Hybrid Arts Lab: Tappyness and Rapid Fire Text
Dear Friends,
Autumn is finally here, but not without heightened emotion, as we collectively continue to face unprecedented uncertainty and change. In choosing to connect with others (even if it must be virtual or in a strictly limited way), we can find moments of joy through shared vulnerability and a deeper urge to understand each other’s needs.
So far in September, Hybrid Arts Lab has featured a diverse slate of arts-based classes and related exhibitions and performances at Hopkins Hall Gallery, online at UAS From Home, and at Stillman Hall Tent. Read more below about two of our recent projects, Rapid Fire Text and Tappyness; performance-based events that centered around such vulnerability and sharing. More extensive documentation of these and other recent projects can be found at our virtual venue, UAS From Home. Meanwhile, stay tuned for our collaboration with the Hale Black Cultural Center and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion for One Voice One Message: Black Lives Matter featuring documentary photography by Joshua Edmonds. In addition, we have added a series of performances by the School of Music—catch the next performances on October 2 and 6 at 5:00PM in Stillman Hall Tent as you’re walking through campus.
Be sure to check out the Urban Arts Space and Hopkins Hall Gallery websites for a full slate of Urban Arts Space and Hybrid Arts Lab programming extending throughout the fall semester. To the artists and performers in our midst, thanks for experimenting and connecting through the Hybrid Arts lab and for sharing your creativity, your work….you make possibility and hope an enduring priority during this season of change.
Rapid Fire Text and Tappyness
Esther Pittinger, Writing Intern, Urban Arts Space & Hopkins Hall Gallery
-
Over the past few weeks, Urban Arts Space and the Hybrid Arts Lab have hosted creative activities, exhibitions, and experimentations of art that diverge from tradition. Of these activities, two that occurred recently showed the interesting possibilities of experimenting with movement and time, as well as vulnerability.
Rapid Fire Text began with a workshop led by Lori Esposito, P.h.D candidate in the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy. Esposito led her students from “Visual Culture: Investigating Diversity & Social Justice” in an improvisational ink workshop to explore both what it means to put our thoughts on paper and how speed and duration affect that. During the workshop, students layered inky words over one another as they wrote down their thoughts in response to prompts and saw them overlap. This exploration not only shows experimentation with ink and words, but also with vulnerability. In writing the thoughts they would normally keep in their minds, the students in the workshop are making themselves vulnerable.
In contrast to the highly improvisational nature of Rapid Fire Text, Tappyness, a performance merging dance and theater, is far more choreographed. Choreographed, in fact, by Matt Greenberg, and performed by Erin Parsons. Tappyness portrays a woman struggling with anxiety, depression, and isolation. We see her dragging her feet to reach the stage and struggling to keep in time with the music while using pill bottles as props. As Parsons dances, we see a narrative of her emotions. And in this narrative, we see Greenberg’s advocacy for mental health awareness, and for reaching out to help each other in times of isolation.
Though we may be isolated with thoughts and feelings in our minds or in our homes in these strange times, perhaps with experimentation of works of art, we can all stay a little more vulnerable and connected together.
Stay in touch: receive newsletters and email updates by subscribing to our mailing list.
