Leslie Friedman, Tasty installation detail

Friedman has hit a feminist note in her installation, in which three panels repeat a soda can’s thick emission dripping down to the open mouth of a conventionally beautiful woman. The pouring hand is manicured–the ladies are doing it to themselves.

Leslie Friedman, Tasty, 2012 installation shot at Napoleon

Friedman’s little exhibit is proof positive that UArts Curator Sid Sachs’ Seductive Subversion show of the year in 2010 came at the right time, when those ideas and strategies are bubbling up again in our communal consciousness–I’m thinking especially of Pop feminist artists Marjorie Strider and Evelyne Axelle from Sid’s show.

Leslie Friedman, Tasty, detail of installation

In Napoleon, the panels are augmented with a floor installation, two-gallon replicas of Coke Zero cans in seductive colors tumble across the unfinished old wood, making Andy’s Campbell’s Soup Cans austere and Platonic. Pink pearly paint–is it nail polish, I wonder–serves as the soda can ejaculate. It’s the same substance pouring down in the painted panels. And sprinkled among all this are giant facsimiles of packets of Splenda, Truvia, et al. Although bigger can be better, the packets lack the material delights and metaphoric possibilities of the other details of the installation.

Marjorie Strider Marjorie Strider Woman with Parted Lips, 1964 acrylic on board Collection Michael T. Chutko

In a world where James Rosenquist painted a deadpan F-111 with a mixture of adoration and dread, so Friedman creates her salvation and her nemesis with equal ambivalence. It’s here, in this ambivalence, combined with sexual messages about desire, and cultural messages about women, their roles and their value, that this seemingly simple installation finds its not-so-simple content.

Leslie Friedman, Tasty, installation detail

Friedman, a 2011 Tyler MFA, is part of the Napoleon team. The exhibit is up until Feb. 24.

"Woman Laughing In Indiana," Ridge Avenue and Tenth Street. Photo from artmostfierce.blogspot.com.

Rewind 10 years: Zoe Strauss is given a Canon Rebel, the tool to finally start creating the beast of an installation she has been envisioning for years. Hoping to transform the space under I-95—which has itself transformed Strauss’s South Philly neighborhood—and to capture the changes over time that this community has undergone, Strauss set up ten annual exhibitions under the highway, with prints for sale of the many Philadelphians she’s taken portraits of, and prints of the many places in the city and elsewhere she has found inspiration.

Fast forward to January 14th, 2012: Questlove is performing at the 10 Years opening to a crowd that can’t quite believe they’re at a PMA reception. Waiting in line to get your photos taken at the party booth, you only wish your prom had been this cool, complete with fabulous Conestoga Angels drum line performances.

Zoe Strauss in office.

Fast forward about ten days: I’m sitting on the floor with Strauss during her office hours eating chips and asking about the three paintings around us. Back to that “what the hell” portrait behind Strauss of a young man with dark hair and a wine colored scarf who glances backwards at the viewer. She forgets on the spot who it’s by and admits she doesn’t even necessarily like the painting that much. She simply embraced the chance to keep looking at it in her office and perhaps figure out its intrigue. This small painting exudes a mystery that I pick up from Strauss’s more abstract work, in addition to her shots of empty storefronts and faded signage and graffiti. Trying to understand any messages behind these images, I ask Strauss if they’re piecing together a mixed-up urban poetry to match the social landscape she’s imagined for us. She tells me the messages are “open and available for repurposing.” Just as Strauss converted expanses under I-95—not unlike the FDR skate park and Boat People guerrilla farmers’ markets continue to do in similar expanses—she’s moved on to repurpose commercial billboard space. These works on the billboards tell “an epic narrative about the beauty and struggle of everyday life”—Strauss’s words.

While the billboards evoke the Love Letter series of murals by Steve Powers, which Strauss was a champion and documentarian of, the billboards’ likely fate in a few months is to turn into a new string of tasteless ads for Delilah’s. Their inevitable evolution mimics the mutability—intrinsic to Strauss’s work—of signifiers, community, and individuals. One empowering adoption of a mutable image, “We Will Win,” represents a very specific and deeply personal sentiment of AIDS advocates over the past 30 years. Strauss confirmed that the repurposing of her visual message in the Witness exhibition that long-time friend David Acosta did at the Asian Arts Initiative perfectly represents her willingness to let her photos’ messages reincarnate many times over. Not enough can be written about the impact of Strauss’s work, which resonates with Philadelphians today, but which has the power to reach communities other artists and institutions can’t and won’t.

