Instruments of Accountability

Opening Reception and Performances:
Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin, AJ Layague, Dana Reason
Saturday, September 29, 2-4 p.m.
Broad Center Courtyard, Pitzer College

The opening reception will feature three performances that will incorporate Elana Mann’s sculpture-instruments from the exhibition. These works will explore the intersection of art, music and activism to address issues of domestic violence, audience participation and empowerment.

Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin: Unseal/Unseam
An experimental, multimedia opera that re-frames the story of Bluebeard’s Castle from the perspective of his abused wife, Judith.

AJ Layague: Signs Revisited
A three-movement work exploring the translation from the visible to the acoustic, from the object to its representation, and from the watcher to the listener.

Dana Reason: Modes of Persuasion: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Mouth
A series of studies for emergent method sound & object practitioners using instructional and graphic scores to be performed by non-art professionals.

Election Day Parade: Grand Buddha Marching Band
Tuesday, November 6, 2:30–4 p.m.
Mudd Quadrangle, Claremont Graduate University

On Election Day, Mann will stage a performance of Pauline Oliveros’ Grand Buddha Marching Band in collaboration with art students from Pitzer and Claremont Graduate University (CGU). Performers will convene on Mudd Quadrangle, adjacent to CGU’s Art Department. This event is co-produced by Pitzer College Art Galleries, CGU, and Fulcrum Arts, Pasadena.

Lecture by Tomorrow Girls Troop (TGT)
Saturday, December 8, 1:30–2:30 p.m.
Broad Performance Space, Broad Center

Self-described as a “worldwide fourth-wave feminist art collective,” Tomorrow Girls Troop (TGT) was established in 2015 and comprises 50 artists and activists from around the world. Focusing on gender equality issues, TGT strives to create a positive world for all sexualities and genders in East Asia through art, social action, education, and pop culture.

Presented in collaboration with The Claremont Colleges’ Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies.

Songbook Launch
Elana Mann: Instruments of Accountability
Saturday, December 8, 2:30–4 p.m.
Broad Performance Space, Broad Center

In conjunction with the exhibition, Pitzer College Art Galleries will publish a songbook of scores/compositions/chants/songs specifically created for Elana Mann’s sculptural instruments. The publication will include compositions by Pauline Oliveros, Dana Reason, Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin, and Douglas Kearney, among others. The songbook will include a jointly written essay by artist, activist and scholar Gregory Sholette and curator and critic Olga Kopenkina. An interview with Elana Mann by Pitzer College Art Galleries’ Director and Curator Ciara Ennis will also be included. The songbook will be designed by Colleen Corcoran, a designer who focuses on projects that examine the use of design as a tool for education and positive change. The form and design of the songbook will draw from the aesthetics of zines, street newspapers and Athanasius Kircher’s many publications.

The exhibition and programming are generously supported in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance and the Frederick J. Salathé Fund for Music and the Cultural Arts/Campus Life Committee, Pitzer College.

MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal Symposium
Friday, March 23, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College

MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal is an exhibition of the ideas, wishes, and demands of scores of citizens with something to say and a need to be heard. It is our current climate of discord that created MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal. It was conceived to give citizens a soapbox and to amplify their voices. These voices are many, and these voices belong to people from various walks of life. In our current climate of discord, it is essential that we reexamine just who we are and what we stand for. MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal has joined the conversation as have the voices in this symposium.

Full Schedule

This Symposium is free and open to the public.

Book Launch:
Jenny Yurshansky
Blacklisted: A Planted Allegory (Recollections)
Saturday, January 20, 2-3 p.m.
Broad Center Courtyard, Pitzer College

Blacklisted: A Planted Allegory (Recollections) is an artist edition, which contains distinctly textured components. It is a box that contains original images, short poetic narratives, a plastic-coated index sheet, an introductory essay by Glenn Harcourt, and an interview with Jenny Yurshanky and Ciara Ennis. It is a record of the 133 invasive plant species that make up this project’s collection and is the final result of four years of research. This publication was developed as the last component tied to the exhibition, Jenny Yurshansky: Blacklisted: A Planted Allegory, curated by Ciara Ennis, Director and Curator, Pitzer College Art Galleries, it took place January 24 to March 26, 2015.

$60, edition of 200 / $160, special edition of 15 with blacklisted plant (Placeholder)

The artist multiple will be available for sale through Pitzer College Art Galleries by cash or check only. Sales through PayPal or Venmo can be made through Jenny Yurshansky.

Annual Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture
Edgar Heap of Birds
Influences, Mentors, Colleagues and Our Homage to this Earth
Tuesday, January 23, 4:15 p.m.
Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College

Edgar Heap of Birds is a citizen of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma whose art decries the colonization of Indigenous lands and expresses Native American claims to sovereignty. A multi-media artist, Heap of Birds’ work includes large-scale drawings, paintings, prints, public art projects and sculpture. Through these mediums, he addresses issues of Native American history, identity, colonialism, time, modernity and the meaning of art.

Heap of Birds is a professor of Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution and the Hong Kong Art Center. He has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation, among other institutions. In 2012, Heap of Birds was recognized as one of 50 of “America’s most accomplished and innovative artists” when he won a United States Artists Ford Fellowship in the visual arts.

This lecture is free and open to the public.

This event is being held in conjunction with the exhibition Edgar Heap of Birds: Defend Sacred Mountains at the Pitzer College Art Galleries, January 20th March 29, 2018.