Generator (Pestilence Part 1)
Conceived, Written & Directed by Jack Waters
Production Design by Peter Cramer
GENERATOR: Pestilence Part 1 is an experimental multimedia look at the AIDS epidemic. This installment, which offers an original story rooted in both biology and mythology, is performed immersively by a cast that includes members of the queer punk "kitchen bank" NYOBS.
Expressionistic and experimental, the narrative begins with a spark of energy triggering life on the planet. A cluster of single celled organisms develop and evolve into clusters of pre-humans. Science and mythology merge to create an origin narrative. GENERATOR climaxes in a lyrical expression of language sung by the African spider god of stories, Anansi.
A meditation on the AIDS epidemic as cultural phenomenon, “The Pestilence Trilogy” is about how a virus can infect and affect an entire society. It merges art, social practice, and technology by combining theater, moving image, light, sound, music, choreography, drama, immersive interactive media and even fragrance.
GENERATOR operates as an order-three Venn diagram. The center of the Reuleaux triangle is the collaboration between Jack Waters and John Michael Swartz, followed by intersections created by the Queer Skinned Kitchen band NYOBS. The ring of greatest intersections represents the 35 year partnership of Jack Waters and Peter Cramer, former co-directors of ABC No Rio. The cast includes Davi Cohen, Bryce Payne, Maddie Schimmel, and JC Augustin.
More information at https://pestilenza.com/
PRESS FOR GENERATOR (PESTILENCE PART 1)
Generator: Pestilence Part 1 Comes to NYC’s LaMaMa
_________
“…in response to the realities of their time…art continues to be made…by Jack Waters and Peter Cramer.
-Holland Cotter ‘Not Over’: ‘25 Years of Visual AIDS’
The New York Times, June 20, 2013
“…The result is a meticulous imagining of the shoot, especially in Waters’s electrifying impersonation of Holliday….”
-Richard Brody, review of ‘Jason And Shirley’
The New Yorker, June 22, 2015
CREATIVE TEAM
Jack Waters – Concept originator/Writer/Producer/Director
Peter Cramer – Concept direction, visual design, installations, lighting, and stagecraft
John Michael Swartz – Music/Sound composition, installations, interactive media
Mike Cacciatore – Music, sets, props, and moving image design and facilitation
Christopher Roberts – Co-design, fabrication, and coordination of sets and props
Rodrigo Chazaro – Co-design and fabrication of sets and props
Austin Windels – Co-design and fabrication of sets and props
Susan Salinger – Production resource development
Barbara Hoon – Production resource development/pilates trainer
Stefani Mar – Costume/set consultant
Ethan Shoshan – Olfactory Score
Tim Cusack – Consultant on dramaturgy and production
Sylvie Degiez – Consultant on tone, frequency, cultural anthropology, philosophy, magic
Peter Cramer and Jack Waters are performers, multi-media artists, co-founders of the art garden Le Petit Versailles and non profit arts umbrella organization Allied Productions, Inc. Members of the band NYOBS, their films, performances and installations have been presented by Anthology Film Archives, Danspace Project, ABC No Rio, MIX NYC, Hermann Nitsch Museum, Microscope Gallery, FRISE/ Künstlerhaus Hamburg, Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Deitch Projects, Visual AIDS and Venice Biennale. Collaborations with artists include Barbara Hammer, Geoff Hendricks, Lorraine O’Grady, Kembra Pfahler and Carl George. Further histories are included in Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Generation by Sarah Schulman. Peter is an interview subject conducted by ACT UP Oral History Project (#50) and Art Spaces Archives Project of the Smithsonian Institution/Archives of American Art. Film/performance/visual works are viewable at the FilmMakers’ Cooperative, Visual AIDS, NY Public Library of Performing Arts, Fales Downtown Collection, Museum of Modern Art, and Allied Productions’ archives.
The Pestilence Team consists of multiply trained intergenerational, integrative artists decentralized in a collaboration where form itself is a plastic, malleable element of production. They roll as the non-profit artist collective Allied Productions, Inc, whose primary venue is Le Petit Versailles, the world renowned community arts garden at NYC’s historically cutting edge of the Lower East Side.