PERFORMANCES BY TERRY RILEY, ROBIN COX ENSEMBLE, A HALLOWEEN WEEKEND SCREENING OF BEWARE! THE BLOB!, AND EXHIBITION-INSPIRED EVENTS COMBINING DANCE, MUSIC, FILM, AND DISCUSSION, HIGHLIGHT SCHEDULE

Berkeley, CA, August 18, 2011-(Download a PDF version of this press release.)The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive announces the September/October 2011 lineup for its celebrated art and performance series L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA. The multidisciplinary program features the return of Terry Riley to Gallery B, a concert by the ascendant sextet Robin Cox Ensemble, a Halloween spookfest and screening of the B-movie classic Beware! The Blob!, a free performative opening featuring dance in conjunction with artist Silke Otto-Knapp's upcoming MATRIX exhibition, and more. Melding visual art and performance in new ways, the programs on this schedule are primarily inspired by themes explored in BAM/PFA's fall exhibitions, including Create and Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage.

On September 2, we host the first of a series of fall events programmed by Kamau Patton, an artist based in New York and San Francisco. He is an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and was one of four artists selected for SFMOMA's 2010 SECA Art Award. His programs for L@TE explore the artistic legacy of Kurt Schwitters, whose work is featured in the exhibition Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage. Patton's first event features performances by Chris Kubick and Seth Horvitz, two artists working in digital and electronic media whose work investigates notions of space and collage. Berkeley-based artist Kubick will present Many Many More Than One, a swirling multichannel audio-video environment that explores and twists film and T.V. sound effects that simulate the murmurs of crowds. Sound artist Horvitz will fill the museum with a complex audio composition that uses a recording of Schwitters reciting his epic sound-poem Ursonate as source material. On October 7, Patton presents Random Rotations, featuring four artists whose practices will expand the boundaries of the stage to create a collage of overlapping performance and sensation that implicates viewers as participants. Amid Parker Ito's newsprint and video installation, Lana Voronina performs a one-woman show with video collage, electronic music, and psychosomatic movement. Suzy Poling's installation of sculpture and light devices will respond to her live performance on flute and synthesizers. Brad Troemel's Blind Mist, an interactive, Internet-enabled, revolving display of images will be projected throughout the night. Go to blindmist.com and enter your image to be included in the random rotation.

In what has become an annual tradition for L@TE, legendary pianist-composer Terry Riley returns to the series he helped launch in an inaugural performance in November 2009 for a highly anticipated solo concert on piano and synthesizer on September 9. Best known as the godfather of minimalist music, Riley's performances encompass North Indian classical music, American jazz, and a particular strain of musical experimentalism that is uniquely Californian. His enormously influential music has inspired three generations of composers around the world and provided the creative spark for rock bands such as Can and the Velvet Underground. We encourage patrons to bring pillows or blankets to stretch out on the gallery floor and on BAMscape to enjoy the reverberations. Riley's appearance is once again made possible by returning guest programmer Sarah Cahill. On October 14, Cahill delivers the Los Angeles-based Robin Cox Ensemble. Dubbed “local heroes” by the L.A. Weekly and “refreshingly diverse” by the Los Angeles Times, the sextet will bring its unique “postclassical” combination of acoustic instruments and electronics to L@TE, performing a selection of compositions by Bay Area composers. The ensemble has produced three critically acclaimed CDs and recent commissions and concerts have included composers such as Todd Reynolds, Andrew Russo, Bill Ryan, Eve Beglarian, Common Sense Composers Collective, Pamela Z, and Amy X Neuburg, among others. This is a chance to see a young and energetic ensemble on their rise to international acclaim.

On September 16, we celebrate the current exhibition Create, which features works by twenty artists who have come out of three pioneering local art centers for artists with disabilities (Creativity Explored, Creative Growth Art Center, and NAID Art Center), on view through September 25. Create gets a royal send-off with an evening of films and video projections, a moderated discussion with Create artists, a dance party DJ'd by some of the centers' artists, and other special surprises. The night will include a screening of The Forbidden Zone, guest programmer Harrell Fletcher's collaborative project with Chris Johanson, the late Creativity Explored artist David Jarvey, Elizabeth Meyer, and Alexis Van Hurkman, that explores Jarvey's interest in an early Star Trek episode. Fletcher has produced a variety of socially engaged collaborative and interdisciplinary projects since the early 1990s, and his work has been shown at SFMOMA and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, among other venues. He is an associate professor of art and social practice at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

