Storefront TV: Season 2
Tuesday February 17, 2015 – Tuesday August 11, 2015
ABOUT:
Storefront TV’s 2014 inaugural pilot season brought to your screen such voices as Prem Krishnamurthy, Michael Young, and ESPTV , as well as a live show featuring Andres Jaque .
We’re at it again, with a lineup of eight TV programs selected from our first open call for pilots. The 2015 Storefront TV Season will feature a series of explorations and performances in the form of talk shows, urban fairy tales, self-help programs, commercials, DIY videos, and documentaries contemplating issues of masculinity and animality, communication, disciplinary obsessions and absurdities, celebrity, and wisdom.
Programs are recorded at the Storefront TV Studio in front of a live studio audience and broadcast online. These recording sessions are free and open to Storefront members. A limited number of seats are open to the general public. To attend, RSVP below.
SCHEDULE:
February 17: Men & More [SFTV S02 E01]
By Studio Rossi Brody (Dani Frid Rossi & Adam Chad Brody)
In 2013, Studio Rossi Brody filmed Men & Pets, an hour-long Internet program that used the format of product review videos to explore the bodies and spirits of men, male animals, and male objects.
Together with Storefront TV, Men & More will expand on Men & Pets by utilizing the dynamic potential of live television to explore male bodies through therapeutic performance, behavioral analysis, physical comedy, group choreography, and clinical erotica.
Over the course of fifty minutes, Men & More will upend its bevy of male participants by fragmenting their bodies, subverting their expected performances, stripping away their agency, healing their wounds and, ultimately, creating a moment of re-identification that allows for a pluralistic masculinity.
Studio Rossi Brody is the collaborative project of artists Dani Frid Rossi and Adam Chad Brody. Using video, performance, and installation, their work explores the problems of masculinity by creating rituals, experiments, choreography, and fantastic situations that expand the range of male performance.
As directors and performers, Rossi and Brody take an active part in their investigations, often walking the line between serious social scientists, comedians and generic consumers. Rossi and Brody met in Philadelphia as graduate students in Tyler School of Art’s sculpture program and have been making work together since 2012.
March 17: Candy Stripe Variety Hour [SFTV S02 E02]
By Jimenez Lai and Matthew Messner
Candy Stripe Variety Hour is a technicolor spectrum of architectural extravaganza. Directed by Jimenez Lai and Produced by Matthew Messner, the show next-levels the lo-fi discourse of youtube ready architecture and high energy of the twenty-teen’s internet pop culture. It is everything and nothing you have already seen. So get out your popcorn and tv digest, the Candy Stripe Variety Hour is this Spring’s must-watch low budget architectural internet television show.
Jimenez Lai is the founder and leader of the LA based design firm Bureau Spectacular. Lai has won the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects, been collected by MoMA and published his first monographic book with Princeton Architectural Press, with a grant by the Graham Foundation. Lai has been on the cover of Architect magazine, and his work is regularly published in international journals. In 2014 Lai represented Taiwan at the 14th Architectural Venice Biennale, with his project the Township of Domestic Parts. Lai is currently a faculty member at UCLA.
Matthew Messner is a designer and critic based in Chicago. He is co-founder of AtelierME, a competition design team based in Chicago and New York, as well as a member of Bureau Spectacular. Messner’s design work, writing and photography have been published and exhibited Internationally. He holds Masters of Architecture and a Masters of Arts in Design Criticism from the University of Illinois Chicago. Messner is currently a faculty member at UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
April 7: Intelligent People with Their Mouths Full [SFTV S02 E03]
By Emilie Baltz & Gabe Liberti, Kevin Siwoff, Dave Rife of Studio Indefinit
A debate show for contemporary consumption, this Lincoln-Douglas style verbal sparring match sits at the intersection of ridicule and reason, focusing on current issues, as disputed by two thought leaders debating while being force-fed extreme amounts of food. Serving up critical commentary on the overconsumption of sensationalized politics in modern-day American society, this show functions as a mash-up of Middle Age disputations, 18th century debating societies and competition style reality-shows. The look and feel of the show will be Willy Wonka meets Crossfire, using fantastic foodstuffs alongside expressive imagery in order to create an overlay of absurdity unto the intellectual debate at hand.
The show will be moderated by Lucie Marble, the performance-ego of Emilie Baltz, artist, educator, entrepreneur and long-time-wisher-of-being-a-television-anchor-person. Baltz, a recurring guest on Storefront TV’s “Perchance, A Talk Show of Ps”, is a seasoned daytime television veteran, having appeared in the role of a Junk Food Chef on THE TODAY SHOW WITH KATHY LEE AND HODA, an Aphrodisiac Expert on THE DOCTORS, a burgeoning intellectual on NBC 5 Chicago MORNING SHOW, and guest commentator for the New York Post heralded UBERBOWL PARTY at Joe’s Pub. She is best known for her Ukrainian accent and is recipient of Best First Cookbook in the World.
