Automata Arts W-2 CONTACT Janie Geiser 1920 Hillhurst Avenue, #151 Los Angeles CA 90027 213.819.6855 automata-la@sbcglobal.net automata-la.org 501 (c)(3): Automata Project Budget Grant Request $12,000 $3,000 PAST GRANTS AWARDED 2015 Project - TUNGSTEN (artery) 2010 Seed - Clouded Sulphur 2007 Project - The Reptile Under the Flowers 2005 Project - Invisible Glass 2004 Seed - Invisible Glass 1998 Seed (1k) - The Arrangement of Things 1996 Project (3k) - Infrared 1994 Project (2k) - Evidence of Floods 1992 Project (3k) - When the Wind Blows 1989 Project (3k) - Stories from Here 1983 Project (5k) - The Glass Dream & Looking for Penguin Film Here / There Here/There is a multidisciplinary puppet theater work that explores the liminal space between here and there--- between home and combat, soldier and family, calm and terror, stasis and action, life and death. Here/There explores the body as the site of war, depository of memory, and vessel of scars. Here/There is conceived and directed by Janie Geiser in collaboration with Jason Barlaan, Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh, and an ensemble of 5 performers. VIDEO SAMPLE Title: Automata Geiser Here/There work sample (2016 and 2015) Artists: 1st excerpt: Here/There idea video. Janie Geiser, Moira MacDonald 2nd excerpt: Excerpts from Fugitive Time. Directed by Janie Geiser. Puppeteers: Moira MacDonald, Luis Tentindo, Erin O'Donnell, Baxley Andresen, Jocelyn Reyes. Description: 1. Short video trailer for Here/There conveying an idea about the emotional space of the work. 2. Excerpts from Fugitive Time, a multidisciplinary performance that explores the history of early 20th Century TB cures in Los Angeles. WORKSHOP
Janie Geiser /Automata Here/There Seed Grant Application Here/There is a multidisciplinary puppet theater work that explores the liminal space between here and there---between home and combat, soldier and family, calm and terror, stasis and action, life and death. Here/There explores the body as the site of war, depository of memory, and vessel of scars. Here/There is conceived, designed, and directed by Janie Geiser, and developed with video designer Hsuan-Kuang, performer/veteran Jason Barlaan, and an ensemble of 5 performers. Our lens is the body. Our materials are the artificial bodies of puppets and the ephemeral space of projected image. We request funds to assist with costs related to our March 2017 workshop, including fees for puppeteers, puppet construction costs, research, and development. Automata will host and provide space for the workshop. Here/There suggests the lingering personal terror that remains after the direct experience of living with warfare, whether as a civilian or soldier, commander or doctor. We investigate this emotionally complex terrain through a merger of formal elements: a life-size puppet, multiple small cutout figures, found objects, model-scale landscapes of barracks and homes, prerecorded and live-feed video. The life-size puppet will be a powerful and uncanny figure standing in for one person, or for many. War is played out through and on the body, so we will locate the work in the physicality of the puppet bodies. Inspired by butoh and bunraku, we will communicate mainly through image and gesture, through stillness and movement. We will explore resilience and vulnerability. We have begun by deconstructing the small actions of daily life: what does it mean to walk, to turn a corner at home, or sleep in a combat zone or at home? What is the physical experience of waiting? Working with a life size bunraku-like figure (with 3 puppeteers) will allow for great expressivity. The main puppet is being constructed so that a limb can be removed, exchanged for a new one; the puppet can fall without breaking; the chest can be opened, be operated on, or filled with other materials. The stage will also be populated by dozens of cutout figures and set pieces that can surround the main puppet, play out smaller dramas, or move to the distance, creating a sense of profound isolation. A performer will, at times, film these manipulated objects for live-feed projection. Here/There is a devised work, and our research includes the history of recent wars and those of the 20 th century. We draw an array of sources: direct interviews with veterans and refugees, ptsd blogs, training videos, chat sites, suicide prevention blogs, readings, military reenactments, and personal experience. My interest began with my father, who never spoke about his own experiences as a soldier. Jason Barlaan is a performer and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His experiences are deeply informing the work and process. In our Spring workshop, he talked about his main strategy for surviving combat, one that was imparted to him by his Captain: you have to believe that you are already dead, then nothing can really hurt you. This devastating reality now colors everything we are imagining. Video Designer Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh is a video and installation artist. A recent immigrant from Taiwan, her experience of living between two worlds will shed light on the work. Working Timeline: The core collaborators began meeting in Fall 2015. Spring 2016: Summer 2016: Fall/Winter 2016-17: Interviews, research. 1st workshop, focused on movement and text, I have been constructing the life-sized puppet. I have been creating a figure with thin strips of wood forming the skeleton, and then using styrofoam and papier mache to give it volume and indestructibility. Further development, puppet construction, script; begin development of sound and video elements. 10-day workshop March 2017. Spring-Fall 2017: Further development of all elements; work-in-progress September 2017. January 2018: Premiere
Janie Geiser /Automata Here/There Seed Grant Application Budget for Workshop 2017 Expenses: Puppet and prop construction $2000 Fees for 5 performers, 10 rehearsals (700 ea) $3500 Video designer fee (research + workshop phase) $1000 Lighting designer fee (research + workshop phase) $1000 Collaborator fee/jason Barlaan $1000 Hard drive and video costs $ 500 Technical designer fee (research + workshop phase) $1000 Production stage manager fee (workshop only) $ 700 Expendables $ 300 Miscellaneous unimagined expenses (always!) $1000 TOTAL EXPENSES $12,000 Income: Doris Duke Artist Award $5000 Automata Residency funds $1000 CalArts Faculty Development fund $2000 Contributed funds $1000 Jim Henson Foundation (requested) $3000 TOTAL INCOME $12,000
