Chosen Families
Chosen Families
April 23rd - June 14th, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 4th | 6 - 8pm
Visual Art Night with Artist Talks and live performance art by Sandrine Schaefer and Amber Imrie: Friday, May 31st | 6 - 8pm
The Medium Gallery
214 S Main St, Springdale, AR 72764
(479) 259-2456
themedium.artChosen Families invites audiences to delve into the dynamics of alternative familial connections through the lenses of six esteemed artists: Sandrine Schaefer, Yvette Cummings, Jim Arendt, Arden Carlson, Anthony Sonnenberg, and Amber Imrie.
The exhibition serves as a platform for contemplating societal norms surrounding family structures, particularly exploring the resilience and support found within chosen familial bonds, with a focus on post-human inclusive queer communities.
The artists featured in Chosen Families explore the intentional bonds formed as evolutions to our biological connections. These relationships offer mutual care, choosing to unconditional love, and support to individuals who may face rejection from mainstream society. Through diverse mediums and styles, the exhibition prompts viewers to reconsider the societal emphasis on traditional family and to expand their understanding of family within their own lives.
As society grapples with increasing costs and environmental concerns, Chosen Families encourages dialogue about the potential of alternative family structures to provide support and connection for individuals - and to consider how far the branches of our family tree reach out into our community and natural world. For more information, please contact The Medium.
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The Medium is an Artist-led project of CACHE dedicated to removing barriers between creatives, their work, and their audiences by providing accessible studio, rehearsal, performance, and exhibition space in Springdale, Arkansas. Chosen Families is supported through the Creative Exchange Grant, funded by the Tyson Family Foundation, through the Spectra Grant Series; supported by CACHE. CACHE works with creatives, organizations, and communities to empower a more inspiring, inclusive, and equitable Northwest Arkansas.Transfigure
Transfigure: Transformation as a Revolutionary Act
Fenix Gallery
Millar Lodge, 150 N Skyline Dr,
Fayetteville, AR 72701
(479) 530-6023
Transfigure Exhibition EventsOpening Night: Friday, June 7th from 5:30 - 8:30pm
w/ performance artist Sandrine Schaefer
& w/ music by Lauren LeonardArtist Roundtable w/ Sophia Nourani:
Saturday, June 8th @ 7pmQueer Poetry Readings w/ BeeBalm Arkansas:
Friday, June 14th @ 7pmÁguila Book Talk w/ Maria Christina Moroles:
Saturday June 15th @ 2pmTranslate a Workshop for Artists w/ Amber Imrie:
Sunday, June 23rd @ 3-5 pmTransfigure is an exhibition and series of events that explore the multifaceted journey of queer metamorphosis. Transfigure seeks to illuminate the boundless potential of self-discovery, resilience, and authenticity within queer communities. At the heart of Transfigure lies the notion of transformation as a revolutionary act. Drawing inspiration from the etymology of the word 'transfigure' - to change in form or appearance - this exhibition delves into the intricate tapestry of queer lives and histories, showcasing the remarkable power of metamorphosis in shaping personal narratives and collective consciousness. This exhibition brings together queer voices from the hollers and surrounding mid-american landscape through the art works of:
Anna Guyton, Rachel Trusty, Arden Carlson, Sandrine Schaefer, Coorain Devin, John Rankine, Anna Culpepper, Brianna Peterson, Pat Hennon, David Wayne Reed, Josh Oldham, CJ Carter, Halee Pratcher, and Hannah McBroom.
Transfigure is curated by Amber Imrie - an internationally-known artist and co-founder of the Alternative Art School. Amber identifies as non-binary, and their work explores rural living through a queer feminist lens as it intersects with gender, domestic life, American culture and environmentalism. Amber is also an Arkansas native -raised off-the-grid in the Ozark Mountains.
Transfigure is supported through Fenix Gallery, an artist-run non-profit space on Mount Sequoyah in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Check out Sandrine's recent interview with Canvas Rebel
E.A.R.T.H.
E.A.R.T.H. Festival
April 11-14 | Conway Riverwalk
April 18-21 | Myrtle BeachE.A.R.T.H. is a festival of site-sensitive performance art and eco-theatre featuring live works along the Conway Riverwalk and Downtown Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. E.A.R.T.H. stands for Eco, Art, Radical, Theatre, Happening and brings together theater, art, and activism to explore themes of sustainability, climate change, and the relationship between humans and their environments. Co-created by Coastal Carolina University students and faculty, this festival showcases works that inspire change and promote awareness about the urgent issues facing our planet. E.A.R.T.H. has been co-organized by Ben Sota, Sadie DeSantis and Sandrine Schaefer.
Access full E.A.R.T.H. program HEREFeaturing work by:
Autumn Belvin
Emma McFarland
Cebastian Erin Thompson
Josh Madison
Niko Moratto
Frances Ludwig
Edie Rogers
Kaelyn Gabriels
Teniia Brown + Jayde Torres
Caroline Belangia
Keller Goldstein
Valentin Lencina-Rabidoux
Visual Performance Art FocusConway, SC on April 11, 2024
11:30am-1:30pm
all live performances will happen along the Conway Riverwalk between Transient Dock 2 and the Riverfront GazeboAutumn Belvin, Way of Life
11:30am-1:30pm
Location: Transient Dock 2Emma McFarland, I’m Afraid to Fall
12:30pm-1:00pm
Along the Riverwalk by the GazeboJosh Madison, Beyond the Stars
12:00pm-12:15pm
Location: stage along RiverwalkVideo Program
11:00-2:00pm at 5th & Main, N. Conway, SCNiko Moratto, New Utilizations
Cebastian Thompson, 544
Autumn Belvin, Water Fountain
Frances Ludwig, The only reward for hard work is more work
Sandrine Schaefer, Practicing for Death
Myrtle Beach, SC on April 18, 2024
11:00am-2:00pm
all live performances will happen between 522 Broadway and Pier 14 by the boardwalk
Cebastian Thompson, Disconnected Community
11:00am-2:00pm
Location: walking piece that begins at 522 Broadway and ends at the Pier 14, Myrtle BeachFrances Ludwig, The only reward for hard work is more work
11:00am-12:00pm
Location: Pier 14 in Myrtle BeachEdie Rogers, Addiction Cycle
12:15pm-12:30pm
Location: Pier 14 in Myrtle BeachKaelyn Gabriels, Rainbow Row
11:30am-1:30pm
Location: walking piece that begins and ends at 522 Broadway, Myrtle Beach----
E.A.R.T.H. is made possible through a Sustainability Grant through Coastal Carolina University.poster design by Lottie Taylor
2023 South Carolina Biennial
Sandrine Schaefer
Pace Investigations no. 13
January 12, 2024
5:50-8:00 pm ET
2023 South Carolina Biennial
701 Center for Contemporary Art
701 Whaley Street, 2nd Floor
Columbia, SC 29201
on view January 12 - February 25, 2024
exhibition hours: Thurs - Sun: 1-5pm
