Newsletter #11 by Angel Orensanz Foundation

#11 ANGELORENSANZFOUNDATI ON

NEWSLETTER Sept ember27, 2011

Hot from the Archives

Tyne Daly and “Mystery School” An En Garde Arts Production at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, 1998 Written by Paul Selig and Directed by Doug Hughes

yne Daly claims to be one of the last “old fashioned actors” left around the business, and that she is a dying breed. Be that as it may, her career as a theatrical, television and movie actress, will resonate with generations to come. Daly has been decorated with numerous Emmy awards and a Tony throughout her long prolific career. She is best known for her role as Lacey, in the detective television series Cagney and Lacey, which won her four Emmy awards. She is also known for her brilliant performance as Mama Rose, in the 1959 Broadway revival play, Gypsy in 1990. Born on February 1946 in Wisconsin, Tyne Daly was born into a family of actors. She is the daughter of actor, James Daly and the sister of actor Tim Daly. She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Art and has been acting for 40+ years. In 1998, Tyne Daly graced the former old temple walls of the now, Angel Orensanz Foundation, here in the Lower East Side, with her starring role in Paul Selig’s Mystery School, which was directed by Dough Hughes and presented by En Garde Arts. Anne Hamburger was the founder and artistic director of the, once award winning theatrical production company En Garde Arts. Hamburger is known for her signature productions that incorporated unique and unconventional spaces of New York. Her last two New York productions took place in the Lower East Side, in which the first was Mystery School

at the Angel Orensanz Foundation. She first read about the Foundation in a New York Times’ article that featured Angel Orensanz and his purchase of a former, abandoned synagogue in Norfolk street. Soon after, she paid a visit to Orensanz. The artist recollects, “It was the Christmas season of 1989, and she (Hamburger) drove me through the Bronx into Connecticut to the Long Wharf Theater, to watch Mystery School. At the end of the play, Tyne Daly came into the foyer, and right then and there, we agreed to produce Mystery School at the Angel Orensanz Foundation.” Hamburger also shared invaluable information about how to maintain a historical property such as the former, Ansche Chesed synagogue. En Garde Arts came back to the Lower East Side the same year to produce, Secret History of the Lower East Side on the rooftop of the Seward Park High School on Grand Street. After a short yet successful run with En Garde Arts, Ann Hamburger closed the company in 1999, and is now the producer of public and artistic events for World Disney Productions. Paul Selig’s 80-minute, one-woman play is a reflection and exploration of faith and spirituality in a fairly secular world and time. His play did not come out at a better time—the millennium. Mystery School, which refers to an ancient learning place of spiritual enlightenment, centers around five exceptionally tragic women who are all searching for one common thing, spirituality. Tyne Daly masterfully played these women who were deemed outcasts and misfits of

Tyne Daly ÂŠ JFM Presents LLC

society, and brought them to life through a series of monologues. The cast of characters Daly played included: a lesbian alcoholic professing agnosticism during a 12-step program session, a Christian fundamentalist advocating gun cleaning and claiming to be Christ’s one true disciple, a grieving dowager surrounded by pagan objects found by her late archaeologist husband, a disheveled yet hopeful Jewish woman, and a New Age prophet who is a television host.

one of her famous master classes at Juilliard during the early 1970s, after her opera career had ended. As Callas is instructing her students about the art of performing opera, she delves into her own life—her career successes and tragedies. The role of Maria Callas was first played by, Zoe Caldwell. Although Tyne Daly did not seem to be the first choice to play Callas by critics, her performance proved to be brilliant and haunting

Daly did not grow up in a religious home—she stated, “our family church was the theater”, and the only organized religion she was ever exposed to was when she played a Quaker in the 1994 television series, Christy which gave her, her fifth Emmy. However, her lack of religiosity did not take away from her performance. If anything, it fed to her intrigue of the play.

She is currently back on stage with her new musical play It Shoulda Been You, (directed by David Hyde Pierce) which opened October 3rd, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ. If you missed her stellar performance as, Maria Callas in Master Class, be sure not miss, It Shoulda Been You, which runs till November 4th. For more information and tickets go to the website. re

Tyne Daly’s latest project, was her starring role in Terrence McNally’s Broadway revival of his Tony award winning, 1995 Master Class, which ran from July 7-September 4, 2011 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater (directed by Stephen Wadsworth). Daly played the legendary opera singer, Maria Callas. Master Class is a portrait of the opera diva told through her recollections of the glories, triumphs and tragedies of her own life and career. The play is set in

Mary Paulyshum

Stage design for Mystery School at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, 1998 ÂŠ orensanz.org

At Orensanz Foundation

Contact Summit 2011: “The Evolution Will Be Social” Hosted by Douglas Rushkoff at the Angel Orensanz Foundation on October 20, 2011

he highly anticipated Contact Summit 2011 will be held at the Angel Orensanz Foundation—the historic former synagogue, here in the Lower East Side on October 20, 2011, in participation of Social Week. Douglas Rushkoff organized this event in response to what has been happening to the “net,” and what lies ahead for the future of the digital age. Rushkoff states, “Contact will seek to explore and realize the greater promise of social media to promote new forms of culture, commerce, collective action, and creativity”. Contact will be an event to bring together technologists, theorists, artists, activists, businesspeople, funders, etc., to share new ideas and solutions, connect with new collaborators and create a community for, “innovating social media and beyond.” The Contact Summit of 2011 is the first of its kind that will bring together the Internet’s leading minds and entrepreneurs. According to the Contact website, Contact is a, “working festival of innovation.” Rushkoff hopes that, “Contact will revive the spirit of optimism and infinite possibility of the early cyberera, folding the edges of this culture back to the middle.”

