I worked on these brooches fairly recently, but I feel compelled to add that when I blogged about my new year’s eve, I saw the dates between today and the last time I published a blog which was February of Last Year (insert The Killers lyric, it’s not consequential, I got potential, I digress).
I enjoyed making these brooches. It was the first time I set out to make brooches in any medium and it made me very satisfied. I have been thinking about embroidery and how I want to embroider all of my wardrobe, but now I see that I can just have acccessories. I do not have a habit of accessorizing my outfits, partially because I don’t have a jewelry wearing habit and I think that affects the way I shop etc. So it has been pretty neat to make brooches. In my experimentation of styling the brooches, I really enjoy the effect of putting the brooch in that sweet gap where the collar meets the button strip, akin to a bolo tie’s clip’s location.
I often think about “where am I wearing this outfit to?” and especially now, in pandemic land, I imagine that there’s a party I’m preparing for when the “new roaring twenties” comes around. I like to distinguish audience member versus performer. The idea that there are some things in my wardrobe that are very punchy and could be worn as someone on stage, but off stage it might be overly peacocky for my taste. I think a bit about fashion as a language for showing others you know where you are and what you should be wearing.
What I especially like about brooches is their compactness. In comparison to other things I’ve embroidered, it has a great hand-feel, like a token or a ticket. There’s something really neat about something you can put in your pocket, perhaps like a handwritten note passed in class. You can keep it for later, forget about it and then remember.
Something to note: as brooches, the objects are a bit unfinished. I couldn’t commit to a type of fastener. In these shots, I have used a variety of methods to pin them, but I would love to talk to a craftsperson about their favorite ways to attach cloth to brooch clips, etc. Perhaps, I enjoy the non-committal versatility of their current state. They could be attached to all sorts of clips/pins, depending on the customer.
It’s been a hot minute since I blogged something. Not that I’ve been inactive in my life, but perhaps it goes into the category of practices rather than projects.
These are photos from a new years eve party at my house I helped make happen. I enjoyed getting dressed up and wearing my new hat I bought from a local clown, Bri Crabtree. I felt like Loonette from The Big Comfy Couch show.
I felt good about having a lot of time to set up the projector textures. You can see me experimenting with the framing with the textures, ultimately I had to make the screen taller so the people didn’t block the bunting I made.
I was really proud of the bunting. I cut out the numbers from a glittery cardstock I got at Michael’s. I accidentally cut the twos backwards which gave me the idea to put some shiny fabric on it. This was the first time I sewed fabric onto cardstock. It’s a nice alternative to glue because my hands did not get sticky and I think the fabric has more room to fluctuate or wrinkle, kind of like a deflated mylar balloon. I hung the bunting in my room and it’s a nice reminder of what year it is. Time seems to flow rather strangely these days.
Back to the shoot. I wanted to comment on how it was nice to do four shots. People tend to loosen up after a couple of takes, and I think people loosen up knowing there will be a couple of takes. To be fair, my housemates are very photogenic and playful. I really didn’t need to give them any direction other than where to sit.
the new year photo I posted on instagram/facebook
I stare at this photo a lot. This was the last take and I really like how each of us, in our own little stripe, have our own vibe. It feels really cool to not have to color coordinate and enjoy how the composition gels because of the way the colors on the projector organizes the image, like the brady bunch, we have our own relatively equal section to express ourselves.
I would love to do this particular arrangement again. I like the idea of making a collage where there’s a long strip of portraits where each person gets a nice equal sized stripe to pose with their instrument or beloved object. That might be the thing I like the most about the photo is that everyone is equipped with a meaningful prop. Often photobooths give you a cheap generic prop. That’s the nice thing about partying at your own house I guess.
One thing that I regret that I want to keep in mind. After we took photos, one of my housemates said that you didn’t get to see the cake he made. Turns out, I wasn’t as detail oriented as I wanted to be. I can chock some of it up to the limited nature of a timer set camera versus being behind the camera when it fires off, but still, the way that this kind of photobooth works is is whatever is in the light is in the frame and I think that’s good to tell your people when you are ushering them into position. Some of the shots do get the cake, but still, I think that it might have been nice of me to offer singles for each person so that they get center stage and have a nice photo where it’s just them and in this case, they get to show off something they want to show off.