www.701cca.orgPace Investigations is an ongoing series of performance artworks that explore the phenomena of felt and measured time. Each iteration of Pace Investigations is new. The actions and materials of the performance are site-specific and the duration of the performance is precisely staggered. In Pace Investigations No. 13, the same performance repeats 13 times over a 2-hour 6 minute and 30 second continuous duration. What begins as a 32-minute performance incrementally loses time to become a 30-second performance, then incrementally gains time to become a 32-minute performance once again. As this constriction, then expansion of time occurs, the performance must shift. Some actions that make up the performance speed up or slow down. Some actions become unrecognizable from previous cycles. Some are abandoned, while others gain significance. Some actions merge to become different actions all together. Regardless of how the performance adapts to the temporal constraint, the tension between measured and affective time is palpable. The actions that make up the performance respond to the 701 Whaley St. building's former identity as a textile mill and gathering center for local communities. An installation of the performance ephemera will remain in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
Wade
Sandrine Schaefer + Jeremy R. Brooks
Wade
September 30, 2023
7:00-9:30
The Alloy Project
Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art
celebrating Tephra ICA’s 50th Anniversary
Signature building at Reston Town Center
11850 Freedom Dr, Reston, VA 20190
TicketsWade
verb
to walk with effort through any substance, as water, mud, snow, sand, tall grass, etc. that offers resistanceWade, a collaborative art piece by Sandrine Schaefer and Jeremy R. Brooks, fuses assisted readymades with performative elements to call attention to the queerness of everyday objects and actions. Through satire, wordplay, and sexual innuendo, Brooks alters found objects to create artworks that court curiosity and blur functionality. Exploring the goose as a queer figure, Sandrine’s site-sensitive performances use long duration and subtle action to reimagine ways for humans to be in relationship with other-than-human worlds. For The Alloy Project, Sandrine and Brooks combine their approaches to circumvent the functionality of objects and optical instruments, while celebrating queer identity and interspecies friendship.
UAAC Conference
2023 Conference of the Universities Art Association of Canada
October 19-21, 2023
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Banff, Alberta
2023 UAAC Conference DetailsPanel: Expanded Practices: Composition in the Postsecondary Fine Arts Classroom
Writing has always been one step in the future. From emojis to slang to song, writing has momentum, and it is up to educators to find ways of moving with it. In the light of current concerns about natural language processing algorithms, how can writing assignments, as well as our pedagogical investment in them, change and adapt, especially in the Fine Arts university classroom? How does the protean nature of writing influence our conception of originality and our methods of teaching core techniques, such as citing, composition, and researching? How (and why) do we engage students in practice-based streams in developing writing skills? Finally, how would a focus on composition, instead of writing, change the way we teach core skills in the classroom? In this panel, scholars, artists, and educators Greg Blair, Michelle Miller and Sandrine Schaefer explore expanded practices of research and writing in postsecondary Fine Arts, with an emphasis on foundational, interdisciplinary, and practice-based courses. Writing has always been a changeable medium with an ambiguous role in arts practice — how can we as educators work and adapt with it in a classroom context while inviting students to do the same?
Panel Chairs: Molly-Claire Gillett and Sandra Huber
Sandrine Schaefer | Translating the Untranslatable: Cultivating Creative Resilience Through Artistic Writing
If an artwork could be understood through the written word, it would be a sentence. If an artwork could be understood verbally, it would be a conversation. The translation of artistic expression into written or verbal forms of documentation can be perceived as an impossible task – an attempt to translate the untranslatable. However, embracing curiosity and a supportive mindset can cultivate creative resilience in this process. In this talk, artist and professor Sandrine Schaefer shares experimental and trauma-informed strategies for writing texts that accompany artworks and explores the symbiotic relationship between writing and artistic critique. Schaefer's method integrates somatic practices, nimbly builds trust and prioritizes play. Practical approaches are additionally explored to support artists whose work does not easily conform to the constraints of the traditional art market, expanding the possibilities of what it means to sustain a creatively fulfilled life.
3rd International Ecoperformance Film Festival
3rd International Ecoperformance Film Festival
June 1-4, 2023
in person & online
Cine Bijou
172 Franklin Roosevelt Square
Consolação, São Paulo, Brazil
ecoperformance.art.br
Wombed Ones is included in the ECOPOET[H]ICS V program for this year's International Ecoperformance Film Festival, screening in person and online. Faced with the eco-political challenges of the 21st century, the 3rd Ecoperformance International Film Festival continues its transcultural mission of bringing together interdisciplinary artists who work in natural, urban, and virtual landscapes to investigate in an ecopoet[h]ic and cinematographic way, the tensions of composition and conflict between environment, body, and ancestry.Conceived and directed by Brazilian choreographer Maura Baiocchi and organized by Taanteatro Companhia (São Paulo/Brazil), the festival received 216 submissions and selected 57 films performed between 2020 and 2023, by artists from 28 countries:
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Congo, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, India, Iran, Mexico, Mongolia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United States and Venezuela.
Link to full programWombed Ones will screen on June 3, 2023. For those watching online, you can access the program on Youtube HERE June 3rd at 5:00 pm EST.
Over the Rainbow
Over the Rainbow
May 24 -July 4, 2023
New Art Center
245 Walnut St.
Newton, MA, USA
newartcenter.orgOver the Rainbow celebrates pride in our intergenerational connections— expressing queer perspectives and what is safe for us and for our youth. Including individual and collaborative work from children to elders of our beautiful community, our goal is to encourage sharing resources between young people with energy and fresh ideas and the experiences and developed thoughts of our older generation. In tracing our queer lineage, we are resisting our history being pushed to the back of the closet.
Artfields 2023
Artfields 2023
April 19-April 29, 2023
Open Hearts Healthcare
121 S. Alcline Street
Lake City, SC
www.artfieldssc.orgWombed Ones will be included in this year's Artfields in Lake City, SC. Wombed Ones is a series of actions made with a herd of cows over one week. Each day, I read my manifesto on building interspecies community and translate it for the herd in a language they might better understand. Developed through an ecofeminist perspective, this work challenges the conceptualization of cows as commodities to reimagine ways for humans and cows to be in relationship.
