FREE PREVIEW FRIDAY NIGHT 5 TO 8 PM

JOIN IN FOR WORKSHOPS AND ACTIONS WITH THE MEMBERS OF GRAND OPENINGS FOLLOWING THE MAYOR’S ARTS AWARDS CEREMONY!

Grand Openings Meets You at the
Corner of the Rainier Room

The Henry Art Gallery Satellite at Bumbershoot 2008

This year’s Henry Art Gallery Satellite at Bumbershoot celebrates
performance in contemporary art. Grand Openings, a New York-based performance collective consisting of Ei Arakawa, Jutta Koether, Jay Sanders, Emily Sundblad, and Stefan Tcherepnin will utilize the Rainier Room as a site of meta-performance. A large, empty E-shaped stage is the place where anything, everything and nothing will take place. During the festival, there will be random workshops by Grand Openings and their friends, such as Hisham Mayat of Sublime Frequencies, Daniel Menche, Lee Williams, and K8 Hardy (on the phone). The Rainier Room’s main function as a conference room inspired the seminar-like approach to the multi-day activities. Some of the activities include:

· Umbrella dance
· Bizarre international music videos
· Pink Noise Paintings and Sound (manifest moment)
· Theory of the Jeune-Fille
· Interior decorating
· Grunge & Riot
· Pain dance
· Forgetting the stage

The final performance will take place Sunday from 6 - 7:30 PM in the Rainier Room.
An exhibition detailing all the events will follow on Monday.

Grand Openings’ one-of-a-kind performances challenge our expectations and the presumed roles of performers, producers, directors, and observers. The actions of the final performance will develop organically over the course of the festival weekend in a highly collaborative manner. Grand Openings also features videos produced by members of Sublime Frequencies concentrating on obscure festivals and styles of music from around the world; documentation of previous Grand Openings performances; and other examples of multi-disciplinary performance art. These video programs are also organized by Grand Openings.

Grand Openings was founded in 2005. They have performed at Performa05 at Anthology Film Archives (New York); magical Artroom (Tokyo); Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2006 (Nigata, Japan); and MUMOK (Vienna). Their videos have been exhibited at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Kunsthalle Zürich Parallel; and Tbilisi 3 and Tbilisi 4 (Tbilisi, Geogia).

The Henry Art Gallery satellite exhibition was curated by Betsey Brock, Associate Director of Communications and Outreach and Sara Krajewski, Associate Curator.