The Sleeping Poet and the Jongleuse

A performance and dinner

TAIX
Los Angeles, CA 

September 14 and 15, 2016

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The Sleeping Poet and the Jongleuse is a new cabaret-style performance by artist Shana Lutker. With an eclectic cast including knife jugglers and strongmen, live music, and swinging chandeliers, the show tells the story of a fistfight that took place on July 2, 1925 at a Paris banquet. This per- formance is part of Lutker’s ongoing body of work on the history of the fistfights of the Surrealists. At the French restaurant TAIX, an LA-fixture since 1927, the audience will enjoy a four-course meal, playfully mirroring the banquet for Symbolist poet Saint-Pol-Roux that was the setting of the contentious 1925 brawl spurred on by the young Surrealists.

The Sleeping Poet and the Jongleuse is a commissioned performance that is part of LAXART’s Occasional platform and is Lutker’s first performance in Los Angeles. Other performances include The Average Mysterious and the Shirt Off Its Back, part of Chapter 3, commissioned by Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and performed at PAMM in May 2015 and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, as part of Lutker’s solo exhibition Le “NEW” Monocle, Chapters 1 – 3 (October 29, 2015 – February 16, 2016). The Nose, the Cane, the Broken Left Arm, Lutker’s first performance based on the Surrrealist fistfights, was a Performa 13 Com- mission, staged in NY in 2013. A version of this play was recently presented at Cabaret Voltaire as part of the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of DADA.

About The Occasional

Initiated in 2013, The Occasional is a series of ambitious commissioned projects produced by a national curatorial team that establishes criticality and innovation through collaboration between artists and curators. The Occasional focuses on international artist residencies, long-term projects, and newly commissioned work presented in experimental contexts throughout Los Angeles. The Occasional is a flexible platform that addresses the problematics of biennials; projects are not bound to institutional time but rather allow an artist to work at their own pace through research, development, and execution. The series takes a city in flux as its starting point, examining L.A.’s capacity for experimentation outside traditional institutional settings.

Founded in 2005, LAXART is Los Angeles’ leading independent contemporary art space supporting artistic and curatorial freedom. The organization is committed to producing newly commissioned works of art, to present experimental exhibitions, public art initiatives, and publications with emerging, mid-career and established local, national and international artists.

LAXART’s programs are produced with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The Getty Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Pasadena Art Alliance; and The Stratton-Petit Foundation.