To vote for Wombed Ones use Artist ID 231434
You Could Be Here
You Could Be Here
April 20, 2023
5:00-8:00pm EST
5th & Main
428 N Main St, Conway, SC 29526
Conway, SC, USAYou Could Be Here is an exhibition of performance artworks created by students in my Arts 420: Exploring Action: Performance Art course at Coastal Carolina University. Through their unique pieces, students explore an array of themes that reflect their artistic concerns, inspirations, and curiosities informed by their study of performance art over the spring semester. This collective event celebrates the shared experience of learning and creating art together.
Featuring works by:
Aubrey Alomar, Cebastian Erin Thompson, De Bennett, Isaiah Cook, Jenna Smith, Marcel Patterson, and Stephanie Rathgeber
SPACORE
April 1 - 22, 2023
Co-Prosperity
3129 S Morgan St.
Chicago, IL, USA
www.spacore.skin
www.coprosperity.org2023 Pee Dee Regional
Sandrine Schaefer "Holda's Gander" 2022
2023 Pee Dee Regional
January 26 - April 7, 2023
Opening Reception: evening of January 26, 2023
Waters Gallery
Florence County Museum
135 S. Dargan Street
Florence, SC 29501
www.flocomuseum.org
Artist Talk for "Embodying Process"
Embodying Process
Embodying Process
The Alternative Art School
Link to exhibition
Artist Talk: Wednesday December 14th @ 7pm ESTIn this exhibition, we bring together attending artists from Embodying Process course with Amber Imrie hosted through The Alternative Art School. This exhibition stands as an opportunity for participating artists to share their process, tests, and creative investigations as they build upon their art practices & make new works with the public. It asks our artists be vulnerable and open as a necessary step in the process of evolving their artistic practices. Thank you to our incredible collective of participating artists, Kellie O'Dempsey, Jini Tanenhaus, Sandrine Schaefer, Jordan Delzell, Claudi Pirippipi, Juliana Toledo, and Bryanna Millis
Communo #1
COMUNO # 1: CLOSE
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EACH CLOSURE BRINGS INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
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Close out the year with the final Comuno party and art show of 2022. This is COMUNO # 1, the first iteration of a series of events combining group art shows and music for open-format tastes. You’ll experience the work of:JULIANA TOLEDO
CAMILA ASTORQUIZA
FELIPE GONZÁLEZ
VALENTINA CADENA
SANDRINE SCHAEFER
RAFAEL DÍAZ
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DJ SETS:
MARIBOSS
DUBLONDS
WANNABE
RISITA NERVIOSA
IPHI
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16 DEC 2022
CASA COMUNO
Bogotá, Colombia
6PM
@Disturbance
Simple Relations No. 4 debut at
@Disturbance 2022
November 10-11, 2022
4:00pm - 5:30pm CT
www.disturbance.info
follow on Instagram @disturbancelndUgly Duck Bermondsey is excited to announce the return of @Disturbance this November. A flagship programme championing LGBTQIA+ performance, video and digital artists, @Disturbance hosts a week-long residency culminating in two nights of public performances on November 10 & 11. A simultaneous high-quality livestream enables those outside London and unable to travel to experience @Disturbance in full effect. It is key for Ugly Duck to encourage accessibility and support radical, diverse, queer artists. @Disturbance is set to be as brave and breathtaking as previous programmes, all of which have sold out and featured artists from all over the world.
@Disturbance 2022 artists include:Gisou Golshani
Joy Yaa Kincaid
River Cao
Khairullah Rahim
Noam Youngrak Son
Olivia Morrison
Sandrine Schaefer
Orlando Myxx
Sophie Hoyle
Yana Bachynska
Talia Beale@Disturbance will debut my new performance for camera, Simple Relations No. 4. Both playful and contemplative, Simple Relations No. 4 queers the use of everyday objects to explore the complexities of living in a gender fluid body in the Southern United States.
Interview in Theatre full Stop
Read my interview in Theatre Full Stop about Pace Investigations No. 4 debuting at @Disturbance
Virtual Sharing of P A C E by Sue Murad
P A C E is a film made by Sue Murad that documents Sandrine Schaefer’s yearlong performance artwork, P A C E Investigations No. 6. Beginning on the 2017 Autumnal equinox, P A C E Investigations No. 6 repeated at dawn and dusk on the equinoxes and solstices for one year. Sited on a public pathway nestled between the historic Waltham Watch Factory building and Mount Feake cemetery in Waltham, MA, the actions and materials of the performance were site-specific. The duration of the performance adapted to changes in sunrise and sunset times from season to season. The piece explored Waltham's historic role in the mass synchronization of mechanical time, considered pre-colonial understandings of time buried by industrialization, and proposed ways time might be measured in the future. Like Sandrine’s performance, P A C E unfolds in 4 parts. In this virtual sharing of the film, each part will be available from sunrise to sunset on the first day of its corresponding season.
Watch P A C E on September 22 through Vimeo
P A C E release schedule
September 22, 2022
4:57am ET - 8:15pm ET
December 21, 2021
5:28am ET - 5:56pm ETMarch 20, 2022
5:13am ET - 8:30pm ETJune 21, 2022
2:52am ET - 10:39pm ET"gaggle" solo exhibition
Sandrine Schaefer
gaggle
solo exhibition
May 28-July 17, 2022
Opening reception: Saturday May 28, 2:00-4:00pm ET
Yester House Galleries
Southern Vermont Art Center
Manchester, VT
www.SVAC.orgWork in this exhibition is available for sale.
Inventory with pricesgaggle explores everyday encounters between humans and geese in shared spaces. Through painting, interactive sculpture, and participatory walks, gaggle celebrates our interspecies entanglement.
photo by Dave BarnumResister, Disrupter, Visionary
Flow Symposium
Sandrine Schaefer (USA)
Pace Investigations No. 12
a performance lecture
Sunday June 12, 2022 - 5:00pm - 6:30pm ET
www.flowsymposium.orgRegister for tickets HERE
Pace Investigations is an ongoing series that asks how one copes with acceleration and deceleration while enduring mediated time, shared space, and other external forces. Each iteration of Pace Investigations is new. The actions and materials of the performance are site-specific and the duration of the performance is precisely staggered. The same performance repeats multiple times consecutively, daily, or seasonally. Each time the performance repeats, its duration either loses or gains time.
In Pace Investigations No. 12, the same performance consecutively repeats 11 times. What begins as a 14-minute performance incrementally loses time to become a 24-second performance, then gains time to become a 14-minute performance once again. As this constriction, then expansion of time occurs the performance must shift. Some actions that make up the performance speed up or slow down. Some actions become unrecognizable from previous cycles. Some are abandoned, while others gain significance. Some actions merge. Regardless of how the performance adapts to the temporal constraint, the tension between measured and affective time is palpable. Works in the Pace Investigations series have been sited in a range of art-designated, outdoor, and public shared spaces. Each place has offered insight into ways time is collectively marked and felt. In this new iteration, “real time” technologies are challenged and the screen is explored as a public site for meaningful exchange.
