Skip to Main Content

Performance: Music, Theater, & Dance Visual Art

Scene Seen: Photos from LabBodies Borders, Boundaries, and Barricades

Words: Cara Ober

Photos by Oliva Obineme from Borders, Boundaries, and Barricades, a two week long performance art review highlighting the performance art community in Baltimore, from Monday, June 22 at Gallery CA, Women on the Borders.

About Borders, Boundaries, and Barricades: The two week long festival examined the concept of borders, visible/invisible lines that separate two or more political or geographic areas.

A border is an edge, a limitation, a boundary. They may be real/ imagined; internal/external; self/other; life/ death; of the city/state. Borders both bring us together as well as define our wounds. Despite the complexity of the bonds and wounds that borders create, we often find ourselves working with or against them in our everyday interactions as they strictly monitor and circumscribe our human movement.  -LabBodies

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-2

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-3

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-4

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-13
Virginia Warwick: Olivia the Sea Turtle
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-6
Virginia Warwick: Olivia the Sea Turtle
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-12
Virginia Warwick: Olivia the Sea Turtle
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-5
Artist Talk: Valeskah Populoh

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-11

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-1
Valeskah Populoh
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-7
Artist Talk: Carly J. Bales and Sheila Gaskins
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-8
Sheila Gaskins

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-9

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-10
Artist Talk: Carly J. Bales and Sheila Gaskins

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-14

Hired-(K)not! by Sheila Gaskins
Myth or Fact: Are African-American Women denied employment due to their natural hair? This performance combs through the Struggles of Getting a J-o-b. Special Appearance by Poetess Fire Angelou.

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-15
Sheila Gaskins
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-16
Sheila Gaskins
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-17
Sheila Gaskins

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-24

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-19

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-20

 

“Notes on Belonging to Boundaries: A Performative riff” by ALLANA CLARKE
DISCOURSE ARTICULATION OTHERNESS
Essentialism: implies an inherent disposition
Discourse articulation: The process of stating the specific rules of a boundary.
When ‘otherness’ is conceived a hierarchical element is automatically formed.
This element is what makes the assertion of power and the ability to create and reproduce representation so important
If we are all others then why is the articulation of power and representation important?

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-22
Alanna Clarke: Notes on Belonging to Boundaries, A Performative Riff
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-21
Notes on Belonging to Boundaries, A Performative Riff
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-23
Notes on Belonging to Boundaries, A Performative Riff

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-18

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-25
OluShola Cole

#PirateRadio by OluShola Cole is an interdisciplinary performance using installation, movement, spoken word and experimental sound. It is the most recent approach of artist Shola Cole’s work Jenny.Was.A.Pirate.Hater reflecting on her personal experience, history’s pirates, their turf and working collusions with slaves during the Golden Age of Piracy and the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Part talk show, part installation and full homage to the works of artists Nina Simone, Sparrow, Brecht, Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya and Kathy Acker and others, #PirateRadio features Cole’s time traveling alter ego Pirate Jenny and fellow collaborator and sound artist Mark Gunnery. Against a backdrop of ambient sound and performance art, Cole will explore concepts of boundaries and borders locally and nationally in the aftermath of the Baltimore uprisings and in the wake of heightened social injustice in the 21st Century.

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-26
OluShola Cole
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-27
OluShola Cole and Mark Gunnery
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-28
OluShola Cole
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-29
Mark Gunnery, with OluShola Cole
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-30
Mark Gunnery, with OluShola Cole
bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-31
OluShola Cole

bmoreart_labbodiesbbb_dayone-32

 

 

 

Bmore Art