Styrene Lounge at Dumbo Arts Festival, September 30, 2012

Total Styrene: Breakdown Video

Total Styrene Breakdown 10min from Lizzie Scott on Vimeo.



Event organized by Michael Mahalchick and Lizzie Scott. Featuring work by Becca Albee, David Galbraith, Marcos Rosales, and Lizzie Scott. Lizzie Scott's piece performed by Lizzie Scott, Nikki Calonge, and Marisa Lark Wallin. Video shot by Ezra S. Henning at Klaus Von Nichtssagend gallery on August 8, 2012.

A Few Choice Moments from Totally Total Styrene: A Happening. 2.26.2012

2.26.2012

Totally Total Styrene: A Happening took place on February 26, 2012 in Long Island City. It featured Andrew Bucksbarg, Michael Mahalchick, Patricia Milder, Lizzie Scott, Marie Warsh, and Max Warsh.

Ever since I first learned of the Happenings of the late 50sand early 60s and the performances in Soho and at Judson Church in the early 70s, I’ve ached to have been able to be there. These moments produced some of my favorite art ever.

Or at least I think so. Having been born in 1970, and having arrived in New York to start my artist life in 1993, I never saw any of it. What I’ve seen, and what I love, is mostly grainy black and white photographs, and some ramblingly long films.

And of course I’ve seen some recreations. Some of these are good — most of the “dancier” ones work pretty well. But most performance art recreations are terribly disappointing. I stand there fidgeting and let down and I wonder if I even like performance at all. Maybe I just like grainy black and white photographs. Maybe I should have become a photographer. Maybe my work is based on a misunderstanding. A fantasy.

But I think the problem is that what makes those happenings and performances of the 50s and 70s so amazing — even in photographs and oral histories — is the particular set of conditions out of which they arose. They were experimental. They came out of small communities of like-minded artists. They were work for which no market yet existed. They were basically groups of artists playing together.

Of course you can’t get that kind of playful experimentalism if you train a bunch of dancers or actors to restage your happening at a museum now that performance is a major commodity. But if you recreate the conditions instead of the performances, I think you can get close.

Of course some things can never go back. I can’t make Soho into a cheap empty wasteland, and I can’t go back to the time before Performa started branding everything that moves. But I can get a small group of like-minded people to experiment and play together. I just did, to make Totally Total Styrene with Michael Mahalchick, Andrew Bucksbarg, Marie Warsh, Max Warsh, and Patricia Milder. And it didn’t disappoint.

Sustainability Studies from Lizzie Scott on Vimeo.

The Styrene Fantastic at Rachel Uffner, Movement Research Spring Festival 09, definitive cut

The Styrene Fantastic Video Remix

Edited to suit the online attention span. Includes footage of both Recessional performances at Rachel Uffner with some rehearsal thrown in for good measure. Starring Mieke Duffly and Georgia X. Lifsher

Video of TSF at Rachel Uffner Gallery, Movement Research Spring Festival 09 Recessional

The uncut video of the Recessional performance, April 26, 2009. Performed by Mieke Duffly and Georgia X. Lifsher

Project Description

The Styrene Fantastic is a physical exploration of the mountains of styrofoam that are both a by-product and a symptom of consumer culture. In different performances in all kinds of locations, dancers wear clothing constructed of large styrofoam-filled blobs. They collaborate with their costumes, adapting their activities and postures to them in an attempt to make the best of a ubiquitous material with little use and an endless future.

The central idea in my work is that function is excessive while frivolity is essential. I make sculptures and performances that use found materials to explore this idea in the context of the urban landscape.

Styrene Trial One

Rehearsing for the Movement Research Festival performance

These moments won't make it into the Movement Research performance at Rachel Uffner Gallery on Sunday the 26th. But Mieke and Georgia look so lovely casually chatting in their styrofoam get-ups that we'll have to revisit the casual chat in Styrene Fantastic's future.