PROBLEM RADICALS Experimental Opera Opens At PS122 4/24-5/10

Problem Radical(s) is an experimental opera mixing everyday radical acts, a sprawling sculpture, massive inflating tarps, industrious performers, and hardcore noise. Each night, the performers navigate an ever-expanding, unstable installation. Musicians and singers reassemble the modular live electronic and instrumental score, evoking American radical thinkers, civic activists, and maneuverable personal blimps.

Performed by an ensemble of actors, musicians and builders, Problem Radical(s) is a project headed by New York-based performance group Object Collection: Kara Feely (writer-director) and Travis Just (composer), in collaboration with visual artist Hannah Dougherty (installation), Berlin-based artist Daniel Kötter (video), and New York-based designers Peter Ksander (costume) and Miranda Hardy (lighting).

The opera, written and directed by Kara Feely and composed by Travis Just, establishes an unstable environment using a compositional framework that allows endless variation at a very small scale and the opportunity to change content, creating whole new pieces in each iteration. This is done through the re-ordering of actions, musical material, varying sound processing methods, and an improvisational approach towards music and text. Emerging as an intense, loud layering of bass, guitar, live electronics, and speak-singing, the actors change direction while changing clothes, and execute banal, everyday acts in completely strange and extraordinary ways. As they wade through the accumulating mass of the installation, they work together and build, collide, organize, disperse, and rebuild again.

Over the course of the performance run the large-scale installation designed and overseen by London-based artist Hannah Dougherty will be constructed by the actors and a rotating crew of builders. The installation is an expansive, sprawling collection of found objects, cardboard, maps, pulley systems, piles of clothing, balloons, massive inflating tarps, and small maneuverable blimps. As the installation expands during the run, it will change the arrangement of the audience and how they view the performance. A live video surveillance system, executed by Berlin-based video artist Daniel Kötter, will gradually be implemented into the growing installation. Made up of rotating cameras and scattered monitors, the system will capture fragments of action, throwing images of the performers off balance while forging new routes of perspective for the audience.

Problem Radical(s) creates a non-hierarchal performance environment in which musicians, actors, builders and technicians work freely amongst each other and are equally critical elements of the live event. What emerges is a continually evolving, highly unstable interdisciplinary performance that must develop new strategies from night to night for a vibrantly changing environment.

Excerpts from Problem Radical(s) have been presented at KuLe (Berlin, August 2007), Experimental Intermedia (New York, December 2007), and Loopline (Tokyo, May 2008). In June-July 2008, Object Collection developed the piece further during month-long artist residency at Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement.

More about Object Collection
Object Collection was founded in January 2004 when founding artistic directors Kara Feely (writer/director/designer) and Travis Just (composer/instrumentalist) presented a concert of John Cage's seminal theater and music composition, Song Books, at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, Germany. This landmark work, that pairs experimental music and theater together within a single interdisciplinary performance, became an inspirational model for the genesis of the company. Now entering into its fifth year, Object Collection puts these ideas into practice by presenting hybrid music-theater performances, which take the shape of longer theatrical-style runs, one-off concerts, and curated performance series. Based in New York City, the company collaborates with an increasing number of musicians, actors, composers, designers, and visual artists, actively combining techniques and methodologies from different mediums in order to generate new artistic work in unchartered forms.

Object Collection's work has been presented by the Ontological Theater, MATA Interval Series, Darmstadt Essential Repertoire, Issue Project Room, Experimental Intermedia, Chez Bushwick/AMBUSH (New York), Podewil/TESLA, KuLe, REM Reihe Elektronischer Musik (Germany) Loop-Line, Gallery Soap (Japan), Los Solos (Baltimore), and Art Basel (Miami). Large-scale projects include: Is this a gentleman? ('05), Evoke memories of a golden age ('06), Chop Shop new music & text ('06), FAMOUS ACTORS ('07), Experimental Music ('08) and Problem Radical(s) ('09). Their performances have been praised for their "rich imagery" and "dreamlike intimacy" (nytheatre.com), and have been described as "contemplative...highly conceptual" (Vital Weekly).

More about Performance Space 122
Performance Space 122 is New York's ultimate destination for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and cross-media. Founded in 1979, Performance Space 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists whose work challenges the traditional boundaries of dance, theatre, music, and performance. Committed to exploring innovative form as well as material, P.S. 122 is steadfast in its search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures and points of view.

Problem Radical(s) runs Friday, April 24 - Sunday, May 10 on the following schedule: Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30pm; Sundays at 5:30pm. Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (P.S. 122 members). Tickets may be purchased online at www.ps122.org or via phone at (212) 352-3101. Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York, New York 10009. www.ps122.org.

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