Saturday October 30, 8pm
Stephanie Barber and KimSu Theiler
Regular Magic
Live visual and sound performance
Microscope is very pleased to welcome artist and sound sculptor KimSu Theiler and filmmaker and writer Stephanie Barber for an evening of live, improvised sounds and images.
For Regular Magic, Barber’s poetic improvisational performance of composing images and fragments of story, dialog, poetry & song respond to the sculptural sounds created by KimSu Theiler’s synthesizer and voice. Each performance of Regular Magic is unique, with the two creating a live sonic-sculptural-cinematic experience reliant on their sensitivities to each other, the spaces in which they perform, and in the materials from which they derive.
Regular Magic is a collaborative project combining Barber’s Looking/Talking project of improvisational “cinema performance,” which she premiered in New York at Microscope Gallery’s original location in 2014. Four years later, Theiler joined Barber in Baltimore to accompany her with live improvised sounds generated with a modular synthesizer and processed vocals. The two have performed this collaboration since then and they are excited to return to Microscope Gallery’s new location to present this work in New York City.
Admission is free.
Please note: Proof of vaccination for Covid-19 and masks required.
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KimSu Theiler is a visual artist based in New York City. She has exhibited film, video and media installation work internationally including the Rotterdam Film Festival (Netherlands), Gwangju Biennial (Korea), Museum of Modern Art (United States), and the Toronto Film Festival (Canada). She has received grants from New York State Council on the Arts Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds, the John Cage Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, the Jack Smith Artist Award and the F/VA Artist Mentor Project Grant. Her artist residencies include the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Korea) and The Art Studios at Rådhuset-Oslo (Norway). “I use all the components of filmmaking: timebased-image recording, sound, performance to interrogate the epistemic foundations of how a person is defined as a member of a community and the choices we should make within that community. As a transnational, transracial adoptee I cannot take basic knowledge construction of the self for granted. This makes the telescoping between – the minutia of a single entity, myself, and the larger societal justifications for how each of us fits within – my major thematic concern. The sculptural potential of – placing in space – literally and metaphorically anchors my practice.”
Stephanie Barber is a writer and artist who has created a poetic, conceptual and philosophical body of work in a variety of media, often literary/visual hybrids that dissolve boundaries between narrative, essay and dialectic works. Her work considers the basic philosophical questions of human existence (its morbidity, profundity and banality) with play and humor. Barber’s films and videos have screened nationally and internationally in solo and group shows at MOMA, NY; The Tate Modern, London; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Paris Cinematheque; The Walker Art Center, MN; MOCA Los Angeles, The Wexner Center for Art, OH, among other galleries, museums and festivals. Her videos are distributed by Video Data Bank and her films can be found at Canyon Cinema and Fandor.com. Her books Night Moves and these here separated… were published by Publishing Genius Press in 2013 and 2010 respectively. Her collection of very short stories All The People was published by Ink Press Productions in 2015. Her haiku collection Status Update Vol. 1 was published in the fall of 2019 by CTRL+P and her full length play Trial in the Woods was published by Plays Inverse in August 2021.
This event is free to the public and is made possible through support from the City Artists Corps Grant administered by New York Foundation for the Arts, in partnership with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.