Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
2017 Mitchell Artist Lecture featuring The Yes Men
UH Moores Opera House 3271 Cullen Boulevard, Houston, TX, United StatesJoin the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts for the 2017 Mitchell Artist Lecture, a landmark public program that annually features major figures in the world of artistic collaboration. This year’s speakers are artists and political activists, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, known together as The Yes Men. They've been doing …
CounterCurrent19 – Ganzeer: Perpetu-War
Tony Marron Park 808 North York St., Houston"Make Art, Not War" has become a cliché sentiment, perhaps to the point of losing its meaning. But, artist Ganzeer asks, is there something to it? Is it at all possible that art represents antithesis to a culture of warfare that has dominated humanity since the beginning of our time? Perpetu-War is a speculative public …
Ten Tiny Dances®: Nightlife, curated by Max Fields
Rich's Houston 2401 San Jacinto, Houston, TX, United StatesTen Tiny Dances®: Nightlife brings together artists, dancers, and club scene icons from Houston and beyond for a night of performances that reflect on the ways in which the cultural knowledge unique to individual club cultures is transmitted and archived through dance, gesture, fashion, and music. Ranging from Texas-style vogue and drag to New Orleans …
CounterCurrent19: Opening Night Celebration featuring DJ Set by Wild Moccasins
Rich's Houston 2401 San Jacinto, Houston, TX, United StatesCelebrate the opening of CounterCurrent19 with dancing, drinks, and DJs at Rich’s nightclub, following the conclusion of Ten Tiny Dances®: Nightlife. Houston’s own Wild Moccasins (Avery Davis, Zahira Gutierrez, and Cody Swann) will be on the turntables, spinning their own mix of dance party anthems inspired by the Ten Tiny Dances® performances. All ages are …
CurrentConversations, organized by Carrie Marie Schneider
MATCH - Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston 3400 Main St, Houston, TX, United StatesCurrent Conversations are a series of public discussions across disciplines and along parallel lines of inquiry. CounterCurrent festival artists and University of Houston faculty experts engage in lively discussion about themes and concepts connected to this year’s festival programming. Each one-hour, lunchtime talk kicks off with a set of rapid-fire presentations followed by questions and …
CounterCurrent19: Tia-Simone Gardner: Salt Water Sweet Water
Waterfront at Allen's Landing 1005 Commerce St., HoustonOpening Reception: 4/10, 6–8pm, Sunset Coffee Building Taking place at “Houston’s birthplace,” Allen’s Landing on Buffalo Bayou, Gardner’s Salt Water Sweet Water (2019) is a site-specific response to Houston’s own history of commerce and construction. Visitors will interact with these histories through a presentation of projected image, sound, and performance. Tia-Simone Gardner (Minneapolis, MN) illuminates …
CounterCurrent19: Jennif(f)er Tamayo: LA QUEERADORA
MATCH - Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston 3400 Main St, Houston, TX, United StatesJennif(f)er Tamayo’s LA QUEERADORA installation sits at the intersection of digital cultural production and embodied cultural performance. It asks: How do material bodies, whose lives hold an archive of cultural knowledge and experience, compete with a manufactured and digitally porous production of identity? In Tamayo’s work, the racial project of U.S. Latinidad, as an often …
CounterCurrent19 – Ellen Fullman: The Watch, Reprise, 2016
Atrium, Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design Entrance 18 off Elgin St., HoustonLong String Instrument composer and performer, Ellen Fullman, explores the acoustics of large resonant spaces with her compositions and collaborative improvisations. Fullman will literally “play” the iconic atrium of the Philip Johnson-designed Hines College of Architecture and Design building at the University of Houston, an action first performed in 1994. The title, The Watch, references …
CounterCurrent19 – Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born: Sitting on a Man’s Head
Project Row Houses 2521 Holman St, Houston, TX, United StatesThe practice of “sitting on a man” was one of the many disruptive durational protest practices used by women in Southeastern Nigeria, it was a traditional exercise of their collective power and it became a vital tool throughout the period of British colonial rule. In Sitting on a Man’s Head, the space of restoration and …
CounterCurrent19 – Awilda Rodríguez Lora: SUSTENTO: from La Performera to La Mujer Maravilla
MATCH - Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston 3400 Main St, Houston, TX, United StatesSUSTENTO: from La Performera to La Mujer Maravilla is a lecture-performance by the transdisciplinary artist, Awilda Rodríguez Lora also known as La Performera. Stories, movements, and songs are strategies used by La Performera to invite the audience to reflect on the concept of sustento (sustenance) as a complex and vital idea for survival in creative …
CounterCurrent19 – Stacy Garrop: How Does a Composer Compose?
MATCH - Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston 3400 Main St, Houston, TX, United StatesIn this lecture-demonstration, Garrop takes the audience through a step-by-step process of how she composes instrumental music, demystifying a process that for many remains challenging to understand. For CounterCurrent19, Garrop will focus on the compositional process she utilized for her woodwind arrangement, Bohemian Café. The presentation features videos of Prague street performers from whom she …
CounterCurrent19 – MF Problem, Autumn Knight & Robert Pruitt
Emancipation Park 3018 Emancipation Avenue, HoustonAutumn Knight and Robert Pruitt, Texas natives who began their artist careers in Houston, will historicize contemporary art-making practices in Houston by discussing its black and artist-of-color communities. In 2016, Knight and Pruitt moved from Houston to New York to participate in an artist residency. The distance from Houston provided the artists with space to …
CounterCurrent19 – Festival Closing Celebration
Axelrad 1517 Alabama St, Houston, TX, United StatesAll ages; light bites and cash bar. Drop in to Axelrad, Houston’s favorite neighborhood beer garden, and celebrate the closing of CounterCurrent19 with happy hour cocktails, light bites, and live music. This year we’ve partnered with Axelrad and our friends at Decatur Bar to present a CounterCurrent signature cocktail crafted by master mixologist Leslie Krockenberger. …