L@TE Closes Out 2010 with Musical Performances by Pacific Mozart Ensemble, ARP, and a Collaboration Between the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus and the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio; a Dance Performance by the Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Company; and Genre-Busting Performance/Film Pieces by Artists Nao Bustamente, Jonathon Keats, and Darryl Sapien

Berkeley, CA October 8, 2010-(Download a PDF version of this press release.) The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's eclectic art and performance series L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA closes out 2010 with a spate of genre-crossing events. From meditative masterpieces to off-kilter performances, L@TE returns with classical and experimental soundworks, dance, video, and conceptual and performance art. Like the current roster of L@TE events, many of these upcoming programs draw inspiration from BAM/PFA's major fall exhibitions: Flowers of the Four Seasons: Ten Centuries of Art from the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture and Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000.

On November 5, prominent new-music advocate Sarah Cahill continues her acclaimed programming focusing on American experimental music. Morton Feldman's classic Rothko Chapel, composed for the Houston interfaith sanctuary inspired by painter Mark Rothko, will serve as a centerpiece to a special collaboration between the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus (directed by Marika Kuzma) and the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio (David Abel, violin; Julie Steinberg, piano; and William Winant, percussion). The collaborators will also perform Robert Ashley's chant-like She Was a Visitor. On December 3, Cahill welcomes the innovative Bay Area choral group Pacific Mozart Ensemble (PME), who's repertoire ranges from Brahms to Brubeck to the Beach Boys. Directed by Lynne Morrow, PME will perform Bay Area premieres of newly commissioned works by Amy X Neuberg and Sanford Dole, as well as music by Meredith Monk. Neuberg's piece is a multi-voice composition inspired by the theme of birth and renewal, while Dole offers a reflection on Gabrieli's motet Vox Domini, which PME will also perform.

On November 12, San Francisco-based Japanese electronic musician and guest programmer Tomo Yasuda (Tussle, Coconut, Ing Rot, and Hey Willpower) presents the third in his series of four events inspired by BAM/PFA's major fall exhibition Flowers of the Four Seasons. Prosperity and Tranquility with ARP uses sound and visuals to reflect upon autumn as well as the zeitgeist of Japan during the economic boom of the late Edo period, when the country's government ceded power to commercial interests. The evening features a performance by “one-man bliss machine” Alexis Georgopoulos, the New York-by-way-of-San Francisco artist behind ARP. Georgopoulos will send his atmospheric electronic sounds up into the museum's concrete heavens as if delivered via cloud. Original films by San Francisco experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson and a video loop that meditates on autumn and the passage of time by Los Angeles-based artist Sara Magenheimer will visually enhance ARP's performance. On December 10, Yasuda's final program The Transformation Call with Harupin-ha Butoh Dance Company explores the transition from the Edo to Meiji periods in Japan-a near-apocalyptic experience for the Japanese-when foreign pressure opened Japan to the modern world. Berkeley-based Butoh masters Koichi and Hiroko Tamano and over fifty dancers from their Harupin-ha Butoh Dance Company will interpret themes of winter and change with a dance performance based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's 1918 short story “The Spider's Thread.” San Francisco-based rockers Vomica will provide sonic accompaniment. Finally, Sara Magenheimer will complement the evening's performance with the fourth of her seasonal video loops, this one evoking the last month of the year.

In conjunction with the publication of Pacific Film Archive's first book Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000, BAM/PFA Film Curators Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid awaken the senses with a new installment of Radical L@TE. On November 19, Performance Anxiety features conceptual art pieces that straddle the tenuous line between performance art and film. First off is Nao Bustamente, who has a rep for off-kilter performances that have an edge of spooky menace. Bustamente's most recent undertaking, Silver & Gold, has her cross-dressing as legendary underground filmmaker and patron saint of American performance art Jack Smith and his molten muse Maria Montez. Projected video will serve as a passageway between realms of bodily enchantment. Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats feels that plants should travel just like the rest of us. To that end, he's made Strange Skies, a moody montage of Italian skies for the stay-at-home-shrub. Sound improviser Theresa Wong will perform the score live, with special flourishes for the leafy special guests. In 1975, Darryl Sapien (with Michael Hinton) erected a thirty-five-foot wood pole in Gallery B, ascended the hefty post and then drove in wedges as he descended. Splitting the Axis had video cameras and monitors positioned around the gallery's ramps to provide a dislocated view. Sapien will recreate this moment by placing monitors along those same ramps, now dislocated by decades.

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 sound beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Nov. 5
Rothko Chapel, featuring UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus with the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Nov. 12
Prosperity and Tranquility with ARP
Programmed by Tomo Yasuda
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Nov. 19
Radical L@TE: Performance Anxiety
Programmed by Steve Seid and Kathy Geritz
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Dec. 3
Pacific Mozart Ensemble
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Dec. 10
The Transformation Call with Harupin-ha Butoh Dance Company
Programmed by Tomo Yasuda
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
Start your weekend in the BAM/PFA galleries! The galleries are open until 9 p.m. or later on most Fridays, with DJs spinning tunes beginning at 6:30 p.m., and an array of performances and other programs in Gallery B. Sarah Cahill programs new music on the first Friday of each month; electronic musician Tomo Yasuda's hybrid programming connects to themes explored in BAM/PFA's major fall exhibition Flowers of the Four Seasons: Ten Centuries of Japanese Art from the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture on the second Friday; and BAM/PFA Film Curators Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid celebrate the arrival of their new book Radical Light on the third Friday, with expanded cinema events that spotlight the Bay Area's rich tradition of avant-garde film and video. For updates on L@TE programs and to purchase tickets, visit bampfa.berkeley.edu/late.

Credit
L@TE is made possible in part by Bank of America, the Tin Man Fund, and the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees. L@TE programming coinciding with the exhibition Flowers of the Four Seasons is supported by Bonhams & Butterfields, Bonhams Japanese Art North America, the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, and the Center for Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley. 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, one of the nation's leading research universities. BAM/PFA believes that art inspires the imagination, supports learning at all ages, and contributes to positive social change. One of the largest university art museums in the United States in both size and attendance, BAM/PFA presents 15 art exhibitions and 380 film programs each year.

Berkeley Art Museum Information
Location: 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue near 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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