L@TE Returns in 2011 with a Concert by Paul Dresher and Joel Davel; Dance and Music with the Brontez Purnell Dance Company and Brilliant Colors; Video and Installation Art by the HalfLifers; and an Evening of Drop-In Workshops Organized by the Los Angeles-Based Machine Project

Berkeley, CA December 17, 2010-(Download a PDF version of this press release.)The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's acclaimed art and performance series L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA returns in 2011 with its most unconventional schedule of events to date. In February, BAM/PFA will play host to an evening of music on invented instruments, a dance performance informed by Yvonne Rainer and Janet Jackson, an oddball DVD release party, and a “mashup” of hands-on workshops that include making kimchee and cloning plants.

L@TE's continuing guest programmer Sarah Cahill welcomes celebrated composer Paul Dresher and his frequent musical collaborator Joel Davel to Gallery B on February 4 for a special concert that draws from Dresher's arsenal of invented instruments. Dresher's inventions include the brand new Hurdy Grande, a giant motorized hurdy gurdy, and the visually stunning Quadrachord. Like composer-inventors before him, such as Harry Partsch and Conlon Nancarrow, Dresher's instruments-both mechanical and electronic-allow him to pursue a keenly personal musical vision. San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman wrote of Dresher, “(He has) an omnivorous sensibility that combines rock'n'roll, minimalism, Indian music, and ambient sounds into a pungent and wonderfully elusive hybrid. For this performance, expect original material spanning the chasm between the raucous and the meditative.

On February 11, new L@TE guest programmer and FirstPerson Magazine Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director Betty Nguyen brings local dancer/musician Brontez Purnell and the San Francisco-based band Brilliant Colors to the museum for an evening of dance and music with a decidedly DIY feel. Though Brontez is best known as the underwear-clad guitar player for the notoriously entertaining local electropop group Gravy Train!!!!, he is also a highly accomplished dancer, drawing inspiration from 1960s avant-garde choreographer Yvonne Rainer, people-watching on his Oakland block, and, of course, Janet Jackson. For this performance, he will showcase a new body of work by the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, combining dance choreography with dance films shot in Super 8: Itzel, Whenever I Get Off the Floor I'm a Total Fucking Hurricane, Free Jazz, and The Beats Are Falling Down. Brontez keeps it punk and street, performing without costume around creative set elements. As part of the participatory piece Free Jazz, Brontez will teach L@TE patrons moves of their own, too. The evening will feature original scores created by Purnell in collaboration with drummer Taji Maalik. Opening for Brontez will be the trio Brilliant Colors. In the few years since their formation, the band has already amassed an impressive batch of singles, two EPs, and a full-length record on labels such as Slumberland Records and Captured Tracks.

In celebration of the recent publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000, BAM/PFA film/video curators and book co-editors Steve Seid and Kathy Geritz continue their multisensory exploration of the avant-garde with an appropriately peculiar new Radical L@TE event. Over the past eighteen years, activation artists Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza have created a series of speculative, performance-based videos and sculptural installations that use improvised movement, recontexualized language, and, most of all, humor to investigate themes of identity and psychic cohesion. Super Gigantic HalfLifers DVD Mega-Release Party launches their newly released compilation DVD, which includes virtually all of the HalfLifers's video work. On February 18 they will repurpose the Gallery B seating structure BAMscape as a multidimensional sculptural screening vessel, navigating a 360-degree journey into the interior reaches of HalfLifers's catalog of videos, exploring afterlife relationships, rescue rituals, and psychic manifestations. This central nerve center will sync up with other portable performance modules housing actions by longtime friends and collaborators, including Anne McGuire, Darrin Martin, Jordan Biren, and Ursula Brookbank.

Whether it's preparing a meal from scratch, planting a vegetable garden, assembling a store-bought dresser, building a computer, or restoring a vintage Camaro, there are few experiences as transcendent and empowering as learning a new skill and making something. The artists associated with the Los Angeles nonprofit performance and installation space Machine Project have been producing events that use hands-on engagement to make rarefied knowledge accessible. On February 24, new guest programmer and Machine Project Founder and Director Mark Allen offers an ecstatic workshop mashup in Gallery B. Titled Machine Project Presents Confuse-a-Tron, this event will feature simultaneous drop-in sessions on subjects as far afield as making kimchi, converting melons into amplified drums, plant cloning, and the application (and styling) of tranimal drag makeup. Stop in, pick a workshop, and revel in the rush of endorphins that result from the acts of learning and creating!

L@TE Calendar
Friday night programs begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B; doors open at 5 p.m. with DJs filling the galleries with music and sounds beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Feb. 4
Paul Dresher with Joel Davel
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Feb. 11
Brontez with Brilliant Colors
Programmed by Betty Nguyen
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Feb. 18
Radical L@TE: Super Gigantic HalfLifers DVD Mega-Release Party
Programmed by Steve Seid and Kathy Geritz
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Feb. 25
Machine Project Presents Confuse-a-Tron
Programmed by Mark Allen
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

$7 After 5
General admission to the BAM/PFA galleries is $7 after 5 p.m. on L@TE Fridays. 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 Bank of America and 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.