In addition to Douglas Rushkoff, a number of leading innovators, experts and entrepreneurs alike will be in attendance: Michel Bauwens from P2P Foundation, Paul Hartzog and Sam Rose from Forward Foundation, Dennis Crowley (founder of Foursquare), Eli Pariers (founder of MoveOn.org) and many more. Contact will not be a traditional convention with the typical speakers or panels. Instead, participants will convene meetings and share demos. There will be four general main topics discussed throughout the day: Technology and Society, Business and Economics, Arts and Learning, and the Government. The convention will also be broken up into three parts. Firstly, a morning session of discussions or “provocations,” with the leading entrepreneurs of the Internet who will discuss about the latest concepts and challenges in the net development. The afternoon will consist of the convention’s participants to partake in a series of sessions and meetings organized in three time slots; midday, there will be a two-hours lunch break to experience the Bazaar – the “epicenter” of Contact, resembling a free-form marketplace of demo stations and food

Douglas Rushkoff ÂŠ Duncan Davidson (Flickr)

image © jdlasica (Flickr)

carts. In it, companies and organizations will be able to conduct demos and network with potential clients, investors and collaborators. There will also be three, $10,000 Innovation Awards given out to the top demos featured at the Bazaar. Finally, the convention will rightfully end with a Bazaar Cabaret Party, where there will be drinks, music and entertainment. “Contact Summit is just a snapshot of a larger movement, taking place around the globe.” If you are unable to attend the convention in New York City, you can still participate in this global movement through Contact Meetups (http://www. meetup.com/contact/). Furthermore, you could start your own Contact Summit Meetup in your neighborhood and connect to a global network and participate in this international discussion. There are already over 50 communities currently participating in the Contact Meetups. Douglas Rushkoff is an America media theorist, writer, columnist, professor, graphic novelist and documentarian. He currently teaches at The New School University in Manhattan, and has written over ten books on the media, technology and culture. He is also a regular columnist for, The Guardian of London, Arthur, Discover, Daily Beast, Feature.com, and One+. The Contact Summit 2011 will not be

the first time Rushkoff is acquainted with the Angel Orensanz Foundation. On a previous occasion, Rushkoff and Al Orensanz met and discussed topics on the future of technology, the media, the current digital age and the work of Angel Orensanz. “Douglas Rushkoff in conversation with Al Orensanz about Angel Orensanz’s installation series: The Abyss of the Gulf, The Radioactive Fires of Russia and Floods of Afghanistan and Pakistan” can be viewed here. Contact Summit 2011 will take place on October 20, 2011 from 7:30am to 7:00pm at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street NYC. Tickets are $245, which includes: admission, food, drinks and entertainment. For more information please visit the Contact Summit 2011 website. This will be one convention you will not want to miss!

Mary Paulyshum

Angel Orensanz Activity Buds and Roots

Angel Orensanz explores the Pyrenees and Guadarrama mountain ranges

he media of sculpture has always offered endless possibilities of exploration to artists. Think of Rodin’s figures infused with deep individuality, the Cubists’ incursions in sculpture with objects split and collaged in three dimensions, Brancusi’s masterly experimentation with different materials and sleek shapes, the bold creations of the Dada artists, the Rauschenberg’s vast inventiveness when tackling his countless assemblages, or the assertive, aweinspiring sculptures created by Serra out of corten steel, to name only a few. From this unorthodox deviations from Academicism, to the latest ventures of live sculpture based on either food, sound, light, or the human body’s interaction with the surrounding environment, the field of sculpture seems a natural choice for many artists who relentlessly try to create new, challenging work. Angel Orensanz is no exception. He deliberately likes to name himself a sculptor above all. During his early years, his first attempts were aimed at creating monumental sculptures, largely public commemorating monuments in Aragon region, like the Monument to the killed in action during the Civil War (1963), at the Miguel Servet Park in Huesca, or the various totem-like tubular sculptures, erected usually in groups resembling a metallic, brightly colored forest. This was followed by assorted ceramics-wall compositions in public places of Catalonia.

