Ira Murfin’s An Interview + Pastel Fractal

•••An Interview is a single, linear performance, consisting of an indeterminate number of interlocking one-hour segments, each made up of the performed transcript of a prior interview and a new extemporaneous interview between two participants — the performer who conducted the interview in the previous segment and a new performer, who interviews the returning performer during the second half of the performance. An Interview commenced with a unique half hour segment presented at Tritriangle on 14 October 2016 in which Ira S. Murfin, the artist instigating the work, was interviewed by a second performer, Heather McShane, for 30 minutes. Later, McShane was interviewed by Nathaniel Lee Jones. For this, the third installment, Jones will be joined by a new performer, Dao Nguyen. Jones and Nguyen will sit across a table from one another and read, verbatim, the transcribed text of the McShane:Jones interview. Once the transcript has been read, Nguyen will interview Jones for one half hour on any subject(s) of her choosing.

•••Pastel Fractal’s mission is to perform wonders™ with the mission statements of Chicagoans. For years, Pastel Fractal stated their old mission to make dance music and sculpture while exercising a personal agenda to reuse the technologically obsolete, the aesthetically dated, and the wastefully discarded. To this day, Pastel Fractal performs wonders™ with the mission statements of Chicagoans that are stored to floppy disks. Pastel Fractal’s mobile performance apparatus is constructed of M.I.D.I. machines (with floppy disk drives) and repurposed walkers, crutches, and commodes. Pastel Fractal transports their body and mobile performance apparatus by bicycle. Seashells are pastel fractals formed by natural recursive processes that qualify as wonders™ and inspire Pastel Fractal.

The evening will begin with An Interview, followed by Pastel Fractal.

Nathanael Jones is a Canadian poet. He holds a BFA (Interdisciplinary Fine Arts) from NSCAD University and is an MFA in Writing candidate at SAIC. He has performed and exhibited in Chicago and Halifax. His work has been published by the Cerealbowl Collective, Hound, HAIR CLUB, Present Tense Pamphlets, and Infinity’s Kitchen, and is forthcoming in Homonym.

Dao Nguyen is an interdisciplinary artist who choreographs thought experiments, play apparatuses, obstacle courses, and transformation rituals. A score becomes a map is a situation where objects, actions, and bodies encounter ontological questions. Her name is a homophone for the Vietnamese word for knife. She is the compact, red Leatherman multi-tool your aunt gave you for Christmas ten years ago. On sale at Marshall’s. Versatility and hidden strength in a small package at a discount. Stealthy enough to pass through security checkpoints on three continents on four separate occasions. She can cut, screw, file, saw, and open your beer. Bonus applications include carving miniature graphite figurines, picking locks, and sculpting tofu.
She has exhibited and performed in backyards, bathrooms, stairwells, highways, and gallery spaces, including Sector 2337, Defibrillator, the MCA, Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Brea Art Gallery, and The Foundry Arts Centre. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was Artist-in-Residence at ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, and Elsewhere: A Living Museum.

Ira S. Murfin is a theatre artist, writer and scholar based in Chicago. His research and interdisciplinary performance work concern the relationship between talk, text, and the performance event. He is currently completing a dissertation on extemporaneous talk, artistic discipline, and media in the post-1960s American avant-garde in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre & Drama at Northwestern University. Performance work has been presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, Links Hall, Sector 2337, Block Museum of Art, and the Rhinoceros Theater Festival, among other places. He also makes work as a founding member of the devised theatre collective The Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials. Critical and creative writing has appeared in Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, Review of Contemporary Fiction, 491, elimae, Fiction at Work, Chicago Art Criticism, Chicago Arts Journal, Present Tense Pamphlets, the blogs of the Harry Ransom Center and Shakespeare 400 Chicago, and Requited, where he is also Performance Editor.

Saturday May 13, 7pm doors, 7:30pm start
$5-10 suggested donation
TRITRANGLE
1550 N Milwaukee Ave Fl3
get@tritriangle.net

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