August 29, 2015

butohPhoto performance on Vimeo

This is the edited video of the August 14, 2015, performance which was the finale of the butohPhoto workshop (link below) held at the Gray Loft Gallery, San Francisco, California.

butohPhoto is one of a string of ButohDrawing projects that have been held since the first one, Action/Reaction, in 1997.  Below the video is how the Ice House Press saw it.


butohPhoto video edit


A better & larger picture of the video can be seen on Vimeo

  We are drinking wine in the Grey Loft Gallery, hosted by Gallerist Jan Watten, and waiting. Some of us have seen buTom and his artist collaborators perform before - ghostly white, loosely flowing costumes and white make-up as the dancers slowly move in mindful harmony, almost trance-like, to fulfill and leave behind some improvised drawing artifact. Chalk or charcoal drawn on paper or direct on floors and walls or taut ropes pulled and strung hundreds of feet in numinous patterns. Some of us. Others are just waiting.
  For this piece there are no papers, no coiled ropes. No curtain. No performers. At least, none present in the Gallery. There are a couple of projectors, screening test patterns on the nearly bare gallery walls. We wait some more, conversations flagging.
  From the outside door, the back door to the gallery, two or three performers, and then several more, enter in street clothes with no make-up at all.

  Cellphones enter the gallery, towing behind them their entranced
performer auxiliaries. The phones lead the way, riding high or low, willing fingers cradling their advance. The phones show selfies or, more conventionally, the rest of us. Sometimes they show nothing but a manufacturers logo. The phones pull the performers for awhile, rise from low to high, fall from high to mid chest. They turn or dart sideways of their own, while performers stare ahead, unseeing. It’s the phones. Looking. Seeking. They exchange one performer carrier for another. Always On. Leading, leading.
  Recorded music accompanies their progress throughout the galleries several rooms. It is idiosyncratic, amelodic and compelling, terse. Like the phones, it too appears to be searching, intently, restlessly.
  The
performers’ faces are blank. But not the white blankness of the stylized performer. These faces have no purpose but to serve their phones. They are the faces of mindless slaves. Style does not lead here. The phones hunt without style or apparent aim. The slaves follow, compelled to move to the requirements of the hunt. Though the phones move almost at random in restless search, for what we do not know, the slaves all have a curious unity, like a school of fish, or a flock of wheeling birds.
  We notice now that there is something being projected on the wall, as the phones and
performers move, sometimes becoming a surface of moving light images themselves as they pass across the beam. At intervals, we can see that the projection is a video of these same phones and dancers, but from what vantage? From somewhere in the gallery? And as the images change, we can see the vantage change. One or more of the phones is sending it’s video images streaming live to the projector, and those images are being drawn on the walls, on the performers and on us! (It turns out these images are going out live all over the world.)
  As we move about in the gallery, our own phones out, capturing images of images, of each other with phones and
performers looming just behind, or in front of us, shifting, changing. We all leave behind drawing artifacts. We all serve our phones.


Video credits:

Tom White - Director
Betty Jo Costanzo - Assistant Director
Styrous® - Sound design
Kyung Lee - Video

Performers:
Isaac Amala   
Minoo Hamzavi   
Larissa   
Kaia Self   

Moses Correntte - Lead cam

Jan Watten - Gray Loft Gallery Director



GRAY LOFT GALLERY
2889 Ford Street, third floor
Oakland, California 94601
510.499.3445




butohPhoto Workshop @ the Gray Loft Gallery   
           
butohPhoto on Vimeo        





Styrous® ~ Saturday, August 29, 2015

~


~









ButohDrawing projects

2015 
BUTOHPHOTO, workshop
Gray Loft Gallery, Oakland, California.

2006
BUTOHDRAWING, workshops
California College of the Arts, Oakland, California

2005
BUTOHDRAWING, performances
California College of the Arts, Oakland, California

BUTOHDRAWING, workshops 
California College of the Arts, Oakland, California

Butoh & WINE, performance  
C. G. Di Arie Vinyard & Winery, Mt. Aukum, California
  
Butoh OVAL, performance 
California State University, Hayward, California   
 
2004
BUTOHDRAWING, workshops  
California College of the Arts, Oakland, California 
  
2003  
SAMSARA, performance   
Sculpture Grove, Paradise Wood, California   

ButoHDRAWING, performance   
Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California       

steps, performance  
Marin Horzon School, Fairfax, California  

SHADOW DRAW, workshops   
California College of Arts & Crafts, San Francisco, California  
         
2000
BUTOH SKIRT, workshop   California 
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA     

ButoHDRAWING, workshops    
The Monagri Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art,   
Archangelos Monastery, Monagri, Cyprus     

