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How might we counter the mechanistic, sociocultural, political, technological and economic forces th |
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July 6, 2019 |
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Hunched-over/engrossed-in cellphones (Grindr/Tinder), performers frantically swipe-left/right. Strings attached to their hands extend to pulleys hanging atop drilling-derricks style towers descending to guillotines behind the opposite performers’ bed. Each swipe slowly lowers guillotines onto a fish (male-side), braided hair-extensions (female-side). Audience also sees real-time projections on ceiling showing performers’ faces captured by their cellphone selfie-video-cams as they swipe; juxtaposing the intended intimacy/vulnerability/connection-seeking of the activity against the lonely/isolated/alienated subjective experience, and revealing the event’s underlying duality—subjective experience of using technology to achieve personal/intimate needs/goals, while technology dispassionately appropriates user’s private/personal behavior/data to advance a solely economic agenda. |
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Can sexual responses be truly voluntary within the convoluted machinery of technological disconnecte |
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July 6, 2019 |
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This ?CONSENT? scene sketch depicts a man entering credit card numbers into a laptop (purchasing pornography) causing a woman to be hoisted upside-down and eggs to fall from her underwear and splatter on the bed and floor below. This will be achieved via wind/air pressure differentials and magnetism (metaphorically apropos)—the principle mechanisms of action for many ?CONSENT? apparatus. My work on electromagnetic-pneumatic orchestral and theatre organs has given me the mechanical engineering knowledge to execute this idea. Scene questions the meaning of consent when the encounter is filtered through fantasies, imagery and sexual expectations established by pornography. |
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Upcoming Project: ?Consent? |
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May July 6th, 2019 |
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?CONSENT? materializes the dynamic processes of consent in a series of performances within a large-scale performer-activated kinetic-sculpture. Through controls connected to their bodies, each performer’s movement sets-off a cascade of connections across the sculpture, materializing the psychosocial interactive-field and animating the theater of tacit forces involved in negotiating consent. In isolated corners of a large kinetic-sculpture, performers move in personal-spaces demarcated sculpturally but fully exposed to the audience. Cloth screens obstruct the performers’ view of one another. Performers’ biometrics are projected onto these screens from polygraph machines. The performers see only their own data-stream superimposed over the others’ personal-space, obfuscating their ability to respond to one another as autonomous beings. Both data-streams are also overlaid in a single projection on the ceiling above the sculpture, as silent dissonance generated by siloed bodies/experiences colliding. In these ways, the performances visualize the vulnerabilities engendered by intercourse, the challenges of communication, provide material structure to the ways in which silent/internal negotiation manifests, and animate the psychosocial theater. It is machine, sculpture, performance. It is the instrumentalization of bodies/selves/groups in an encounter mediated through a mess of strings>springs>levers>bellows>pneumatics>etc. It is an exposé of the kinetics of awkwardness and the complex challenges of meeting the psychic demands of consent. First-wave performances (years1&2) implicate sexual consent, though not exclusively nor explicitly. Second wave performances (years3&4) draw on consent-negotiation analogs occurring between groups colliding around development-versus-displacement issues in the context of gentrification. Final year performances turn to consent-negotiations at-play between colonialist institutions and Alaska Native tribes in matters related to tribal sovereignty. Multiple performance iterations by diverse couple pairings will open onto dialogue about the meaning of consent, and provoke questions about the instrumentalization of the Other in human intercourse. ?CONSENT? materializes and animates interpersonal interactions to make public the psychosocial interactive field undergirding this negotiation. |
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Concept Sketch of the ?Consent? Installation: Materializing the obstacles to consent negotiation |
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May July 6th, 2019 |
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What does it mean to encounter another’s body as constitutive of the fullness of personhood, as embodied agency? ?CONSENT? enacts a physical consent language by giving material dimension to the immaterial dynamics and psychosocial/psychosexual structures at-play between two bodies. The magnitude of the sculpture highlights both the fragility of the individuals within it and the urgent need for collective reconsideration of consent as a shared responsibility (to generate new norms/mores) rather than the utterances of individuals. The visual complexity stands at-odds with the simplification of consent to “yeses” or “nos,” undermining the fiction that simple words have simple meanings. |
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Sound Machines! |
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May 22nd, 2018 |
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For the past 4 months Iris Freeheart has been working with Bowerbird to create a ridiculous monster sound machine on sound machine extravaganza for the U.S. premier of Maricio Kagel's Zwei Mann Orchester in Philadelphia! We built a huge kinetic sound sculpture of found objects and orchestral instruments played via an intricate web of strings, springs, slinkys, sticks, wires, and levers to produce the entire timbral range of a symphony orchestra. You can come see this great work on exhibition the whole month of May at: Drexel University's Pearlstein Gallery URBN Annex 3401 Filbert Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 GALLERY HOURS Tuesday – Sunday; 11a.m.–6p.m. Opening Reception: May 3, 5pm to 7pm You can also come see it in action in the production of Maricio Kagel's Zwei Mann Orchester at the Pearlstein Gallery on: May 3, 4, 13, 17, 20, 24, 30 @7pm Tickets available on the Bowerbird website: https://bowerbird.ticketleap.com/kagel-zmo/ |
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Iris in Alaska |
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October 29th, 2017 |
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Iris Freeheart is alive and well in Alaska. See you soon! |
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Draw Til You Die |
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May 10th, 2016 |
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Come one, come all! Tomorrow, May 11, 2016-- we are welcoming our freehearted friends into our home for a night of music and art. We also welcome our wonderful musical guests: Lobo Marino! Our door opens at 8 p.m. Performances by Lobo Marino and Iris Freeheart will begin at 8:30. Did we mention homemade chili and sangria??? Join us for a night of love and music! Doodling and sketching utensils are suggested!
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Ear God |
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January 26th, 2016 |
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Our performance back on January 8, 2016 at Marginal Utility, within "I LOST MY HEAD" installation. |
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Entanglement featured on NBT Music Radio |
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December 15th, 2015 |
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We are happy, honored, and humbled to announce our EP Entanglement was featured on the NBT Music Radio's 20 Best Albums of 2015. It is Amaze-(ing) to know that people are enjoying our music! Congratuations to all of the artists on the list!
Check it out!! : |
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In Concert at Trocadero (Main Stage) August 28, Philadelphia |
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August 5th, 2015 |
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Iris Freeheart Is Performing At The Temple University Verizon Symposium 2015! |
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March 21, 2015 |
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This coming Friday March 27th, we will be performing at the Temple University Verizon Symposium titled On The Record: The Download on the Music Industry. If you are a music maker, music appreciator, music man, music woman, music lover, music child.... you will not want to miss this event! To learn more about this event follow the link @ http://smc.temple.edu/events/on-the-record-the-download-on-the-music-industry
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Mighty Mighty, We're Excitey |
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March 20, 2014 |
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Iris Freeheart is thrilled to announce that 2 new EP's titled Entanglement and Secret Babies will be released by April 1st! We ain't foolin'!
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Movie Songie |
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March 20, 2014 |
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We love songs, but we also love things that move with songs. A music video? Maybe. A song that moves? Hope so. We will be releasing NEW videos by Juice often, so please check in! |
