Primetime Wisconsin; 423

[test tone] Presentation of prime time Wisconsin is made possible in part by the Secura insurance companies Appleton providing a broad range of services property casualty and life insurance products mutual funds and other related financial services. Welcome to prime time Wisconsin the Arts and Entertainment Magazine presented by public television stations of Wisconsin. [music] On tonight's program we visit an exhibit in Madison where art is used in a surprising way to examine the forces threatening our planet. Then it's up to the Fox River Valley for the paper Valley Arts Festival. Those stories and

more on tonight's program. And now here's your host Debra Mims Welcome. It's good to have you with us this evening for our weekly review of the arts. The elements of nature are the focus of our stories tonight. We begin our first story in Madison performance art is a new trend that combines many artistic forms like painting theater and music with the commemoration of Earth Day this week performance art is the method one artist used to communicate her concern about the dangers threatening our planet. Lori Beth Clark is a UW Madison art professor who specializes in performance art. She's won a number of awards and grants and was recently awarded a $5000 fellowship from the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission to stage her latest work at the Madison Art Center. This exhibit approach avoidance is one the audience is invited to walk right into and confront not just observe from a safe distance.I realized then that something was Seriously wrong The judgment. Deliver.

[sounds] I think in the end all art is socially involved all art makes political statements regardless of whether it intends to or not. Lori Beth Clark definitely intends to make a political statement with this art exhibit It's called approach avoidance and was created at the Madison Art Center beginning with the bare walls. There are 2000 newspaper clippings on the walls that don't go back much more than a year in terms of the reporting of these issues. they are Articles about internet nuclear war and about environmental issues. Each clipping is an ingredient a slice and Clark's examination of denial as a social force society's denial of AIDS pollution and nuclear armament as deadly threats that put all life at risk. Because we can't think about those things we can't believe in the possibility of them it's something about surviving

as human beings about going on a day to day basis in order to get up this morning and go through my day I need to not think that I'm going to die today just to go Has everybody got splitters Yep. We're kind wanted the splitters. insert into that The TV clips will be very. Abrupt and will be uninformative so there's a sense of kind of failed communication systems. but instead of talking about resurge in disarmament we're talking about isolation wars and fallout shelters. it's a vocabulary of closing in rather than a building community. Throughout the building of the exhibit. Actors are practicing their roles for deciding what is wrong and what is right. First we must find out what we are like how long you want to work before you want to get some feedback from outside. Wires wires everywhere. Tomorrow there's going to be 40 sets of action here and I know that you'll want to have to climb up here if you can help it.

You're right here Broken glass ash kind of caked earth a sense of. The environment that looks quite apocalyptic and sort of the end of the world so I guess in some ways we're walking on top of the ruins of the culture that is now. We want them to start to end up at odd angles and that you know they can be face up in the ground. Some letters have gone out asking people to send in one object that represents kind of ordinariness of their life. And my idea in this is thinking about that it is in fact the

ordinariness of our life just the day to day that is what is at risk. The survival aspect. So. Literally. I want to understand why the world that I live in is the way it is and so I set up these circumstances where I can take on questions that I don't fully understand the answers to things that concern me and I hope that through the artwork itself I can move further along. In my understanding of those things. And at the same time people who are audience members can also participate in the process of moving with a political or social question. the introduction of real life objects into the work has a primary function of making people understand the connectedness of the work to their lives in almost a physical way. To take something as ordinary as somebody's baseball mitt and set it into a post-apocalyptic environment is much more of a troubling idea. On the walls people will be bringing things like you might bring to a shrine specific

mementos of themselves or of friends or loved ones people they're concerned about photographs or the notes. Experience or physical experience of a work is very different. If you're standing in the midst of it. And you are a participant you can't really say OK that's this other thing to say I'm in the middle of this. Also in the middle of this are the performers. Sexuality is tied to recent devices of power. There is no beginning it will be different depending on any minute that you come during the day because the way the performers operate in the gallery is that they come in on their own schedule and perform the material once a day so that you would be standing in a gallery you may or may not know whether in fact what you've witnessed is a performance according to

Dr. Diseases and I think that the piece should be a motivation an activation an incentive there's a way in which this piece is like a an alarm and it's like saying alert alert pay attention. If somebody walks goes home from here and sits down with their family and has a discussion about something they would not have talked about that evening otherwise. That's the scale of social action I'm interested in. Now that's different. Clarke's work approach avoidance will be at the Madison Art Center through May 6th.

This next story takes us to the Fox River Valley. The paper arts festival began earlier this month as a salute to paper is the industrial heart of the Fox River Valley and a creative medium for visual and performing artists. This festival begins brings the Fox Cities together in a month long celebration of community and corporate friendship [music] Their arts festival began as the brainchild of artist Mary Gaber. And when she enlisted the help of John Rand and they both began a momentous undertaking that created ninety art and nonart Activities dedicated to paper during the month of April. It's only natural since Wisconsin is the leading paper making state.