I thought and journaled a little about this phenomenon as a photographer, you are a historian, and you have an opportunity to shape how this memory will be fortified. And how it does everyone an honor to be reminded of stuff that they were proud of or worked hard on or were very into. How virtuous a photograph can be. And I can say that this year, like last year, I missed out on an opportunity, partially just being unpracticed in the ways of being a photographer. Last year (2019-2020 NYE party), I missed getting two party attendees photos taken, making the composite group shot incomplete. And now this year, I missed the cake. I suppose that’s an improvement though the number of attendees being what it was, perhaps, the percentage of incomplete relative to the party is the same.
Alas, I’m glad to start this year off with an opportunity to reflect on a beautiful photoshoot and with gratitude for beauty and aesthetics in this time of pandemic and significantly low overall party-quotient.
a note about the video– I made it using my iphone and facebook live attached to my station– so the resolution is not ideal for presentation purposes but more to document it in a scrappy way– in a world, I would have hired a professional like I occasionally do.
event flier design by Jenny Yang
The process of making the show– I saw an opportunity for a performance at the Night of Forts and so I reached out to Nathaniel Miller who I have been jamming with at the Noise Jams and Art Nites.
He agreed to collaborate with me on a performance and I recruited some movers for the dance part. Inspired by psychobotany, I wanted to make a dance using the overhead projector and involve some people that I’ve never involved before, Dominique Nigro and Laura Cohen.
The dancemaking process was decidedly different than that of psychobotany. I wanted it to have more structure and use more props. I invited the four movers to my house for a kind of workshop were we talked about the intentions for the piece. We listened to the music and they planned how they would work together.
The execution of the piece was a bit of a different story. The environment of the event on show day was less than controlled. For Nathaniel to set-up a set up he’s never set up with someone else’s PA without adequate lighting, with a bit of pressure of time and people depending on him– we debriefed afterward, agreeing that it was a lot to expect.
So what happened is that we started maybe forty five minutes later than anticipated. It can be a lot when it seems like it’s five minutes away from starting every five minutes. I think this was the first time I was in a line-up as a “director” type role where there were other acts after us. I felt very responsible for the delay and had no idea of what the etiquette was for making amends or acknowledging the situation.
The movers took initiative– they wanted to start, so I said ok. The silence that ensued from them taking the stage after all this time was breathtaking. I really enjoyed the attention that was all visual. It was solemn, dreamy, sculpture-esque. I had never seen that before. I really liked it.
The music trickled in, slowly coming together into something. Nathaniel told me it wasn’t what he planned, he had to improvise. After about 16 minutes, one of the movers initiated a bit of choreography that was intended to be the end sequence. She rightly anticipated that the music cue they were relying on to leave the stage wouldn’t come on.
All in all, it was a good experience, though it was a bit stressful. I felt on the hook for commissioning movers to move in such an environment for a small stipend. I keep thinking that ideally I want to secure some grant money so that I wouldn’t feel so guilty, like compensating them with material gain would make me feel like I wasn’t asking for so much discomfort. And I would have more rehearsals to make sure they felt secure in the timing and manipulation of props– though now I’m inclined to have some kind of fallback plan in case the music isn’t cooperating.
During the show. I especially liked watching Andrew’s make-up stunt. It felt like a stunt, he took shirt and wiped his make-uped (and sweaty face) into his shirt and made a kind of rainbow. I am curious how to make a dance like that, where that is better integrated into some kind of narrative or series of colorations– like the dancers start out with white clothes and then there’s different dyeing mechanisms, ooooh.
I think in my heart I am still a painter and just want to see more color happen, the process of transformation.
There was a part where one of the mover’s dismounted another mover and fell onto a third mover– that was not planned either, but I was intrigued and nervous. I believe safety is an important factor, but also, like with theatrical wrestling, it might seem like more to those of us who are not so physical, how a small collision is really not that intense as watching it from the outside. But yea, also, I would want to give a show with four movers a bigger stage than I what was available this night.
