PS122 Presents Edit Kaldor's POINT BLANK 12/11-12/14

The definitive spy-ware performance, Point Blank is a voyeur's paradise. Edit Kaldor invites the 19-year-old Nada to present her incredibly large collection of photographs: specifically 75,000.  For years, Nada has been observing people, taking 'spy-photos' of them, capturing their private moments. The core of Nada's obsession is to trace the various life-strategies that people follow. Driven – perhaps consumed – by curiosity, she becomes witness to a wide range of – and at times excessive – human behavior. Together with the slightly neurotic and quirkily entertaining Nada, the audience autopsies the images, implications and patterns that emerge.

Deceptively simple in appearance, Point Blank reaches out to the audience in a way that few theatrical pieces do.  Spectators observing the photographs of strangers on the screen and listening to Nada's commentary are at once complicit; compelled to ask "What makes a life worth living?"; and prompted to look inward – to imagine if instead, those images being projected could be of their own lives.  

Born in Budapest, Edit Kaldor currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels and her.  Her theatre performances tend to integrate the use of digital media.  For Point Blank, she has collaborated with the artist and filmmaker Frank Theys.  At some point between Budapest and Amsterdam, she spent six years spent in New York with Peter Halasz at the Squat theater/Love theater collaborating on numerous theater performances and film scripts.  Since then, she has been invited to perform in 30 countries around the world.  It's about time she was back, and what better piece to return with than this one? Point Blank will no doubt strike a deep chord of contemporary paranoia in New York City, a peeper's paradise and a capitol of surveillance.

At the age of 13 Edit immigrated with her mother to the United States, where she lived for ten years. After receiving her degree in English and Theater at Barnard College (New York) and University College (London), she worked for 6 years with Peter Halasz (Squat theater/Love theater, New York), collaborating on numerous theater performances and film scripts. She then enrolled at DasArts, the postgraduate performing arts center in Amsterdam, where she started making her own theatre pieces, which soon received international acclaim.

In the solo performance Or Press Escape (2003) she constructed a story using a computer. In New Game (2004) she experimented with transposing the computer game format to the stage. Then she started a series of crash-tests: solo performances inspired by a person whose performance qualities suggest a well-defined shape. Crashtest 01: Drama (2005) was presented in STUK after a five-week rehearsal period. At present Edith Kaldor is one of the resident artists at the Antwerp workplace wp Zimmer.

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.

Point Blank runs Thursday, December 11 – Sunday, December 14 on the following schedule:  Thursday – Saturday at 8:00pm/Sunday at 6:00pm.  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.

 

Photo courtesy of PS122

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