Biographies Janie Geiser is an internationally recognized experimental puppet theater artist and filmmaker, whose work is known for its elliptical narratives, its embrace of artifice, and its sense of suspended time. Geiser is a recent recipient of the 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, awarded to exemplary individual artists in contemporary dance, jazz, theatre, and related interdisciplinary work who had proven their artistic vitality and commitment to their field. Geiser gives voice to the reaches of the unconscious, pointing to the abandoned splendor that exists prior to the rules of society and language. (- - - Holly Willis, Res, 2004). For the past three decades, Geiser has created innovative, hypnotic performances and installations that integrate performing objects, puppets, and projection. Her work has been presented at The Public Theater, the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater, Center for Puppetry Arts, St. Ann s Warehouse, Redcat, The Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Links Hall, and other venues. Geiser s work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE Award, two Bessie Awards, and with funding from Creative Capital, the Rockefeller Foundation, NEA, Center for Cultural Innovation, MapFund, TCG/Pew, and others. Recent performances include Fugitive Time (2014-15) and Clouded Sulphur (death is a knot undone) (2013). A work- in- progress of SOUND HOUSE, her collaboration with composers John Eagle and Cassia Streb, will be presented at the LAX Festival in early October 2016. Geiser s films have been screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archives, the Centre Pompidou, the Salzburg Museum, San Francisco MOMA, LACMA, and at 10 New York Film Festivals, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, the London International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Geiser currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is a founder and co- artistic director of Automata, a Los Angeles nonprofit dedicated to experimental puppet theater, film, art and music. Geiser teaches at CalArts as faculty in the School of Theater. Hsuan- Kuang Hsieh Hsuan- Kuang Hsieh is a multimedia artist who work is situated in video and performance art. Coming from a photography and theater background, her practice highlights audiences' experience in which emphasizes the viewing process as an action. She integrates new media, performance, installation, film, puppetry and hybrid forms of photo sculpture and text to create live experiences for her viewers. Hsuan- Kuang born in Taipei, Taiwan. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Jason Barlaan Captain Jason Barlaan is a performer, director, and veteran. He creates and presents his own solo performances working with both text and Butoh- influenced movement. He recently performed the title role in Ellen McLaughlin s Ajax in Iraq at the Greenaway Theater in Los Angeles. Other recent performer credits include: Sophocles, Electra. Dr. Trousant, Now Then Again. Ensemble, Melancholy Play. Alonso, The Tempest. Guide, Founding Families. He recently collaborated as Assistant Director on Agamemnon at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Barlaan received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre at CalArts.
Automata Mission and History Automata, located in Los Angeles, California, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the creation, incubation, and presentation of experimental puppet theater, experimental film, and other contemporary art practices centered on ideas of artifice and performing objects. Founded in 2004 by artists Susan Simpson and Janie Geiser, Automata has been creating and presenting intimate performances of original work, film screenings of contemporary and historical avant-garde film, lectures, workshops, and exhibitions in a variety of spaces in the Los Angeles. Automata seeks to radically redefine and re-contextualize the notion of object performance by taking an art form that is frequently marginalized and locating it at the intersection of contemporary performance, media, visual art, music, sound art and experimental writing. Automata is dedicated to creating and nurturing new work that is engaged in cutting edge art practices, and in deep conversation with our contemporary culture of simulation and mimicry (digital, robotic and otherwise), while embracing the aura of the handmade and hand-operated. Automata has a particular interest in intimate viewing situations, similar to those that have been the provenance of traditional puppet theater and early film: living rooms, storefronts, and tiny theaters. We are interested in the intimacy and informality that exists when the artists and audience can actually see each other. Instead of performing to 600 people at once, we prefer to perform a show twenty times to 30 people. This intimacy allows for interaction and dialogue, and for genuine community to develop. To encourage dialogue, every event has a post-show social component. We are deeply interested in the confluence of Automata s work with the life of the neighborhood and the city, and use storefront exhibits and performances as attractions, as art, as peepshow and workspace, as direct interface with the life of the city. Automata stands at the fulcrum of objects and performance, artifacts and ephemera, magic and mechanics, artifice and interface. We are dedicated to work which explores, merges, or subverts these forms in unexpected ways. We have presented original performance work by Laura Heit, Susan Simpson, Janie Geiser, Clare Dolan, Eli Presser, Caitlin Lainoff, Alison Heimstead, Beth Peterson, Paul Zaloom, Marsian DeLellis, Katie Shook,Weba Garretson, Carole Kim, Yulya Dukhovny, and others. We have presented programs of early and experimental films, including work by Warhol, Perry Hoberman, Jordan Biren, Lewis Klahr, janie Geiser, Laurie O Brien, Carole Kim, and others. Automata is an artist-driven organization. We have, since our first performances in 2004, created a context in which visual art, performance, film/video, interactive technology, and experimental writing intersect with the puppet and its contemporary siblings. Working in a variety of existing spaces in Los Angeles, we have invited playwrights and composers, designers, visual artists, and new media experimenters to collaborate and create new works using performing objects. In 2012, we found a permanent space in Chinatown,Los Angeles where we now present performances, screenings and exhibitions, window installations, and we have become a site for new work development.
W-2 Janie Geiser / Automata Here/There Visual Ideas