the Imaginists

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-Theater performance?

• The design for the glue and paste box was definitely a post election sentiment: How are we unified and around what? We all deserve a beer for sure and we are all pissed about at least one thing. Could turnbuckles or rope or tape hold us together or do we just need to grit our teeth?

What is a work of art or performance you remember that changed your idea of what art/performance could be?

• While I grew up in a very creative family with parents that were both elementary school teachers and Renaissance Faire puppet makers, I had never seen an artist studio until a college field trip. We walked into a small studio outside of Chicago where there was a printing press, drawing tables and flat files, and walls covered in prints that told a story that was only known to those who had seen this artist’s work.
  
  This space was entirely built to be what it was, a studio for one person to tell their story, he wasn’t working next to the car in the garage, or on his lap on the couch, or at the kitchen table. That was the moment, not the hundreds of hours visiting museums, or the several years I had under my belt studying art in college by that time, but this visit to this studio of an artist who’s name I can no longer recall, that was the moment where I realized how pinpointed the intention of art could be.

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-Theater performance?

• Drafting the underground, concrete, cold steel & wire brush dust, stage managers, comic strips, advent calendars, and my dad. The flop and flail zone, multiple starting points intertwining into new constellations.

What is a work of art or performance you remember that changed your idea of what art/performance could be?

• The unforgettable experiences. Stuff that ties us into knots that work out over time; sometimes maddening, sometimes joyously triumphant, but it’s that sting and extended buzz- that’s the hook. 

  Dmitry Volkostrelov’s untitled slide show performance, which I was fortunate to attend in Moscow in 2014 at Teatr.doc, was a one and only experience where an audience walked out mid performance in wild numbers, throwing all sorts of loud, hateful displeasure back at the artist while making their exits. The longer it lasted, the more entertaining. By the end, I found myself giggling hysterically. Here was a performance within a performance that wasn’t made easy. It broke all the rules that never really existed.

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-Theater performance?

• My thoughts about the December 2020 Imaginists Post-Theater performance were focused on creating a thought-provoking, optimistic moment for the recipients; fellow Bed Rockers. I’ve enjoyed every one that I’ve received to date. The challenge for me was how to include layers of meaning on possibly just a card. When I decided on an envelope for enclosure then it became a matter of how many elements I could utilize? I’m quite excited about the result so far. It’s often an adventure when doing a multiple number of pieces so there may be surprises. A wispy cloud, stairs to climb, a feather for tickling ideas and a cup of tea while musing are currently included. I’m honored to contribute to this series in this time of ours. Here’s to 2021!

What is a work of art you remember that changed your idea of what art could be?

• Over 74 and 1/2 years of living, I’ve seen much ART. Because I see art in all things, it’s even a broader category? One such work that impacted my thinking was in a junior college painting class. A student stood up for our critique with no canvas to present. He waved his arms around and drew a chalk line on the board. It was CONCEPTUAL ART. Intriguing, but I wasn’t quite convinced. I knew that he’d just not worked on his painting but still clever? And, my introduction to conceptual art... 1975?

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-Theater performance?

• A few things:
  Freedom & Process: Following a trail that has no end in sight; being comfortable with not knowing. Getting out of the way so that what wants to be written can come through; what wants to be made can be made. Practicing letting go of expectation and whether something will have value, an audience, worth, - all of that. Enjoying what arrives; being surprised. And then going in with a knife like a lox-slicer; cutting away.
  
  Imagination: I was thinking that it really is the work that we most need, we need to be able to imagine other stories, futures, and narratives in order to change current constructs. Donna Haraway says “It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what stories we tell stories with.” I was thinking of the scientists working on vaccines; the intimacy with failure in order to learn, and discover.

  Using found materials: using recycled cardboard to make the postcards, and how that choice resulted in different sized and shaped postcards. How form came from that choice. Exciting to think of the multiple lives and functions of the material.

C.K. Itamura | October 2020

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-theater performance?

• Being hungry, starving perhaps. Being presented with a banana. Mouth watering. Anticipating sweet bellyful. The act of slowly peeling. Discovering the inside of the banana. Turning the entire fruit — all three levels — inside out before biting, tasting, chewing, swallowing, and finally absorbing potassium, vitamins B6 and C, magnesium and all manner of essential fibers of being. So there you have it. This is what I was thinking about.

What is a work of art you remember that changed your idea of what art could be?

• There are many. “Apple” by Yoko Ono is one.

Barry Morgan | September 2020

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-Theater performance?

1) The nature of play. How it can start and stop on a dime and can be picked up where left off later. How the energy of play is entirely creative and lives equally in the body and mind. How work and play remain two sides of the same coin all these years later. 

2) How I live in the place where a theater began amidst what many would call ghosts and relics but what I call old friends. How those old friends still have stories to tell and how I am in a unique position to conjure those stories, feature this space, and expose these roots for reference, perspective, time travel and teleportation.

3) How the power of sound, harnessed under terrible circumstances, AKA the opportunity of a lifetime, could strip a century from the timeline.

4) How I am certain some creatures were harmed during the production of this film, but not nearly as many as when I mow my fricking lawn.

5) How my connection to this land, both real and imagined, has kept me here as a human through line and makes all of the above possible. How our sister spaces are joined. How we step into the woods and find ourselves in a forest. How art is reliable medicine while carnivores remain rich and ridiculous.

6) How freeing it is to imagine that technology might rely upon natural beauty, of all things, to help keep the lights on.

Alejandro Salazar | August 2020

What were you thinking about when you were creating your Post-Theater performance?

• I was thinking about sharing something intimate, something to make the receiver of the postcard question the art process.

Did you work in any new way in response to this commission?

• Yes, I wrote almost as I paint. Using intuition, chance and some reason.

What would you like to see more of in theater? 

• Inspired by William Kentridge, I'd like to see the integration of other disciplines to their maximum expression.