TIFFANY LEE BROWN:
THE EASTER ISLAND PROJECT
We are compelled to create—to make, write, act, and give birth. How do we manifest this deep desire? How do our creations—novels, babies, and atom bombs—affect our lives, our culture, and our planet?
The Easter Island Project invites audiences to explore the questions through the act of creation itself with Plazm editor and 2GQ/New Oregon Arts & Letters director Tiffany Lee Brown, as she prepares for an interdisciplinary art expedition to Easter Island in the South Pacific. The "Easter Island: participatory tour" welcomes live audiences at intimate gatherings in Seattle, New York City, Portland, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
ANNOUNCING: PORTLAND PERFORMANCES JUNE 6 & 7
MAKE, PLAY, BE: THE EASTER ISLAND PROJECT
Tiffany Lee Brown & Eric Hausmann
with help from Gary Wiseman
June 6 7 pm
June 7 2 pm w/ Tastebud Bagels
Featuring live music, video installation, and the option to participate and make your own DIY writing, music, sound, or artwork, each creation a "seed" that Tiffany will take to the South Pacific isle of Easter Island next year.
BYO: Feel free to bring your drink of choice to open at the reception afterward.
Performance Works NW
4625 SE 67th at Foster Road, Portland
503 777 1907
$10
Advance tickets recommended, at Brown Paper Tickets
If paying at the door, please bring cash
Sponsors:
Tastebud • Plazm • Viator Travel • The Tarot Reading Fundraiser
Presenters:
Performance Works NW • New Oregon Arts & Letters
THE EASTER ISLAND PROJECT
We are compelled to create—to make, write, act, and give birth. How do we manifest this deep desire? How do our creations—novels, babies, and atom bombs—affect our lives, our culture, and our planet?
The Easter Island Project invites audiences to explore the questions through the act of creation itself with Plazm editor and 2GQ/New Oregon Arts & Letters director Tiffany Lee Brown, as she prepares for an interdisciplinary art expedition to Easter Island in the South Pacific. The "Easter Island: participatory tour" welcomes live audiences at intimate gatherings in Seattle, New York City, Portland, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
ANNOUNCING: PORTLAND PERFORMANCES JUNE 6 & 7
MAKE, PLAY, BE: THE EASTER ISLAND PROJECT
Tiffany Lee Brown & Eric Hausmann
with help from Gary Wiseman
June 6 7 pm
June 7 2 pm w/ Tastebud Bagels
Featuring live music, video installation, and the option to participate and make your own DIY writing, music, sound, or artwork, each creation a "seed" that Tiffany will take to the South Pacific isle of Easter Island next year.
BYO: Feel free to bring your drink of choice to open at the reception afterward.
Performance Works NW
4625 SE 67th at Foster Road, Portland
503 777 1907
$10
Advance tickets recommended, at Brown Paper Tickets
If paying at the door, please bring cash
Sponsors:
Tastebud • Plazm • Viator Travel • The Tarot Reading Fundraiser
Presenters:
Performance Works NW • New Oregon Arts & Letters
EMAIL LIST, PRESS-READY IMAGES, ETC.
People can participate online, in person, or via postal mail (DETAILS BELOW). Artist Bio is also below.
Images and photographs are available right here: Easter Island Project images.
Images and photographs are available right here: Easter Island Project images.
JOIN EMAIL LIST
THE WORK: INSPIRATION & EVOLUTION
Inspired by Tiffany's investigation into biological childlessness in contemporary American culture, the Easter Island Project is an ongoing participatory art and performance work. Participants and audience members "seed" the project by generously contributing their own creativity in person, online, and through the mail. Seeds take the form of found objects (the shell of a newly hatched bald eagle), original artwork (a painted egg with skeletal wings), writing (poems written on Tiffany's paper flags), personal offerings (the word "Yes" painted on a bone, wrapped in red velvet), and performance (snippets of video, performance documentation, and recorded music).
The artist continually transforms, documents, and works with these materials, which become part of her performances, rituals, and installations. Tiffany will bring the project to Easter Island in 2009. The following year, she will weave all these seeds of creation into a theatre-based performance piece with a related book and installation, composing an original soundtrack with multi-instrumental musician Eric Hausmann.
EASTER ISLAND: THE PARTICIPATION TOUR 2009
Please email easterislandproject@gmail.com for an invitation or to participate via mail/email.
