PERFORMANCES BY ARTISTS FEATURED IN THE NEW EXHIBITION STATE OF MIND: NEW CALIFORNIA ART CIRCA 1970, PLUS CONCERTS BY AMY X NEUBURG AND EDMUND CAMPION HIGHLIGHT THE SPRING SCHEDULE; PROGRAM INTEGRATES WITH COMPANION PROGRAMS E@RLY: SUNDAYS @ BAM/PFA AND RE@DS

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Berkeley, CA, February 27, 2012-The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive released its spring L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA schedule. Highlights include a series of evenings inspired by the new exhibition State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970, performances by new music pioneers Amy X Neuburg and Edmund Campion, an evening of roots music and avant-garde film, and a second E@RLY: Sundays @ BAM/PFA event hosted by local publisher and record label Land and Sea.

The spring L@TE season opens on March 2 with an evening titled Music & Film: The Goat Family & Beige. The Goat Family, whose “influences range from Led Zeppelin to Leadbelly,” features local filmmakers and musicians Rock Ross, Thad Povey, Cecil B. Feeder, Dan Janos, and Chris Santeramo. Known for providing musical accompaniment to original film in their live shows, the group started out as a jug band and plays an ebullient mix of bluegrass and country on traditional and homemade instruments. Local filmmakers Kent Long and Vanessa O'Neill, who comprise the project Beige, open the evening with a screening of the immersive and abstract Which Ceaselessly Float Up, a double-projection film accompanied by live sound by Long. The evening is programmed by BAM/PFA Film Curator Kathy Geritz.

On March 9, continuing guest programmer Sarah Cahill welcomes Edmund Campion to BAM/PFA's Gallery B. Campion is an innovator of computer-enhanced performance practice and much of his work draws connections between music and the natural world. Campion, the codirector of UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, transforms the museum space with sound and visuals, including video projection, a choir spread throughout the building, and his own brand of dynamic, buoyant electronic music. Designer Raveevarn Choksombatchai, artist and 3-D animator Claudia Hart, and the Cornelius Cardew Choir and its director Tom Bickley join Campion for this event. Cahill continues her wide-ranging survey of the most adventurous performers in new music by presenting a concert by Amy X Neuburg on April 13. The composer, violinist, and electronic musician expands on her patented “avant-cabaret” sound to take on the acoustics of our atrium gallery with works for large ensemble and electronically processed voices. Neuburg, who has “scoped out her own territory in the gulf between pop and classical” (Village Voice), is joined by wild percussionist Moe! Staiano and a large chorus for an evening of wordless and nearly wordless songs.

March 16 features the first in a series of L@TE events which channel the revolutionary Conceptual art explored in the new exhibition State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970. The series is programmed by the exhibition co-curator and BAM/PFA Adjunct Curator Constance M. Lewallen. For Flashback 1970s, three influential performance artists revisit works from the early 1970s: Linda Mary Montano meditates in a chicken bed, Jim Melchert does whatever the television tells him to do, and Adam II (the late Paul Cotton) presents “Mystical Body of The Astral-Naught Bride-Groom (Living Sculpture) in Hir Present State of Herm-Aphroditic Metamorphosis,” which is exactly what it sounds like. In 1975, California-based Dutch Conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader disappeared under mysterious circumstances at sea while attempting to cross the Atlantic in a small craft. On March 23 we screen Rene Daalder's Here Is Always Somewhere Else above BAMscape. The film uses Ader's story as the basis for a sweeping overview of contemporary art and an epic saga of the transformative powers of the ocean. The evening begins with a recording of ARP's meditative electronic musical work Odyssey (For Bas Jan Ader). Finally, artist Eleanor Antin performs her no-holds-barred coming-of-age memoir, Conversations with Stalin on May 11. Naturally, she performs the reading in the spirit of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

On April 15, Land and Sea (artists Chris Duncan and Maria Otero) wrap up their two-part series of E@RLY: Sundays @ BAM/PFA events, which draw inspiration from the sun. For The Sun (Part Two), visual artist Duncan leads a prism-making workshop so that people of all ages can take home their own rainbow. Collin McKelvey, who performs under the moniker Orbless, debuts “a new quadraphonic composition for synthesizer, voice, and ice” in response to Paul Kos's Sound of Ice Melting (on view as part State of Mind). And the award-winning volunteer chamber choir International Orange Chorale fills the galleries with harmonies that celebrate the earth's nearest star.

