"A focused exploration amidst the contours of human interiority, One of You is Fake seeks a solace that the present moment, or near-past, or fast-approaching future for that matter, can never quite provide. As its audience, we are left with a firm belief in a pursuit of honest connection; true human relationships — physical, emotional, electronic or otherwise — may be our one saving grace".
-Tara Sheena, Culturebot, NYC, May 2017 on One of You Is Fake at La MaMa Moves Festival
-Tara Sheena, Culturebot, NYC, May 2017 on One of You Is Fake at La MaMa Moves Festival
Thank you to all who came out to see One Of You Is Fake at La MaMa Moves May 25h & 26th 2017!
Read a thoughtful preview by Tara Sheena in Culturebot: Here
Read a thoughtful preview by Tara Sheena in Culturebot: Here
As a dance artist I'm currently working on solo work for a project I call Desire Motor. The seed idea or basis of research surrounds an interest in how humans dislocate or blend their innate internal desires with an external reality. Questions I am interested in provoking for an audience include:
How does your inner life seep outwardly into the world? Is your inner life a stark contrast to your external world, or is that space porous, fluid? How do you reconcile the triumphs and failures of the longing and wants of your being with what you can sustain as you meet other? What is your responsibility to the cultivation of an inner life, which can involve the imagination, the senses (including mental perception), and the basic processing of information coming into your body? These are some of the things I want to understand further, and through performance-based research. I'm currently making solos that aim at making interior spaces soluble in the external realm, for those to view, question, connect with, reject, and hopefully enrich one's own experience of the space in between private interiors and the communal world.
How does your inner life seep outwardly into the world? Is your inner life a stark contrast to your external world, or is that space porous, fluid? How do you reconcile the triumphs and failures of the longing and wants of your being with what you can sustain as you meet other? What is your responsibility to the cultivation of an inner life, which can involve the imagination, the senses (including mental perception), and the basic processing of information coming into your body? These are some of the things I want to understand further, and through performance-based research. I'm currently making solos that aim at making interior spaces soluble in the external realm, for those to view, question, connect with, reject, and hopefully enrich one's own experience of the space in between private interiors and the communal world.
Desire Motor:
A solo performance project.
One Of You Is Fake, 2017
One of You Is Fake is the second solo in Graczyk’s performance series Desire Motor following her inaugural solo Beast. Unfolding as a precariously optimistic look at the future of mankind, Graczyk engages with mundane and exquisitely made objects to question our collective participation in the erosion of the physical, sensual, and material world. Part science lecture, part song, One of You Is Fake accumulates physical movement through examining the process of formation, highlighting shifts between the natural and synthetic. Written and performed by Beth Graczyk with a performance cameo by Lindsay Head. Sound design by Cameron Shafii, visual design elements by Steven Berardelli, and costume design by Asa Brown Thornton.
Beast, 2016
A series of physical micro-worlds emerge and dissolve in Graczyk's inaugural solo, BEAST. Humorous, absurd, and as unstable as a live wire, Graczyk guides us with peculiar and detailed logic through a seemingly empty room. Human interactions and objects become necessary partners in bringing forth the unseen as we follow Graczyk's journey of revelation, rejection and carnal need, vividly etched through the labor of her imagination. BEAST is the first solo for Graczyk's larger body of work: Desire Motor which embodies the dissonances arising between internal wants and external realities.
A solo performance project.
One Of You Is Fake, 2017
One of You Is Fake is the second solo in Graczyk’s performance series Desire Motor following her inaugural solo Beast. Unfolding as a precariously optimistic look at the future of mankind, Graczyk engages with mundane and exquisitely made objects to question our collective participation in the erosion of the physical, sensual, and material world. Part science lecture, part song, One of You Is Fake accumulates physical movement through examining the process of formation, highlighting shifts between the natural and synthetic. Written and performed by Beth Graczyk with a performance cameo by Lindsay Head. Sound design by Cameron Shafii, visual design elements by Steven Berardelli, and costume design by Asa Brown Thornton.
