Performance artist and club scene legend Julie Tolentino premieres her first
evening-length work in New York City
The Bottom Project (N.Y. Premiere) by Julie Tolentino
October
5-7 [Thu-Sat] 8pm $15
October 5 [Thu] Post-performance discussion
For Tickets call
The Kitchen Box Office at 212-255-5793, ext. 11.
The Kitchen is located at 512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th avenues).
Conceived, directed,
performed by Julie Tolentino
Installations and Set Design: Tolentino and Jet Clark
Lighting design: Lori E Seid
Live Violin: Julie Fowells (F100)
Live Computer synthesis and sound installation: Bernard Elsmere (F100)
Soundscape compositions: Aldo Hernandez and Killer (including live percussion)
Video: Catherine Gund, F100
Slide imagery: EXUM
Super 8 Film: Jet Clark
“Haunting, full of pungent and unsettling images coming together in a reflection of how complex an individual can be...”The Herald (Glasgow)
Performance artist and club scene legend Julie Tolentino “digs from the bottom up” in The Bottom Projecta provocative exploration of the psyche, where the bottom is the starting point to the top. For her New York premiere, Tolentino probes physical and emotional boundaries, real or imagined, creating a striking performance of visuals and movement, which she likens to “moments of 'fall out' during a deep meditation, then a return into being.” The evening will include guest appearances from performers from US, UK, and Australia, along with a mystifying live soundscape featuring violin and synthesized computer by F100 (Julie Fowells and Bernard Elsmere) and acclaimed DJ Aldo Hernandez and Killer. Visuals and lighting are by Jet Clark and Lori E. Seid.
The Bottom Project investigates the various uses and meanings of the word “bottom”bottoms up, hitting bottom, the pits, bottom of the barrel and bottom vs. top. It conjures a series of compelling images such as a ten-minute rice rain, an immersion into an enclosed plastic “bubble,” a Plexiglas box slowly filling up with sand, and a “princess and the pea” bed slowly deflatingmapping an inward journey through chaos, where memories surface and secrets unfold.
About the Artist:
In the last 15 years, Filipino/El Salvadorian-born Tolentino has worked with
influential, diverse and sometimes provocative performance artists including
David Rousseve/REALITY, Ron Athey and Company, Diviana Ingravallo, Amy Pivar,
Joy Kellman and Margarita Guergue. Her debut solo evening-length performance
piece, MESTIZA-que bonitos ojos tienes, was generously commissioned by the queerupnorth
Festival in Manchester, England and Tramway in Glasgow, Scotland in May 1998.
Pieces of Mind-Mestiza as Landscape, a three-hour ambient work with live DJ,
was presented at DanceExchange, Birmingham, UK as part of Queerfest in 1999.
Other works were also presented as part of the New York City Downtown Arts Festival/Simon
Says: Butterfly Box # 3 (1997), and in 1999 she contributed as guest artist
in Abandoned Shores directed by Ibrahim Quarishi. Tolentino will again perform
her solo within Abandoned Shores in Paris at La Batofar/National Library in
August 2000. She has been invited by New World Theater in Amherst, MA (September
2000) to present a case study on her first solo work, MESTIZA, addressing issues
of mixed-race identity and performance making. Tolentino has been awarded the
Franklin Furnace Performance Art Grant 2000 and The Fund for US Artist at International
Festivals and Exhibition. She is active within the gay community as an events
coordinator, AIDS activist, caregiver, and prominent supporter of lesbian visibility,
both politically and artistically. She is also the founder of the Clit Club,
now in its 10th year, and has recently opened a new weekly party, Butterfly.
The Bottom Project is her second commission by queerupnorth Festival 2000 in Manchester, US at The Green Room, with support of the Fund for US Artists Exhibition in International Festivals grant, which premieres on September 15, 16, 2000. The New York City premiere of The Bottom Project at The Kitchen is presented with the support of 1999-2000 Performance Art Grant from Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art grant.