1/18 SEATTLE, WA at Studio: Current (Capitol Hill)
2/9-12 PRESCOTT, AZ at Prescott College, MAP Humanities Colloquium
3/21-29 NEW YORK, NY at Synthetic Zero (South Bronx) and at
The Wellness Center (Brooklyn: DUMBO)
4/18 OAKLAND, CA at Myrtle Street Review
6/7-8 PORTLAND, OR at Performance Works NW
8/29 BLACK ROCK CITY, NV at The Playa
4/18 OAKLAND, CA at Myrtle Street Review
6/7-8 PORTLAND, OR at Performance Works NW
8/29 BLACK ROCK CITY, NV at The Playa
ON EASTER ISLAND
DELAYED UNTIL AUGUST 2010
8/1-10 RAPA NUI, CHILE, a.k.a. Easter Island, a.k.a. Isla de Pascua, at various moai and ahu
SEEDING EASTER ISLAND
08/2008 PORT TOWNSEND, WA at military bunker Battery Vicar, Fort Worden
THE EASTER ISLAND PROJECT: ALTARS I & II
05/2008 OR at Oregon Cascades (invitation only)
05/2009 OR at Oregon Cascades (invitation only; documentary filming)
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Participants offer their seeds at the project's performances and gatherings, via Internet and postal mail, or personally to the artist. Seeds take many forms: snippets of video, tiny sculptures, miniature musical compositions, short poems, and found objects. The first seed offered to the project was a tattoo (currently residing on the artist's hip); another was the shell of a freshly hatched bald eagle.
At a live event, a participant might do a one-minute dance in front of the video camera as her seed, write a few words on the project's paper flags, or search for the perfect shell on a beach walk. Some people meditate on the concept of creation before a live event. They bring their tiny sculptures and ceramics, poems and textiles, dances and tiny found objects.
Each seed is an offering, a contribution to the project as a whole; how the artist will metaphorically plant each seed remains to be seen. Anything at all might happen to your creation. Offering a seed is an act of trust.
Participants offer their seeds at the project's performances and gatherings, via Internet and postal mail, or personally to the artist. Seeds take many forms: snippets of video, tiny sculptures, miniature musical compositions, short poems, and found objects. The first seed offered to the project was a tattoo (currently residing on the artist's hip); another was the shell of a freshly hatched bald eagle.
At a live event, a participant might do a one-minute dance in front of the video camera as her seed, write a few words on the project's paper flags, or search for the perfect shell on a beach walk. Some people meditate on the concept of creation before a live event. They bring their tiny sculptures and ceramics, poems and textiles, dances and tiny found objects.
Each seed is an offering, a contribution to the project as a whole; how the artist will metaphorically plant each seed remains to be seen. Anything at all might happen to your creation. Offering a seed is an act of trust.
SPONSORS & DONORS
The work is made possible by individual donations, participation in the Tarot Reading Fundraiser, and sponsorship from Viator.com's travelblog, together with the community members and venues of Goddard College, D-Rat, Studio-Current, Synthetic Zero, The Wellness Center, 2 Gyrlz, and Myrtle Street Review. Presented by 2GQ/New Oregon Arts & Letters. The Portland show in June is co-presented by Performance Works NW.
ARTIST BIO
Tiffany Lee Brown is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Oregon. Her work has been presented by Performance Works NW, Wordstock, and PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art), among others. Her writing appears in Utne, Bookforum, Bust, Tin House, and other periodicals, and in anthologies such as The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin, 1999) and Literary Cash: Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash (BenBella, 2007). Her book of poetry, A Compendium of Miniatures, is available as a book arts collector's edition from Tiger Food Press, Plazm Books, and Powell's City of Books.
A recipient of grants and residencies from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), Caldera, the City of Portland, Soapstone, and Hypatia, Tiffany holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College and a BA in Dramatic Art from the University of California at Berkeley. She is Director of 2GQ/New Oregon Arts & Letters, a service of 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts, and sits on the Selection Committee for the city's Visual Chronicle of Portland collection. Presently, Tiffany is an adjunct faculty in Prescott College's Master of Arts in Humanities program.
Tiffany Lee Brown is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Oregon. Her work has been presented by Performance Works NW, Wordstock, and PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art), among others. Her writing appears in Utne, Bookforum, Bust, Tin House, and other periodicals, and in anthologies such as The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin, 1999) and Literary Cash: Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash (BenBella, 2007). Her book of poetry, A Compendium of Miniatures, is available as a book arts collector's edition from Tiger Food Press, Plazm Books, and Powell's City of Books.
A recipient of grants and residencies from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), Caldera, the City of Portland, Soapstone, and Hypatia, Tiffany holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College and a BA in Dramatic Art from the University of California at Berkeley. She is Director of 2GQ/New Oregon Arts & Letters, a service of 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts, and sits on the Selection Committee for the city's Visual Chronicle of Portland collection. Presently, Tiffany is an adjunct faculty in Prescott College's Master of Arts in Humanities program.
KEY WORDS for ART PEOPLE
Participatory artwork, social practice, performance, ritual, community-engaged practice, engaged art, literature, new media, book arts, poetry, fiction, Internet art, web, memoir, literature, video, installation, performance art, theatre, theater, interdisciplinary art, multidisciplinary, multimedia, music, art/life, art as experience, process-based art, process over product, feminism, writing, women artists, creation, creativity, birth, childless, childfree, childlessness.
Participatory artwork, social practice, performance, ritual, community-engaged practice, engaged art, literature, new media, book arts, poetry, fiction, Internet art, web, memoir, literature, video, installation, performance art, theatre, theater, interdisciplinary art, multidisciplinary, multimedia, music, art/life, art as experience, process-based art, process over product, feminism, writing, women artists, creation, creativity, birth, childless, childfree, childlessness.
