Cloud Eye Control, Half Life, 2015; photo: Eugene Ahn
What:
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) welcomes families and intergenerational audiences to the museum for its third Free Family Day on Sunday, April 23, 2017. While the museum is always free for visitors 18 and younger, on Free Family Day it is also free for up to two adults accompanying each visitor 18 and younger. Tickets are available onsite only on April 23.
Free Family Day programming features a series of activations by the Los Angeles–based artist collective Cloud Eye Control with Chi-wang Yang, Anna “Oxygen” Huff and Miwa Matreyek. As Cloud Eye Control resituates their acclaimed performance piece, Half Life, from the theater to the museum, visitors are invited to explore the many components that bring a performance to life — from immersive video, original music and digital animation to costumes and set design.
Created in response to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, Half Life examines cycles of destruction and rebirth, exploring the relationship between the body and the environment. Over two weekends, April 15–16 and 22–23, 2017, Cloud Eye Control presents short performances, as well as an array of artist-designed interactive technologies and “psychic armor” building workshops, culminating with Free Family Day on Sunday, April 23.
Free Family Days are generously supported by the John & Marcia Goldman Foundation and the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District.
Cloud Eye Control: Half Life is funded in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Why:
Performance All Ages brings newly commissioned, participatory artworks to intergenerational audiences and facilitates direct engagement with artists through workshops, gallery activations and live performances. Cloud Eye Control’s residency is the third and final in the series during the inaugural 2016–17 season, following Chris Kallmyer: A Paradise Choir and Lucky Dragons: User Agreement.
When:
Free Family Day, Sunday, April 23, 2017
9:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Galleries open at 10 a.m.
Cloud Eye Control: Half Life, Saturdays and Sundays, April 15–16 and 22–23, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.
Both weekends feature visually immersive drop-in experiences, imaginative activations and interactive performances happening throughout the day, including:
- Psychic Blobs: Museumgoers are encouraged to wander through the galleries and happen upon these colorful creatures.
- LiDAR Data Bodies: Presented in partnership with Velodyne, this activation explores how Light Detection and Radar (LiDAR) sensors “see” the presence of the body in the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium on Floor 1.
- Body Scans: Imaginary Tools for Self-Analysis: This interactive experience offers a one-of-a-kind face, hand or full body scan in the Helen and Charles Schwab Hall on Floor 2.
- Ruins Walk: Visitors can meander through fantastical, animated landscapes and reflect on modern ecology and its destruction in the Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box on Floor 4.
Saturday and Sunday, April 15–16, 11:30 a.m.–4 p.m.
- A set of 20-minute Data Sensitivity Training workshops take place every half hour in Schwab Hall on Floor 2.
Saturday and Sunday, April 22–23, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.
- Rituals for New Shapes, a workshop where museumgoers can craft and wear unique “psychic armor,” takes place in Schwab Hall on Floor 2.
- Scenes from Half Life screen in the Peterson White Box on Floor 4.
- Miwa Matreyek presents her visually mesmerizing performances, This World Made Itself and Myth and Infrastructure, at noon and 2 p.m. in the Phyllis Wattis Theater on Floor 1.
Where:
SFMOMA, 151 Third St, San Francisco, CA 94103
More:
For more information about Free Family Day and Cloud Eye Control: Half Life, visit sfmoma.org/performance-all-ages.