Coastal Now feature
Gestures of Greeting
Sandrine Schaefer
Gestures of Greeting
Feb 25th- Mar 25th
New Faculty Exhibition
CUBE Galleries
100 Chanticleer Dr E
Conway, SC
29528Gestures of Greeting is a series of place-based performance art actions sited near the Cube Gallery at Brittain Hall on the Coastal Carolina University campus. Material and sonic traces from these actions accumulate in the Cube over the month. The actions are site-sensitive, responding to features of the place such as pedestrian movement and everyday encounters between humans and nearby other-than-human life. Having recently relocated to South Carolina from Boston, Gestures of Greeting simultaneously explores Sandrine's experience finding a sense of home in a new place.
schedule (all times are in EST)Thursday 3/3 - 2:30pm-3:30pm
Thursday 3/17 - 2:30pm-3:30pm
Thursday 3/24 - 2:30pm-3:30pmUntitled Business
Feb 7th-18th, 2022
Gallery 244
715 Purchase St.
New Bedford, MA +
Instagram Live
Link to Live StreamUntitled Business is a new hybridizing installation + performance that facilitates experimental collaboration between Daniel S. Deluca and 11 other guest artists. Invited artists will collaborate through a mix of live and virtual encounters and pre-recorded videos. The material and experiential elements will accumulate and feedback throughout the two-week exhibition. Numerous conversations emerge through overlap and points of divergence in each artist’s research and practice. Topics of exploration include Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetics, and Systems; Embodiment, Nature, and Race; Archives, Memory, and Information; Art, Commerce, and Value. This project encourages the public to observe and interact with these playful experiments in person and via a live stream on the internet.
Untitled Business schedule (all times are in EST)
Feb 8, 2pm-5pm
Kevin Clancy
Feb 10, 3-6pm:
Clareese Hill
Feb 11, 10am-1pm
Sandrine SchaeferFeb 14: 12pm-3pm
Vlada Benedetti
Feb 15: 10am-1pm
Tai Jimenez
Feb 16: 2pm-5pm
Coorain Devin
Feb 17: 3pm-6pm
Dell Hamilton
Feb 18: 11am-4pm
Zayde Buti
Feb 7-11, 14-18: 9ish-5ish
Daniel S. DeLuca
Reoccurring videos and conversations
Allison Holt
Corinne Spencer
Sasha Stiles
review of essay in TDR
A review of Responding to Site: The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem has been published in Vol. 65 Issue 4 of TDR: The Drama Review.Raegan Truax writes the following about my essay "With the Others":
"Schaefer’s articulation of durational work as an engagement with the materiality of time, reliant on ‘moving through multiple temporalities’, stands out as the most nuanced analysis of the durational medium." - Raegan Truax
Access the review HERE
INVERSE 2021 at The Momentary
INVERSE 2021
a two day performance art symposium
December 11-12, 2021
at The Momentary
507 SE E St
Bentonville, Arkansas
Reserve Tickets HEREI am one of 8 artists involved in the 2021 INVERSE cohort. Over the past 6 months, we have met weekly in a virtual residency program. December 11-12, we gather in person to present live performance art works, make a group performance, share video works, and participate in a roundtable discussion about our varied practices. To learn more about participating artists visit the INVERSE website.
For INVERSE, I will present a new work titled, To Make Grievable. The building now known as the Momentary functioned as a cheese plant for Kraft Foods Company from 1947-2013. In To Make Grievable, I create a memorial to the bovine lives lost to sustain Kraft Foods Company during its history on this site. Bovine lives are often positioned as inherently more killable than humans’ just by virtue of their species membership. This positioning renders the grief felt for this other-than-human animal death socially unintelligible. To Make Grievable resists this erasure by acknowledging the everyday violence enacted by the US industrialized agricultural system, challenges the conceptualization of cows as commodities, and extends grievability across species lines.
Artists For Animals - Vlada Benedetti- "SAFARINON"
Vlada Benedetti, SAFARINON: a multi-species friend-group merger
June 13, 2021
3:00pm-4:15pm
Zoom LinkIn SAFARINON: a multi-species friend-group merger, Vlada Benedetti will talk about the journey that led to the creation and meaning of SAFARINON, and the continued exploration into forming "INterfaces" for and with other beings on the planet to cultivate a "multi-species friend-group" where personhood can be shared.
Born in Colorado, Vlada Benedetti received a BFA in film/animation/video from the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 2009 started SAFARINON, a "multi-species friend-group merger". Through SAFARINON's platform, each work is an exploration into the personhood of beings interfacing in both the wild and captivity.
Review of Review of Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless (eds.), "Responding to Site: The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem."
"Sandrine Schaefer explores divergences between the terms ‘durational’ and ‘endurance’ as regards performance art. Their analysis of With the Others (2013), as a durational rather than endurance work, is captivating and insightful, and their discussion of these terms provides a critical point for understanding this piece in which 'non-linear time is actively dismantled. Simultaneously unfolding multiplicities of past, present and speculative future are made explicit through Arsem’s choice to actively connect her body to a specified history preserved within the museum.' (Schaefer 2020, 69)" - Mareli StolpRead full review of Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless (eds.), Responding to Site: The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem HERE
Artists For Animals
Announcing, Artists For Animals, a new speaker series organized by Sandrine Schaefer for VINE Sanctuary! In this bi-monthly series, contemporary artists making work that expresses concern for animals share stories behind their varied practices and how art can be used as a tool for social change.
Sandrine Schaefer, gaggle: Interspecies Entanglements in the Everyday
April 18, 2021
3:00pm-4:15pm
Link to recording of this event:
HEREIn the first talk in the Artists For Animals series, Sandrine Schaefer shares their current work that explores everyday encounters between humans and resident communities of geese. These explorations are sited in urban wilds that hold queer histories. Sandrine juxtaposes goose-gathering behaviors and human strategies of assembly used in protest that occur in these spaces. Through site-specific performance art, interactive sculpture, and participatory walks Sandrine’s work proposes new possibilities for how humans and geese cohabitate in these shared spaces.
Artists Looking At Animals | Episode 8
I am excited to share my conversation with Andy Pepper about Canada Geese for episode 8 of ARTISTS LOOKING AT ANIMALS, an audio journal of creative people's thoughts on a changing natural world. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Canadian Theatre Review
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"In a contemporary art world attracted to the easily commodifiable flash and sex appeal of performance art’s quick sensationalism, Schaefer’s embodied refusal to entertain or cater to the expectations of liveness is transgressive."- Didier Morelli
I am thrilled to have a review of my work published in the Winter 2021 issue of Canadian Theatre Review Volume 185: Drag.