ButoHDRAWING, performance     
Lithica, Citadella, Menorca, Spain     

ButoHDRAWING, performance     
Fulbright Center, Buffer Zone, Nicosia, Cyprus    

ButoHDRAWING, performance  
HP Gallery, Northern Nicosia, Cyprus     

1999
ButoHDRAWING, performance   
Timken Lecture Hall Foyer     
California College of Arts & Crafts, San Francisco, CA   

ACTION/REACTION: IMPETUS & RESIDUE, performance 
Nahl Hall, California College of Arts & Crafts, Oakland, California    

BUTOHDRAWING, performance    

Oliver Art Center, California College of Arts & Crafts, Oakland, California  

1997 
ACTION/REACTION: IMPETUS & RESIDUE, performance    
Dance Ground, San Francisco, California      



August 28, 2015

Betty Sheehan White ~ 12 days of a lifetime










August 28, 1913
 -
April 20, 2006






photographer unknown




photos by Styrous® unless otherwise noted







2005

Betty & Tom White
January 4, 2005










January 3

Tom, John, Betty, Ray Kay, Max & John
photographer unknown

Betty, Tom & John

Tom, Betty & Max

Tom, Betty, John, Max
& Abby










January 2

Betty with Trace Stahmann




putting away the ornaments












January 1

Betty & Tom White, Abby & friend


 John & Betty White

John, Betty & Tom White








Betty White










2004


Tom, Betty & Abby
December 31, 2004










December 30




 Tom, Betty & John White

 Tom, Betty & Max
photo by John White











Francesca Gonzalez with Betty
December 28, 2004










Chrismas Day
 












December 24

Betty White w/Abby
photo by Styrous®












~ ~ ~






The lifetime




Betty White
Ruidoso, New Mexico
date unknown
photographer unknown










1990's


Ray Kay & Betty White
grandchildren
date unknown
photographer unknown










1950's

White Family
front row: John & Betty
middle row: Tom Bruce White, Jr. & 
Tom Bruce White III
top row: Ray Kay
photographer unknown










1940's

 Betty & Tom White
photographer unknown





front: Tom White, Lou Ward & Ray Kelly Sheehan
back: Betty White
circa; 1943
photographer unknown










1930's


 Betty Sheehan White
photographer unknown










Early 1910's

Betty with her mother, Ray Kelly Sheehan
photographer unknown















Styrous, "I would like to photograph you."
Betty, "With my clothes on or off?"
                                 -  December 24th, 2004




wedding wine glass ~ 2008





Styrous® ~ August 28, 2015

August 18, 2015

butohPhoto all over the world








workshop
photos by  
Styrous®

It is with pleasure I can report the performance of butohPhoto was seen in Spain and Germany, as well as in the United States: New York, New Mexico, Texas, Los Angeles and, of course, the San Francisco Bay Area.

“ButohDrawing is a recombinant culture, a nomadic umbrella whose spokes point to many disciplines: art, architecture, design, movement, performance, philosophy, psychology, and historicism.  It interfaces the Japanese discipline of Butoh* movement with investigations of contemporary drawing, writing and postmodern thought."   

Tom White © 2003  

* Butoh is a Japanese dance form, circa 1959.  













































projection by Betty Jo Costanzo




Tom White 
Betty Jo Costanzo
Styrous®
Kyung Lee

with participation of:
Larissa
Minoo Hamzavi
Isaac Amala  
Kaia Self        




Styrous® ~ Tuesday, August 18, 2015    

August 17, 2015

John Gilbert Simonson









August 17, 1951
~
May 1, 1987







photographer unknown









1980's
 
John Simonson
photographer unknown


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvH4SwhtE9zRbubDeChsZATWSA_tptewoI52zs7druiY2RzFMRzrvMdTqDqyo9l245Jjbhr-kF_QzK8asE5SA2SQFiqhhFqB1iopAqrcGOA29ZJ7g8dj_lCtJVAYcMksRW921SCoNfYtQ/s1600/Conan_Anita_243.jpg
John Fisher, Conan, Fritze Telle & John Simonson
album photo by Neal Johnson
detail photo of album back by Styrous®










1970's


John Simonson
photographer unknown



John Simonson & Pat Polries
 photo by Conan Dunham










1960's


John, Steve & Kenneth Simonson
photo by Bernard E. Simonson



Steve, Kenneth & John Simonson
photo by Bernard E. Simonson










Steve & John Simonson
1961
photos by Styrous®


 
   










                    John, Vern McDonald, Steve & Maggie 
                                     photo by Styrous®



 
John Simonson
photo by Styrous®



John & Steve Simonson, Max               











Steve & John Simonson
photo by Bernard E. Simonson










1950's


John & Kenneth Simonson
November, 1959
Potrero Avenue, San Francisco, CA
photo by Styrous®










John Simonson
August 17, 1957










November 1956













 John Simonson
August 17, 1956
photo by Styrous®




John Simonson
February 11, 1956
photo by Styrous®



   



 


John Simonson
August, 1951
photo by Bernard E. Simonson, Jr.




bo bom


  Styrous® ~ Monday, August 17, 2015