Writing about it, I feel very grateful and inspired. I enjoy this play of light, movement, and sound. I am working to get a grant for a series of workshops around this kind of collaboration so that my group will be better prepared and better compensated. It’s a slow process of learning about how grants work.
Once again, a big thank you to the event’s producers, Jenny Yang and Forrest McCuller, the team at Beauty Supply and everyone on that bill. It was a fantastic night and I am honored to share the space and time and art with this community.
Above is the “contact sheet” I edited the photos and curated this gallery– there was 530 photos from the event in my camera and I made an online repository, but I like this better.
The fort making process was pretty smooth. I practiced ladder safety and engaged some embroidery habits in the construction of the fort that was four shower curtains, string, and tulle.
My collaborator, Nathaniel Miller, on the fort had an eye for details and really pushed it to be better than I envisioned it. I got some feedback after the event that there was a breakdown in communication. He would have preferred in person conversation to texting and he wanted a more active role in the construction process. Some obstacles to that was I got the impression he was a bit overwhelmed with preparing the music for a separate collaboration we were doing for the same event.
I hope we work together in the future. This is the first official project we have worked on together and it was mostly positive and I think that’s encouraging.
The experience of proctoring or facilitating the photobooth at the event was mostly smooth. I perhaps needed a better sign that said come in, I have a camera and will take your picture. I had a sign that had two faces, one side said that the photobooth is in use, and the other is a self-service instruction list for when I stepped away.
I provided a link to the google drive folder with all the photos from the event on the facebook event page. It seems like there are different delivery methods for photobooths. This was less sophisticated. If you got photos at the photobooth fort and have a facebook notification for the link on the event, you could comb through the photos until you found your session. I had a form for the people without facebook accounts to provide another way for me to send them the g-drive link.
The fort was fairly easy to dissemble, like cutting a puppet off its strings (except you wouldn’t do that). I really enjoy installation art and hope to get more opportunities to create spaces like this.
Similar to my sounds and sips event of years past, this was a great time to get together and enjoy an unstructured flurry of sounds and tones that I think is an amazing environment to feel alive in. And a great time to play my clarinet!
I spent three hours on Christmas Eve in my living room exploring movement with a peach colored sheet to some meditative music, livestreaming to Facebook.
Last summer, I had an idea to write a screenplay for me and my friend Robbie Bruens. I enlisted help from one of his collaborators, Jeg Jooper, who was the cinematographer of Treefeelers.
The logistics was tight. I would bus down to LA for five days and work around their schedules for two evenings of shooting. Robbie arranged some photogenic locations (we needed a bedroom and a bathroom). We shot at Echo Lake Park, Pershing Square, a shop near Santana Row, and a few Hollywood residences.
The shooting process was a lot of fun. My collaborators, Robbie and Jeg, were respectful, easy to work with, and provided input and logistical concerns where they thought it was needed. I felt very supported and inspired by our three person team.
This was my first script I’ve written* (by myself*). I’m normally interested in improvisational work. I put asterisks in there because I scripted some non-scripted parts. There is dialog that is off the cuff (Robbie’s words) and there is dialog that is read from the script. I’m pretty fascinated by that process, essentially giving a fictional frame to essentially an interview.
During the video editing process, the words that I wrote seemed stilted and awkward which I think adds to the dream quality, but I was more charmed by the natural verbage that improv provides.
Speaking of the editing process, I found it to be um, rushed. I care about my projects, but this one sat in my to-do pile while I waited for my musician darling to produce some music for the movie. By the time I got the movie into the editing room, my vision for the project was a bit fuzzy and I felt less driven towards the unpleasant details of editing. And truth be told, it was on a friend’s computer, so I didn’t feel at leisure to go away and come back. It was edited in one sitting.
I had recorded the sound separately. We didn’t have a sound person and I am not too savvy with processes about that. I ended up using the table reading as the final spoken word part. It was kind of funny. I’ve seen movies that do that, where they do the dialog in a voice over kind of way, (like in Ant Man 1 and 2), though in this, Robbie does his own lines and the mouths rarely line up. Ha! Ah! I keep telling myself that it is in fact a step below from Student Work. I just like doing this. I don’t study it and I don’t see myself becoming an industry professional. It’s the amor in amateur.
