July 13  PERFORMANCE 6 PM

8 collaborators in  "MANIPULATION"

Casa Regis has an unusual event for you. A group of 8 artists, musicians, and movement performers from Iran and the United States embarked on a month long residency together at Villa Emma in order to collaborate on an experimental performance, "Manipulation". Composer Shooka Afshar created a "graphic score" which is a way of composing using shapes and colors rather than musical notation. This frees the artists up to improvise with each other and in their own medium.

THE ARTISTS INCLUDE: SHOOKA AFSHAR, APRIL CLAGGETT, DANI GREEN, STEVIE KINCHELOE, GARY McGRAW, MATT SAVAGE, SOGOL SHIRAZI, RHINE SINGLETON

The theme motivating the research, as the title indicates, has to do with subconscious stages of manipulation and the damage ensued using manipulative tactics in relationships. In this composition, the musicians, singers, movement and visual artists, will interact with each other as the theatrical performance unfolds. Using several visual art mediums - props, paints, wires - and various sonic instruments - piano, violin, electric guitar, percussive elements and synthesizers - the group will interpret the graphic score, immersing the audience in the emotive and complex experience of manipulation.

a BIG THANK YOU is IN ORDER

TO VICTORIA CHAPMAN

Victoria who is our U.S. Liason has been the force behind facilitating these encounters! Victoria finds interesting people, spends time with them, hears out their needs, and matches them up. We are so thankful to her for making our presence known in the U.S. and beyond. LINK

This is a nice segue to fill you in on how the month long residency with Alice Sheppard Fidler went last Spring, as Alice was the English artist Victoria brought us.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM the EXHIBITION

ALICE SHEPPARD FIDLER

"Imagining the Fluidity of Impermanence"

Alice was invited in Spring of 2022 to do a month long artist residency, concluding in a solo exhibition, based on her on-going investigation of historic buildings with stratified identities. The research was oriented along two axes. One was that she would install/recreate selected works that had been preconceived but adapted to the site and the second one was that she would create site-specific installations that were generated by materials found locally or within the building.

Her time spent in the residency was super productive, as she connected to the place and its people, and her installations grew organically in response to Casa Regis.

Installation "Sum of its parts"

THE BUILDING

What is a building? A meaningless structure unless humans inhabit it. Without care, it is overgrown by vegetation, roof tiles are displaced, and water starts the decay process. It might not take even 10 years to permanently compromise a building that with a human presence has been kept healthy since the 1600s or possibly over 11 generations. What you find in Alice’s work is that measurements are calculated in terms of human lives and her pieces always acknowledge a presence.

The installation "Sum of its Parts" was so appropriate that we asked to keep it as part of our permanent exhibition. Alice intuited that by collecting every free chair, whether it be covered in dust in the attic or basement (besides the uncanny fact that they all fit perfectly inside the space she had chosen), she would somehow be giving a visual chronology of the past. It is as if every soul is given a spot, as we travel from scholastic chair, to garden chair, to kitchen chair, as well as sweep through the stylistic changes of the eras. It also brought stories from the locals to the forefront. One visitor, seeing all the chairs, vividly recalled how as a 7 or 8 year old child, she was lined up with her peers in that room with their chairs in rows, their feet dangling, all facing the same direction, while they did their Catechisms with the head nun.

Installation "Surfeit"

Installation "Momentum"

MATERIALS

In Alice's family there was a heightened awareness for recycling and great pride was taken in not letting anything go to waste. Her family legacy was making something out of everything.

Of course the identity of an artist can't always be summed up in a few biographical references, but we can say that Alice's practice is sensitive to not adding more heaps of "stuff" to the world. In this region, known for its textile production, a local neighbor and factory worker brought home a piece of cloth, 25 meters (27 yards) long and gave it as an offering to the artist. So thoughtful.

This cloth was interesting because it had reached the end of the line. It had served, like a work horse (for what they call "satini di decatissaggio") to protect, in a sandwich format, the fine wool cloth. After 50 to 100 times of being subjected to high-temperature washings and pressure, and once retired, its only usefulness would be a drop cloth for painters. Yet, Alice inserted one more life cycle before returning it to this final fate.

The artist worked on the cold, stone floor to meticulously fold the cloth, being scrunched up in an uncomfortable position for days and days. The resulting installation piece, "Momentum" speaks to me on many levels. The cloth was an "ugly" leftover and with the touch of her hands, she made it beautiful (fluffy and inviting/monastic and meditative). It is also hard for me to disassociate the artist's results from the origin of the cloth from the iconic textile factory, so I continue to see in the work an honorary gesture to the laborer, to the repetition of their day, to the physical contact with the materials, to the human behind the machine.

Installation detail, "Momentum"

Ninaì, Walter Guabello, and Alice Sheppard Fidler

COLLABORATION

Alice asked local musicians Ninaì and Walter Guabello to collaborate with her, as a way to get to know the building acoustically, curious about what would be generated by and through the space. What an experience! The two sound whisperers worked with Alice in the dark, improvising with any found object, and felt out every sound crevice. The walls had a huge amount of unexpected emotion and I had never felt so directly linked to past voices. A big thanks to these musicians who spent the day with us and certainly helped Alice hear the unspoken past.

Installation, "Untitled (Sandbags)"

...notes on the building...

In conclusion, it was a wonderful experience working with Alice and I invite you to follow her on Instagram. LINK

RESIDENCIES   AND PROJECTS

Thank you for not just following our news but being part of our news.

L. Mikelle Standbridge

email: infocasaregis@gmail.com