A SERIES OF LANDSCAPES
Written and performed by Gelsey Bell, Isabel Castellvi, Andrew Livingston, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Dave Ruder and Jeffrey Young
0:00 - Part One
15:33 - Breakout Rooms
25:30 - Part Two
Premiered in July 2020, presented as part of HERE Arts Center’s #stillhere.
A Series of Landscapes is set in the world of our dreams. Audiences are invited into a Zoom call where seven performers dive into the anxiety and serenity of this paradoxical moment, where yesterday’s action in the street, today’s paralyzing personal stasis, and tomorrow’s online wedding are all refracted through the bizarre filter of social and emotional distance. You’re outside of time and somehow you’re everyone. “Is that me? Is that you? What year is it?”
We’re together with everyone we’ve ever known.
Jeff’s dad shows up to get us out of there.
We might be in Texas.
There will be absurdity, severity, sweetness, and uncanniness amidst moments of interaction, deluge, and connection. In April 2020, thingNY was one of the early “adapters” of making work within and responding to quarantine culture, creating and performing a series of etudes which toyed with the shortcomings of virtual performance: SubtracTTTTTTTTT. Praised in the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Wire, and Steve Smith’s Night After Night, the band returns with another chapter of socially distant live performance. A Series of Landscapes pushes our attention, our practice, and our technologies further.
Stage manager: Marianna Hoitt-Lange
Sound technician: Matthew D. Gantt
0:00 - Part One
15:33 - Breakout Rooms
25:30 - Part Two
Premiered in July 2020, presented as part of HERE Arts Center’s #stillhere.
A Series of Landscapes is set in the world of our dreams. Audiences are invited into a Zoom call where seven performers dive into the anxiety and serenity of this paradoxical moment, where yesterday’s action in the street, today’s paralyzing personal stasis, and tomorrow’s online wedding are all refracted through the bizarre filter of social and emotional distance. You’re outside of time and somehow you’re everyone. “Is that me? Is that you? What year is it?”
We’re together with everyone we’ve ever known.
Jeff’s dad shows up to get us out of there.
We might be in Texas.
There will be absurdity, severity, sweetness, and uncanniness amidst moments of interaction, deluge, and connection. In April 2020, thingNY was one of the early “adapters” of making work within and responding to quarantine culture, creating and performing a series of etudes which toyed with the shortcomings of virtual performance: SubtracTTTTTTTTT. Praised in the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Wire, and Steve Smith’s Night After Night, the band returns with another chapter of socially distant live performance. A Series of Landscapes pushes our attention, our practice, and our technologies further.
Stage manager: Marianna Hoitt-Lange
Sound technician: Matthew D. Gantt
Marianna (she/they) is a performer, writer, and violist based in NY -- though perhaps now they should say in Zoom. Recent stage managing + assisting credits include Bloodshot (exponential festival), A Meal (HERE RAW), and mɔːnɪŋ (HERE RAW), where her ears first met Gelsey's daxophone and, more importantly, the lovely members of thingNY. marianna has worked with the ensemble in subsequent zoom performances of SubtracTTTTTTTTT and now, A Series of Landscapes. They hope to hold space for theater-making and experimental performance, and are working to unlearn and undo their own racism in the art world and beyond.
Matthew D. Gantt is an artist, composer, and educator based in Troy, NY at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/EMPAC. His practice focuses on sound in virtual spaces, generative systems facilitated by idiosyncratic technology, and production presets as cultural readymades. He bleeps, but also bloops.
[email protected]
IG: https://www.instagram.com/gan.tttt/
Matthew D. Gantt is an artist, composer, and educator based in Troy, NY at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/EMPAC. His practice focuses on sound in virtual spaces, generative systems facilitated by idiosyncratic technology, and production presets as cultural readymades. He bleeps, but also bloops.
[email protected]
IG: https://www.instagram.com/gan.tttt/