Blog - The Project Room

In our next online installment of the Oral History Interview series, we present the funny and articulate women of Capping Day, Bonnie Hammond and Laura Vanderpool. This is a segment of the full-length interview that was filmed at TPR in 2012 and will be archived at the University of Washington after the completion of the project in 2013. To read more about THESE STREETS and buy tickets to the show that opens at ACT in February, 2013-go here:

I am trying to undo the knot I am finding myself in with L’Aquila.

I am including an image of a protest of the citizens of L’Aquila, having hung their house keys on a construction site barrier as a demonstration against being forbidden to return to their homes and–in my interpretation– as a sign of the difficulty in being able to simply DO something. It is the only protest action I have ever seen that is a gesture of giving up.

This text is the continuation of my reflections initiated in “An Introduction to L’Aquila, Empty City”. This should not be taken as an independent text but rather as the further development and honing of – but also the deviation from – the ideas evoked in the first text. To read more about this project,click here.

1. The freezing of time and the dissolution of political space, which took place in the aftermath of the earthquake in L’Aquila on April 6th 2009, transformed the city into a “non-lieu”. A gaping black hole opened up where the city once was. And that black hole aspirated the meaning and purpose of the city, absorbing any notions of coherence, organization or social structure. As society itself was aspirated, all that is left is a carcass – of urban, architectural and security structures – devoid of life and disconnected from normal temporality. L’Aquila is no longer. All that remains is a “un-city” (I use the expression “un-city” in echo of the German word for vampires and zombies,Untote,which means the “not-dead”).

An “artistic gesture” carried out in this “un-city” would become the only structure capable of indicating the presence of life in a lifeless environment. It would be the only apparatus capable of underlining the passage of time in this city that has fallen out of time. The “artistic gesture” would echo the traces of life and societal structures. Effectively, it would become their replacement. But, by its very nature, an “artistic gesture” cannot replace something and this condition of “replacement” would annihilate any possibility of the “artistic gesture” actually being art.

In other words, any artistic gesture introduced in the “un-city” of L’Aquila is stuck in an indissoluble and paralyzing contradiction. As “art”, it is alive – or at least a trace of life. Yet in the “un-city”, it is lifeless and devoid of justification, dead. Art in L’Aquila would, like the city itself, become a zombie.

2. Not being able to avoid this reasoning, I began to accept that the two words that I chose as a starting point, “gesture” and “artist”, needed rethinking because linking them together made them seem pointless in the zombie-like zone of L’Aquila.

Yet the status of this “un-city” continues to fascinate me, and I feel that I need to keep trying to DO something. I realize that I need to dissolve the link between the terms “gesture” and “art” and then link each word separately to the “un-city” itself. The initial duality becomes a triangulation composed of “gesture”, “art” and “un-city”.

A triangulation does not allow for an artistic gesture in L’Aquila, but it does allow me to differentiate and modulate the relationships between the different components. This triangulation allows me to play with the various starting point combinations and their manifest or tacit presence. At least I can act.

3. For the moment, there seem to be two paths of modulation and potential action:

On one hand, I can carry out an action – make a gesture – in the urban and architectural carcass of the city, specifically in what was its public space. However this gesture must be plausible in its environment. The question of its artistic origin should not be posed.

On the other hand, I can carry out an action that is fully inscribed in the realm of art. However this gesture cannot be carried out in the city’s public spaces due to my issues with responding to L’Aquila’s current state by making art about it.

4. Even if these two possibilities are functionally opposite they are linked by an underlying condition. Neither possibility can be productive if it is capable of contradicting its surrounding or of constituting a corrective element:

⁃If an action carried out in the public space of L’Aquila has the capacity of correcting or contradicting the surrounding situation then it becomes extraordinary (perhaps even a work of art). It will then lose plausibility.

⁃If an action carried out outside L’Aquila has the capacity of correcting or contradicting the situation from a distance then it becomes a proposal for solving non-art related problems and loses its status of artwork. It will likewise be nullified.