PDF copy available in Reviews tab
2020 Year in Review
Click HERE to read my reflection on 2020.
Podcast Guest: Art at The End of the World
I am excited to be the first guest on Art at the End of the World, a podcast produced by Eventworks through the Studio for Interrelated Media that features contemporary artists and creatives from Boston and beyond. In the episode, I speak with Julia and Luc about some of my past work, how I am adapting current work, and share how I am coping with the pandemic by walking with geese in graveyards. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more!
PUBLICATION: Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem
Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem is now available! I am honored to my words on Arsem's work included in this important and thoughtful book.
Order your copy through The University of Chicago Press.Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem
edited Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless
316 pages | 147 color plates | 6 3/4 x 9 1/2
This book focuses on the performance art of Marilyn Arsem, an internationally acclaimed performance artist known for her innovative and experimental work. Arsem’s work addresses women’s history and myth-making capacities, the potency of site and geography, the idea of the audience as witnesses, and the intimacy of one-to-one works. One of the most prolific performance artists working in the United States today, Arsem performs carefully choreographed durational actions that are developed site-responsively and range from deceptively simple interventions to elaborately orchestrated actions. This edited volume seeks to extend Arsem’s legacy beyond the audiences of her live performances and enter her work into the lexicon of the art world. Accompanied by two hundred images, Responding to Site will be of interest to scholars and students of performance studies, feminist performance, feminist art history, and performance history. It will also contribute to the history of alternative spaces and galleries that is only now being written.
Distributed for Intellect Ltd.Lend me your LAUGH
Link to Laughing Meditation:
soundcloud.com/abandonedtires/laughing-meditation
Please send sound files (.mp4, .m4a, .mp3, or .wav) to Sandrine@SandrineSchaefer.com and write LAUGHTER in the subject line of the email.
If you are sending files over 10 MB, Please send through WeTransfer or Google Drive. For Google Drive, send to SandrineSchaefer@gmail.com.Thank you!
HOUR (BIPF 2020)
Performance Art Bergen is proud to present
HOUR Bergen International Performance Festival 2020 (BIPF 2020)
Kunstgarasjen, Bergen.
28th of February - 1st of March 2020HOUR is a performance art, collective encounter curated by Pavana Reid into which 24 artists from Norway, Nordic and international countries migrate, interact within and share time, space and materials over a 24 hour period. With the framework of performance art encounter and the idea of time as an essential element of performance art, Reid has developed the concept of the performance project HOUR. The project is an experimental, live art event which aims to examine the way different artists use their artistic intuition in a controlled environment on subjects such as territory, ownership, belonging and geographical identity.
Friday 28th February at 18.00, the artists will enter the shared space, one by one, on the hour, every hour and remain in the space for the 24 hour period. The various points of entry will create different social situations, a before and an after, and will challenge how artists make connections, interact and share with others. The artists perform together and will end the performance collectively at 18.00 on Saturday 29th February.
Participating artists:
Alastair Maclennan UK
Ana Matey ES
Andriy Helytovych UA
Béatrice Didier BE
Chomphunut Phuttha TH
Gustaf Broms SE
Ingeborg Blom Andersskog NO/SE
Ivonne Navas Dominguez CO/MX
Jan-Egil Finne NO
John Court UK/FIN
Mads Floor Andersen DK
Manuel Lopez ES
Marilyn Arsem US
Marta Bosowska PL
Niamh Seana Meehan IE
Nieves Correa ES
Olga Prokhorova RU/FIN
Rita Marhaug NO
Sajan Mani IN/DE
Sandrine Schaefer US
Sinead O’Donnell IE
Tanya Mars CA
Thomas Reul DE
Thomas Wells UKThe collective, group performance is followed by a one-day seminar focusing on time. For more information visit www.performanceartbergen.no
Videos on Loop
still from Xiaoqing Zhu's 2.5D Space (2017)
Videos on Loop
curated by Sandrine Schaefer
February 22 - April 22, 2020
Gallery II, Wolf Kahn Studio Building
Vermont Studio Center
Opening reception + gallery talk: February 22, 2020 8pm
visit www.vermontstudiocenter.org for details.
gaggle walk No. 1
Sandrine is the current Fall 2019 Visual Art Resident at Boston Center for the Arts. From September through December, Sandrine will be developing a series of performance artworks to be sited in public parks throughout Greater Boston where large populations of geese and humans gather. Actions that make up these performance art pieces are sourced from goose gathering behaviors observed in these locations and human activist strategies of assembly.
Public programming throughout Sandrine's residency at the BCA includes two upcoming performative walks. During these walks, participants will both perform and witness site-specific experimental actions and gain insight into Sandrine's creative process and research.gaggle walk no. 1
Meet at Evans Way Park | 244 Fenway, Boston MA 02115
Friday, October 18 | 5–6:30 pm
Begin at Evans Way Park and continue through the Fens to encounter and engage the local residential and migratory populations of geese.
Space is limited. Please RSVP HERE.gaggle walk no. 2
Meet in front of BCA | 551 Tremont St. Boston, MA 02116
Saturday, November 9 | 1:30–3:30 pm
rain or shine
Begin at BCA and continue to the Boston Common, to encounter and engage the local residential and migratory populations of geese.
Space is limited. Please RSVP HERE.
In preparation for these walks, Sandrine is collecting responses to the following short survey to learn more about human/goose encounters. Please share a story if you have one and/or send along to anyone who you think might be interested.Ayatana Artist Research Program
This October, Sandrine is one of 7 artists who will participate in the Ayatana Artist Research Program, Mortem: Ritual. Mortem is a specialized residency for artists to pursue their curiosity of death. The immersive research retreat features 12 field trips/workshops to study notions of death in art, biology, philosophy, history, taxidermy and the death/funeral industry over a week in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.
