FALL 2017
WHITNEY WHITE LINEN NIGHT 5:30pm–midnight Opening: EPHEMERA OBSCURA (Through October 1) 5:30pm–9:30pm
Thursday
Tuesday
Saturday
Friday
Thursday
BUILDING DEDICATION 7pm
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm SECOND THURSDAY 6–9pm
Saturday
Friday
Thursday
Wednesday
SEPTEMBER 14 20 15 21 16 22 19 23
Saturday
AUGUST 5 10
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT Mondo Bizarro 7:30pm
SECOND THURSDAY 6–9pm
Saturday
Friday
Thursday
Thursday
Saturday
Sunday
GO FORTH Kaneza Schaal 7:30pm and 11pm
GO FORTH Kaneza Schaal 7:30pm
GO FORTH Kaneza Schaal 7:30pm SECOND THURSDAY 6–9pm
SECOND THURSDAY 6–10pm
ART FOR ARTS’ SAKE 6–9pm
Closing: EPHEMERA OBSCURA
Saturday
Friday
Sunday
Saturday
Friday
OCTOBER 1 13 14 7 12 15 NOVEMBER 9 17 10 18 11 MÖNSTER OUTSIDE Sidra Bell Dance New York 7:30pm Opening: PROSPECT.4 (Through February 25, 2018)
MÖNSTER OUTSIDE Sidra Bell Dance New York 7:30pm
TRISHA BROWN: IN PLAIN SITE Trisha Brown Dance Company 2:30pm and 7:30pm
TRISHA BROWN: IN PLAIN SITE Trisha Brown Dance Company 2:30pm and 7:30pm
TRISHA BROWN: IN PLAIN SITE Trisha Brown Dance Company 7:30pm
Photo: Logan Magee
Dear Friends, As we begin our fifth decade as the region’s only multidisciplinary art center, the CAC finds itself in the midst of exciting changes. The renovation of our gallery spaces is all but complete and our historic warehouse spaces have been updated to realize the worldclass performances and exhibitions you will discover in the coming months. The following pages illustrate why Fall continues to be a glorious time to be a participant in the growing cultural landscape of New Orleans. The CAC’s Fall season opens with Ephemera Obscura, our annual presentation of artists living and working in the New Orleans community. In September, we are thrilled to present a beautiful new work by the New Orleans–based theater ensemble Mondo Bizarro, The Way at Midnight, commissioned by the CAC together with commissioning partners from throughout the country. In October, Trisha Brown Dance Company will present Trisha Brown: In Plain Site a bittersweet look at seminal works created by the late American choreographic icon (1936–2017). The evening-length performance will move audiences through The Helis Foundation First Floor Galleries, The FreeportMcMoRan Theater and our newly renovated warehouses, providing a fitting tribute to the world-renowned artist’s life and work. Kaneza Schaal’s breathtaking installation/performance GO FORTH, based in part on the Egyptian Book of the Dead, follows in November in our warehouse spaces taking full advantage of the facility’s enhanced technical capabilities. Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp opens November 18 for what promises to be the triennial’s largest constellation of artists on view in a single venue. The CAC’s second collaboration with Sidra Bell Dance New York will end our Fall Season. Commissioned by the CAC, Bell’s latest work, MÖNSTER OUTSIDE, will feature live music composed and performed by New Tide Orquesta, one of Sweden’s most internationally celebrated contemporary music ensembles. Also beginning this Fall, The Domain Companies’ stunning co-working space entitled The Shop—in residence on our third and fourth floors—will bring a new vibrancy to our historic facility while creating a synergistic partnership between our two institutions, the fruits of which will begin to unfold in the coming months. And this is just the first four months! I invite you to flip through the pages of our Fall brochure to discover more about our exciting season, and look out for the Spring edition of our brochure in November. We look forward to welcoming you to the CAC this Fall and throughout the coming year. Neil A. Barclay Director and CEO
CAC Staff
Board Officers
Neil A. Barclay Director and CEO
Deborah Brockley, CPA President and Chair
Nanette Saucier Deputy Director and Chief Financial Officer
Gregg Porter Vice Chair
Andrea Andersson The Helis Foundation Chief Curator of Visual Arts Hasan Aquil Associate Director of External Affairs Lindsay Barfield Exhibitions Manager and Chief Preparator Noni Clemens Individual Giving Manager Nelly Cotton Financial Services Associate Jennifer Francino Senior Curatorial Associate Michele Frentzos Senior Manager, Financial Services Joel Jackson Assistant Director of Rentals and Hospitality Services Lisa Kirwin Hospitality and Building Operations Manager Beth Lavin Associate Director of Development Émilie Lamy External Affairs Manager Summer Mead Frontline Supervisor Courtney Mouton Finance Associate Jo Nazro Resident Technical Director Samuel Oliver Senior Manager of Executive Affairs Christopher Staudinger Patron Services Coordinator
