Videos
Case, Treaty, Land
4'45
Recorded at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky during a Spring 2021 improv workshop. Case, Treaty, Land is an experimental guided group improvisation piece that explores the complex web of colonialism and indigenous land rights in the United States by mixing the text of contemporary court cases, US treaties with nations including the Chippewa nation, and collected writings from indigenous and non-indigenous sources, with the sounds of tools involved in dictating how the land is used (books, pestles and mortars, and saws). Each performer performs one role, and using a method akin to blackout poetry, a tapestry of sound emerges that emphasizes how both decisions and music are fundamentally determined by the voices that get to participate. Complete performance notes can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/e24tk2jj
Beiber Bathos Elegy
12' + 27'
In this hybrid work of musical performance, New York-based artist, poet, and writer Felix Bernstein shifts from poetry to cabaret drag to lonely web voyeurism to deconstructive criticism to opera. Bringing into the light issues of identity and persona, Bernstein ponders the concept of bathos—the anticlimax that comes with the descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. Set to new music by composer Rron Karahoda, pop star "Justin Bieber" visits the stage as a prophetic angel to critique Felix’s perverse rapture and hysteria, while avant-garde vocal artist and pioneer Shelley Hirsch leads a youth’s chorus in a rendition of “Tomorrow” from Annie. Felix’s frequent collaborator Gabe Rubin directs and appears as a solemn sprite in a haunting version of Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye.”
Bieber Bathos Elegy was organized by Jay Sanders, Curator and Curator of Performance, as a co-commission with NYPAC, the New York Performance Artists Collective, with residency support from Pioneer Works.