My current possibilities for action seem to only be potentially productive if they are exclusively attached to the materiality of the city, measuring that which is quantifiable. At the same time, I can operate on the principle that in measuring, my potential actions delimit the field of possibilities and create forms. If these forms are based on measurement, they have a function and cannot be completely devoid of meaning. But this meaning appears, in given context of cause and effect, as a byproduct or a parasitical phenomenon. The notion of “meaning” as parasite may indeed have its place in the “un-city” of L’Aquila. It may even be plausible in its environment.

Veit’s research continues during a visit toThe Project Room onWednesday February 6 at 6pm.Join us to see what he proposes to do about the empty city of L’Aquila.

Military personnel stand beneath holidays lights in a deserted L’Aquila, December 2012

Leading up to the premier of the playTHESE STREETSat ACT Theatre inFebruary 2013, TPR is releasing weekly online interview segments from the oral history portion of this project. The full length versions of these interviews will be archived at the University of Washington. This second interview, filmed at TPR, featuresSally Johnson and Mike Katellof the former band, Faster Tiger.

See interview#1 here:

To learn more about THESE STREETS, followthis link:

Filming by Wes Hurley
Interview conducted at The Project Room.

Tickets on sale now!

These Streetsis an unconventional theatrical play and history project, inspired by women rock musicians in Seattle during the infamous “grunge” years. Spearheaded by rock guitarist, Gretta Harley (faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, and guitarist who played in several bands during the era) and Sarah Rudinoff (Actress, Writer and The Stranger Genius Award Winner),These Streetsis inspired by over 35 interviews conducted with and about the many women rockers who were integral to the Seattle music scenebut have been overshadowed by the familiar bands and retrospectives.

This original piece of theatre is not a documentary, but a gritty, funny and powerful fictional story with characters that represent an amalgam of the real women rockers upon which it is based. The show is filled with music from that era, as well as a few new original songs(by Harley and Rudinoff’sWe Are Golden), all played and sung by the characters and a live band.

The story centers on five musicians who share a house in Seattle from 1989-1994. The audience meets these characters when they are young and full of excitement and optimism. We see the challenges they face as their tight-knit community unexpectedly explodes and their city becomes an international rock Mecca. We also meet the characters in the present; their stories evolving as much as the city around them.These Streetswill have its world premiere onFebruary 21, 2013at ACT Theatrein downtown Seattle for 12 public performances.

While the performance is the core of the project,These Streetsalso aims to illuminate the stories and music of the real life women rockers who were involved in the scene that changed a generation by creating an addendum to history with: an oral history project that will be archived at the Library of the University of Washington; a gallery exhibit at The Project Room (a non-profit interdisciplinary art space in Seattle) of collected memorabilia; and online resources such as Wikipedia and YouTube pages, musician biographies, recordings and discographies.

For more information, please contactAmy [email protected].

What does failure look like to an accomplished writer? How does an architect use failure as a productive tool? What can be learned from successful people who have managed daunting problems, and where are specific industries falling short?Join theconversation as we pick the brains of highly imaginative people by focusing on a topic most of us try to avoid. This program is part ofTPR’sFailureseries.

Wednesday, December 12 @ 6pm: Trimpin, Sound Artist

Trimpin is a Seattle-based kinetic sculptor, sound artist, musician, composer, and inventor. He has combined these varied disciplines into his extensive body of work since the 1970s, often creating kinetic sculpture installations that include the production of sound through the inclusion of mechanically or computer-driven instruments or entirely new sound sources. Trimpin has pioneered the development of computer-driven instruments and sound sculptures, including many built prior to the advent of the MIDI interface, but his work almost always includes acoustically produced sounds, and he has created devices to play every instrument of the orchestra. Most of his pieces integrate both sculpture and music in some way.

Trimpin is a MacArthur Genius Award winner and the subject of a documentary,TRIMPIN: the sound of invention.