Zoe with Alice Neel's "Last Sickness"

Turn around: The Alice Neel painting behind me features the face of the elderly woman in a patchwork bathrobe which must read differently by everyone from the public who has visited Strauss in her office (PMA Director Timothy Rub’s satellite office, which he gave to Strauss for the duration of her exhibition). She takes a moment as we’re talking to admire the complexity of emotions expressed by the woman in “Last Sickness,” which, not unlike her work, is up to the viewer’s interpretation, subject to multiple reads, and void of pedantic descriptions.

Cello music sounds faintly down the hall, and I ask Strauss about the fate of the Megawords room where I waited before entering her office, and where Philadelphia Orchestra’s Hai-Ye Ni, propping her cello against plush pillows on the ground, is practicing for the afternoon show.

Hai-Ye Ni in Megawords

The Megawords installation runs kitty-corner to her retrospective, and like the artist’s office hours, serves as a new programming model for the PMA. Visitors from 10 Years and Van Gogh mill in and out of the installation wondering “what the hell” happened to the “scary,” old ATM/phone booth dug-outs. Megawords, “an experimental media project,” raises eyebrows with an explosion of photos, zines, chalkboard, and publications for sale in the tiny alcoves. Megawords also seeks to document the “ongoing narrative” of urban life with their installations and concurrent events.

Hai-Ye Ni in Megawords

Fast forward ten more years? Strauss makes no predictions for what will become of the new spaces—possibly now with chip crumbs in the carpets!—created for her exhibition inside the PMA and all over the city. My hope is that this wonderful experiment (please, include more dance parties!) produces many more experiments in its wake. Philly deserves thought-provoking and purely awesome “what the hell” moments for many more than ten years to come.

Wim Wenders and Angela Merkel at the Berlin premiere of Pina in 2011

It’s in the the great vaulting leaps of one dancer into another’s arms that I caught myself wowed, not for the skill so much as for the sense of complete trust and overwhelming joy that the gesture embodies — like the blind trust a child has for a parent. There are a few moments of glee, with almost vaudevillian slapstick, even in the somber Cafe Muller.  After a blind woman struggles through a room filled with chairs, when she finally finds a man and throws her arms around his neck with gusto, a manager-type in a suit quickly arrives and disentangles the two then places the woman, like a baby, in the arms of the man.  But she promptly falls to the ground and scrambles back up to embrace the man again. In manic pacing, the action repeats (see video clip) with the manager dis-entangling the two; the woman falling from the man’s arms and scrambling back into the embrace again, each time speeding up so that you hear the dancers panting from all the extreme action. It’s Chaplin-esque, both funny and poignant.

Pina, scene from Volmond, with dancers exuberantly throwing buckets of water at each other

The dances sprawl on stages covered with peat or water, and they’re out in Wuppertal, on street corners and in an elevated train. One segment has a dancer scrambling up to the top of what looks like a quarry to dance an exuberant number in the dusty dirt. Music runs from elegiac and classical (Rites of Spring) to contemporary jazz/rock and bubbly (“Lilies in the Valley” by Jun Miyake).

After a manic running leap the dancer is caught in the arms of another.

Bausch’s dances and this movie should do much to introduce people, in a friendly way, to an art form considered icy and foreign to many. With moves seemingly scripted from life itself — those great leaps; the seemingly martial arts-inspired arm and leg moves; breakdancing, even — Bausch’s dance-theater has a populist hook that crosses generations to connect with a potentially wide audience. The very engaging Volmond (with the water on stage) includes a crowd-pleasing scene in which at one point the dancers use buckets to splash each other like kids on a hot summer’s day (clip here).

The dances are extremely sensual and emotional but they’re also highly kooky, and the movie captures that combination and makes it very winning. Paced perfectly, with dances interspersed with lovely quiet moments of the dance troupe members in closeups, smiling wistfully as a voiceover plays words they previously spoke about Pina.  Whether this needed to be a 3D movie is not clear to me.  There were a couple of obvious 3D moments (a scrim curtain seems to brush past you; some water seems to splash your way), but basically, the dance-to-3D-effects ratio is such that I forgot I was watching a 3D movie.  (And I want to say that the clips I’ve seen on YouTube and Vimeo convey the film quite well without any 3D at all.)