Bush Wrighton Treasurer Staci Rosenberg Secretary Board of Trustees Carla D. Arriola Bryan Bailey David T. Baker Luis Baños III Judy Barrasso Dawn Barrios Valerie Besthoff Jacquee Carvin Leslie Castay Sandra Chaisson Anna Coleman Dunbar Jonathan Fawer Krystle Ferbos Sayde F. Finkel, J.D. Grant Harris Elizabeth Hefler Russ M. Herman Mark Jeanfreau Orelia Minor Kara Tucina Olidge, Ph.D. Virginia Freeman Rowan Patrick Schindler Robyn Dunn Schwarz Randall A. Smith Hank Torbert Gretchen Wheaton Sarah Wood David Workman Leopoldo J. Yanez Emeritus Board Members Sydney J. Besthoff Patricia Chandler Thomas B. Coleman Sandra Garrard Barbara Motley Jeanne Nathan Michael J. Siegel MK Wegmann
Mariana Sheppard Associate Director of Education and Public Programs Laurie Uprichard Senior Curator of Performing Arts
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Ephemera Obscura Group Exhibition
Opening a season of programming that celebrates New Orleans’s tricentennial, the Contemporary Art Center’s annual open-call exhibition presents the work of more than 34 regional artists. As a port city, New Orleans has long served as a departure, respite or destination point for artists, intellectuals, merchants and romantics. As we celebrate the three-hundred-year history as a city of journeymen, we recognize our own history in global patterns of geographic mobility. From refugees fleeing conflict, or facing oppression and natural disasters, to immigrants seeking opportunities and freedoms in new regions, the nomad presents as contemporary archetype. Across national borders and difficult passageways, this nomad brings mementos. Despite, or perhaps because of, their fragility, these objects accrue heightened significance as carriers of cultural and personal history. They serve as signifiers of ethnic, religious and regional association, transmitting memories of particular landscapes and traditions. This exhibition presents the work of artists who examine the relationships of objects—which hold importance beyond their physical form—to experiences of places and cultural identities. Artists were asked to submit works that evoke their own sense of emotionality, sacredness and personal connection to their cultures and beliefs through objects found and made. When faced with conflict or duress, what sacred objects or physical memories would be the first in hand and tucked away for safekeeping? What forms serve to tell your cultural story to the next generation? What is
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Dates
August 5–October 1 Admission
$10
CAC Members
Free admission Join at cacno.org Free on Sundays for Louisiana residents.
Thursday, August 10 6–9pm Free and open to all Happy hour: 6–8pm Artist talks, performances, live music, bar, food trucks and more!
EPHEMERA OBSCURA the history communicated by your chosen medium? Are objects singular and distinctly self-reflective, or do they portray individual history as copy, reproduction or commodity in a global economy of exchange? How do histories of colonization and cultural domination figure in the objects with which we most closely identify? Organized by the Contemporar y Arts Center, New Orleans and curated by Aaron Levi Garvey.
Support for this exhibition is provided by the Sydney & Walda Besthoff Foundation, The Helis Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Welch Family Fund in memory of Walter Wade Welch.
Alia Ali, Undocumented, from the Borderlands series, 2016. Photograph courtesy the artist.
CAC Fall 2017 Exhibition
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CAC Fall 2017 Performance
Photo: Zack Smith Photography, 2017
MONDO BIZARRO
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World Premiere
The Way at Midnight Mondo Bizarro
Mondo Bizarro has been creating original, interdisciplinary performances and fostering creative partnerships in local, national and international communities since 2003. Working as an ensemble and developing projects over several years, their art inspires a deeper understanding of what makes us commonly human and individually unique.
Dates
Thursday, September 14– Saturday, September 16 7:30pm Wednesday, September 20– Saturday, September 23 7:30pm Admission
$25–40
CAC Members
Receive discounts and early seating Join at cacno.org
Thursday, September 14 6–9pm Free and open to all Happy hour: 6–8pm Artist talks, performances, live music, bar, food trucks and more!