Wednesday, January 16 @ 6pm: Jason Dodson and Faustine Hudson of The Maldives

In the great Northwest, The Maldives are more than a band, they are an institution. With a history that goes back more than half a decade (their friendships considerably longer), they’ve played every kind of gig imaginable- from backwoods festivals on the back of a flatbed truck to the inauguration of Seattle’s musically minded mayor.

They have overflowed the stages at SXSW, CMJ, Capitol Hill Block Party, Sasquatch, and Bumbershoot. In 2010, they were featured on MTV’s $5 Cover series which spotlighted the best of Seattle’s music scene.

What started as the personal project for lead singer and songwriter Jason Dodson has at times swollen to a small army of twelve before settling on seven full-time members. At some point, The Maldives became bigger than any one man.

Their debut full-length, 2009’s Listen to the Thunder (Mt. Fuji, produced by Grammy Award-winner Kory Kruckenberg), was the culmination of years of live playing, not a studio piece, but a faithful document of who the Maldives had become as a live band. Their latest release Muscle for the Wing (Spark & Shine) is the opportunity to bring the band’s assembled creativity together in a different way and explore their combined vision. And this time they brought in producer Shawn Simmons (The Head and the Heart, Grand Hallway) to capture it all. It builds on a heritage of cinematic American rock & roll that’s at turns chivalrous and fist-pumping, steeped in tradition but unbound by expectations. Dodson’s words reveal characters set in a widescreen frame, scenes from real life that often portray victims of the heart and casualties to the beast that is circumstance.

Wednesday, January 23 @ 6pm: Barbara Earl Thomas- Visual Artist, Writer & DeputyDirector of the Northwest African American Museum

Barbara Earl Thomas a Seattle based painter and writer, and the Curator and Deputy Director of the Northwest African American Museum, which opened in 2007. She is represented in Washington by the Francine Seders Gallery, and her work is currently on view in the Tacoma Art Museum’s Best of the Northwest Exhibit that runs through March 2013. In 1998 & 2000 she received The Seattle Arts Commission award for new non-fiction.In 2007 she completed project coordination on a monograph for artist Joe Fedderson, University of Washington Press, published as part of the Jacob and Gwen Lawrence endowed series on American artists.

Barbara is a confirmed bibliophile. One of her recent best reads is Francisco Goya: A Life, by Evan S. Connell. This book is excellent. Of it she says “Inquisitions are not to be desired. Vote no if you ever have the chance.”

Wednesday, January 30 @ 5:30pm: Tom Kundig, Principal/Owner ofOlson Kundig Architects

Tom Kundig is one of the most recognized architects in North America. He has received some of our nation’s highest design awards, including a National Design Award in Architecture Design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; four National AIA Honor Awards; seven National AIA Housing Awards; and an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which recognizes creative individuals whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction. Recently, he was included in The Wallpaper 150,Wallpaper’slist of the 150 people who have most influenced, inspired and improved the way we live, work and travel over the last 15 years.

To date, Kundig has been awarded a total of thirty-seven AIA awards, and over seventy awards total. Olson Kundig Architects received the 2009 National AIA Architecture Firm Award (as Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects) and has twice been named one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Architecture byFast Company.

Kundig’s work encompasses residential, commercial and institutional and is located around the world. His signature detailing and raw, kinetic construction explore new forms of engagement with site and landscape, which he frames in the workings of unique, building-size machines. In his houses, which are quickly becoming recognized as modern-day classics, brute strength and tactile refinement are held in perfect equilibrium. Recent projects include Art Stable, 1900 First Avenue Hotel and Apartments, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and private residences in Spain and throughout North America, including The Pierre, Shadowboxx, Studio Sitges and Hawaii Residence, Whistler Ski House.