I was not convinced I would even like Pina but I came out loving it. What a treat! Don’t miss it.

Catch the short making-of video and a fun red carpet video of the Berlin opening, in which you get to see, among others, German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the front row and wearing her 3D glasses.  In Philadelphia see it at the Riverview Stadium 17 and the King of Prussia Stadium 16.

Henry O. Tanner 'The Three Marys' (1910) o/c 42x50" Fisk University Galleries

Supporters of the avant garde have been willing to accept modern religious art in two forms only: when the spiritual is channeled through abstraction (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko, Polke), or  when expressed by artists working outside the official institutions of art (Gertrude Morgan, Howard Finster). Tanner received an academic art education, both at PAFA, then at the Academie Julien, Paris. While he produced work across genres (some portraits, a few genre scenes, many landscapes), his highest expression was in the form most valued by his training and by the mainstream art institutions of his day: history painting. In Tanner’s case this meant scenes from the Hebrew and Christian Bible. Tanner’s son described him as a mystic, but Tanner’s faith was likely consistent with that of his father, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This distinguished him from the occult mysticism of his period promoted by figures such as Madame Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner (whose influence on abstract art was significant).

Henry O. Tanner 'Florida' (1894) o/c 18x22" collection Louis Tanner Moore, photo Rick Echelmeyer

The exhibition situates Tanner as a modern spirit, which is true if one considers him a man of his times. But a modernist he was not. The winners in art history (as told until now) have been the artists who rejected the tenets of academic art, yet Tanner and most of his contemporaries retained traditional values about art, even as they enjoyed technical advances in paints, lighting, transportation and everyday life. A number chose religious subjects, as did occasional modernists. Around the year 1900, William Trubler, Jean Benner and Louis Corinth each depicted Salome (a subject, admittedly, appreciated more for its sexual than its religious aspect, at the fin de siecle), and painters of Christian subjects included a broad range of artists, among them Eugene Carriere, William-Adolphe Bougereau, Maurice Denis, Edward Munch and Pablo Picasso, who showed mourners in a chapel in The Burial of Casagemas (Evocation), 1901 (he, too, had an academic art education).

Henry O. Tanner 'Nicodemus' (1899) o/c 33 11/16x 39 1/2" PAFA

An African- American artist and son of a former slave who achieved an international reputation in late nineteenth-century Paris will inevitably be of interest for biographical and historical reasons, and the exhibition does a good job of situating Tanner within the racial context of his times. But Tanner always insisted that he wanted to be thought of as an artist, with no qualifier as to race. And it is the paintings that interest me. The exhibition’s labels are of little help in situating Tanner artistically; it doesn’t help that those in several of the rooms are almost illegible, printed in brown on a mole-grey background.

Henry O. Tanner 'Salome' (ca. 1900) o/c 45 7/8 x 35 1/4" Smithsonian American Art Museum

I left the exhibition with more questions than answers. Tanner spent most of his professional life in Paris, then the center of the art world. He would have seen a great deal of current art as well as that of the old masters. His early landscapes suggest a range of influences: his teacher, Eakins, Barbizon painting, the Hudson River school. The exhibition acknowledges the influence of Whistler on his later landscapes, but the paintings have similarities with the work of a number of artists familiar with French modernism but working on its periphery: Ferdinand Hodler, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Ferdinand Keller and others. Tanner’s Raising of Lazarus owes an obvious debt to Rembrandt, but what other painters made an impression on him?  Letters survive, and it is likely he mentioned some of the paintings he studied.

