Erin O’Brien

Past Present Future Imperatives Queer Space Time

Sabina Lee Gallery http://sabinaleegallery.tumblr.com | www.sabinaleegallery.com
971 Chung King Road, Los Angeles CA, 90012
Past Present | Future Imperatives: Queer Space Time
Việt Lê, Genevieve Erin O’Brien, Jai Arun Ravine, Tina Takemoto
Opening (Screening, Food, Installations & Performances) Saturday, February 25, 2012, 6-9pm
6pm start | 7pm short screenings | 8pm One Night Band
Exhibition February 25-March 24, 2012 | open Wednesday – Saturday 11am-6pm
imperative grammatical mood:

give an order
express a desire
make a request
offer advice
recommend something

What is queer time? What is colored people’s time? And queer people of color time?
Crossing, cruising time zones and erogenous zones, this show explores transnational queer bodies through space and time. Queer time challenges standard notions of linear progress and biological time. There is no single, straight-forward model of development (pun intended) but rather a multiplicity of movements and moments. Queer temporalities collapse the binaries of time, sexuality, and progress. The past, present and future is blurred. Gendered divides are re-imagined. First and third worlds meld.
The Global South is stereotyped as “backwards” while the ―”advanced” Global North is the forward-moving engine of development. Political economist Timothy Mitchell observes that “the experience of modernity is . . . a relationship between time and space.” Shifting city skylines trace timelines of progress. The exploitation of gendered, raced labor is built upon this uneven terrain. Labor is the site of multiple oppressions.
At work and play, queer time reconfigures institutional and intimate relationships. In a Queer Time and Place, gender theorist Jack Halberstam argues that “Queer uses of time and space develop in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction.” The past, present, and future meet through queer bodies of color and their imagined communities. “Queer subcultures develop as alternatives to kinship-based notions of community,” Halberstam notes. Enmeshed within trans-local communities, these four artists explore time, space, race, and translation. Through queer postcolonial time, they reexamine still-present pasts and offer possibilities for dystopic/ utopic futures.

GEO Home Los Angeles Pop-up Dinner

GEO Home Los Angeles pop-up

Monday November 22^nd 2010

Seating @ 7:30pm (PST)

Good Girl Dinette

110 North Avenue 56

Los Angeles, CA 90042

To RSVP, email Erin at erin@erin-obrien.com. Please include your name, how many people are in your party, and your phone number. Once you RSVP, you will be emailed a confirmation and given directions for payment via PayPal. We apologize but due to space constraints we cannot accept reservations for parties of more than 4 people.

Tickets are $45 per person.

Please join us for this unique art event where the food and the guests are the art.

This is a one-time only event, so make your reservations soon! We are grateful to our gastronomic sister and chef Diep Tran who is generously hosting us in her space at Good Girl Dinette. www.goodgirlfoods.com

The 4-course menu (with refreshments) will be a surprise, but to give you a hint, the theme is Saigon meets Los Angeles.

10% of all proceeds for the event will be donated to KOTO – Know One Teach One Saigon – http://www.koto.com.au/. KOTO is a not-for-profit restaurant and service-based vocational training program that is changing the lives of street youth and disadvantaged youth in Vietnam.

See you there,

Genevieve Erin O’Brien

www.erin-obrien.com

Notice of documentation: GEO Home is an artistic endeavor and a performance. By attending the GEO Home LA Pop-up, you agree to be documented (digital still, video and web broadcast) during the event. If you are not comfortable being documented we cannot accommodate you for this dinner.

GEO Home – a new performance series

GEO Home

In this synaesthetic performance series, I will cook a meal that reminds me of “home,” which will be prepared at the host’s house. Through this performance series I explore notions of home, memory, synaesthesia, community, and authenticity. Sometimes, it is about food that reminds me of a place I called home, or a memory or feeling of a place. Sometimes, it is just about a moment. Sometimes, it is about a confluence of temporal and spatial realms in a particular space. It is always about food. As a bit of a nomad, food has always been anchor to a place that for me has never really existed – a place called home. I will create a performance of home by preparing and sharing a meal with you. You never know what will be on the menu. Together, we will enjoy a meal, just like family – just like “home.”

Fulbright Project

Nu’ó’c Nào?
Where are you from? Where is your water/country/homeland?

Nuoc Mam bottles at a Phu Quoc Factory

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Peace Salon

At the Free Speech Corner adjacent to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, on Veteran’s Day 2007 Erin shaved her head as a response to the war in Iraq and other forms of oppression. In an effort to extend this gesture to the public, Erin offers to shave off the hair of those willing to make a commitment to peace. The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago invited the artist to present the Peace Salon as part of the on-going 12×12 series on Independence Day 2008.

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Nuclear Family

gingerbread-birds-eye-al

A SYMPHONY FOR THE SENSES EATING ART FOR PEACE

Chicago, Illinois – In a gesture some are calling “Yum-Yum Diplomacy,” a Chicago based performance installation artist Genevieve Erin O’Brien has built a replica of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) nuclear reactor site at Yongbyon entirely out of gingerbread.

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Vietnamese Suitcase

Multi-city Durational performance

A Vietnamese suitcase is a generally speaking a cardboard box. The “suitcase” serves a particularly temporary purpose, unlike the somewhat indestructible western version of the suitcase, made for on-going travel. I position myself at specific locations around specific cities and ask people to write their sentiments about Vietnam. The thoughts, feelings and memories are written on Joss paper and put in the “suitcase”.

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