Beast, 2016
A series of physical micro-worlds emerge and dissolve in Graczyk's inaugural solo, BEAST. Humorous, absurd, and as unstable as a live wire, Graczyk guides us with peculiar and detailed logic through a seemingly empty room. Human interactions and objects become necessary partners in bringing forth the unseen as we follow Graczyk's journey of revelation, rejection and carnal need, vividly etched through the labor of her imagination. BEAST is the first solo for Graczyk's larger body of work: Desire Motor which embodies the dissonances arising between internal wants and external realities.
Desire Motor stems from time spent with the writings and thoughts of a myriad of voices including Duchamp, Proust, Wolf, Spinoza, and Kafka. Each voice offering unique textures in their writing and approaches that speak to a continuum of ways humans dislocate or blend their innate internal desires with an external reality. Graczyk will construct 12 entities in the form of performance, writing, and presentations that emerge out of the consideration of desire as a physiological and transformative body, observing its metabolic rates and effects as revealed in the sensual digestion of architecture, object, spatial configuration, weight, texture, and scenario.
Selected Writing & Source Material for Desire Motor:
From Ocatvio Paz on Duchamp - "Appearance Stripped Bare"
"...her sovereignty, is a attribute of her nature: “basically she is a motor, but before being a motor that transmits her timid power, she is this very timidpower... Her essence, both in chemico-physicological and in the ontological meanings of the word, is desire. This essence is, at one and the same time, a lubricant and her being in itself. Her essence, her being, is desire, and this desire, which cannot be reduced to feelings although it originates in them, is but a desire for being."
….
"We walk among shadows and illusions, and nothing that we see, touch, and think has real consistency. Between us and real reality intrudes the horizon...The horizon of our memory."
Beth Graczyk is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer and a scientist. Graczyk concocts sensation-based worlds built by observing and amplifying the hidden, the unseen, and the ignored, in an attempt to bring into focus peripheral stories, spaces, and ideas. She enmeshes herself and the audience as, simultaneously, active participants and outside observers, through the interplay between the imagination, the human body, and inanimate objects. Graczyk has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Japan, Ecuador, France and India for the past 17 years. Concurrently, she has contributed to 10 science publications in the field of cancer research, including a first author paper in Analytical Biochemistry. In 2017, her solo work was selected to be a part of the Gibney’s Work Up Series and the La MaMa Moves Festival.
Photo credit: Effy Grey | Effyography, Video: Mikcas Castaneda, Video Editing: Beth Graczyk
Sound Score for Beast: Spare Death Icon (Jason E Anderson), 'Foreign Relaxation Technique', 2011
From Ocatvio Paz on Duchamp - "Appearance Stripped Bare"
"...her sovereignty, is a attribute of her nature: “basically she is a motor, but before being a motor that transmits her timid power, she is this very timidpower... Her essence, both in chemico-physicological and in the ontological meanings of the word, is desire. This essence is, at one and the same time, a lubricant and her being in itself. Her essence, her being, is desire, and this desire, which cannot be reduced to feelings although it originates in them, is but a desire for being."
….
"We walk among shadows and illusions, and nothing that we see, touch, and think has real consistency. Between us and real reality intrudes the horizon...The horizon of our memory."
Beth Graczyk is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer and a scientist. Graczyk concocts sensation-based worlds built by observing and amplifying the hidden, the unseen, and the ignored, in an attempt to bring into focus peripheral stories, spaces, and ideas. She enmeshes herself and the audience as, simultaneously, active participants and outside observers, through the interplay between the imagination, the human body, and inanimate objects. Graczyk has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Japan, Ecuador, France and India for the past 17 years. Concurrently, she has contributed to 10 science publications in the field of cancer research, including a first author paper in Analytical Biochemistry. In 2017, her solo work was selected to be a part of the Gibney’s Work Up Series and the La MaMa Moves Festival.
Photo credit: Effy Grey | Effyography, Video: Mikcas Castaneda, Video Editing: Beth Graczyk
Sound Score for Beast: Spare Death Icon (Jason E Anderson), 'Foreign Relaxation Technique', 2011