On September 30, the MATRIX exhibition program for emerging artists moves out of its customary home in Gallery 1 and into Gallery B for a special free L@TE program and opening that brings the paintings of London-based German artist Silke Otto-Knapp to life. The evening commences with stage videos from the Pacific Film Archive collection, including a rare 1969 performance by Yvonne Rainer, followed by a Q & A with Otto-Knapp moderated by programmer Dena Beard, BAM/PFA curatorial assistant. Portland-based dance artist Linda K. Johnson will perform two variations of Rainer's Trio A, emphasizing the stage dynamics and gestural discipline of this seminal dance. Choreographer Flora Wiegmann concludes the night's festivities with a site-specific dance that reinterprets still-frame photography.

Start your Halloween weekend off fright with The Blob: A Shapeless Spectacle on October 28. Beware! The Blob! That amorphous 1970s mocu-monster movie will slowly undulate its way into Gallery B. This will be a B2B viewing experience-Blob to BAMscape. The Blob blobulates around town, absorbing all creatures, big and small: Godfrey Cambridge, Bud Cort, even the totally edible director/star Larry Hagman. To keep things as formless as possible, we'll extrude an ill-defined selection of gooey, gooshy treats to eat. Beside our orange blob, BAMscape, will be another nebulous form, a giant air sac with sounds and images emitting from its moving membrane.

L@TE Calendar
Friday night programs begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B with the exceptions of MATRIX Live, which includes a special film program and Q&A beginning at 5:30 p.m., and The Blob, which features a projection performance at 6:30 p.m.; doors open at 5 p.m. with DJs filling the galleries with sound at most events beginning at 6:30 p.m.

September 2
Chris Kubick & Seth Horvitz
Programmed by Kamau Patton
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ Sutekh 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

September 9
Terry Riley
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ Citizen Zain 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

September 16
The Forbidden Zone
Programmed by Harrell Fletcher
Doors 5 p.m.

September 30
MATRIX Live
Programmed by Dena Beard
Doors 5 p.m. / Films and Q & A 6:30 p.m. / Dance Performances 7:30 p.m.
Free admission

October 7
Random Rotations,
Programmed by Kamau Patton
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

October 14
Robin Cox Ensemble
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

October 28
The Blob: A Shapeless Spectacle
Programmed by Steve Seid
Doors 5 p.m. / Projection Performance 6:30 p.m. / Film 7:30 p.m.

$7 After 5
General admission to the BAM/PFA galleries is $7 after 5 p.m. on L@TE Fridays, with the exception of MATRIX Live, which is free for all. Show your ticket for a same-day PFA screening or gallery visit and get in to L@TE free. Admission is always free for BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff.

About L@TE
L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA is the institution's afterhours program, featuring guest programmers-as well as BAM/PFA curators-who showcase mostly local artists, musicians, filmmakers, performance artists, and other creative types resulting in a series of eclectic performance and events. Galleries are kept open until 9 p.m. Programs begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B; doors open at 5 p.m.

Credit
L@TE is made possible in part by the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees. Special thanks to our media sponsors, East Bay Express and San Francisco Bay Guardian.

More Online
For updates and advance tickets, visit bampfa.berkeley.edu/late.

About BAM/PFA
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is the visual arts center of the University of California, Berkeley, the nation's leading public research university. One of the largest university art museums in the United States in both size and attendance, BAM/PFA aims to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through contemporary and historical art and film, engaging audiences from the UC Berkeley campus, the Bay Area, and beyond. Each year BAM/PFA presents fifteen art exhibitions, 380 film programs, and dozens of performances, as well as lectures, symposia, and tours. The museum's collection of more than 30,000 works ranges from Neolithic Chinese pottery to contemporary video art. Among the collection's exceptional strengths are Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese painting, Italian Baroque painting, Old Master works on paper, early American painting, mid-twentieth-century abstract painting-including important works by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse, and Mark Rothko-Japanese cinema, Soviet silent film, West Coast avant-garde video and film, animation, and international classic films.

Berkeley Art Museum Information
Location: 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue across from the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Open L@TE Fridays until 9 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Information: 24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; fax (510) 642-4889; TDD (510) 642-8734.

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu

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