Tech support, production design and camera will be directed and produced in collaboration with Studio Indefinit, a New York based design company specializing in immersive and interactive environments.
June 9: O Me! O Life! [SFTV S02 E04]
By Samuel Jablon
Participants: Samuel Jablon, Yuko Otomo, Steve Dalachinsky, Bob Holman, Sophie Malleret, Monica Carrillo, Di Fang, Andrew Telichan
The poetry will be made/taken from advertisements. This performance will highlight the shared experience of navigating NYC. The poetry is the language of architecture, it is created from words that literally cover sides of buildings. Street signs, announcements, and traffic lights direct us; they are the rules to how we navigate public space. They lead us to locations where we are bombarded by advertisements. The performance will counteract the ads by offering a space to create an exchange. An exchange that is not commercial. The exchange will experiment with poetry and how useless it is. No one needs poetry, and that is what is fabulous about it.
Samuel Jablon is an artist and poet.
Yuko Otomo is a poet.
Poet/collagist Steve Dalachinsky was born in Brooklyn after the last big war and has managed to survive lots of little wars.
Bob Holman is a poet.
Sophie Malleret is a poet.
Monica Carrillo is a performance artist and poet.
Di Fang is a video and multimedia installations artist based in Shenzhen, China.
Andrew Telichan is a composer, musician, sound designer and Music Technology doctoral researcher at NYU.
June 30: What About the Grid? [SFTV S02 E05]
By Bar Studio (Derek Chang, Peter Dumbadze, Dustin Murphy, and Young-Tack Oh)
“What About the Grid?” is a situational comedy about how three anthropomorphic animals engage with the gridded plane. Through their interactions with the grid, our protagonists discover how this surface is their tabula rasa for creating new relationships with their surrounding environment. Dealing and coping with experiences that range from the trivial to the significant, the animals develop ways of creating new social interactions vis à vis the grid, and in doing so, learn to redefine its rigid geometries, ultimately attaining a higher level of political and cultural agency.
Since 2013, Bar Studio has served as a moniker for a fluid assortment of architecture students at the University of Michigan who collaborate in exploring ways and means to engage and challenge the contemporary architectural discourse. Founded by Peter Dumbadze, Bar Studio strives to provide for a setting where collaborators can engage in an environment that is unfettered by the stresses of the discipline.
August 11: A Little Fawn [SFTV S02 E06]
By Brean Bush, Charles Harris, Jonathan Reynolds
Project Support: Aaron Jones and Wesley Taylor of Talking Dolls Studio
“A Little Fawn” situates experimental architecture within the trope of “American Children’s Program.” This work is in an effort to stoke alternative urban discourse and reveal latent conflicts between televised media, the city, and children. The work is meant to be widely accessible and is therefore crafted from the perspective of a young child. Traditional program realms of cartoon and skit will layer different scales and media, and then leverage them into scenes, sets, stages, and backdrops.
Brean Bush is a graduate student based in Detroit, Michigan. Brean is currently studying architecture at Lawrence Technological University and working professionally at JPRA Architects. Recent projects include partnership with the Downtown Youth Boxing Gym of Detroit and varied hospitality work, both which strive to impact communities through collaboration.
Charles Harris is a graduate student based in the Detroit Metro area. Charlie studies architecture at Lawrence Technological University and is working professionally at Rogvoy Architects. Recent projects include Pioneer Material Renewal in Detroit as well as various retail projects. Charlie aims to balance creative ambition with technical prowess through applied architectural research.
Jonathan Reynolds is a graduate student based in the Detroit metro area. Jonathan studies architecture and project management at Lawrence Technological University and also works as a teaching assistant and a manager for Roncelli, Inc. Recent projects include collaboration with former Acts 29 Fellowship of Hamtramck and the Downtown Youth Boxing Gym of Detroit. Jonathan aims to develop architecture which is interactive and meaningful at varied scales.
Aaron Jones and Wesley Taylor are an interdisciplinary design partnership based in Detroit, Michigan. They operate as the Talking Dolls studio and also teach various design coursework within Lawrence Technological University’s College of Architecture and Design. Their work aims to prompt alternative urban discourse and empower positive change at varied scales. This work manifests as pop-up structures, comic books, performance art, and critical writing – all of which exhibits internationally.
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COMMERCIALS:
YourCribs
By Leigha Dennis and Farzin Lotfii-Jam
“Your Cribs” is a set of commercials produced for Storefront TV live broadcasts.
