REDCAT Presents CASSILS: HUMAN MEASURE, October 13-15

From Oct. 13 to 15, 2022, Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts' center for contemporary arts in downtown Los Angeles, presents artist Cassils with their debut contemporary dance work, Human Measure.

Against an unprecedented backdrop of U.S.-based anti-trans legislation, Human Measure asks: How do we manifest empowerment, sensuality, and self actualization in a society that actively tries to erase trans and nonbinary individuals? Insisting upon plurality and avoiding legibility, Human Measure straddles dance and the history of photography. The work is purposefully designed to be difficult to see and is staged in low levels of red light found in photographic darkrooms. The viewer's physiology is hijacked as live after-images are seared into the audience's retina by a massive flashing light box, culminating in the active development of one of the world's largest cyanotypes, on stage in real time.

Rooted in kinesiology, martial arts, sports science, and personal safety protocols, the work reinterprets Yves Klein's Anthropometries paintings. As opposed to the models in Klein's work who acted as passive "human paintbrushes", the performers in Human Measure wield the double-edged sword of representation in a collective process of empowered labor.

Human Measure was made in collaboration with U.S. choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque, composer Kadet Kuhne, lighting designer Christopher Kuhl, and a team of five trans and nonbinary performers.

Cassils is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils' art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle, survival and empowerment. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils's work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

Cassils has had recent solo exhibitions at HOME Manchester, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC; Institute for Contemporary Art, AU; Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Bemis Center, Omaha; MU Eindhoven, Netherlands.

They are the recipient of the National Creation Fund (2022), a 2020 Fleck Residency from the Banff Center for the Arts, a Princeton Lewis Artist Fellowship finalist (2020), a Villa Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (2019), a United States Artist Fellowship (2018), a Guggenheim Fellowship and a COLA Grant (2017) and a Creative Capital Award (2015). They have received the inaugural ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, California Community Foundation Grant, MOTHA (Museum of Transgender Hirstory) award, and numerous Visual Artist Fellowships from the Canada Council of the Arts. Their work has been featured in New York Times, Boston Globe, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Wired, The Guardian, TDR, Performance Research, Art Journal and was the subject of the monograph Cassils published by MU Eindhoven 92015) and their new catalog Solutions, is published by the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, TX (2020). Cassils work was recently acquired by the Victoria Albert Museum, London, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Leslie Lohman Museum.

Cassils is an Associate Professor in Sculpture and Integrated Practices at PRATT Institute.

The performance contains nudity, strobe, flashing lights and is performed in low lighting.

Cassils: Human Measure

Thursday, Oct. 13 at 8:30 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 14 at 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 15 at 8:30 p.m.

Ticketing:
$25 for General admission
$20 for REDCAT members and students
$13 for CalArts students, faculty and staff

Tickets can be purchased at:
https://www.redcat.org/events/human-measure

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, is a multidisciplinary center for innovative visual, performing and media arts founded by CalArts in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. Through performances, exhibitions, screenings and literary events, REDCAT introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT continues the tradition of the California Institute of the Arts, its parent organization, by encouraging experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse.

California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) has set the pace for educating professional artists since 1970. Offering rigorous undergraduate and graduate degree programs through six schools-art, critical studies, dance, film/video, music, and theater-CalArts has championed creative excellence, critical reflection, and the development of new forms and expressions. As successive generations of faculty and alumni have helped shape the landscape of contemporary arts, the institute first envisioned by Walt Disney encompasses a vibrant, eclectic community with global reach, inviting experimentation, independent inquiry, and active collaboration and exchange among artists, artistic disciplines and cultural traditions.

REDCAT is located at 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, within the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. For current program and exhibition information, visit redcat.org.