THE WAY AT MIDNIGHT
Directed by Joanna Russo, Mondo’s latest work is inspired by contemporary questions of migration and (dis) orientation. The Way at Midnight explores confrontations with losing and being lost from the colonial period through the digital age and incorporates theatrical performance, visual installation and live and recorded music. Two performers—Hannah Pepper-Cunningham and Nick Slie—bring humor and gravitas to their portrayals of seven distinct characters confronting their ancestry and looking towards an uncertain future. Framing the performance, visual artist Miwa Matreyek’s custom animations are projected onto four surfaces of the CAC warehouse, while composer Peter Bowling’s dynamic sound design and original compositions fill the auditory space.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Way at Midnight is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Center in partnership with Clear Creek Creative (KY), 7 Stages (Atlanta), Double Edge Theater (MA) and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). This project is also made possible by support from the NPN Performance Residency Program. For more information: www.npnweb.org.
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TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY
6 Photo: Geometry of Quiet ©Service Culturel Musée d’Art moderne
CAC Fall 2017 Performance
Louisiana Premiere
In Plain Site Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown (1936–2017) was one of the most acclaimed and influential choreographers and dancers of our time; her groundbreaking work forever changed the landscape of art. A student of Anna Halprin, Brown participated in the choreographic composition workshops taught by Robert Dunn—from which Judson Dance Theater was born—greatly contributing to the fervor of interdisciplinary creativity that defined 1960s New York. Expanding the physical behaviors that qualified as dance, she discovered the extraordinary in the everyday, and brought tasks, games, natural movement and improvisation into the making of choreography. Brown has described herself as “a bricklayer with a sense of humor.” Today the Trisha Brown Dance Company continues to perpetuate Brown’s legacy through its Trisha Brown: In Plain Site initiative. The Company draws on Brown’s model for reinvigorating her choreography, re-siting works in relation to new contexts that include outdoor sites and museum settings, as well as theaters. At the CAC, the company will animate the entire building, from the galleries, through the Freeport Theater and into the warehouses with works spanning several decades from the 1960s to the 2000s. This performance is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana State Arts Council.
TRISHA BROWN: IN PLAIN SITE Dates
Friday, October 13 7:30pm Saturday, October 14 2:30pm and 7:30pm Sunday, October 15 2:30pm and 7:30pm Admission
$25–40
CAC Members The presentation of Trisha Brown: In Plain Site is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Discounted tickets Join at cacno.org
Thursday, October 12 6–9pm Free and open to all Happy hour: 6–8pm Artist talks, performances, live music, bar, food trucks and more! 7
Louisiana Premiere
GO FORTH Kaneza Schaal
Kaneza Schaal is a New York City– based artist who has performed with many of the major downtown experimental theater companies. Her recent work, GO FORTH (2016), draws inspiration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a text originally intended to provide the deceased with a blueprint to the afterlife. Incorporating analog projections, chanting and dance, the work animates a series of burial rituals. Entering via a photographic installation that conjures family histories, the audience is then seated in a semi-circle facing a dark and rough space (design by Christopher Myers). Excavating the 3,000-yearold series of spells and incantations, Schaal has created a new translation, focusing on the scroll’s central metaphor: the weighing of the heart. The performance proposes burial not as erasure but as offering restitution that creates space for the presence of the absent, the longed for and the imagined. GO FORTH was commissioned by Performance Space 122 and premiered at PS122’s 2016 COIL Festival. Since then, the work has traveled to the Ubumuntu Arts Festival in Kigali, Rwanda; LMCC’s River-to-River Festival; and Schaal’s alma mater Wesleyan University. This performance is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana State Arts Council.
GO FORTH Dates
Thursday, November 9 7:30pm Friday, November 10 7:30pm Saturday, November 11 7:30pm and 11:00pm Admission
$25–40
CAC Members
Receive discounts and early seating Join at cacno.org 8
Thursday, November 9 6–9pm Free and open to all Happy hour: 6–8pm Artist talks, performances, live music, bar, food trucks and more!
