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REDCAT: Paul Chan "Waiting for Godot in New Orleans" 8:30 PM, February 1, 2010 Paul Chan Los Angeles premiere Alpert Award-winning video and media artist Paul Chan gives a stirring live multimedia presentation about an extraordinary community art experiment he spearheaded in New Orleans in collaboration with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and the public arts group Creative Time. In November 2007, Chan and his colleagues staged five site-specific performances of Waiting for Godot in the Katrina-devastated neighborhoods of Gentilly and Lower Ninth Ward. The production played to large crowds of local residents, for whom the classic Beckett-penned lines rang with fierce immediacy. The artist-activist, who had previously gained prominence by going to prewar Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness in defiance of U.S. law, also discusses the social and aesthetic ideas underpinning the Godot project. Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud. "Chan is an unusual model for an artist, being one for whom creating objects in the studio and dynamic situations outside it are equally important." "I think that art can be any number of things at once, and they can all be contradictory." Paul Chan Links Paul Chan's official website: www.nationalphilistine.com A PBS video about the project: Source files + docs from Waiting for Godot in New Orleans on Paul Chan's website: New York Times review: Paul Chan is an artist who lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited widely in many international shows including: Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; Medium Religion, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2008; Traces du sacrê, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008; 16th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2008; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2007; and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include: My Laws are My Whores, The Renaissance Society and the University of Chicago, Chicago, 2009; Paul Chan: Three Easy Pieces, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2008; Paul Chan: The 7 Lights, Serpentine Gallery, London and New Museum, New 2007-2008; Paul Chan - Lights and Drawings, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2007; Paul Chan: 1st Light, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, 2006-2007; and Paul Chan, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm and Portikus, Frankfurt, 2006. REDCAT is located at 631 West 2nd St., Los Angeles, CA 90012 - in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure and in adjacent lots. |