Brenda Hutchinson’s WHAT CAN YOU DO? public project and performance
Presented by Shawn Hansen’s Sycamore House Series
and Charlotte Street Foundation
FRIDAY, MAY 13TH, 2016 4-6:30PM / What Can You Do? project
SATURDAY, MAY 14th, 2016 8pm FREE Performance
This May, Charlotte Street Foundation is excited to welcome well-known composer, Brenda Hutchinson, to Kansas City! Brenda Hutchinson—in collaboration with Shawn Hansen’s Sycamore House Series—will present free performances and a presentation of Hutchinson’s project, What Can You Do?
What Can You Do? is a 2 part operations project that is a celebration and reclamation of the public space through direct interaction between strangers. The project is facilitated by San Fransisco composer, Brenda Hutchinson. These interactions can be a series of encounters on the street—encouraging public engagement—to electronically mediated experiences.
Oddly enough, What Can You Do? is NOT about what YOU can do. It is the question that will be asked to other people/strangers. These interactions will then be documented—whether thru written documentation, photograph, video, oral, etc. Initial trepidation and fear aside, it is surprisingly fun and exciting to go outside our comfort zones!
What Can You Do? Public Engagement Project
Friday, May 13th, 4-6:30PM
Paragraph Gallery
23 E 12th Street Kansas City, MO 64106
Please contact [email protected] to participate in this event or for more details.
SATURDAY, May 14th 8pm FREE
La Esquina, 1000 W. 25th St KCMO 64108
Events include:
– Brenda Hutchinson performances
– What Can You? Do public presentation (part 2)
– Frog Haiku #62 + Sunset Bell Observation
– Duet with Shawn Hansen. BH-Short Tube and electronics
Saturday evening at La Esquina, Hutchinson will present a free performance of Frog Haiku #62 in collaboration with 18 Kansas City performers, along with “Duet” with Kansas City composer, Shawn Hansen. A public presentation from the What Can You Do? project will also be presented. The audience is invited to participate in the evening event.
Follow Brenda’s project, What Can You Do? on our Facebook page!
ABOUT BRENDA HUTCHINSON
Brenda Hutchinson is a composer and sound artist whose work is based on the cultivation and encouragement of openness in her own life and in those she works with. Through her work with large-scale experiments in socially based improvisations and interactions, Brenda has developed a body of work based on a perspective about interacting with the public and non-artists through personal, reciprocal engagement with listening and sounding. She continues to explore and share with others the conceptual, aesthetic and relational possibilities that arise from this type of activity.
Brenda is the recipient of the Gracie Allen Award from American Women in Radio and Television and has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lila Wallace, McKnight Foundation, NY State Council on the Arts and Meet the Composer among others. Recordings of her work are available through TELLUS, Deep Listening, O.O. DISCS, Frog Peak Music and Leonardo Music Magazine. She has been an artist in residence at San Quentin Prison, Headlands Center for the Arts, Harvestworks, Exploratorium, Ucross and Djerassi.
About Shawn Hansen / Sycamore House Series
Shawn Edward Hansen, a native of Kansas, is an artist and musician living in Boston, MA. His main instruments include saxophone, organs, and analog synthesizer. Practicing his own style of Midwestern hermetic art known as Tangential Assertivism, he performs with Christopher Tignor as New Scalthzkgazan, with Jaime Fennelly, Chris Forsyth, and Chris Heenan as Phantom Limb & Bison, as well as in the civil twilight cover band, Dirty Pool with Chris Forsyth. Shawn is also the artistic director of KJEA radio, which had its first broadcast in 1984 from the blue room in Kansas City. He is currently working on a series of records called the Sycamore House Duets, with nine other keyboard artists from around the world.