Performance Is Alive
Image: Christopher Nunez at Performance is Alive | Satellite Art Show Miami (2018) photo by Wlodarczyk
Performance Is Alive at Satellite Art Show NYC
Curated by Quinn Dukes
October 3-6, 2019
Pfizer Building, 630 Flushing Avenue, 1st Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11206
www.performanceisalive.com
Performance Is Alive is thrilled to announce upcoming programming for Satellite Art Show NYC. Programming will feature several artists local to the fair's location while integrating programming from an international group of performance and video artists. Live performance programming will run throughout all 4 days of Satellite Art Show, featuring 17 live durational actions. A screening program features 23 dynamically diverse works exploring performance, ritual and body politics in addition to hosting a special screening featuring the work of seminal video artist, Barbara Rosenthal.FEATURING PERFORMANCE ART from
Thomas Albrecht (New York, NY)
Christie Blizard (San Antonio, TX)
Mairead Delaney (VT)
Vyczie Dorado (New York, NY)
Rebecca Fitton (NY/England)
Kathie Halfin (NY/Ukraine)
Markus Holtby (Larchmont, NY)
Amanda Hunt + IV Castellanos (Brooklyn, NY)
Amanda Kleinhans (Tallahassee, FL)
SUNGJAE LEE (Chicago/Korea)
Stephanie McGovern (Brooklyn, NY)
Butch Merigoni (Brooklyn, NY)
Matthias Neumann (NY/Germany)
Christopher Unpezverde Núñez (NY/Costa Rica)
Alison Pirie (Brooklyn, NY)
Sandrine Schaefer (Boston, MA)
Wild Actions - Patience, Carley McCready-Bingham, Ginger Wagg (Chapel Hill, NC)FEATURING VIDEOS from
Carolina Alamilla (Miami, FL)
Alex Apostolidis (Montreal)
Katina Bitsicas (Columbia, MO)
Jeffery Byrd (IO)
Victor de La Rocque (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Christina M Dietz (New York, NY)
Julha Franz (Porto Alegre, Brazil)
Tales Frey (Portugal/Brazil)
Edgar Fabián Frías (Tulsa, OK)
Igor Furtado (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Rodrigo Gomes (Lisbon, Portugal)
Jiang Feng (New York, NY)
Maria Del Pilar (PILI)
Lopez-Saavedra (New York, NY)
Tone Haldrup Lorenzen (Berlin)
Nadja Verena Marcin (New York, NY)
Rachel L Rampleman (New York, NY)
Barbara Rosenthal (New York, NY)
Monstera Deliciosa (NY/London)
Sylvain Souklaye (Copenhagen/France)
Alison Starr (Dallas, Texas)
Natacha Voliakovsky (Buenos Aires)
Christopher Willauer , Cherrie Yu (Chicago, IL)
PUBLIC FAIR HOURS
Thursday, October 3: 5pm – 12am (VIP/Press Preview)
Friday, October 4: 5pm – 12am
Saturday, October 5: 12pm – 12am
Sunday, October 6: 12pm – 6pmExhibition: Contours of Meaning
image: Lillian P.H. Kology, I Fall To Pieces, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, 2019 (installation view). Courtesy of the artist.
Contours of Meaning
Curated by Jameson Johnson
Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts
August 8–October 6, 2019
Opening Reception | Friday, August 8, 6–9 pm
Last Look Event Panel Discussion | Tuesday, October 1, 6:30-8:00 pm
www.BCAonline.orgFeaturing: Leika Akiyama, Lillian P.H. Kology, Georgina Lewis, Allison Maria Rodriguez, Sandrine Schaefer, Miriam Shenitzer, Nate Tucker
Bringing together a group of seven interdisciplinary artists, this exhibition is comprised entirely of site-specific installations that utilize the gallery space to revisit and recontextualize objects that reflect personal practices, narratives and histories. The works presented in this show consider the deeply embedded symbols, images and traces we rely upon to comprehend and navigate the rapidly changing world around us.
Ranging in mediums from sculpture and drawing to video and performance, the installations are not isolated, but rather elicit an interdisciplinary examination of how humans create meaning. A clock transformed into a musical instrument; a toy bathtub cast in resin; the construction of a sacred site; a display of relics. Together, these works invoke a broader examination of accumulation, ancestry, nostalgia and performativity. There is inherent playfulness in situating this work within the context of the gallery walls. Here, the viewer becomes a spectator to memories, experiences or happenings that are not their own, creating a sense of distance while simultaneously inviting interpretation.
Each of the seven artists work within Boston Center for the Arts’ Artist Studio Building. The works in this show were selected and presented collaboratively between curator, Jameson Johnson, and the artists—allowing space for the work to develop upon leaving the studio and entering the gallery. While some bodies of work present fantastical, parafictional or exaggerated narratives, others reveal historical, sacred and personal accounts. To this end, viewers are asked to consider duality and contradictions between the installations in order to understand the complex nature through which we ascribe meaning to objects, spaces and happenings. Considered together, the exhibition posits that meaning might just be situated in the contours of nuance.
Entry to the gallery is free and open to the public.
Contours of Meaning in the Boston Globe
Cate McQuaid reviews Contours of Meaning at the Mills Gallery inExhibition: Ruffles, Repair & Ritual: the Fine Art of Fixing
Ruffles, Repair & Ritual: the Fine Art of Fixing
Dirt Palace-Wedding Cake House
514 Broadway
Providence, RI
dirtpalace.orgMay 2019-May 2020
Ruffles, Repair & Ritual: the Fine Art of Fixing celebrates the extensive renovation of the Wedding Cake House into a cultural facility that will support an Artist in Residence program and expansion of the Dirt Palace, a feminist art space going strong in Providence since 2000. This inaugural exhibition, opening on May 18th 2019, mounts 150 artist works to honor the 150th anniversary of the house being built. The exhibition is comprised of four components : Long term installations composed of commissions built into the space, flat works for viewing on the walls, literary and research projects that will be presented on web and in print formats, and time-based pieces that will be part of a series of events programed. Conceptually artists have been asked to consider the following; pattern and the textile materials acquisitioned from the house in the collections of the RISD Museum and URI, decoration and the ornate architecture of the house, the history of the neighborhood and city over the last 150 years, immigrant experiences, changing ideas within feminism and concepts of sisterhood, as well as big picture ideas about what it means to repair both material things and relationships, cultures and histories. This scale of exhibition foregrounds the breadth and depth of extraordinary artists in Providence, in our extended community of artist run spaces, as well as artists who have built relationships with us from afar - seeking out models of alternative spaces that integrate feminism and identity in cooperative, accountable, and visionary ways.
Sandrine's work featured in PUBLIC 58: SMOKE: FIGURES, GENRES, FORMS
PUBLIC 58: SMOKE: FIGURES, GENRES, FORMS proposes smoke as a pressing figure of our global present that calls forth a capacious counter-archive of knowledge and sociality.
EDITORS: Rosa Aiello, Nataleah Hunter-Young, Michael Litwack
Sandrine Schaefer's contribution, Reflecting Torpor documents methods, research, and reflections on a performance artwork titled, Torpor (Pace Investigations No.5) developed on site at Banff Centre for Art and Creativity. The text engages ideas and strategies around how the acceleration and deceleration of actions can make mechanical, geological, and felt time palpable. Other themes explored in this reflective text include, surveillance, site-sensitivity, the body as material, anthropocentrism, witness participation, visibility, and TRAnsferenCE.