Nevertheless, the most defining feature of Orensanz’s sculptural work is not so much its public and monumental essence, but its close connection to nature. In other words, the artist’s concern has been, and still is, a constant trial to synthesize art and nature. This in turn, offers a myriad of possible dialogues and interactions between the two dialectical forces of art and nature. Orensanz navigates through them with his customary original imagination and resources. A combination of the manufactured, mancreated object, and its seemingly opposite natural environment, will pervade the artist’s production for the rest of his career. This fruitful synthesis that is so embedded into Orensanz’s work, was already perceived in his early sculptural works. For example, his decisive exhibition, Environmental Sculpture, at Holland Park, London in 1973, and the book that was published for that occasion. The show and catalogue’s name, triggered a profuse use of the term, ‘environmental sculpture’ throughout Orensanz’s career, with countless, varied examples all around the world, from Italy to the US. Still, this dichotomy that engages both outdoors sculpture and foliage, has one of its best illustrations in the work, Homage to Ruben Dario (1967), placed in Zaragoza. This sculpture of a naked, little boy trying to reach a star – an allusion to one of Dario’s poem—broke with the traditional notion of the public

Faces in Nature (2011) © Angel Orensanz

monument’s plinth, replacing it with a sort of an uneven rock, swathed by a thick layer of ivy. The abundant plant, typically associated with 19th century Romanticism’s mentality, covers the rocky pedestal and semi-hides the bottom of the sculpture. Yet, what is even more interesting is the possibility of witnessing the shifting hues of the ivy plant as the seasons change. This fact leads to a major issue for 20th century art -- the role that temporality plays in the process of art making, and the future life of the artwork. This is made particularly evident in the case of outdoor sculpture and installations. The relentless passing of time, like the changing tides, is an undeniable essential fact of our lives. Yet, if this is true and easy to grasp, our transitory nature as human beings is still, and will always be, a difficult concept to cope with. Nevertheless, it seems that precisely through art, our fleeting nature can be outlasted. Angel Orensanz discerningly works according to this principle. By interconnecting his sculptural work with the surrounding nature, he adopts a laid back attitude towards the effect of time and weather conditions will have on the piece’s materials; what’s more, he deliberately allows the seasons to assume their role in shaping his work. The arbitrary caprices of nature are a valuable gift for him, hence assessing the capital role of time and its ability to modify the medium. As the Old Masters used to state, “the Time

is also a painter.” The echoes and confluences with the Eastern philosophy are also manifested here. In short, Angel’s monuments and environmental sculpture embody a nature-devoted poetry, which willfully address as well issues of playfulness and joy. This is evident not only in their colorful aesthetic appearance, but in their relation to the environment where they are placed or built. While life is indeed ephemeral, so can be the artists’ inspiration. Both aspire to permanence with the latter taking its cue from these momentary lifeconditions, and constantly and successfully shifting from one media to another, addressing a wide range of concerns. Angel Orensanz’s artwork is a good example of this probe between different media. As he went on experimenting and developing his style, Land Art slowly replaced the term environmental sculpture, which had entailed an outstanding productivity in his artistic practice. The artist began to encompass broader, new media, like performance in the public realm, large-scale installations with recycled materials, site-specific sculptural happenings, or digital photography, as is the case in his latest work executed in the Guadarrama Sierra, nearby Madrid city, and the Pyrenees mountain range, mainly around the village of Prades. For a few months, the artist roamed the mountain

Faces in Nature (2011)© Angel Orensanz

ranges of Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia and the French Pyrenees, and built collections of diversified, rarely seen species. Under the name Faces in Nature, Orensanz recorded with a digital camera hundreds of little details in the Guadarrama’s meadows and woods, resulting in subtle poetic compositions of the nature that reveal the beauty that can lie awaiting in the simplest elements. Pinecones, piles of branches, circular compositions of sticks, lush vegetation, or solitary boughs, are elements commonly taken for granted while wandering and hiking in the forest and mountains. In Orensanz’s photographs however, a kind of unexpected, potent meaning arises from the most minimal composition and elements. But going one step further, the images appeal to the viewers, who then start to wonder whether this motif that look like subtle ‘objets trouvés,’ are a product of the whimsical nature, could not indeed stem from human intervention. Here is where the intriguing essence

of art is perceived –though not entirely unveiled. As spontaneous as the vegetation and nature arrangements seem, the captured images have an elaborate and intricate plan behind the scenes. Through it, Orensanz painstakingly explored, tested and arranged the elements, in order to obtain a moving, scenic result. He positions himself as the artist aware of the infallibility that defines our existence, but who stills believes firmly in the immutability of a sublime poetry that can always be found in nature.

Marta Arenal

Homage to Ruben Dario(1967)ÂŠ Angel Orensanz

all images Faces in Nature (2011)ÂŠ Angel Orensanz

Recent Events

“LES on the Screen” Photographic Report Photos by Dario Garcia

JOIN

our mailing list at

joinlist@orensanz.org

VISIT us at

www.orensanz.org

FIND us at

facebook twitter

A N G E L O R E N S A N Z F O U N D A T I O N , Inc ÂŠ 172 Norfolk Street, New York, NY 10002. Tel. 212.529.7154 Fax. 212.529.1864