My approach to this project was not to think about refining it too much and letting it breathe raw qualities.
Future projects like this, advice to me in the future, I would love to have more control over my environments and create more whimsy with practicals like bizarre lighting and props, make up, movement. I love making movies, but it’s hard to do it in a city where I can’t take all my art-making supplies and lighting equipment. I would love to make a script with someone else too. It was nice having a script but I felt less driven to zhoozh it. Feeling beholden to a second co-producer would have made me more considerate in the refining process, or to a refining process.
A note about the Credits– I like keeping it simple but I also knew that I would have a post about it where I can give credit formally.
Robbie Bruens, actor, muse, coordinator and improviser
Jeg Jooper, cinematographer (work involving drone footage and rollerblading camera work!)
Katarina Countiss, actor, creator, “costumer”, writer, video editor
Music: “Bedroom Shapeshifting” Written and Performed by Cassidy Barnes
“Picnic Night” Written and Performed by Cassidy Barnes–The classical guitar piece is Canarios by Gaspar Sanz 1674 (public domain)
Amelie Fantasy — 9 min 37 sec
Special Thanks to Christine Medrano and David Clifford Turner
a set by Michael Shrader
psychobotany
with original live music by brother’s quarrel with David Samas, Kevin Corcoran, Michael Schrader, movement by Fenner, Andrew Gabriel Rose, Annikah Peabody, and live projection art by Katarina Countiss
about psychobotany
this is a container– the movement is based on authentic movement and contact improv– the music, movement, light and shadow combine for a sensual experience of a kind of dreamlike state that’s never the same twice
Special Thank you
to Beauty Supply for hosting this event in their new space in Downtown Oakland. They are a valuable resource for the local arts scene.
:: About the opener
Michael Shrader of Santa Fe, New Mexico will be presenting a lighthearted soundscape using a variety of sound therapy instruments with digital augmentation. The intention in mind is to gently journey you through a subtle shift in consciousness, gently assisting your landing into wherever your mind may choose.
Very excited to present: Kevin Corcoran and David Samas will be performing live music for psychobotany
David Samas is a composer, curator, conceptual artist, instrument inventor, and social sculptor with a background in shamanism and magics. A queer, native San Franciscan from mixed immigrant/refugee roots, David got his a BFA from the SF Art Institute in conceptual art in 2000 and studied poetics at the New College of California and Naropa. He performed with the SF Boys Chorus, SF Opera and SF Symphony, receiving a GRAMMY in 1994 for Best Choral Performance. His artworks hang in the Di Rosa collection and showed at the Diego Rivera Gallery,Canessa Galleries and the SF Asian Art Museum. He has performed at the Exploratorium, Grace Cathedral, YBCA, Cal Shakes, Bing Hall, the Asian Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, CCRMA, the Lab, and Center for New Music, where he also curates the Window Gallery for Invented Instruments. He served as artistic director of the Turquoise Yantra Grotto (a house concert series of free improv and ethno-modernism), the Meridian Composers in Performance series, MicroFest North, Thingamajigs Festivals, and is the director of Pet the Tiger Instrument Inventors Collective and the Harmonic Series Gamelan. He gives back to his communities by teaching math and physics through inventing workshops with Thingamajigs (Oakland) and advocating for the legal personhood of all sentient beings.
Kevin Corcoran works with percussion and field recordings with an open interest in sound as medium as it moves through contexts of art, music, ecology, and communication. As a drummer/percussionist he is most interested in techniques which extend the sonic possibilities of the instrument emphasizing textural sound, atonal sympathetic vibration, sustained tones without audible attack and the use of found objects.
As a recordist he collects sounds in urban and rural locations. These sonic environments are presented displaced from their origins with an intent to create temporary imagined acoustic places and are often combined with percussive sounds and used in installation artworks.
He has performed throughout the United States, Europe and East Asia collaborating with artists working in various disciplines.