CAC Fall 2017 Performance
Photo: Maria Baranova
KANEZA SCHAAL
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MÖNSTER OUTSIDE
Sidra Bell returns to the CAC for the world premiere of her new work, MÖNSTER OUTSIDE, for which Sidra Bell Dance New York has joined forces with innovative Swedish composer Per Störby, his critically acclaimed chamber ensemble New Tide Orquesta and Sweden’s Visual Relief to develop a voyeuristic discourse about the nature of outliers in contemporary society. Marrying dance, theater, chamber music, projection mapping, vocal scoring and scenic and lighting design, the work will locate and depict aspects of human joy and despair via the experience of the “outsider.” The title MÖNSTER OUTSIDE is a play on SwedishEnglish cognate irregularities; in Swedish, “mönster” translates as “patterns.” This work will engage audiences in the process of deconstructing social structures that create outsiders in our society, those who live and operate outside of the norm. It comments on nature and its relationship to the pursuit of technology that causes dissonance and detachment from humanity. Onstage, the work will use a theatrical interplay of Sidra’s virtuosic movement vocabulary that references social and club sources with sound patterns by the New Tide Orquesta. The work veers between playful and disturbing, as narrated by the band’s experimental vocalization. The piece will be performed in a multitiered stage arena of moving parts and screen filters designed by the dynamic design team Amith Chandrashaker and Amy Rubin. MÖNSTER OUTSIDE and its presentation is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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World Premiere
Sidra Bell Dance New York
Dates
Friday, November 17 7:30pm Saturday, November 18 7:30pm Admission
$25–40 CAC Members
Receive discounts and early seating Join at cacno.org
MÖNSTER OUTSIDE This project is made possible in part by support from the National Performance Network (NPN) Performance Residency Program. For more information: www.npnweb.org.
Photo: Umi Akiyoshi Photography
Photo: David Flores Productions
CAC Fall 2017 Performance
SIDRA BELL DANCE NEW YORK
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Prospect.4 Group Exhibition
Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, the fourth iteration of this citywide exhibition opening November 18, 2017, and running through February 25, 2018, alludes to the city’s unique cultural landscape as a creative force. Cultural synthesis and syncretism inform many of the central issues explored in Prospect.4. The rich diversity of New Orleans is rooted in a long history of human interactions including colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, waves of migration and displacement and Gulf Coast trade buoyed by the city’s position as the American South’s largest port. Many artists in P.4 explore related themes, connecting them to contemporary geographies and cultures around the world. Prospect.4 overlaps with the city of New Orleans’s tricentennial celebration—the three-hundredth anniversar y of the founding of Nouvelle-Orléans by the French in 1718. Because of this serendipitous intersection, P.4 takes the city’s distinctive character as a point of departure to investigate global concerns, while also directing more of its focus southward, placing greater emphasis on art and artists who engage with the American South and the Global South, particularly those from North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa and the European countries that colonized these regions.
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Dates
November 18, 2017– February 25, 2018 Admission
$10
CAC Members
Free admission Join at cacno.org
PROSPECT.4 Thursday, December 14 6–9pm Free and open to all Happy Hour: 6–8pm Artist talks, performances, live music, bar, food trucks and more!
Maria Berrio, Wildflowers, 2017. Image courtesy the artist and Praxis Gallery, New York.
CAC Fall 2017 Exhibition
THE LOTUS IN SPITE OF THE SWAMP
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Join us ever y Second Thursday of the month for a free evening full of entertainment: artist talks, performances, live music, bars, food trucks and more! From 6 until 9pm, happy hour: 6–8pm.
Thursday, August 10 Thursday, September 14 Thursday, October 12 Thursday, November 9 Thursday, December 14
Teens@CAC
Artist Exchange Field Trips
Teens@CAC invites high school students from around the city to learn about contemporary art, artists and the creative process. This diverse group meets biweekly on Saturdays to learn from arts professionals, investigate current exhibitions and create programs for teens by teens, such as the annual Teen Exhibition and Teen Nights.
Artist Exchange field trips introduce young artists to applied skills in the arts, reinforce Common Core Standards, and address the needs and abilities of all students. Students tour current exhibitions followed by workshops in theater, dance, music, visual arts, or creative writing. These learning experiences engage students by enabling them to discover new interests while learning through and about the arts. To plan your school trip, visit cacno. org/artistexchange
Family Workshops
EDUCATION & PUBLIC PROGRAMS Free and open to all 14
During our family arts day, grownups work closely with their little ones to discover creative and fun ways to enjoy art together. These afternoons consist of family-friendly tours of current exhibitions, art-making workshops with local artists, film screenings, music, and food trucks. Fall Family Day: Saturday, September 23. To learn more, please email education@cacno.org
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Photo: Frank Aymami Photography
CAC Fall 2017 Membership Coming this Spring
Thanks to the support of our members, the CAC can fulfill its mission of providing bold and innovative contemporary arts programming to diverse audiences. By becoming a member, you help the CAC remain an accessible and thought-provoking gathering place for visitors, artists, students and families, and all those in our local and extended communities.
