RFK in EKY, The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project, is a series of public conversations and activities centered around the real-time, site-specific intermedia performance that recreated, on September 9th and 10th 2004, Robert Kennedy’s two-day, 200 mile “poverty tour” of southeastern Kentucky in 1968.
An Appalshop project directed by John Malpede.
Noorderzon Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands - August 20-26 - by PeerGrouP and Los Angeles Poverty Department
The Cold War was a war of ideas, not limited to a battlefield but
pervasive as only a war can be. Post Cold War free market triumphalism
has imposed limits on what kind of society we can envision and create.
It raises the question: What have we all lost? The Cold War divided
Europe into East and West. The end of the Cold War advanced the vision
of European integration. Now, the dissonance between the economic and
political realization of that vision is threatening to erect a new wall
across Europe between North and South. We Koude Oorlog / Brain Freeze
artists, like dissenting artists in the former East, find ourselves in a
system we don't like, that we are trying to reform - while doubting
that it can be reformed.
COLD WAR
The Wende Museum
- Friday, February 24, 2012 - 6PM
Los Angeles Poverty Department and the Board of Directors of The Wende Museum cordially invites you to the Winter Salon at the Museum Galleries.
The Winter Salon will present a special evening of theater, an exploratory duet between the performers and the Wende Collection.
Project artists include LAPD: Henriëtte Brouwers, KevinMichael Key, John Malpede; PeerGrouP: Henry Alles, Floris van Delft, Merel van Dijk.
The Wende Museum, 5741 Buckingham Parkway, Suite E Culver City, CA 90230
“The cold war is always a
conflict between two people > a bus driver and a boarder guard."
LENIN:
Look at you. Standing
there. Looking look down at us. On the right side of this wall. You like that,
don't you. Being right. History has proven you right. You won, without even
having to do anything for it. Just being yourself, your beautiful self. The example
of your beautiful life with all its advantages and luxury drove people crazy
enough to tear down this wall.
We just wanted a
society in which people are really equal. Isn't that beautiful? That's what you
also say at your politically correct get-togethers. Well, we really tried. And
don't say our experiment failed. We just didn't have enough time. Real change
takes time. You of all must know that...
And now you're
standing there. Looking at a museum which you made of our 'experiment', our
little deviation of history. I have to correct you. This is not a museum, this
is a tomb. And you proclaimed us dead without even checking our pulse. So happy
you we're with your victory.
You know what I would
like? I would like to start a new museum. I would find an immense space and
start putting things in boxes. I'll start with everyday items, posters, toys,
flags. Loads of flags. Paintings of presidents. One of Reagan made of Jelly
Beans. Republican ties, democrat ties, CEO ties. A box full of Mars bars, Coca
Cola cans from a whole century, MacDonald Styrofoam boxes, Burger King boxes,
Jack in the Box boxes, Dunkin Doughnuts boxes. Big plastic containers full of
chips of Mt. Rushmore and the Twin Towers. The furniture from abandoned car
factories in Detroit. Pieces from the wall at the Mexican border, together with
border patrol uniforms complete with sunglasses and stun guns. May be a box
with action figures. Of course Bush in fighter pilot costume, Rambo and
Megatron from the Transformers. And in between the piles of diabetes drugs and
a collection of gang tattoos big empty spaces for free health care and good
education.
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The Winter Salon will present a special evening of theater, an exploratory duet between the performers and the Wende Collection.
And now you're
standing there. Looking at a museum which you made of our 'experiment', our
little deviation of history. I have to correct you. This is not a museum, this
is a tomb. And you proclaimed us dead without even checking our pulse. So happy
you we're with your victory. 