This week, current artists-in-residence Cog•nate Collective (Amy Sanchez and Misael Diaz) presented a listening/walking activity tour through downtown Santa Ana, with Erin Hyatt’s students from Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School here in Santa Ana.

The focus of Ms. Hyatt’s current teaching is a living history of Santa Ana, with the goal of exposing students to the arts and culture of their community.

During their visit, the students were provides a tour of the current exhibitions at Grand Central Art Center, including: Jody Zellen: Time Jitters; Flora Kao: Wind House, Abode That A Breath Effaced; and Susan Robb: Wild Times. We discussed with the students the connections between the current exhibitions and the activities they were to engaged with throughout the day – subjects such as journey and discovery; uses of technology as information platform, information and connector; everyday surroundings and place; local history.

Amy and Misael took the students on adventures throughout downtown, sharing along the way audio excerpts for their recently developed BORDERBLASTERS (SNA) // LA CUATRO I-IV series, presented via their radio transmission wagon – collections of oral testimonies of local residents, artists, community leaders and 4th Street business owners as they reflect on the economic, social and cultural dimensions of redevelopment in the Downtown core of Santa Ana. The stories are also available to the public through QR codes and printed binders located at businesses throughout downtown.

The interactions of the day provided the students an opportunity to use their technology to record, through image, sounds and video, new discoveries of their own community. The documentation will be brought back to the classroom where it will be discussed, edited and used in the continued classroom curriculum over the summer course.

On the evening of Saturday, June 14th, GCAC presented the fifth performance in our Santa Ana Sites series, with a sound performance by artist Steve Roden.

The evening began with a reception at Downtown Santa Ana’s Q Art Salon, hosted by Jose Quant and Shell Martin. Guests gathered and connected with one another at this pre-event mixer.

At 8:15pm, GCAC Director/Chief Curator and Sites Co-Founder John D. Spiak led guests downstairs, up the street, and to a historic law building parking lot – having them facing a roll-up gate leading to an underground parking area. When all had arrived, the gate was opened and guests made their way underground, where they then entered another space – that of a subterranean racquetball court located beneath the law building, which is owned by Dennis Dascanio who generously allowed GCAC use of the space for the evening.

There, guests were greeted by Sites Co-Founder and Artistic Director Allen Moon and were introduced to Steve Roden for some brief pre-performance remarks.

GCAC invited Steve to perform in the Sites series, as we admired and respect him for the constant risks he takes – through his painting, installation work, films and sound performances. He is always challenging himself and the audience, allowing access to those slight moments in life that we often forget, or don’t allow ourselves to experience or enjoy – the slight mark, the capturing of an actual shadow, an adjustment or shift of a tone. It is what Steve does best and what makes him such a remarkable individual.

Over the course of his 5o-minutes performance, Steve didn’t disappoint, as he took the audience on a complicated sound journey – one that began with sound bleed from a cumbia band performing for a wedding at a nearby banquet hall, first collaborating with those sounds, then making that background beat truly disappear as his own synthesized composition took center stage. Through his skillful use and knowledge of sound, Roden was able to successfully transport the audiences to a place outside the confines of the Downtown Santa Ana location, to a space of “elsewhere” that was unique to each of the 108 individuals experiencing this live performance.

GCAC was fortunate to have in attendance Carolina Miranda of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote a wonderful review of the evening. capturing her own images and sound of the performance that she shares through text and slideshow, available through the following link:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-steve-roden-sound-art-santa-ana-20140617-column.html

We were able to record video documenting some of the sound check with the artist during the afternoon set-up, so we thought you might enjoy it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLddMuVTJos&w=560&h=315

In addition, LA Times created this preview video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEbEIgX7bm4

We would like to also acknowledge and thank Dennis Lluy, along with his team at The Yost Theater for their continued support of Santa Ana Sites. Through their in-kind generosity, they have loaned equipment that makes each Sites performance possible.

Lastly, we thank all those who attended and who continue to support Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana Sites and our community outreach activities!

More information on the Santa Ana Sites series, including documentation of past performances, can be found online at:
http://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/santa-ana-sites/

SANTA ANA SITES #5: STEVE RODEN
a sound performance

JUNE 14, 2014
7:30 – 8:15PM
PRE-PERFORMANCE RECEPTION / MIXER
*please arrive no later than 8pm

RECEPTION LOCATION:
Q Art Salon
205 N. Sycamore St.
Santa Ana, CA 92701

audience will be escorted to performance location

SEATING LIMITED, TICKETS REQUIRED, BUT ARE FREE TO PUBLIC
ticket information below

Santa Ana Sites #5 presents an evening of sound performance by artist Steve Roden. Performing through the use of two analog modular synthesizers, Roden will continue the Sites approach of presenting work in unique Santa Ana spaces, activating a subterranean racket ball court located in the heart of Downtown Santa Ana.