I was asked if I had any ideas for a festival that could. Include encompass all of the arts. And well once you get your creative juices flowing it just seemed a natural how we could then include paper and in the other arts as well the graphic arts performing arts visual arts the display arts literary arts and so all of a sudden it became a full blown art festival it is. Probably one of the largest art festivals this community has ever had. We've had lots of activities where one area of the arts have been focused at a time but we've never had art festival. That was an umbrella for the entire arts community where all of the various aspects of the art discipline are going to be featured at the same time all of them using the theme of Paper. The purpose of the festival was was risen originally to pay tribute to papers in art medium and that really has not changed. The word arts remains part of our

logo and is a very key part of this whole situation. But we've also dovetailed from that and they're trying to accomplish some other things at the same time. We're also going to use this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the to the paper industry the paper industry is just tremendous glue here in the Fox cities. And oftentimes just take it for granted and everything else. Even during the Depression they brought tremendous stability to this area and they've been around for a long time and this is finally a time for us to pay recognition to the paper industry. That was the second thing and the third thing was to try to develop this into an educational type situation as well. We wanted people to be exposed to the arts. We wanted people to have fun and to celebrate. The first two factors the third was take it was to educate. And as a result we've got various superintendents of schools involved in this thing so we have all school districts six to seven school districts in this area as well as some parochial schools involved in the paper of Arts concept. So This this festival is meant to have a

tremendous unity theme it's meant to unify the communities around here. It's meant to unify the business with the arts with the with the citizens. And there's just so many examples of it but the corporations given the money is one typical example of how everybody is working together to make this thing happen. Tremendous amount of pride in the community for this by us showing our talent through our creativity and by doing it for the paper at the festival we're also paying tribute to our community. Because an artist does not. Function. And cannot work where you don't have a supportive community. And so we're saying in a sense thank you to our community by doing the activities that we're doing as well of course as being able to showcase our talents as Well this year we are going to be using theme handmade paper. So we have 17 galleries located from Osh Kosh to Green Bay which will be featuring only people artists at one time.

It will be the largest. National. Paper show that has ever been held in our nation. Paper vital to the state and its people. This festival celebrates its attributes and qualities. And has been established as an annual event. So who knows how regional This thing might become down the road it started as a five cities thing we're getting some of these other areas involved. We'll see how it explodes and it's exploded very well mushroomed very well the first time around I'm just got a feeling the second time we'll just keep going. Willie Porter is an accomplished guitarist from Eu Claire. He began playing the guitar as a child

because of a genetic disorder that affected his hands. It turns out that playing music has been the right therapy for his hands. And tonight he entertains us with the song Trees got soul. [singing]

[singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing]

[singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] Our thanks to Willie Porter. Each week our arts calendar keeps you up to date with the

latest art exhibits. Here are a few of the shows available to you this week. The Vacimbay the calabash and the ganophone are all traditional African instruments that have a deep personal meaning for Nadi Qamar a Cincinnati native studied European classical piano as a teenager and performed as a jazz musician on the West Coast. At age 33 he moved to New York where he first took interest in traditional African instruments that interest has been a passion for

Qamar for the last 40 years. These days at 73 he spends his time decorating and playing instruments of what he calls the musical idiom. And I thought it symbolic the way I thought about what I was doing with the music was something it was kind of shedding a light

a Very light study reading about African music. You'll discover that there are many kinds of music some of it has no rhythm totally just floating very pastoral the shepherd's melodies that they play on those flutes no rhythm there They're very meditational and this is the misconception if it's African it's got to be it's not these instruments were discovered in Africa by explorers by Charles Livingston and his brother and others Over fifteen hundred years ago. these particular instruments

and the ballophones which became the xylophone. Or instruments like the which is a log zither. Which finally became the harp and made this way the big one and finally became a harpsichord and the piano. But the same function the plucking of the string of the plucking of a reed or prong is the same physical function that makes the piano or harpsichord play. I became aware that music is something all of it is something that. In a way is it really arrests your consciousness or your attention and focus your mind on the music takes it off of what was

happening just before you heard the music. And I said to myself If you're going to do music then let it be about something. And today and even at that time I began to think of music as a philosophy of peace. It's something that comes out of a. Harmonious relationship between the parts. Of the instrument. As the strings or the keys resound From each other's vibrations And the way that that music will make people feel. And I said this. Is really an example of the way that human beings should get along [music] [music]

[music] [music] I want my music to be. Something that would. Inspire. People. To. Be more positive. About what they get into

they go as they live their life. The poet Leopold Sangor says African music is rooted in the nourishing earth it is laden with rhythm sounds and noises of the earth and that it brings our program to a close this evening. Please don't us next week when we feature the mountains call my name. A special program about John Muir for all of our primetime crews. I'm Deborah Mims. Good night. Presentation of prime time Wisconsin is made possible in part by the Secura

insurance companies Appleton providing a broad range of services property casualty and life insurance products, mutual funds, and other related financial services.