PUBLIC 58 can be purchased from publicjournal.ca
Sandrine receives a residency award from Vermont Studio Center
This summer, Sandrine will participate in an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Sandrine will use this time to work on finding new ways to document and share their ephemeral works.
Sandrine awarded 2018 Live Arts Boston Grant
The Boston Foundation recently awarded Sandrine a 2018 Live Arts Boston grant in support of continued work on Pace Investigations No. 6!
Live Arts Boston (LAB) is designed to respond directly to the needs articulated by Boston's arts community through Boston Creates. LAB provides critically needed, flexible, project-specific grants to Greater Boston’s performing artists and small nonprofit performing arts organizations to create, produce or present artistic work for Greater Boston audiences. To learn more about this grant program, go to http://www.tbf.org/lab.
The Boston Foundation, Greater Boston’s community foundation, is one of the largest community foundations in the nation. In 2017, the Foundation and its donors paid $130 million in grants to nonprofit organizations. The Foundation is a close partner in philanthropy with its donors, with more than 1,000 separate charitable funds established either for the general benefit of the community or for special purposes. It also serves as a major civic leader, think tank and advocacy organization, commissioning research into the most critical issues of our time and helping to shape public policy designed to advance opportunity for everyone in Greater Boston. The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), a distinct operating unit of the Foundation, designs and implements customized philanthropic strategies for families, foundations and corporations around the globe. For more information about the Boston Foundation and TPI, visit tbf.org.
image: Sandrine Schaefer | Pace Investigations No. 6.3 (spring) | photo by Daniel DeLuca (2018)Review in Delicious Line
Heather Kapplow's review of Pace Investigations No. 6.2 in Delicious Line.
WCC 2018 Project Grant Recipient
Sandrine was awarded a 2018 Project Grant from the Waltham Cultural Council in support of Pace Investigations No. 6, a yearlong performance artwork that investigates Waltham's historic role in the mass synchronization of mechanical time, considers pre-colonial understandings of time buried by Industrialization, and proposes ways time might be felt and measured in the future.
The Waltham Cultural Council is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Pace Investigations No. 6 in The Boston Hassle
Write up on Pace Investigations No. 6 by Emily Cobb in the Boston Hassle
ART TAKES OVER CITY HALL - CONCRETE ACTIONS: INTERDICIPLINARY ART AT CITY HALL
Preview of ESCALATE/DE-ESCALATE by Emily Cobb published in The Boston Hassle. Cobb writes:
"Sandrine Schaefer expressed some glee when she told me that she would be changing the speed of the escalators for her piece. Look for her there, possibly in camouflage.This performance builds upon an earlier piece where she stood in a revolving door to the Salt Lake City Library, situating her body to reveal the tacit social agreements that happen every day without us even noticing. Exposing this evidence of cooperation opens a strange well of intimacy and optimism. What can happen in these between-places where we all behave without even realizing it?"To Some, Boston City Hall Is An Eyesore. To These Artists, It's Inspiration
Preview of CONCRETE ACTIONS by Amelia Mason on WBUR.Art and Surveillance: Watching and Being Watched
This Fall, Sandrine will be teaching a new course through the Experimental College at Tufts University. Registration is currently open for Tufts students.
If you are unable to register but interested in auditing the class, please email Sandrine@SandrineSchaefer.comhttp://excollege.tufts.edu/courses
EXP-0016-F Art and Surveillance: Watching and Being Watched
1.0 credit, Letter-graded
Thursdays, 6:00-8:30pm
%How is art changing in a climate where many in the Western world have access to technology and social platforms to surveil one another? How does the ubiquity of media surveillance influence artists practicing today? How is the spectatorship of art changing in a society under constant surveillance?
This course will investigate the impact of surveillance on art history, current art discourse, and current socio-political issues. Through class exercises, readings, assignments, and field trips, students will consider strategies for witnessing, observing, and contending with being on display. Students will journal/sketch ideas, and create art projects generated from course content. Although art is the primary lens that we use to engage the theme, no art practice experience is required.%% image: Sandrine Schaefer, For You....and anyone else who might be watching (2014) screen shot from surveillance footage%
Sandrine goes to Banff!
This summer, Sandrine will be participating in the Banff Research in Culture program - The Year 2067!
During this 5 week program, creative thinkers gather to ask what the world might look like in fifty years and how we might shape it. Moving beyond apocalyptic predictions, post-apocalyptic theories, and techno-utopianism, this program aims to shake up our sense of the political, social, and environmental. 2067 asks us to prod and plot the pathway from a present that needs work, to a future that works better.
During this residency, Sandrine will be developing a new iteration of her ongoing project, Pace Investigations that utilizes time structures inspired by premonitions of how time might be understood and measured in the year 2067.Sandrine awarded a Live Arts Boston Grant
The Boston Foundation recently awarded Sandrine Schaefer a Live Arts Boston grant in support of a new iteration of Pace Investigations sited in Waltham, MA, also known as "Watch City". In the 1850’s, The Waltham Watch Company developed machinery that could produce interchangeable watch parts. This revolutionized the mass production of timepieces on an international scale, making watches more affordable and accessible than ever before. Waltham has been praised as a site that changed the “world’s time consciousness." Pace Investigations explores Waltham's historic role in the mass synchronization of mechanical time, while also resurrecting buried time structures. How was time measured in pre-colonial Waltham? Waltham is currently enduring rapid gentrification. How is time consciousness in this location changing during this transition into its future?
For updates on this project, please sign up for Sandrine's seasonal newsletter.Live Arts Boston (LAB) is designed to respond directly to the needs articulated by Boston's arts community through Boston Creates. LAB provides critically needed, flexible, project-specific grants to Greater Boston’s performing artists and small nonprofit performing arts organizations to create, produce or present artistic work for Greater Boston audiences. To learn more about this grant program, go to www.tbf.org/lab.
Sandrine awarded Assets for Artists Matched Savings Grant
Sandrine was recently awarded an Assets for Artists 2017 Matched Savings Grant. Sandrine is 1 of 12 Massachusetts-based artists enrolled in this program that supports artists working across artistic disciplines by providing funding and professional development services.
Sandrine awarded 2015 Brother Thomas Fellowship
Sandrine was named 1 of 10 local artists as a 2015 Brother Thomas Fellow through The Boston Foundation. The Brother Thomas Fund honors the life of Brother Thomas Bezanson, a Benedictine monk and ceramist whose work can be found in museums nationwide.
