Informative Literature

OUR AIMS

CONTACT US!

Hideous Beast is a collaborative effort between two artists, Josh Ippel and Charlie Roderick. Through organizing structured participatory events we attempt to encourage cultural activity outside the bounds of mainstream entertainment and fabricated desire.

We are always looking for others to collaborate with, both in carrying out our own projects and realizing others. Please contact us with any ideas for activities or events.

Critical of the audience as a passive participant, Hideous Beast seeks to coordinate events in which an acknowledged exchange between the event (as entertainment) and the spectator (as collaborator) can generate meanings beyond traditional formalized modes of entertainment.

It is our intent as artist and beings in common to shift perceptions of authorship and participation within the realm of constructed entertainment and art generated activities.

This might change though.

Currently Charlie and Josh are located both in Denver, Colorado and Chicago, Illinois.

We have a web site which we update fairly often. hideousbeast.com We also have an email address through which we do most of our correspondence. info@hideousbeast.com

INFORMATIVE LITERATURE

MINI MOVIE FEST: Our first Mini Movie Fest featured Mini Movies from students at the University of Illinois as well as various residents of Urbana-Champaign. The Mini Movies were created using the “movie” function on a digital still camera and were screened for an audience with an LCD projector. Mini Movie Fest continues to regenerate in venues all over the world, helping produce social gatherings pertaining to a wide range of subjects and activities.

Check out our user guides for a Mini Movie Fest Workshop, how to make a Mini Cine solicitation device, and our videosharing site – http://minimoviefest.startyourtube.com

PIÑATA PARTY: We asked participants to construct a piñata for display and destruction. First we offered a 2-night piñata workshop where people could learn how to make a piñata. For the night of the event we began with a kids piñata party. Later on, the “adults” had a go at the piñatas. Before and between bands spectators where asked to destroy piñatas. In collaboration with My Masterpiece Will Be A Burning Museum, a piñata wall was constructed which held the bands’ 5 guitarist and lead singer until they busted through with candy flying and music blasting!

LEISURE LIBRARY: Leisure Library is a project started in Spring of 2008. Instigated by our involvement in the Infinite Exchange Gallery at the ZERO1 biennial in San Jose on June 6, 2008, we started compiling a selection of manuals that give instructions for producing a variety of social events. These collections will manifest as a series of Leisure Libraries.

We are contacting producers of events in hopes of collaborating in the production of these manuals. If you have ideas and would like to add them to the Leisure Library, please contact us!

FIELD TEST: Hideous Beast is invested in creating alternate forms of social exchange. To further this practice, we investigate the efforts of other artists and cultural producers who promote new understandings and modes of social interaction. Many of these projects carry an imperative for the gesture to be repeated.

This is apparent either implicitly in the ideology and logic of the activity, or explicitly in the form of instruction sets or public presentations. As an extension of our own search for new tactics of engagement and in order to evaluate these reproducible actions, we will recreate other artist’s projects, document and analyze the results.