A recent companion program to L@TE, RE@DS, seeks to spotlight the vibrancy of the contemporary Bay Area writing community and the area's long tradition of artistic and literary comingling. RE@DS events precede most L@TE performances through May at 5:30 p.m. Guest programmers Suzanne Stein, poet, publisher, and community producer at SFMOMA, and poet/writer David Brazil have enlisted writers to present their own written works in the context of another writer or artist that has been a source of inspiration for them. On March 9 we welcome Christian Nagler, a writer, translator, and artist whose work has recently appeared in Fillip, Somatic Engagement, and The Poetic Labor Project. Ariel Goldberg reads on March 16. Goldberg is currently writing and performing The Photographer, an epistolary novel. Brian Ang, author of Communism and Paradise Now and the editor of Armed Cell, reads on March 23. Poet and activist Ted Rees reads on April 13. Poet Lara Durback, whose work is “leaning more toward performance art of letterpress,” closes out the RE@DS series on May 11. RE@DS events take place in The Reading Room, a temporary space dedicated to experimental poetry and fiction open through June 17.

L@TE Calendar
Friday night programs begin at 7:30 p.m.; doors open at 5 p.m. with DJs filling the galleries with sound at most events beginning at 6:30 p.m. RE@DS events start at 5:30 PM in The Reading Room, and are included with L@TE admission.

Friday, March 2
Music & Film: The Goat Family & Beige
Programmed by Kathy Geritz
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 9
Edmund Campion
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / RE@DS: Christian Nagler / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 16
Flashback 1970s: Performances by Linda Mary Montano, Jim Melchert, and Adam II
Programmed by Constance M. Lewallen
Doors 5 p.m. / RE@DS: Ariel Goldberg 5:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 23
Here Is Always Somewhere Else
Programmed by Constance M. Lewallen
Doors 5 p.m. / RE@DS: Brian Ang 5:30 p.m./ DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Friday, April 13
Amy X Neuburg
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / RE@DS: Ted Rees 5:30 p.m./ DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, April 15
E@RLY: The Sun (Part Two)
Featuring Collin McKelvey (Orbless), Chris Duncan, and International Orange Chorale
Programmed by Land and Sea
Doors 11 a.m. / Performance 12:00 p.m.

Friday May 11
Eleanor Antin, Conversations with Stalin
Programmed by Constance M. Lewallen
Doors 5 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Tickets
General admission to the BAM/PFA galleries is $7 after 5 p.m. on L@TE Fridays. General admission to the BAM/PFA galleries is $7 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on E@RLY Sundays. Both L@TE and E@RLY are free with a same-day PFA Theater ticket. Admission to L@TE and E@RLY 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. E@RLY events bring this same type of programming to early Sunday afternoons.

Credit
L@TE and E@RLY are 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
Founded in 1963, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is UC Berkeley's primary visual arts venue and among the largest university art museums in terms of size and audience in the United States. Internationally recognized for its art and film programming, BAM/PFA is a platform for cultural experiences that transform individuals, engage communities, and advance the local, national and global discourse on art and ideas. BAM/PFA's mission is “to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through art and film.”

BAM/PFA presents approximately fifteen art exhibitions and 380 film programs each year. The museum's collection of over 16,000 works of art includes important holdings of Neolithic Chinese ceramics, Ming and Qing Dynasty Chinese painting, Old Master works on paper, Italian Baroque painting, early American painting, Abstract Expressionist painting, contemporary photography, and video art. Its film archive of over 14,000 films and videos includes the largest collection of Japanese cinema outside of Japan, Hollywood classics, and silent film, as well hundreds of thousands of articles, reviews, posters, and other ephemera related to the history of film, many of which are digitally scanned and accessible online.

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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