The award is not tied to any particular project and designed to assist mid-career artists to evolve their practices. Working with a site-sensitive approach, Sandrine plans to use the funds for travel opportunities to make new work."
Read more about this year's award in The Boston Globe
ICA Foster Prize show emphasizes action and flux
Cate McQuaid's review of Sandrine's work published in The Boston Globe."What I saw of it was lucid, lyrical, and affecting. Schaefer’s naked legs protruded from one end of the carpet; her hair spilled out the other end. It was a comical scene, and it captured the incremental back-and-forth of existence. Playing out against the backdrop of the harbor, her motion echoed the water’s, and the long horizontal thrust of her performance traced the horizon line." - Cate McQuaid
Read full review HERE
Improper Bostonian
Pick up a copy of the Improper Bostonian to read Scott Kearnan's feature, Off the Wall: With new Institutional Support, Performance Art is Moving from the Margins to the Museum Floor.Sandrine is quoted throughout.
Interview with BR&S
Sandrine's interview with Big Red & Shiny about The Foster Prize Exhibition!
ICA Foster Prize announcement in Art Forum
The four, 2015 ICA Foster Prize recipients announced in Art Forum. Image from Sandrine's This is an Archive of... is used as the announcement image.
Sandrine Schaefer awarded the 2015 ICA Foster Prize
Sandrine Schaefer has been named one of The Institute of Contemporary Art's James and Audrey Foster Prize recipients. Beginning in April, Schaefer will create a piece comprised of 5 performance art works that site the spaces in and around the ICA Boston's waterfront, Founders Gallery. Each live performance art piece will leave traces that accumulate in the space, shifting the audience's sensorial encounter with the site. Congratulations to her fellow winners: Vela Phelan, Ricardo DeLima, and kijidome.
Read the full announcement in the Boston Globe and the ICA's press release on icaboston.org
Textual Archiving for Venice International Performance Art Week
Sandrine was recently invited to participate in the Discourse program at the 2014 Venice International Performance Art Week: Ritual Body-Political Body. Sandrine wrote about the long-durational program for the Art Week's blog and is working on a text for a forthcoming print publication. Her writing can be viewed here by following the links below:
The Liminal Body-Vela Phelan and Alastair MacLennan & Sandra Johnston
The Blindfolded Body-WenYau, Alice Vogler, and Marilyn Arsem
The Fragmented Body-Benjamin Sebastion, Bean, and Sarah Jane Norman
An interview with Sandrine
Check out Sandrine's recent interview on the Other People's Pixel's blog.
Review of "Untitled View"
Allison Vanouse's review of Sandrine Schaefer and Philip Fryer's piece "Untitled View" created for Odd Spaces at The MFA. For her full review visit www.howlround.com
"A piece by Sandrine Schaefer and Phil Fryer, titled Untitled View participated in this realm of activity in a performance about (as much as aboutness is an available quality for work of such simplicity) the action of looking. From the afternoon until the evening, over hours rather than minutes, Schaefer and Fryer stood variously distant from each other, and looked at art. The piece created no feeling in the pit of the stomach in the way Arsem's did, no frissons: but then we weren't directed here to an elemental human experience, but to a politics of viewing and social space. "People would move around my gaze," Schaefer related at the evening's panel, "sometimes people would come and look with me, which was nice". But this piece, for me, was ultimately not about activating the objects viewed. Watching the pair looking, I was struck by the way prolonged, premeditated activity contrasts and heightens the frenetic spectacle of "ordinary" human behavior, even when the action is ostensibly congruent with the objective of the crowd: the patrons, too, were probably there to look at art, but much is changed by a tempo and quality of attention less deliberate and less vast. In Untitled View this textural difference rose to the surface."
Rapid Pulse Discourse
Visit the 2013 Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival's blog to read Sandrine's writing about select performances.
Performance Art is Thriving in Boston by Cate McQuaid
Sandrine is quoted in this Boston Globe article written by Cate McQuaid on the current climate in Boston for Performance Art.
www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/20…
The Interface as Place
Sandrine Schaefer and Bradley Benedetti in Conversation on Big Red & Shiny
Interview with Robert Moeller in Art New England Online
Review of Sandrine's piece "Thinking Of A Goldfish" in Big Red & Shiny
"Next into the room was Sandrine Schaefer. Sandrine began her piece with a large glass vase full of water sitting in the middle of the room as she walked along the wall eating a banana. Stopping in the corner, she finished the banana and dropped the peel on the ground, then stood staring at the vase for a moment. Eventually she walked over and picked up the vase, which turned out to have a hole in the bottom. She plugged the hole with her finger and walked back over to the corner. She did her best to contain the water but a steady trickle ran down her knuckles to the floor. The vase was tall enough that with the base of it held down by her waist, the top came up to her chin, and at an angle where she slightly rested her face in the opening while standing there.
After about fifteen minutes, showing fatigue from holding the weight of the vase, Sandrine carried the vase outside and allowed the contents to drain out onto the grass as she walked the length of a ledge outside the gallery. Once it was empty, she re-entered the gallery and placed the vase where she had been standing, then sat in the middle of the floor and ran out the remainder of her hour watching the condensation from her breath slowly evaporate from the surface of the glass.For the audience it was a combined experience of watching the vase, watching Sandrine as she sat as still as possible, and fitting the pieces together. The piece could be viewed as a durational exhibition, or you could look further into the space that was occupied by Sandrine and these objects. The relations between these spaces and the transitory states of being that they went through are things that happen all around us every day, and Sandrine’s piece turns the viewer’s focus toward contemplating these ubiquitous principles of existence.
If she had stood there long enough, all the water in the vase would have eventually drained out and we would have seen the vase go through a full change in its state of being from full to empty. The corner she stood in was occupied, then empty save for the remnants of her being there: the vase and the banana peel. Then there was an immediate remnant of Sandrine in the vase while the condensation was there, but once it disappeared all immediate traces of her body ever being there were, too.
There were also several stratifications of states of permanence displayed within the piece, albeit abstractly. The least permanent object in the performance was the water. If all the water drained onto the floor it would have completely evaporated within a couple of hours. As an object, water holds a very short presence. After that is the banana peel. Given enough time, it would biodegrade and also disappear. Next is Sandrine herself. If enough time passed, Sandrine would also biodegrade and disappear, leaving only the vase. Then after hundreds of years the vase, and also building, would eventually disappear, leaving only the space itself as the one true permanent presence we can count on, at least as far as we’re aware. "
- Matt KuhlmanRead full review of Time Body Space Objects 2 by Matt Kuhlman on Big Red & Shiny