David Rodgers: Performance Artist
David Rodgers is a New York-based Performance Artist. He has appeared in museums and galleries in the United States and internationally. He writes, directs and acts in his own performance art and theatre pieces. He also collaborates with other artists, and directs improvisational performance events in public locations. He began creating his own works in the art world of New York’s Lower East Side, at underground- and artist-run galleries. Recent projects include “The Man From Another World: A Performance Suite in Six Parts,” shown at the Mainseits 08 Exhibition in Homburg-am-Main, Germany, and a series of public performances in South America, including one at Machu Picchu.
He has a degree in Theatre Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and has also studied at the State University of New York at Purchase, New York University, and The School of Visual Arts, New York City.
Press Release- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York, USA and Wurzburg, Germany
July 15, 2009
David Rodgers, the New York performance artist, will be performing at the Plastisches Theater Hobbit in Wurzburg on August 17, 18, 19, 2009 at 9 pm. Rodgers will perform his work “Willkommen und Abschied,” inspired by the poem of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The performances of the work will take place on three consecutive nights, in and around the environs of the theatre, including the outside courtyard of the Volkshochschule, where the theatre is located. The Hobbit Theatre is located at Munzstr. 1, and admission to the show is 6 Euros.
The performances, and the poem which has inspired them, (generally translated as ‘Welcome and Farewell’), describe the physical and emotional journey of a man through the night to meet his enamored, and the subsequent joy of their meeting and the triumph over the challenges of the journey. Rather than a literal enactment of the poem, Rodgers’ performances will create a series of symbolic actions exploring each work’s depiction of the universal human journey toward fulfillment and satisfaction. Rodgers’ performances, which frequently take the form of ritual activities, often explore the commonality of human experiences.
The performances will be accompanied by original music created for the occasion by noted Wurzburg musician, Dennis Schutze. The Hobbit Theater (as it is locally known), is a puppet theatre which has been in existence in Wurzburg for over 30 years, and is run by the artist Jutta Schmitt and her husband Bernd Kreusser. Rodgers and Schmitt first met in 2008 when they were both included in the exhibition Mainseits 08, in nearby Homburg am Main.
Rodgers is returning to Homburg during the last week of August 2009 to conduct a teaching seminar on creating performance art at the Sommer-Akademie Kunst in Schloss Homburg, now in it’s tenth year, under the direction of the artist Gertrude Elvira Lantenhammer. Rodgers and Schmitt are also planning a collaborative work for 2010.
For further information contact:
David Rodgers
Email: drrave99@yahoo.com
www.davidrodgersperformance.com
Telephone (in USA): 212-781-9321
Plastisches Theater Hobbit
Email: theaterhobbit@online.de
www.theater-hobbit.de
Telephone: 0931-59830 or 09366-6946
And:
www.jochenvolpert.de
www.kunstinschlosshomburg.de
Quotes about David Rodgers’ work:
“David Rodgers’ alter egos, characters in continual transformation, (are) sent out to act his life…. With Rodgers, boundaries between real and unreal do not exist. He is the ultimate Joker, a Russian Matryoska doll containing innumerable alternate versions of itself within.”
-Joyce Korotkin, Curator, in the exhibition catalog for "Double Indemnity: The Self Unmasked", 1994
“David Rodgers is fearless, and as captivating and magnetic as a witch doctor. But instead of an accompanying power madness, he possesses your attention with a kind of alluring absurdity. He is a walking TV show that would never be allowed to broadcast. Not because of any kind of coarse or bawdy content, but rather because it would create more chaos than Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds”. We all know that the Germans love Hasslehoff like the French appreciate Jerry Lewis, but Rodgers makes me re-think life; not life on other planets, but rather as life shaping itself in the ether, in the atmosphere. Spontaneous animation, but not. That doesn’t make sense, but that is precisely the point. He does not make sense as a life form. Of course he’s eccentric, of course you wish you could be him at times, of course he has a wall of stacked suitcases in his apartment, but the goddamn point is he’s vastly more sane than most, without being sane at all. I know you’re sane, but this guy reconciles sanity with being committed. Rodgers, simply put, is the walking, talking, nearly comprehensible truth. This is what I’m getting at: Dave Rodgers could do anything he wanted, and yet he chooses to enlighten you by confounding you. And he does so because for the most part we really don’t have the slightest idea of how to go about being crazy and thoroughly sane (or sane enough), at the same time. I strive for it, but of course I HAVE to give up; which is to say, I give up on sanity, but I don’t embrace insanity…. He’s a performance artist. And for that I do thank god.”
