Research 2008

Research 2008

Jeremy Xido
Coaching Project: Piracy & Tour-Guiding: Cooptive Realities

© Chris Sheller
Coaching Project
Week 3, 28.7.–1.8.2008
10:00–16:00
VOP2
Piracy and Tour-guiding (Co-optive Realities) This workshop focuses on the creation and implementation of intimate experiences for people in the public realm. Strategising ways of co-opting reality for personal purposes, we will analyse, experience and create site specific performances or installations over the course of the workshop and set them loose in the world and on each other. Utilising a mixture of various forms of mediated expression we will define a series of working tools for understanding and creating an art form that we call Co-Opts: art works in public space that play with and alter the perception of reality in order to bend it, twist it, and utilise it as a primary element in creating of a work of art or expression. By "mediate expression" we mean pretty much anything as long as someone can conceive of a way of using it - this could be audio, video, performance, city traffic, children’s toys, instructions for treasure hunts, framed sun-sets, town architecture. Anything. It depends on the interests, ingenuity and irreverence of the artist. Co-Opts are essentially performative, but not in a traditional sense of performance. They are things that a participant or audience member does. The creator sets up a type of tour through physical space and time that another person can follow and experience. In this way, “reality” is conceived as a series of actions or do-able acts in the world combined with the contemporaneous means for understanding and interpreting those actions. At their core, Co-Opts are conceived of as a creative means of interacting with that reality at the very moment in which it is being questioned, shifted and interpreted. The workshop consists of a combination of practical exercises and theoretical discussions used to explore and define the work. It will be dedicated to presenting and sharing the work created by the workshop participants. This will be open to the public. To get a better idea of what “Co-Opts” can be, please take a look at www.cabula6.com. Click on “c6 projects” and look at TRACE, CAFÉ BON BON and THE ANGEL PROJECT. Who is the workshop meant for? • Choreographers • Performers • University and Post Graduate Art Students • Film and New Media Students or Professionals • Theatre Directors who work Out of the Box • Historians (City Historians) • Storytellers • Anyone who daydreams when walking around the city, pretending to be someone else • Anyone who has ever pretended to be a secret agent • Anyone that looks to an apartment window and tries to imagine what it would be like to live there • Anyone who tries to imagine what it would be like to live in a certain city when visiting it • Anyone that likes to walk around the city with a walkman • Anyone who feels a strong divide between their life and the way s/he has to act in the public life • Anyone who has a strong active fantasy life or likes to game play / role play • Anyone who ever thought to do something and never did it • Anyone who’s ever wanted to run naked through the streets but feels like they need to have a good reason to do it. Some topics covered: • narrative structure in physical space • story telling through physical sensation • characterisation • hybrid reality: the line between truth and fiction • literal sites vs. functional sites • "being there": intimacy and presence • transparency / ghosting • guiding • history embedded in public space • gaming • audacity / irreverence / naughtiness Jeremy Xido Jeremy Xido originally from Detroit, graduated cum laude in Painting and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in New York and trained at the Actor's Studio with Barbara Poitier, Arthur Penn and Andre Gregory. He has trained with Earl Mosley at the Alvin Ailey Dance Center in New York, and Sasha Waltz, Jordi Cortes, Frey Faust, Ivan Wolfe and Curt Hayworth. He plays Capoeira Angola with Mestre João Grande, Mestre Laercio and Mestre Moraes in Brazil, New York, and Europe. In 1998 he was part of the Forum for Young Theater Artists at the Berlin Theater Festival and in 2000 received a Fulbright Grant to develop the company Cabula6 in Barcelona. He was Artist-in-Residence at General Eléctrica in Barcelona where, with Cabula6, he created "The Love Project" and "Eixam". In 2003 along with Claudia Heu he was commissioned by the Tanzquartier in Vienna to create the audio-tour and theater piece "Trace," which went on to premier in New York City, Bucharest, Vienna and Salzburg as part of the Sommerszene where it won the Audience Award. At the end of 2005, he created "Angel Central" as part of Tanzquartier's "Rent an Angel" project, and for 2006 Cabula6 was invited to take part in the Advancing Performing Arts Project (APAP), a European Union project organized by 6 theaters across Europe. For this residency he shot and directed a series of 6 documentary films investigating the reception of local criminal cases in 6 towns across Europe. The films focus less on the truth of the cases and more on the ways in which the people attempt to retell the stories of what happened in order to understand who they are and with whom they live. In 2006 along with Claudia Heu, he developed the piece "Café Bon Bon" in residency at the Choreographic Center in Linz and premiered it at the Austrian Dance Platform and Tanzquartier Wien in 2006. Their project, "On Earth," was commissioned by the Tanzquartier in Vienna and UNIACC in Santiago de Chile. It took place on a public bus, that crossed from one part of Santiago de Chile to the next, at the end of February 2007. The next version of ON EARTH, presented at Tanzquartier Vienna in May 2007 was a co-production with the refugee center Macondo on the outskirts of Vienna. He was again commissioned by APAP to create a piece focussing on African Immigration patterns between Portugal and Angola for 2008. Cabula6 has performed all over Europe, in the States and South America. As an actor and dancer Jeremy has worked with Esther Balfe and Tanztheater Wien, lawine_torrèn, Laroque Dance Company, Cia Diagonal, CATARACTS, Jay Scheib, the onnotheater, and at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin under the direction of Stephan Mueller. In the US he has worked at the California Shakespeare Festival, Virginia Shakespeare Festival, and the Drama League in New York. He has appeared in several feature films including Brad Anderson's "The Machinist," as well as TV series for the BBC in London, TV3 in Barcelona and "Law and Order" in New York. In addition to the Crime Europa series he has completed 3 short films as a filmmaker: "Trace Vienna," "Trace Napoo," and "Monger's Cut." Jeremy is currently developing a new stage piece called "Other People's Pain" which will premiere in October 2008.
Jeremy Xido