Marion Gray - an Evening of Performances
Drinks 6pm, event 7pm On the occasion of the exhibition Marion Gray: Within the Light at the Oakland Museum of California, and in collaboration with the exhibition’s curator, Christina Linden and performance historian Lydia Brawner, Kadist presents an evening of improvisational performance by local artists. Gray has spent four decades capturing performances, dance, and installations by some of the most significant artists in the Bay Area and beyond. One of the performances featured in Marion’s photographs is “Some Inch Haunted Evening,” a 1981 event in which William T. Wiley shared the stage at Herbst Theatre with several friends, collaborators, and students for impromptu performances to celebrate the opening of his retrospective exhibition Wiley Territory at SFMOMA. When recounting the event, Wiley told Linden that he remembered the structure had been pretty open, but that he’d ask each of the participants to come with about five minutes of activity loosely prepared. In the spirit of this event, emerging contemporary performers will be invited to create short responses to several of Gray’s images, which will be projected at Kadist. Less re-enactment and more echo, historical Bay Area performances will be given time and space to reverberate in our contemporary moment. Performers include: Nathalie Brilliant, Keith Hennessy, Brontez Purnell, and Maryanna Lachman and Mara Poliak