Henry O. Tanner 'The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water' (ca. 1907) o/c 51 1/2x42" Des Moines Aert Center

Tanner’s mature technique was experimental and distinctive, but while the curators suggest this as a modern aspect of his work, it is consistent with a number of artists during the 19th Century. He applied many layers of paints bound both in oil and temperas, some with additions of varnish. The choice of tempera usually indicates that the artist is interested in old master technique, although some artists were exposed to tempera paints used for theater sets. Artists from Joshua Reynolds on hoped to discover the secrets of the old masters, and the mid-nineteenth century saw the translation and publication of a number of early artist’s recipe books.  Some of Tanner’s experiments produced problematic results; the deeply-cracked surface (alligatoring, as it is called) of the wonderful Salome ca. (1900) is a product of improper paint layering, ignoring the painters’ rule of fat over lean paint. But many of the later paintings have wonderful, if inscrutable, surfaces.

Henry O. Tanner 'Entrance to the Casbah' (1912) oil on paper on canvas 32x26" Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, IN

The most unusual aspect of Tanner’s work has received no significant discussion that I know of: his palette, most specifically his tendency to emphasize tones of blue, particularly in religious scenes; some are so exclusively blue that the paintings could be considered monochromes.  Some are set in the evening, and blue is commonly associated with twilight; indeed, the French use the term l’heure bleu. But not all of Tanner’s blue paintings are obviously set at dusk or nighttime.  The unnatural coloring certainly situates them beyond a realistic representation of observed visual effects.  It also creates an affinity among a group of works that portray ordinary human activities performed in the presence of the divine.  This highly personal and deeply felt recasting of religious imagery makes the most persuasive case for Tanner’s modernity.

Henry O. Tanner 'Flight into Egypt' (ca. 1916-25) oil on wood 16 7/8x16 7/8" Smithsonian American Art Museum

The exhibition catalog, with 14 essays by French and American scholars, gives a much more nuanced picture of the artist than can be obtained from the exhibition itself.  PAFA, by the way, is opening the exhibition free of charge on Sundays throughout the exhibition.  That sends the clearest possible message about the broad audience they hope the exhibition will attract – and it should.

Jason Lazarus will take your unwanted photos
Do you have photos that are too painful to keep around? If so, Chicago-based artist Jason Lazarus will take them.  He’s collecting unwanted photos for an art installation. There’s no need to provide the background for the photos, and if you feel they are too private to be shown, the artist will display them face down. Lazarus can pick them up on Sunday February 5 from 10 AM – 7 PM. E-mail him at jasonlazarus.photo@gmail.com or call 312-953-2885.

Knapp Gallery closing
Old City’s Knapp Gallery is closing up shop at the end of February. A rough economic climate and a need for income generating and career boosting opportunities in Philadelphia are among the reasons director Karl Slocum listed for the gallery’s decision to shut down. The final show runs from February 3 – 26 with work by painter Bryan Guglielmi.

CENTERpieces — Julie Courtney and Jennie Shanker curate the Catskills

Dome building under construction, The Center for Discovery, Harris, New York, 1984.

CENTERpieces, a cultural initiative co-curated by Julie Courtney and Jennie Shanker at the Center for Discovery in Harris NY, this month debuts The Harris Observatory, a temporary project  by Richard Torchia, in which a disused geodesic dome is converted into a sunlight-powered chart of the stars. The Harris Observatory is on view February 18 – March 3 by appointment: catskillcenterpieces@gmail.com. Grand opening day is February 25 and requires an RSVP at the Eventbrite page.

Network sessions at Moore
February 17 kicks off Moore College of Art & Design’s first networking opportunity this year, Launch into Fashion. The event goes from 6 – 8 PM in the Great Hall and includes a local DJ, cocktails, and a chance to meet Philly’s top fashion and design experts.  While this network session is about fashion, others will focus on the visual arts.

In the Media

Bonnie Brenda Scott.

Sarah McEneaney’s current show at Tibor de Nagy in New York is featured on Huffington Post as one of the 10 must-see painting exhibits this year–congratulations! Via Franklin Einspruch, Bill Scott’s exhibition at Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York appears in the Jan. 2012 issue of Art in America. Also via, via an artnet tweet,  photo blog Boxes of Blight documents Philadelphia’s graffiti and sticker-covered newspaper honor boxes — a great obsession, don’t we all hate these eyesores? Bonnie Brenda Scott’s work appears in a recent post on Beautiful/Decay (also catch her opening at Benna’s Cafe on February 10).

