Goldstar Member Reviews

Paul K.

Highways puts on shows that can be seen nowhere else in Southern California. They are original, stimulating , adult oriented (R rated), and participatory for the audience. This performance art show kept my attention and got me personally involved. And the reception after the show was a bonus. You got to personally interact with the performers in a very intimate setting.

Written on Nov 16 2009

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More Information About Endurable Goods

Description

The enticingly transgressive Endurable Goods performance menu, presented by Highways Performance Space Artistic Director Leo Garica, includes: crotch portraits, non-gratuitous nudity, dirt-eating and soul-scrubbing rituals, wading through an ocean of shitty post-Richard-Simmons epiphanies, unabashedly gratuitous nudity, gorgeously weird wearable sculpture, in-depth explorations of masculinity and masochism by way of headfirst plunges into a vat of Gatorade, and a rock-n-roll revue of the crucifixion of Adult Baby Jesus.

So whether you’ve got a hankering for difficult pleasures, beauty in extremity or the playfully perverse, we guarantee there is something to delight, provoke, tantalize, upend, offend and satisfy every audience appetite.

Endurable Goods is curated by Flint, and features performances by Nathan Bockelman, Irina Contreras, Matt Cornell, Flint, Brian Getnick, Tania Hammidi, and Eric Svedas. The performers first joined together to develop new work under the tutelage of performance art provocateur Ron Athey—and their uniquely realized vision is born from this shared aesthetic perspective.

Endurable Goods features the following work:

Artist: Flint
Title: Approach the Body
Description: “I” expands into “we” as audience members perform a score upon (and with) the stripped bare body of the “solo” performer to create a hands-on, poly-vocal retelling of a personal trauma narrative.
Bio: Flint cultivates her idiosyncratic creative and academic interests through works like Blood: A Memoir; My Daddy’s A Faggot! and The Hole Story, (illustrated “children’s books for adults”); Toys & Tools for the Transhuman Tot, Tyke & Toddler (audio recording); and performances at MOCA LA, Santa Monica Museum of Art, REDCAT, and Highways Performance Space. Publications include Chronometry, SPRAWL, and online journal Two Hawks Quarterly. Flint is a recent graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Critical Studies, and holds an MFA in Writing.

Artist: Mike Atienza (performing as Aloha Tolentino)
Title: ... marking difficult pleasures with Pin@y impressions ...
Description: A campy take on Philippine diasporic experience and a comment on the labor of transnational women from the 2/3rd's World and the industry of beauty, cum hear memories of desire and abuse of power as Aloha prepares for your facial.
Bio: Aloha Tolentino emerged from a queer, male, immigrant Filipino’s nostalgic memory of enacting Miss Universe pageants in his living room at the age of 7. Exclusively performing at UC Riverside’s “Dragalicious Drag Ball” these past six years, Aloha also presented work at the University of California Institute of the Arts 2009 Demonstrate conference and the UC Riverside "You Belong To Me: Art and the Essence of Performance" seminar with Ron Athey. Her partially closeted male identity is completing his master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies.

Artist: Nathan Bockelman & Eric Svedas
Title: Hiring a Stage Prop
Description: Nathan and Eric join again to utilize performance as an unstable platform to examine action and its effect on physical space and their interpersonal relationship.
Bio: Nathan Bockelman and Eric Svedas hail from Southern California with combined backgrounds that range from music to sculpture, gymnastics to stand-up comedy. They began performing works through a collaborative group simply dubbed "Sally" in 2005 and have since developed their own cross-disciplinary art practices. Here, the pair joins again to utilize performance as an unstable platform to examine action and its effect on physical space and their own interpersonal relationship.

Artist: Irina Contreras
Title: Ballad of the Pocha
Description: Ballad of the Pocha is comprised of three short acts intended as simultaneous investigations of visible, invisible and forgotten migratory practices.
Bio: Irina Contreras is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist and educator whose projects engage language, site and dispersal. She is an adjunct video instructor and lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design as well as a staff writer for make/shift Magazine and the former editor in chief for LOUDmouth Magazine. She is also a contributor to the recent anthology Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. Most recently, she served as a member of the steering committee for Resolution 3 at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, MIX LA and the upcoming Coopers Doughnuts Presents... In November, she was a resident artist at PA 61 in Mexico City where she continued to hone in on her work and research around the politics of cultural travel, queer histories and immigration. Recent shows include Patriot Acts at 18th St Arts, You Make Me Laugh at SF 1, and Mix Tape at Federal Art Projects.

Arist: Matt Cornell
Title: Use Me
Description: In Use Me, Matt Cornell re-stages the crucifixion as a rock and roll revue, with an infantilized, masochistic Adult Baby Jesus breaking free from an enormous womb.
Bio: Matt Cornell is a Los Angeles-based artist, performer and film programmer. From 2000 to 2004, he was a business consultant in San Francisco for outsider artist eXtreme Elvis. His current performance avatar is Adult Baby Jesus.

Arist: Brian Getnick
Title: The Adored Young Man
Description: Brian Getnick and The Ballet present "The Adored Young Man", a small play inwhich an inhuman cast become the buffer between the opposing forces of a spectral and actual audience.
Bio: Brian Getnick (b New York, 1976) is a performance artist who creates elaborate sculptural costumes that, through their detail and materialty, provide the primary text for actions. Central to his work is his concept of the spectral audience or "those who watch from posterity". Brian is the director of "The Ballet" a performance toupe comprised of hand made actors and is codirector with Noe Kidder of the forthcoming movie "Holy Blood".

Artist: Tania Hammidi
Title: ANOTHER WORLD
Description: After attending a Richard Simmons calesthenics class, two athletes wade and row across an ocean of shit, and Tania Hammidi invites you to so listen in, join in the breathing and keep your eyes open for the composting toilets on set.
Bio: Tania Hammidi is a live artist working on the abject, butch gender/sexuality, and activism on the mental health industry using installation, sound, and live performance. She has performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside, the Mojave Desert, and work-shopped with Split Britches, Tim Miller, Rachel Rosenthal, Ron Athey, Julie Tolentino, and Juliana Snapper. Hammidi is currently completing a doctorate degree in Dance History at the University of California, Riverside.

About the Ticket Supplier: Highways Performance Space

Highways Performance Space is Southern California's boldest center for new performance. Founded in 1989, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages fierce new artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative works.

Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms. Our mission is implemented through four programs (the performance space, workshop/university program and two galleries). Annually, Highways co-presents approximately 250 performances by solo dramatic artists, small theater groups, dance companies and spoken word artists; curates and exhibits approximately 12 contemporary visual art exhibits per year with work that explores the boundaries between performing and visual art forms; commissions and premieres new work by outstanding performing artists; organize special events, curate festival, offer residency and educational programs that engage community members in the arts while providing access to professionally-directed instruction.