JOIN THE CAC Every CAC Membership includes •
Free admission to CAC exhibitions and invitations to CAC Members-only tours
•
Free admission to the Whitney White Linen Night Afterparty, CAC’s Art for Arts’ Sake, film screenings co-presented with New Orleans Film Society and other special events
•
$10 off CAC performance tickets with priority seating
•
15% discount at The Stacks Bookstore and The Cafe at the CAC
•
Guest passes to CAC galleries and special events
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Listing in quarterly digital CAC Members newsletter Join at cacno.org/membership, by phone (504) 528-3805, or in person at the front desk.
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Performances
Urban Bush Women HAIR & Other STORIES (Louisiana Premiere) January 24–28, 2018 Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Stretch Music February 21–23, 2018 Miguel Zenón Quartet (New Orleans debut) March 23–24, 2018 Southern Sonic Sound Art Festival May 10–13, 2018 Junebug Productions Gomela (reprise) June 7–10, 2018 Exhibitions
Sarah Morris March 22–June 17, 2018 Jockum Nordström: Why Is Everything a Rag March 22–June 17, 2018 Save the Date!
Whitney White Linen Night Saturday, August 5, 2017 Building Dedication Tuesday, September 19, 2017 Art for Arts’ Sake Saturday, October 7, 2017 Sweet Arts Gala Saturday, February 24, 2018
CAC Support The CAC Is Supported By
Bryan Subaru; Cox Communications; The Domain Companies; Felicity Property Co.; The Helis Foundation; Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Josephine W. Nixon; The Wallace Foundation; Whitney Bank Major In-Kind Support
Ace Hotel New Orleans; Corporate Realty; Event Rental; Uniti Fiber; Oilfield Slang; The New Orleans Advocate; Premium Parking; SkyCom Education and Public Programs Support
Nancy Aronson & Virginia Besthoff; City of New Orleans | Edward Wisner Donation; J. Edgar Monroe Foundation; New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, Inc. Performing Arts Support
CEC ArtsLink; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; National Performance Network; New England Foundation for the Arts; New Orleans Theatre Association; South Arts Visual Arts Support
Sydney & Walda Besthoff; Greater New Orleans Foundation; John T. Scott Guild; Visual Arts Exhibition Fund Capital Support
Anonymous; Dathel & Tommy Coleman; Ella West Freeman Foundation; The Helis Foundation; Past Presidents of the CAC; RosaMary Foundation; The Selley Foundation Business Arts Fund Members
Arthur Roger Gallery; Audubon Communities; Callan Contemporary; Joan Mitchell Center; W.I.N.O.
Hours
Gallery Hours Wednesday–Monday 11am–5pm The last admission to the galleries is at 4:45pm Hours vary for performances, lectures and special events. Call for holiday hours and closures
The Stacks Bookstore Monday–Sunday 11am–5pm The Cafe Monday–Friday 9am–5pm Saturday and Sunday 11am–5pm Open during performances and events Gallery Admission
$10 General Admission $8 Students & Seniors Free to CAC Members Free to Louisiana Residents on Sundays courtesy of The Helis Foundation Free to Children & Students through Grade 12 and under at all times courtesy of The Helis Foundation Contact
The CAC is supported in part by a Community Arts Grant made possible by the City of New Orleans and administered by the Arts Council New Orleans, and by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works.
Phone: (504) 528-3805 Tickets & Info: (504) 528-3800 Fax: (504) 528-3828 Contemporary Arts Center 900 Camp Street New Orleans, LA 70130
The Institute for Interdisciplinary Innovation (I³) is a three-year pilot project of the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (CAC), supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, designed to provide both the context and content for the expanding aesthetic landscape of interdisciplinary performance as practiced by artists whose projects are drawn from or inspired by the rich cultural traditions of the South. The CAC’s I³ Southern Partners include Duke Performances, Fusebox, The Nasher Museum of Art, Oz Nashville, and Speed Art Museum.
The CAC is located on Camp Street between Andrew Higgins Drive and St. Joseph Street in the New Orleans Warehouse Arts District, one block from Lee Circle and the Saint Charles streetcar line
On the cover: Alia Ali, Undocumented, from the Borderlands series, 2016; flap: Sidra Bell Dance New York, photo: David Flores Productions; back cover: Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, photo: Kiel Scott
Contemporary Arts Center 900 Camp Street New Orleans, LA 70130 cacno.org
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