Wednesday, February 20, 6pm: Carrie Akre, Vocalist

In the early ’90s, Akre was the lead singer of Hammerbox, a potent alternative rock outfit with guitar hooks as sharp as Nirvana’s but without the record label push the group deserved. In August 1993, Hammerbox performed at Endfest in Washington State to an audience of more than 14,000 fans, sharing the stage with well-known college-radio favorites like X, Social Distortion, and They Might Be Giants. The group was dropped, marking the beginning of Akre’s difficulties with major labels, one that would motivate her to start her own label, Good-Ink Records. Akre formed the band Goodness in 1994 whose self-titled first album was first released on Y Records and then later re-released onLava, an imprint of Atlantic Records. Their second LP, Anthem, for Atlantic in 1998 was shelved after failing to produce a “single”. The label dropped the band soon there after. Goodness disbanded in 2000. In 1999, Akre joined the Rockfords with guitarist Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Rick Friel (vocals), and ex-Goodness members Danny Newcomb (bass) and Chris Friel (drums). Akre released her solo debut, Home, in 2000 (on GoodInk Records), Invitation in 2002 (on self owned My Way Records) and Last the Evening in 2007 (on Loveless Records).

Above image:Train wreck atMontparnasse Station, at Place de Rennes side (now Place du 18 Juin 1940), Paris, France, 1895.

Friday, November 9 7:30pm-12:30am – 18+

Seattle Art Museum Downtown
1300 First Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101-2003

As part of SAM’s monthly REMIX event, THESE STREETSco-creatorsSarah Rudinoff and Gretta Harley present live musicfrom the upcoming show featuring the show’s on-stage band and other musicians who have been key to telling Seattle’s rock n’ roll story from the 1990s. This is a great opportunity to preview the fantasticmusic from this show before its premier at ACT Theatre in 2013! More about the evening’s event ishere.

Leading up to the premier ofTHESE STREETSat ACT Theatre inFebruary 2013, TPR is releasing weekly online interview segments from the oral history portion of this project. The full length versions of these interviews will be archived at the University of Washington. This first interview, filmed at TPR, featuresVanessa Veselkaof the former band, BELL.

About Vanessa:Besides being a guitar player, singer and songwriter, Vanessa has been at various times a teenage runaway, an expatriate, a union organizer, and a student of paleontology. Her debut novel,Zazen, won the 2012 PEN/Bingham prize for fiction. Vanessa’s music is featured in THESE STREETS along with songs from other women in forthcoming interviews.As a single mom to a nine year-old daughter, Vanessa talks here about the social stigma that exists for young girls who retreat into solitude to learn how to play an instrument, and how necessary that isolation is for a budding artist. It’s a fascinatinginterview!

Filming by Wes Hurley
Interview conducted at The Project Room by TPR FounderJess Van Nostrand- October 19, 2012

Sunday November 4, 2-3:15PM
Arts Education Panel Discussion

As part of the Youth Philanthropy Project, PONCHO hosts a panel of local experts to discuss the strengths, needs and issues of the local arts education community. This panel discussion is free (with suggested donation) and open to the public. Panelists include: Karen Sharp (Seattle Children’s Theatre), Randy Engstrom (Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs), Estevan Munoz-Howard (Social Justice Fund) and Elizabeth Whitford (Arts Corps). Reservations are requested for patrons that are not members of YPP [email protected]

Founded in 1963, PONCHO (Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural and Charitable Organizations) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, dedicated to enriching the quality of life in the Puget Sound through increasing resources and community support for the arts. PONCHO acts as a catalyst for change in the arts sector by leveraging relationships with arts, philanthropic and education communities. Launched in 2012, PONCHO’s Arts Education Initiative ensures K-12 students in King and Pierce counties have equitable access to quality arts education.

Any classical musician will tell you: they’ve been trained to believe that mistakes are a very, very bad thing. Most classical musicians have had drilled into them the goal of perfection – that the best performance was one that adheres the most strictly to the score, that doesn’t deviate in any way from what’s written on the page. The performer must get 100% of the notes right in order to get an A+; anything less is an F.

