Open Lot is quickly becoming one of the best venues in Nashville to see challenging, innovative, and groundbreaking art. Take the collaborative performances series, for instance, where a musician teams up with a visual artist. Theatre Intangible contributor Chris Murray of Square People participated in a collaborative session last year, and I believe contributor Charlie Rauh will collaborate with dancer Meghan Harold in a session later this year.
Of most immediate interest is the stellar lineup for the Collaborative Performances Session 4, taking place at the Open Lot tomorrow. (Wednesday, March 3rd.) You don’t want to miss this one. The lineup and description is below.
I’m working on a longer article about Open Lot and its relationship with the Nashville art community to be published here soon. Because it’s on-topic, here’s an excerpt: Open Lot Director Jonathan Lisenby talking about tomorrow’s performance:
Open Lot pushes collaboration as much as possible, which is a strangely absent element in a town as full of talented musicians and artists as Nashville. Two heads are usually better than one, and the collaborative curation at Open Lot shows it. Open Lot uses collaboration as a kind-of marketing tool as well, letting the distinctness of the collaborating artists bridge the gap between cliques of art-goers and scenesters. For example, the next Collaborative Performances Series installment, Session 4, features Barry Jones and Kell Black, two video artists and musicians most native Nashvillians would find too envelope-pushing for their taste. But pair Black and Jones with accessible, yet profound, Nashville musicians Stone Jack Jones and you get a double-layered, meaningful performance that any music-lover can get into. These collaborations are often great introductions into newer forms of art, like circuit bending, aleatoric, and video art.
From the Open Lot website:
Collaborative Performances Session 4 (3.3.10)
–Stone Jack Jones + Black & Jones
–Dust From 1000 Yrs. + Black & Jones
–Pineapple Explode + Black & Jones
–Blue Cadet Three + Black & Jones
Video and performance artist duo Black & Jones (Barry Jones and Kell Black) take on four sets of diverse music, unifying them into a cogent visual narrative. Black & Jones explore the history of cinema as visual metaphor for aural maturity. Black & Jones’ live, mutli-channel vJing uses contemporary technology to present archetypal narrative in the tradition of bildungsroman.
Session 4 is Open Lot’s fourth installment of this truly impractical collaborative experiment. A musical scattershot of touring musicians is paired up with an equally diverse group of Nashville-based visual/performance artists. Each pairing communicates only by email until the collaborative performance at Open Lot. What results is an improvisation born from necessity: quick, simple, and forcefully unadulterated.
Doors open at 8pm, performance begins at 8:30pm sharp.
$5 admission, $10 admission with open bar. BYOB allowed and encouraged.
This event occurs at Open Lot Nashville, 3.3.10
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