:: psychobotany has featuring a recurring mover, Annikah Peabody
Annikah Peabody
Mixed media artist, landscaper, and sad sad clown.
:: psychobotany has featuring a recurring mover, Andrew Gabriel Rose
If Martha Graham was the mayor of Baltimore and they found a magical wish-granting emerald in an underground chamber beneath city hall that the mayor could only use with the help of 13 juggalos from the future, together they might wish for something like Andrew Rose to come and build a marble and granite funk academy with his bare hands on a new island, conjured by his dancing in the harbor, where funk professors from around the world might gather to teach the world to love. Furthermore, fuck Milton Friedman.
:: psychobotany has featuring a first time mover, Fenner
Fenner is an performer, director and producer living in West Oakland. Trained in ensemble devising processes, clown, Suzuki and ancient Japanese theater, they also frequent axis and butoh dance halls. Around and sometimes with theater Fenner is also an adventure cyclist, musician and host with the most.
:: psychobotany has featuring a live projection artist, Katarina Countiss
Katarina Countiss is an Oakland based multimedia artist-designer. Keywords: zines, embroidery, Instagram, drawing therapy, psychedelics, autofiction, petals, performance making, improv uke, overhead projector, art nites
Bill Russell was the documentarian of the night. A big thank you to him for without him these videos would not exist. He was at the SF Fringe psychobotany as a documentarian for that. It was great to feel the sense of evolution and continuity.
The movers: Andrew and Annikah were a part of the original team from Psychobotany at Safehouse and the fringe shows. It was great to have Fenner on the team for the first time. I worked with Annikah and Fenner on The Boy Who Cried “Naked!” It was great to see them again and working with each other. The chemistry is lovely.
David Samas, leader of the Brother’s Quarrel, is the composer and live musician of psychobotany music so far. His enthusiasm and reliability as well as music magic was appreciated. The additions of Michael Shrader and Kevin Corcoran were harmonious.
As far as event producing goes, this was my most ambitious event yet. I reached out to the venue/team, Beauty Supply with a proposal. It was great feeling like I had control over the timeline and who I was booking and the space. In previous psychobotanies, we had to leave pretty much right after the show, so it was nice having some time to come down from the thrill of performing.
There was an element of something that I don’t want to publicly mention, but for my own sense of the show’s memory, that it was magical, and mostly safe, though I learned some lessons about labeling and supervision that I want to be more conscientious of in the future.
Also, I would add as a sole-producer– I would make the note of being more upfront about when payment is happening and making sure that all artists get some kind of photographic/videographic/aural documentation. It was an oversight for the opener not to have something after the show for their use.
The experience of the show: it was exciting to feel nervous, it was sad to feel that not everyone who is important to me came to see it, it was ecstatic to see the elements coming together. It was a miracle– I loved the stories that emerged from the movements on stage. The thing about this show is that the movers are instructed to move “authentically.” The free associative quality makes the show a treat for me because I don’t know what’s going to happen and I know most about what’s going to happen. The stories were amazing. I had my stained glass window silhouettes and Annikah wore a full veil, so there was a mystical church storyline and overall, it felt like Holy Mountain because of how stately some of the action was.
My role of lighting artist was a treat. It’s always great to be in control of a machine that makes colors and textures happen with ease. It’s an overhead projector, old school style– it feels like a microscope, it feels like a spotlight. I feel like I’m dancing with them, picking up on the stories and vibes and adding and being inspired. An interplay of responding, and sponding. There were parts like, I’m done looking at that story, moving to another area of the stage, and other parts where I think Andrew was talking to me, like he knew I was out there looking at him and said here’s this projection surface for you.
I’m excited about doing more psychobotanies. I feel like it has a lot of benefit for experimentation. The timing of the show was 2 30-minute cycles instead of a 45 minute with 5 9-minute sections. It was a different dynamic and at first I thought, what makes it psychobotany if not for the timing, but it felt like psychobotany.
I was telling my therapist about how much I love this show and how it feels like a crystallization of a lot of my interests. Thank you to all who came to witness it in person. Thank you to everyone who held space for it.
Kismet Arts Tangent 