-J. Parker Cross, Writer and Filmmaker,
from "Exile on Exile Street: Portraits of Self", 2009
On the Home page:
Background photos from The Forest Portfolio by Katrin Heyer, 2008
Animation by Brendan Coyle, from video of The Assembly, 2004
Performances
1996-2009
2009
The Banishment of Retrograde Motion (with Amanda Curtis and Brendan Coyle)
Procession starting at The Assembly Room, Staten Island, NY
Life-Lo, Heels-Hi
Ouchi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2008
The Man from Another World: A Performance Suite in Six Parts
1. The Transmigration
2. The Tale of an Ancient King
3. What Are Crimes to One Man May be Joys To Another
4. An Attempt to Buy Souls On the Street
5. Confession and Silence
6 . Transcendence and the Resultant Airy Feeling
Mainseits 08, Kunst in Schloss Homburg,
Homburg-am-Main, Germany
08 – 08 – 08: The Cabinet of Caligari (with Brendan Coyle)
Rivington School Underground, NY
Supernovas: Artists on Sale
Madame Kymara Gallery, Biddeford, Maine
Specemin
Diesel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
The Hobo King (by Brendan Coyle)
Day de Dada Festival, Staten Island, NY
Supported by a grant from
The Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island
Clown in a Bathtub (by Krzysztof Zarebski)
Rivington School Underground, NY
2007
The Devil in Potosi
Public performance, Plaza de Armas
Potosi, Bolivia
Limpie El Diablo
Public performance, Calle Illampu
La Paz, Bolivia
Requium for Souls Lost
Public performance, Machu Picchu, Peru
2006
Gift from Escondido/Baby Frankenfood (by Krzysztof Zarebski)
Voice Recording for Performance
Real Art Ways, Hartford, Ct
The Rite of Spring Tenth Anniversary
Diesel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2005
I’m Sorry (video)
XIV Festival Inner Spaces,
Museum Inner Spaces, Poznan, Poland
Baby Frankenfood(by Krzysztof Zarebski)
The Lab Gallery, NY
2004
The Man of Steel
The Howl Festival
Fusion Arts Museum, NY
The Assembly (with Krzysztof Zarebski and Brendan Coyle)
Fusion Arts Museum, NY
DJ Cool Swamp(by Krzysztof Zarebski)
Gallery Roshkowska, Wyndam, NY
2003
How to Send Interesting Emails (Video)
WRO International Festival,
WRO Center of the Arts, Breslau, Poland
Helmut's Voice (Video by Krzysztof Zarebski)
Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle
Warsaw, Poland
Helmut’s Voice (by Krzysztof Zarebski)
The Chelsea Art Museum, NY
The Impostor (with Brendan Coyle)
The Bowery Poetry Club, NY
The Ides of March
Diesel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2002
Earth People vs. Carcass Eaters (by Armand Ruhlman)
The Bowery Poetry Club, NY
Remote Lounge, NY
The Walker Stage Theatre, NY
Eulogy
The Cutting Room, NY
2001
Gloomy Sunday: The Doctor Rave Art Therapy Show
ABC-No-Rio, NY
The Twenty-First Century Rorschach Test
Gallery 128, NY
Everything’s Fine
Gallery 128, NY
The Blackout
Gallery 128, NY
Nana's Gone
The Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2000
Doctor Rave and His Medical Staff: A Lobotomy Assisted by the Audience
ABC-No-Rio, NY
1999
Mother Earth
Cybersapien Entertainment, NY
Doctor Rave and the Asylum Crew
The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, NY
Bellevue Backroom Space, NY
The Man on the Piano
Theatre for the New City, NY
Let Me Tell You 'Bout the Old Days
"The Last 42nd Street Sex Show" NY
Mexican Dog Stories
Gallery 128, NY
Girls Night Out
Wayne Dobson's Space, Brooklyn, NY
Ros T.V. (with Moses Ros)
P.S. 122, NY
1998
Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States
Henry St. Settlement, NY
Death and Transfiguration
Ridge Street Gallery, NY
A Visit to an Earlier Time
Gallery 128, NY
I Won’t be Your Whipping Boy (with Stuart Nicholson)
The Right Bank, Brooklyn, NY
Trust
Ridge Street Gallery, NY
A Purple Passion
The Right Bank, Brooklyn, NY
The Separation
The Tunnel, NY
The Conversion of a Man
Eleven East Ashland Gallery, Phoenix, AZ
1997
Requiem for a Collector
Eklektikos Gallery, Washington, DC
Mister Hazy
Clinton Street Performance Space, NY
Convection: Dreams of a Weatherman
Pseudo Projects, NY
Self Immolation, Parts I, II, III
Ridge Street Gallery, NY
Self Immolation, Part I
Public performance, Documenta X,
Kassel, Germany
The Rite of Spring
The Five Cities Project
Galerie Miro, Prague, Czech Republic
My Birthday: A Commemorative Presentation
Ridge Street Gallery, NY
Mother: A Fragment
Ridge Street Gallery, NY
Dirty Vinyl
Gallery 128, NY
The Interrupted Journey
Gallery 128, NY
1996
The Rite of Spring
419 Lafayette Gallery, NY