Sounds scary, right? How can any musician actually enjoy this?

On the other hand, the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi celebrates imperfection and asymmetry as key elements in art. It shows that a human being is behind the creation, not a computer program.

As a composer, much of what I do is created in rehearsal, and it’s through the performer’s own interpretations of my music that I feel that the music is given life.

I rarely put in tempo markings, dynamics, articulations. I discover them.

When I first moved to Seattle, I took Indian vocal lessons and was introduced to the Indian raga. I was inspired by this fluid and poetic, yet highly structured approach to improvisation. Since then, I’ve embedded my own “ragas” into my scores, in which the performer is required to be part of the process, as opposed to the end-result. It creates more spontaneous performances; and it excites me to think that there might not be just one interpretation of my music.

My general rule is, make it your own, but be true to the spirit. While I grant the performer a lot of leeway, there are times when I do feel that the performer has veered too far from what I intuitively believe to be the intention – the mysterious intersection between my artistic self and the piece I’m trying to create.

But there are times when, even if the performer tries to change, they just keep going back to the way they were doing it. This is what I call the beautiful mistake. It’s my own version of wabi-sabi. It might not be what’s written or directed, but it’s who the performer is. It’s how they were meant to perform the role.

This way of working extends to other elements too, like production design. With my latest projectMagda G, I’ve been working with artistTori Ellisonon a paper dress, to be worn by countertenorJosé Luis Muñozwho plays the lead. Instead of giving Tori explicit parameters, I’ve given her poetic ones:fragility, filo dough, Nazi, paper, danger. It’s been great to see how she’s developed this and made it her own, while staying true to the spirit.

I’ll be rehearsingMagdanext Tuesday (October 16) at the Project Room @ 8 pm, before we perform it atBarca Lounge on Friday, October 19. It’ll be an open rehearsal, so come by! The thing about beautiful mistakes is that they can’t be planned, so I can’t guarantee anything. But a good, if imperfect, time shall be had by all.

Update: we just learned thatMagda G(the screenplay) was shortlisted at the2012 Gotham Screen International Film Festival!

Photo: José Luis Muñoz as Magda. Courtesy of Tim Aguero.

Thursday, October 11, 11am-12pm

The Project Room welcomesNew York Timescontributor and author ofThe Joy of X, Steven Strogatz, for some morning mathematics!A frequent guest on Radiolab and ambassador of making math engaging for anyone, Strogatz will present his perspective on different kinds of “solutions” as our final event in theSolutionstopic.

If you are acreative maker of things and find little to like about numbers, this is the event for you! Space is limited, so plan to arrive early!

Steve will also be presentingThe Joy of XatTown Hall SeattleonOctober 10 at 7:30pm.Listen to him read, buy your book, and then join us at TPR the next morning for more fun with Steve!

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He holds a joint appointment in the College of Arts and Sciences (Mathematics) and the College of Engineering (Mechanical andAerospace Engineering).

After graduating summa cum laude in mathematics from Princeton in 1980, Strogatz studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Marshall Scholar.He did his doctoral work in applied mathematics at Harvard, followed by a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and Boston University.From 1989 to 1994, Strogatz taught in the Department of Mathematics at MIT. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1994.

Strogatz is passionate about public outreach and loves sharing the beauty of math and science with a wide audience. He hasspoken at TEDand is afrequent guest onRadioLab.In the spring of 2010 he wrote a weeklyblog about mathematicsfor theNew York Times; theHarvard Business Reviewdescribedthese columns as “must reads for entrepreneurs and executives” and “a model for how mathematics needs to be popularized.” His secondNew York Timesseries,Me, Myself and Math,appeared in the fall of 2012.Strogatzhas also filmed a series of 24 lectures onChaosfor the Teaching Company’sGreat Coursesseries.He is the author ofNonlinear Dynamics and Chaos(1994),Sync(2003), andThe Calculus of Friendship(2009). His most recent book,The Joy of x, was published in October 2012.