The Performance Art Institute Of San Francisco Presents: The Artist Is Elsewhere

Online, August 27, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Conceptual artist duo Sean Fletcher and Isabel Reichert present The Artist is Elsewhere, an evening of remote-access performances. The event will take place on October 19th at The Performance Art Institute, located at 75 Boardman Place in San Francisco, California. Artists participating in the event include Linda Ford, Justin Charles Hoover, Scott Kildall, Sonya Rapoport, Roland Roos, Stoll and Wachall, Lee Walton, Gordon Winiemko, and Michael Zheng.

The Artist Is Elsewhere is a juxtaposition of radically different ways of existing in time and space. The performers participating in the event examine notions of absence and presence, physical and virtual, corporeal and mechanical to create inter-subjective dialogues mediated by technology. With an evocative nod to Marina Abramovic's famous retrospective (called "The Artist is Present"), Fletcher and Reichert assembled artists who will deliver live performances somewhere outside the confines of PAI's exhibition space; in office buildings, apartments, malls, street corners - anyplace else in the world. Each performance will be accessible to the evening's attendees through televisual devices like telephones, video conferencing equipment, web cams, and other remote access technologies.

In keeping with the 2012 Zero1 Biennial's theme "Seeking Silicon Valley", contributors to The Artist is Elsewhere emphasize the notion of labor in an increasingly sedentary working environment. In Silicon Valley, "work" means developing concepts, programming, filing patents, or closing deals. The Silicon Valley labor market specializes in privatized ideas, while the physical labor of manufacturing their products is handled elsewhere.

In Googala Rasa, Scott Kildall uses the Google Docs spreadsheet as a digital arena for a live networked performance of text, numbers, formulas, and formatting simultaneously contributed by participants located in the US, Canada, Britain, and Italy. In Weltschmerz made in Germany, Klaudia Stoll and Jaqueline Wachall (a.k.a. Stoll and Wachall) use Skype to deliver a performance from Berlin where their mock business aims to sell us an emotional sense of melancholy.

"The Artist is Elsewhere" is a one-night-only event. Admission is $10 in advance or $15 on the day of the event. The Performance Art Institute is a wheelchair accessible venue. Doors will open at 7:30pm and performances will begin promptly at 8:00pm. Seating is limited, so please arrive early. Space will be provided on a first-come-first-serve basis. This event will last approximately two hours.

The Artist is Elsewhere is the first of three programs to be held at The Performance Art institute as part of the 2012 Zero1 Biennial. The Artist is Elsewhere will be followed by The Future Imagined: What's Next? curated by Hanna Regev and opening on November 9th. Finally, the panel discussion, Women, Art, and Technology: An UNeasy Access also organized by Hanna Regev will be held on December 13th at 7:00pm.

About the curators
Sean Fletcher and Isabel Reichert have been collaborating since 1999 on conceptually based performance works, interventions, writings, installations, videos, photography, and prints. The artists use their personal arguments to investigate the dynamic interplay between power and vulnerability and reveal how the struggle for power is manifest in society. Humorous, subtle, and always thought provoking, Fletcher and Reichert use their art to press emotional buttons and broaden our understanding of the human condition.

They exhibit their work internationally, and have appeared on both Bay Area NPR member stations KQED and KALW, on Studio 360 (a PRI nationally syndicated program), and the European on-line magazine der Spiegel. Their art has appeared in various international publications including Flash Art International, Art Week, East Bay Express, Der Spiegel magazine, the Associated Press, The Contra Costa Times, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.

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To contact the artists or for further information, please call (510) 533-3962 or email [email protected]