Philadelphia Barnes Campus hours and ticket prices
The Barnes Foundation has released its new set of hours and pricing for the upcoming opening of its new museum on the Parkway.  Members can buy tickets now.  Tickets will be timed to manage the flow through the small galleries that replicate the rooms at the Merion Barnes.  We don’t see an artist price on the list, but we hope they might consider it.  Or a pay what you wish Sunday like the PMA has. Amazingly, the Barnes will be open 7 days a week!

In Activism
Still juiced from Occupy Wall Street — check out the OWS Arts & Labor Teach-in in Brooklyn at 300 Nevins St., Brooklyn on February 19 from 3 – 6 PM, for discussions of alternative economies and creative prosperity. Contact owsartsandlabor@gmail.com for more information. On the home front, Nicola Midnight St. Claire is hosting an event at ICA this Sunday, Feb 5, 2pm.  Lead from Somewhere examines the relationship between art and civic action.

PHLocal exhibit and event listings
A new site – PHLocal.com – is set to fill the niche for listing art events and exhibits all around the city. The site is currently in beta and it’s definitely worth checking out for all you artists, organizers, and venues!  We miss our own maps&listings, but this looks like it may be a great resource.

In Curatorial
Bryn Mawr College appointed Brian Wallace as Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts. Wallace formerly put on some great programming for Moore College when he was head of the galleries there, and we’re glad he is back in the area. Tyler School of Art alumn Dean Daderko was named Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Daderko ran an influential apartment gallery in Brooklyn, Parlour Projects from 2000-2005 and also did some freelance curating at Vox Populi. Sarah Schultz has been named Director of Education and Curator of Public Practice at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She has been leading the way in experimental programming in museum education.

Opportunities

The International Migration Art Festival is seeking work for its Art Your Food competition to be held in Milan, New York, and London. The theme is “Food and Migration” and mediums include film, literature, music, and visual art. The deadline is April 15.

Via inLiquid, the NARS Foundation has announced its second annual Emerging Curator Open Call, which offers an opportunity for a young-in-career curator to present a group show at the NARS Foundation Gallery. You can find all the details here. The deadline is March 2.

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is seeking photographers for its 3rd annual Contemporary Photography Competition and Exhibit. The deadline is May 29.

Artist News

Judith Schaechter has her first solo show in Philly in 10 years this May at Eastern State Penitentiary. Can you believe that – 10 years and no solo show in her own town? The opening reception is May 11 from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. Always in demand, the queen of glass is also exhibiting at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York — among many other things — check her website for more.

Becky Suss, "Hope St", Sumi ink on paper.

Becky Suss, a new Vox Populi member, has a week long show, Feb. 3-10 at Snyderman-Works. Her show at Snyderman looks like the work she showed in her Vox solo exhibit last year — that seems a great strategy, join a coop, show work there, then get a gig at a commercial gallery so you can (maybe, we hope) sell something.

Daniel Hoffman – a former artblog contributor – has started a new animation business Laundryboat Media. Check out his music video for ManMan!

Out of town shows: Bonnie MacAllister and Rachel Blythe Udell have a two person show at et al projects in NYC. Rebecca Gilbert will be part of the Cutting Edge: Contemporary Paper show at Boise State University.

Maureen Drdak, from the Prakriti Project: "The Flying Naga", detail Collection of Berthe and John Ford.

Maureen Drdak culminates her Fulbright in Nepal with a show at Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu, opening February 9.

Marsha Owett, Antimony, 2012, Archival C-Print, 24" x 30" Edition of 10

Social critique and playfulness go together in Jong Kyu Kim’s monumental duels with pop culture icons Facebook and Keanu (in The Matrix). It’s Kim against the corporation, or Kim against Hollywood. In both cases, the artist deals with ideas of powerlessness at a time when we think we’re more in charge than ever. Elizabeth Leister, too, explores the desire to capture the movement and beauty of another’s performance via her art. Both artists keep trying even though their tasks are unwinnable. Marin Abell’s playful video has a similar quirky and forlorn appeal in a work that could be a parody of a survival tv show for machines.

Some new media artists crave beauty and order. Jing Zhou‘s and Jeanette Bonds’ sophisticated animations are both technical “wows” – and beautiful.

Also beautiful, although not traditionally so, are Marsha Owett‘s color photo, whose digital mystery makes it somewhat terrifying; and Hernando Rico Sanchez’ color photo, which is so perfect you believe it to be a lie.

