on the behalf of art, but it is crucial to our experiences, to express & explore it. Life is theatrical, but the theatricality of life is far from realizing its true potential. Art actively gives way to courting the imagination into the undefinable heights that the dreamers, visionaries, and pioneers in us all relish as the source of creation. Performance art creatively gives way to the romance of experiencing it.

As a performance artist, I feel a responsibility to harbor dream-scapes. I don't aim to show what we see every day; I aim to show what we don't know how to see every day. My quest to expose the unseen beauty of life is heightened through a theatrical presentation, where visual sensations are enlivened by surprising juxtapositions. The sophistication of being "cultured" shouldn't interfere with an innate response to color and shape alive in space. I don't use story as a base for my performances, but rather produce an aesthetic rendering of life in the present, both personal and universal, into a mirage of sensations. My work is best approached as a high voltage meditation, that acts as a gateway to a vortex of alertness, awakening a part of the soul that didn't believe it was asleep before.

My latest show, "CHINATOWN, CIAO!" has been presented at Echo Curio, a gallery in Echo Park, December, 2008, Celebration Theatre, Hollywood & Son of Semele, Silver Lake in February 2009, and will be back at ECHO CURIO: 1519 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park 90026 APRIL 19, 2009 @ 8:30pm. This a show in love with LUCK. Good Luck! We all have it when we want it! Delving into the universal law of attraction, happiness & fortune. Toying with the follies of what is lucky, what is Chinese (developed in coordination with the auspicious year of Chinese Charm in 2008, a year with China on the global stage & the Olympics opening 8-8-08, 8 being China's lucky number); inspired by my recent travels to Rome, "CHINATOWN, CIAO!" is set in a Chinese Restaurant in Rome. This performance oscillates between cultures to the point that the performance becomes a new culture. It's a tradition of mine to ignite a new show before the end of the year, and then develop it through performance in the new year. I enjoy the chance to present this show in both gallery & theatre, for it allows the performance to take its own shape between both, exposing intimacy to the audience. As with every show, there is a hope for experiencing something new that will wake us up, shake us up & make us up. How lucky I am to be a performance artist in L.A.!
Valentine Peace Project: Wales
Left: a VPP participant in Wales

This year, AMPer Federico Hewson's Valentine Peace Project expanded its vision of Valentine's Day as an opportunity for promoting peace. TVPP:
  • generated an opportunity for poetry on themes of peace and discussion in schools and organizations in Amsterdam
  • held an evening of peace and political poetry at the American Book Center and an evening of music at Sappho's bar, both in Amsterdam
  • held a Valentine Peace Celebration at Amsterdam's historic and oldest church - the Oude Kerk (Old Church). 5,000 fair trade roses were donated to be shared together with hundreds of poems from the Netherlands, US, Holland, New Zealand and England
  • More than one hundred Amsterdammers passed out roses in the heart of the city on an unusually sunny winter's day
  • TVPP built partnerships and flowers were shared in Berlin, Wales, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and in Chicago where a special workshop focused on poetry and resistance with Code Pink and the Neighborhood Writing Alliance
  • The project aims to continue to develop with poets, students, activists and community artists in its message of Valentine's day to recognize the many faces of love and the budding potential for peace in the 21st century
TVPP is glad to be supported by AMP, sharing the goal of generating creative networks to make the world a more beautiful and peaceful place. Contact Federico Hewson about the Valentine Peace Project directly at fhewson@valentinepeaceproject.org

AMPer Andrew Crummy in Scotland recently produced the third World Community Arts Day, and welcomes you to join in for the fourth, coming up next February.

More from Andrew:
The World Community Arts Day is held on the 17th of February each year. The aim is to ask as many people as possible to be creative on that day, using art as a catalyst for caring and sharing. AMP has been very supportive of WCAD and we hope to develop this link for the future.

Sing, dance, theatre, draw, paint, write, make, poem, photograph, lecture, walk, tour, talk, teach an art class or do anything that is creative! It can be a project for WCAD or it could be a separate ongoing project. If possible the artwork or event will be put on the internet or linked to the main WCAD website. The aim is to create a "world festival society" for a day, to illustrate how festival and celebration through the arts can provide answers.

In the first three years World Community Arts Day has grown from an initial idea for worldwide friends to celebrate the life of Reg Bolton to over 400 websites which include many social networks, ongoing projects, concerts, workshops, radio stations and live internet broadcasts from almost every country in the world. Although it is difficult to work how many were involved, on monitoring 36 of the 400 websites in 2009 an estimated 250,000 took part through views/hits, members/friends, and participation through the internet on these key websites. It is all voluntary and multicultural, essentially grassroots individuals and groups expressing a global voice. There is no money involved and it is entirely voluntary. Throughout the year it grows as the social networks continue to build up linkage.

The main aim is to not to control, but concentrate on linkage and cooperation. An example from this year of how this works would be an poem written about Art and AIDS in the Cameroon by young women called Zoneziwoh Mbondgulo, emailed to Homely Planet in Northern Ireland, an internet Radio Station, and then recorded by an Irish Poet - Scream Blue Murmur and then broadcast both from Northern Ireland and Cameroon. Another project is a live broadcast on the day of a recreation of "All you need is love" by The Beatles in 1967 by a tribute band called The Cheatles and a community group from Rochdale UK called Peopleprint that gained 17,000 viewers that day. Another example is a concert in The Waterfront Hall Belfast which was broadcast and repeated throughout the following week by Homely Planet. Another example is Ken Wolverton in Mew Mexico, who created an artwork on his farm, then update its creation (over a four month period) on his website and World Community Arts Day discussion group. And finally a global drumming circle was started by Drumatik, a drumming group from Fife Scotland, broadcast live by Rocca Gutteridge on Leith FM, who is also a member of AMP.

You are invited to be part of this growing movement.

http://www.communiversity.org.uk/worldcommunityartsday.htm

You can still hear highlights on Homely Planet radio station
http://www.homelyplanet.co.uk/
http://www.homelyplanet.co.uk/wcad09.php

"All you need is love" broadcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOA25DbK_zU

Support from Scottish Minister of Culture
http://www.communiversity.org.uk/lindafabiani.htm

Ken Wolverton, New Mexico, USA
http://kewolve.com/Communityarts.htm

Getting involved with your local arts community is good for you, on so many levels. Start local, post your doings on AMP through blogs, images, sounds, and videos, and check back to see what other AMPers are doing. And don't forget that with AMP, you share in an amazing worldwide collective of artists and art worlds.

all the best,

 Grey Hat
Terri Anderson, Executive Director
AMP: Artists Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Email Marketing by