JOSHUA SEIDNER

· UV Nile

Joshua — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:24:19 +0000

UV Nile is an immersive, start-stop performance that draws connections between spiritualism, exoticism, false-idolatry and themes of tribal unity in 90′s rave culture. The piece casts the gallery space as a house of worship; the performer as a high priest; and each spectator as a congregant. Throughout the night, Blvck America projects multiple layers of live video and sound to isolate the most escapist elements of contemporary nightlife. In response, Joshua Seidner, prompted by constant and intermittent siren interruptions, borrows aspects of Egyptian initiation ritual, go-go worship, and glossolalia to offer both himself and a younger disciple as an objectified, mummy-wrapped, father-and-son of the cloth. Slowly transforming a secular experience into one of mystical reverence, UV Nile uncovers oft-overlooked connections between nihilistic artifice and holy abandon that characterize much of underground club culture. Duration 2h.

Below: UV Nile Photo Documentation, 2011.

· Fear of a _____ Planet

Joshua — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:10:14 +0000

The premiere performance collaboration between Joshua Seidner and art collective Blvck America, Fear of a _____ Planet explores the blank space between the beats of a disco track; those unnamed moments amidst the gospel lift of each strobe and the grounded truth of each deep bass throb. Within that black-lit blank space, the performer submits to his own blissed out, blessed out, and drugged out solitude. Immersed in audio manipulated to 1/800th its original speed and aspects of slow spectacle, he defines himself in waves of drawn out movement and dreamlike terms. Isolated from real-time, Fear of a _____ Planet plays with nightlife sub-culture, club-culture, and the desire for private escape on a public dance floor. Duration 1h45m.

Below: Fear of a _____ Planet Photo Documentation, 2011.

· First Fight

Joshua — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:05:36 +0000

First Fight, presented in a white-washed concrete space, sets six men against one another in improvisational physical confrontation. Within the ring-fight, each performer is afforded an opportunity to assert dominance over the opposing five, alternately filling the role of warrior and defender. The inherent violence in those interactions is tempered and informed by text, delivered in ringmaster style, that speaks of a journey from male adolescence to adulthood, from the old-world East to the new-world West, grounding the piece in the virtues of traditional fighting-as-sport. Throughout the performance, machine elements of smoke, strobe, and snow are incorporated and layered into the action, culminating with the men in a body-bonded pyramid of fists, flesh, and blood both fake and real. Duration 30m.

Invite photo by Bogdan Teslar Kwiatkowski. Below: First Fight Photo Documentation, 2010.

· Esquire

Joshua — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:00:38 +0000

Using the red-light tropes of a traditional brothel, Esquire, set in a private penthouse suite, incorporates intimate contact with each spectator. Informed by the cartoon-masculine showmanship of Russia’s popular male striptis, the performance piece allows each performer to present himself as Jinetero, the Cuban slang for hustlers as “horse jockeys” that “ride the tourists.” Amidst a haze of tequila shots and reggaeton blasting, the spectator is urged to physically interact and induced to use each performer as rough trade. Upon any aggression on the part of the spectator, the performer is prompted to deliver an expository confession to the spectator in whisper. It is in the use of that whispered plea that Esquire contextualizes the reality of exploitation, exoticization, and human traffick in this act of male strip. Performance duration 1h30m. Filmed in night-vision. Endless loop.

Performance installation presented and filmed at:
Esquire Magazine’s Signature Space at The Soho Mews
Benefit for The Watermill Center | New York City | 29 October 2009
Performers: Joshua Seidner, Sardor Sodikov, Leif Huckman, Alessandro Magania

Below: Esquire Video Stills, 2009.

··· Brief

Joshua — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:33:54 +0000

POWDERBURN is an original play, currently in development, that follows one man from an old world to a new world to an underground otherworld. The piece pits itself against themes of masculinity, violence, and immigration. Text veers from prose to broken translations of Barrio Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic slang, Russian mat and other mother tongues. Physicality is confrontational, culled from sport and street-fights of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Drawing from a number of disparate social and societal influences, POWDERBURN presents a clusterfuck of culture clashes, deathmatches, and old-world machismo set against the corruption and pop of the début de siècle; the blood and fire filled streets of somewhere East versus the broken neon promises of somewhere West.

Selected as part of the Artist-in-Residence program at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, POWDERBURN was first workshopped in Fall 2009. Throughout the residency, work included delving into both the slang/languages and physicality of the material. Research ranged from ethnic exogroups to exoticism; cockfight culture to post-colonialism. Daily strength and duration exercises led to the practice and performance of one individual act of aggression, drawn and isolated from within the text, per night. Those acts included, among others: Jumpen, youth-driven European form of street dance; Military drills influenced by Krav Maga, the IDF’s hand-to-hand combat fighting technique, Speczna, the Soviet Army training system, and the US Army Cross-Fit approach; Fireplay; Turkish Oil Wrestling; Backyard Deathmatches; and finally, Intros of each character to an invited audience. Throughout the POWDERBURN residency, the physical demand made upon each participant was continually increased as each act further defined the characters being developed, creating the opportunity to examine the larger questions of spectacle and shifting identity in the piece. Listen to POWDERBURN interview on NPR.

POWDERBURN workshop reading held with New York Theatre Workshop, December 2010.

powderburning@gmail.com | facebook.com/powderburn

··· Development

Joshua — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:30:50 +0000

POWDERBURN workshop reading:
New York Theatre Workshop | New York City | 20 December 2010
Director: Joshua Seidner | Performers: Kobi Libii, Edward O’Blenis, Brian Greer,
Mark Vazquez, Paul Bomba, Christopher Scheer | Assistant: Terell Richardson

···· Intros

Joshua — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:44:22 +0000

···· Jumpen

Joshua — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:42:13 +0000

···· Militant

Joshua — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:40:57 +0000

···· Fireplay

Joshua — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:38:34 +0000