Ryuta Nakajima, photo from 88 aspects of the 20th Century Paintings according to a Cuttlefish (2010)

Embracing the idea of the beautiful sublime (which is often terrifying, verging on ugly) are Ryuta Nakajima‘s video with its odd juxtaposition of the ancient cuttlefish over a mélange of contemporary scenes; and Ava Blitz’ Photoshop manipulations of everyday suburban landscape, which are as enigmatic as the cuttlefish.

New media art is a young art form, but it’s fresh and engaging and, being experimental, it lacka the pomposity often attached to traditional art forms. As new media art attracts more practitioners, and as galleries show it more and collectors find ways to showcase it in their collections, the field of new media art will, I predict, live up to this show’s title.

from February Our Picks

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In Talk to Me, Joao Enxuto and Erica Love read to each other text messages supplied by the audience.

The high point–using text messages–was an interactive performance by Brooklyn-based artists Joao Enxuto and Erica Love, who collaborate under the name the original copy. In their performance Talk to Me, they play a couple reading text messages to each other, the texts supplied by the audience.

It was a dark and rainy weeknight, however, and the audience in AUX was small, less than 20 when I counted. But the audience was greater than the people in the room, thanks to another layer of technology streaming in and out of the UK. Alas, the audience was a little reluctant to interact, raising the level of tension as well as the discussion about lack of meaningful communication between Enxuto’s and Love’s characters.

What made Talk to Me so successful were the theatrics, the fourth wall broken not just via technology but via the actors…and the irony that communications technology had created a fourth wall of sorts between the two lovers in much the way that we have our noses in our cell phones when we ought to be talking to the person right in front of us. This work was thoughtful and engaging, making successful use of the technology but putting it in a human context with a will-they-won’t-they-? plot driving the action forward in time.

Bonnie Jones, a Maryland-based artist who uses text and music in her improvised and composed performances, projected a poem on a screen in rhythmic bursts of typing and “copied/pasted” text. The words and their presentation were a cosmic meditation on the desire to communicate and how technology mediates. I found myself thinking of the percussive, aggressive word art of Heavy Industries, but the mellow jazziness of Jones’ poem was quite different–more like a haiku than a Howl.

Matt Kalasky performing his short story about love in the internet age. Two Diet Cokes were his main prop.

The ecstasy was palpable in Matt Kalasky‘s performance/reading of a tale of two early Match.com web developers who find each other via their own tech-savvy device in what amounts to an e-epistolatory short story. Why, I wondered, did Kalasky’s persona down two cans of Diet Coke? Why was one of the lovers his mom? With ironic nostalgia for early internet culture, the story builds to its predictable climax after actual bits of computer code (fictional I presume) become part of the mating dance. Highly entertaining and a nice addition to the discussion of the role of technology in communication. Kalasky is a Philadelphia artist and writer, chief editor of The Nicola Midnight St. Claire.

Also worthwhile and layered with ideas was a political film by New York-based Rainer Ganahl featuring a copy of Friedrich Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England… being kicked down the streets of a deserted English mill town fallen victim to economic and technological changes. Ganahl represented Austria in the Venice Biennale in 1999.

Skyping with London-based KIOSK after 2am, Greenwich Mean Time

The framework of the evening, however, was pure agony–an intercontinental, interactive Twitter feed at #nightwatch2012–arty and infertile. An equally arty performance by the Bristol (Engand)-based group the Collect, with a trite visual metaphor of a man untangling wires, also fell flat.

KIOSK’s trio of sleepy curators in England (it was past 2am GMT) participated with the AUX crowd in a post-performance discussion on Skype. One of them suggested the word agony to describe much of the evening’s experience. That helped break the ice.

The Twitter feed for #nightwatch2012 ran in the background throughout the performances.

For all the agony, though, I found the evening fruitful. It brought to mind tedious early art videos, and how the process of learning to take advantage of a new technology takes experimentation and time until a vocabulary of useful strategies and precedents get built.

Since AUX opened over the summer, there’s been a steady stream of performances and screenings there–a space for taking risks. In that light, the agony was to be expected and was not for everyone. The ecstasy–I’d return for more (although there’s not much continuity in what gets shown at AUX; every performance is an adventure).