Tickets are free but reservations are required – RSVP info towards the bottom of this page

Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist born in Los Angeles and living in Pasadena, CA. Roden’s practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture, writing, film/video and sound performance.

Since the late 1980’s, Roden has had numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. recent solo exhibitions include: CRG Gallery, New York and Susanne Vielmetter LA Projects, Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include Silence at the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas and the First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena, De Indias, Colombia.

Roden has performed his soundworks at various arts spaces and experimental music festivals worldwide including: Serpentine Gallery, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; DCA, Dundee, Scotland; Redcat, Los Angeles; Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland; as well as performance tours of Brazil and Japan. Recent performances include John Cage’s Cartridge Music with composer Mark Trayle at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena; a tribute to Rolf Julius at the Hamburger Banhof, Berlin; and performances at the Museum of Art, Strasbourg, France and The Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas. Since 1993, Roden has released numerous cds under his own name as well as under the moniker “in between noise” on various record labels internationally.

Recently the artist has created numerous site-specific sound works for spaces such as MOCA at the Pacific Design Center in response to a group of paintings by Mark Rothko; the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington’s James Turrell Skyspace; the MAK Center for Art and Architecture/Schindler House in Los Angeles; a live collaboration with Stephen Vitiello in a room of 50 pieces of sculpture by Donald Judd at Chinati, Merfa, Texas; Daniel Libeskind’s Run Run Shaw new creative media centre building at City University of Hong Kong; a sound/sculpture/drawing installation for Thomas U. Walter’s 1848 building at Girard College, Philadelphia for the Hidden City Festival; and a permanent public artwork at Hayvenhurst Park, in West Hollywood, California.

This event is anticipated to be at maximum capacity with reservations required.

Reserve FREE tickets through email with name and requested number of tickets with a maximum of two tickets per guest to:
jspiak (at) fullerton (dot) edu

A reception at Q Art Salon will begin at 7:30pm, with guests being asked to arrive no later than 8:00pm on Saturday, June 14th.

ABOUT SANTA ANA SITES
Santa Ana Sites, an initiative of California State University, Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center, presenting, in community partnership, contemporary performance in public and private spaces throughout Downtown Santa Ana.

The traveling forum is designed to provide the community shared artistic experiences, encouraging the discovery of diverse environments and architectural space.

Santa Ana Sites was founded by Allen Moon, Artistic Director/Community Partner and John D. Spiak, Grand Central Art Center Director/Chief Curator.

More information on the previous Santa Ana Sites can be found at:
http://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/santa-ana-sites

SUPPORT
Santa Ana Sites #5 is made possible through the generous in-kind support of Dennis Dascanio, Jose Quant and Shell Martin, and Q Art Salon.

Flora Kao: Wind House, Abode That A Breath Effaced
June 7 – August 10, 2014
Opening Reception: June 7th, 7-10pm

The Mojave Desert is a space of tenuous order and inevitable decay. Shacks in varied states of ruin punctuate the scrubby expanse of sand. Allowing homesteaders to claim up to five acres of expendable public land, the Small Tract Act of 1938 spawned a mid-century desert land rush. The majority of these homes were eventually abandoned due to the extreme living conditions. In Wonder Valley, a collapsed shack seems to have melted into the ground. A single gable stands erect, surrounded by an explosion of white shingles.

Wind House, Abode That A Breath Effaced explores the poignant associations of this fallen form through a life-size rubbing of the homestead’s debris field. Executed on a thousand square feet of white silk, gestural black marks map the house at a specific moment of decay. This rubbing is transformed into an installation of eight panels suspended askew across the gallery. Upon entering, the viewer is immersed in a sensuous drawing that can only be comprehended in fragments over time, never at once. With each turn, one’s experience oscillates between compression and openness, as new vistas are framed and cropped, lines advance and recede, and textures unfold.

Capturing the physical evidence of failure, Wind House, Abode That A Breath Effaced archives the effect of entropy on an architecture of economy. Mapping absence and presence, the rubbings present a visceral encounter with erasure and accumulation. Breathing with the viewer’s movement through the space, the installation suggests the precarious balance of a structure on the verge of collapse. Referencing shrouds, fossils, and grave rubbings, the installation’s black wood grain and white fabric suggest sails, shipwreck, and surrender, linking the vastness of the ocean with the extremes of the desert. Ultimately, Wind House, Abode That A Breath Effaced meditates on the fugitive nature of home and the ease of loss in a land of new beginnings.

The opening reception will take place on June 7th, 2014, 7-10pm, during the First Saturday Art Walk.