Digital mass culture is increasingly self-referential, generating social media that displays an endless series of private spaces. Even while most of these spaces are intended only as backdrops in videos or photographs, this is the first time we are able to see inside so many private homes. This video series, entitled YourCribs, combines the cultures surrounding YouTube videos and the early 2000s reality television program, MTV Cribs, which features tours of celebrity homes. Like MTV Cribs, we broadcast a selection of domestic spaces, but unlike the orchestrated tour-guided format of Cribs, we adapt the conventions of YouTube genres that inadvertently expose private interiors to the public sphere.
Leigha Dennis and Farzin Lotfi-Jam collaborate on projects that query the impact of social media on architectural space, in particular modes of representation and dissemination of YouTube and selfie culture. Leigha Dennis is a faculty member at Columbia University GSAPP, where she co-directs the Architecture Online Lab and is a member of the Network Architecture Lab. Farzin Lotfi-Jam is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he was the 2013-2014 Walter B. Sanders Fellow. He is the Principal of FarzinFarzin and a Partner of A(n) Office.
Modern Intermezzo
By Dr. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss & Technical Assistant
“Modern Intermezzo” is a set of commercials produced for Storefront TV live broadcasts.
“Modern Intermezzo” are short broadcasted discussions about art and architecture of the Museum of Modern Art and the exhibitions of American art that traveled through Europe in the 1950s organized by its International Program. The focus of Modern Intermezzos will be on several anecdotes of modern art with architectural settings through modern history worldwide and what do they mean to us today on web TV. We will assess anecdotal frictions between architectural settings and art collected by Technical Assistant of MoAA and their role in the age of web TV and WWW.
Although the origins of intermezzo derive from music, opera and theatre, early television programs included TV Intermezzos as a short design form between featured programs. Gradually TV intermezzos turned into advertising.
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss is a Serbian-born architect living and working in Manhattan. He is the founder of NAO and co-founder of School of Missing Studies (SMS). His books include Socialist Architecture: The Vanishing Act (with Armin Linke, 2012), Almost Architecture (2006), Lost Highway Expedition (ed. 2007) and Evasions of Power (ed. 2011). His designs include Villa 62 in Ordos, China, Threadwaxing Space, Participant Inc., Swiss Institute Contemporary Art in New York and Slought Foundation Office in Philadelphia. His exhibitions include: Lina Bo Bardi presented at Columbia GSAPP, Yona Friedman: About Cities at The Drawing Center in New York and Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry at The ICA in Philadelphia and at the Graham Foundation in Chicago. Jovanovic Weiss teaches at Columbia GSAPP and Penn Design.
Technical Assistant, managing collections of MoAA (The Museum of American Art, Berlin). MoAA has been exhibited in New York, Berlin, Guangzhou and Beijing presenting episodes in modern art. MoAA is primarily dedicated to assembling, preserving, and exhibiting memories of the early years of the Museum of Modern Art and the exhibitions of American art that traveled through Europe in the 1950s organized by its International Program. Those exhibitions contributed to the formation of a common European post-war cultural identity that was based on ideas of modernism, internationalism, and individualism.
“Topografía inversa/Reverse Topography”
by adjkm for PROYECTO HELICOIDE (Caracas,2014)
A sculpted hill-turned-spiral mall-turned modern ruin, El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya has been one of Caracas, Venezuela’s most symptomatic urban challenges. After its construction was halted in 1961, all attempts to make this unfinished building into a cultural or commercial center have consistently failed. Its only real uses were a three-year occupation by ten thousand homeless people (1979 to 1982) and the thirty-year takeover by the Venezuelan intelligence police from 1985 to date.
“Topografía inversa” illustrates El Helicoide’s strange history and surreal condition in a ludic juxtaposition of potential Helicoides from the ice ages to contemporary Asia, displaying all sorts of utopian and dystopian fantasies along the way. The video was created for PROYECTO HELICOIDE’S 2014 exhibition “Helicoides posibles: visiones fantásticas” (Centro Cultural Chacao, Caracas).
adjkm is an architecture collective based in Caracas.
Founded in 2010 by Khristian Ceballos, Alejandro Méndez, Mawari Núñez and Daniel Otero, it is dedicated to research, communication and experimentation on contemporary issues. adjkm won the first place in the Caracas Symphony Complex competition (2010), and several honorable mentions, including the Central Bank of Venezuela Headquarters in Guayana (2015).
PROYECTO HELICOIDE is a non-profit organization dedicated to rescuing the memory of El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya, a semi-abandoned modern building in Caracas, Venezuela. Founded in 2013 by cultural historian Celeste Olalquiaga (Megalopolis, 1992, The Artificial Kingdom, 1998), PROYECTO HELICOIDE organizes exhibitions and talks and is currently preparing a book on El Helicoide. It is based in Caracas and New York City. www.proyectohelicoide.com