Denise Uyehara and James Luna at LACE, Nov. 2011, photo design: Adam Cooper-Teran

(Click here for video, 4 mins.)

Transitions by Denise Uyehara and James Luna
Everybody has a past.  For James Luna and myself, that past began in Orange County — land of malls, surfers and the 405 Freeway.  How did we evolve from being ethnic minorities in suburbia to the artists we are today? And in the sea of consumerism and cultural amnesia, what makes an Indian or Asian American truly “authentic?”

In this project we revisit one of James Luna’s performances from the 70′s, also entitled Transitions, in which he unpacked a bag full of “Indian” objects and created a new rituals with them.  We’ll spring board off the earlier work and unpack the metaphorical bag to revisit what’s inside.  Together we’ll conduct a series of rituals that recount surviving life behind the “Orange Curtain.” We’ll be remixing surfing music, disco, narrative and home movies and surfing footage projected onto a psychedelic kimono with 30 foot long arms that can wrap around Denise like a cocoon or straight jacket.

Transitions is commissioned by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) for Los Angeles Goes Live as part of Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty. Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California coming together for the first time to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene, beginning in the fall of 2011.

Premiered at LACE Thursday, November 10, 7pm.
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)
6522 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

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Pan Left, Jason Aragon and Denise Uyehara receive MAP Fund

We are pleased to announce…

Pan Left Productions, Jason Aragon and I have been awarded a MAP Fund to create an evening of outdoor, multi-media “micro-performances” at sites of deportation in southern Tucson.   The audience will view the performances from inside cars as driver takes them from site to site on this three-mile journey.

Bus Stop Dreaming is inspired by interviews   Jason is currently conducting with immigrants as he covers the ongoing deportation crisis in Tucson, AZ, a city just 70 miles north of the US-Mexico border.  Jason volunteers with Migra Patrol/Copwatch — hey, someone’s gotta police the police.  He tapes South Tucson police as they stop people going about their business in public spaces (driving, walking, sitting at the bus stop) and when they subsequently call in Border Patrol to deport them — right there on street corners.  This project works closely with Pan Left Productions and the grassroots organization Derechos Humanos to gather stories from the community.  I’ll choreograph an ensemble that performs at selected public sites of deportation. Engaging in pedestrian and butoh-inspired movement, the performers’ bodies will also serve as a canvas onto which video footage—testimony, clouds, dreams, desert landscapes, and urban crisis—will unfold.

Project interviews begin in the spring of 2012; outdoor free performance in October 2012.

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Uyehara draws shimmering blue and green maps over her body as she evokes what marks us in our migration towards more borderless identities: blue numbers on a Jewish woman’s arm; a Chicana biker neighbor; queerness; love and violence between Asian women and men; a grandmother’s fiery suicide. In this moving and provocative performance, Uyehara reveals to us the marks on her body as memories, and through them, she shows us our life destinations.

Visuals by Lee B. Directed by Chay Yew. Commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum’s Asian Theater Workshop. Maps premiered in 1999 at Highways Performance Space, co-produced with the Taper’s Asian Theater Workshop. Also presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, East West Players, The Asian Art Museum and the Modern Language Associan conference in San Francisco, the 3rd Conference on Asian Women in Theater in Tokyo, and for the MuuMedia festival at the Kiasma in Helsinki, Finland.

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Denise is one of five founding members of Sacred Naked Nature Girls, a culturally diverse experimental performance collective that toured with critical acclaim from 1993-1997. Founding members are: Danielle Brazell, Laura Meyers, Aikila Oliver, Bella Hui, and Denise Uyehara. SNNG’s work includes “Untitled Flesh” (’93), “The Last Place I Ran To Just About Killed meHome” (’96) and “The Party” (’97), the latter two pieces receiving commissions from the Flintridge Foundation. The Party was directed by Elia Arce. The ensemble has been presented at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Highways Performance Space, Kate’s Studio in Colorado, Sushi in San Diego, Luna Sea in San Francisco, The Echo in Portland, and Randolph Street in Chicago. Their work has been covered in Bomb Magazine (Coco Fusco, Summer ’95) , Theater Forum (Meiling Cheng), Drama Review (Meiling Cheng, Summer ’98), and in the book, “The Other Los Angeles”, by Meiling Cheng (2002, California Press).

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Uyehara tells it like it is through the Vegetable Girl, Mad Kabuki Woman, Asian Queer/Bi Girl, an Asian Guy, “that Asian male/female thang”, ‘The Joy Fucked Up Club, exciting all the genders to laugh, talk and respect one other.  She examines love, violence and respect among men and women, HIV/AIDS, women loving women. Premiered in 1994 at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, and toured nationally at venues including the Painted Bride, PA, the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, Northwestern University, the excerpts at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Hairou, China.

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