First Person Arts

Join the Complaint Choir!

First Meeting: Thursday, September 25th at 7pm
The Gershman Y @ 401 S. Broad St. (Broad and Pine)

NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!

StorySlam tonight at L’Etage (6th and Bainbridge above Beau Monde)

Doors at 7:30 and the Slam begins at 8:30.  We’ll be collecting complaints for the Philly Complaint Choir outside before the doors open!

Oh yeah…and:

Nicole Brewer, CBS 3’s Digital Journalist, stopped by the First Person Arts offices on Friday to shoot a little feature in her “Behind the Blog” series.  Miss Koco came along to share some of her work as a way to show how art can persist and, better yet, be amplified across the web, by building little social networks around stories.  You can see the segment she produced here.

One of our 2008 Salon presenters, Jenny Kanzler, and Shelley Spector–First Person Arts’ partner in whine for the Philly Complaint Choir–are part of a show at My House Gallery dedicated entirely to the 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper!  Besides being a great idea for a show, it offers an added entendre to the phrase “works on paper.”  Check it out tonight:

My House Gallery invites you to attended its opening of PAPER JAM on Friday, September 19th from 5:30pm to 8:30pm.

The 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper has become a fixture in our
contemporary culture. This standard image confronts us every day.
Containing advertisement, files, faxes, business contracts, photo
copies, and a myriad of information, we take in the information, often
over looking the spatial context within which it is contained. What if
our standard paper size was drastically different? What if it was half
of or doubled in size? How would this change our perception and
understanding of information? Paper Jam puts the 8 1/2 by 11 piece of
paper under the hand of the artist to allow them to expand or contract
their artistic understanding of the parameters of space presented.

My House Gallery
2534 S. 8th Street
Philadelphia, PA
19148

You can see Shelley Spector (whose sit Spector PROJECTS chronicles her own artistic projects) at the preliminary meeting for the Complaint Choir, September 25th at the Gershman Y (401 S. Broad St.).  Find out more details here at the Philly Complaint Choir Blog.  See you there!

Download it:

2008 First Person Festival Press Release

A champion of first person arts (and First Person Arts), Miss Koco’s established a nice archive of projects in what we might as well call Distributed Documentary: “Distributed,” because it is not all collected at one time, but “Documentary,” nevertheless, because it does adhere to a single collection point.  Here’s one she conducted for a year in 1998-1999:

the door, 1998-1999

For a year I asked people who came to visit me to sign and leave something from their wallet, bag, or purse on my door.

It’s a visitor tax, levied entirely in ephemera:

Check out the rest of the collection HERE.

Davy Rothbart, with Found Magazine, has built the world’s largest ‘door’ and encouraged millions of people across the world to deliver to it an astonishing array of found items-scraps from the lives of others–fragments of stories that form a far less time-bound or geographically centered picture than Miss Koco’s “the door.”  But for what his found objects lack in narrative coherence, they gain in sheer wonder and, in some cases, voyeuristic indulgence.

Rothbart will be at the First Person Arts Festival, Friday November 14th with a collection of some of his found items.  Miss Koco, we’re guessing, will probably be there too.

Found
Location: Painted
Bride
Time: 7-8PM
Cost: $10

Davy Rothbart,
founder of the wildly popular underground magazine Found (also
a book and website) weaves some of his most fascinating finds into an
energetic presentation. Join Rothbart for his entertaining
elaboration on the stories behind the cast-off notes and letters
plucked from the nation’s subways, schools, streets and
sidewalks.

Davy
Rothbart, creator of Found Magazine, is a collector,
author, filmmaker, and frequent contributor to the public radio show
This American Life. The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, a
collection of Rothbart’s short stories, was published in 2005
by Simon & Schuster, and Geffen Records recently released
Rothbart’s documentary film How We Survive about
the punk rock band Rise Against. Rothbart lives in his hometown of
Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And exhibit of
Found items will be on display in the Painted Bride Gallery
throughout the Festival. Audience members are invited to contribute
their own discoveries to Found’s collection of anonymous
ephemera.

Tickets are available for advance purchase here.

First Person Salon veteran Martha Kemper’s got just two nights left in her Fringe show: Me, Miss Krause and Joan.   It’s at 2nd Stage at the Adrienne (2030 Sansom) Friday and Saturday night at 7pm.  She workshopped part of the piece–as it turns out, just a fragment of the larger story–for us at the May Salon at the Gershman Y to great acclaim:

And if you happened to see the Chestnut Hill Local this week, you might have seen a familiar face!

The Krause in the play’s title refers to Martha Kemper’s mentor, Alvina Krause. “She deeply believed in the power of theater to change lives,” recalled Martha. “She believed in students. She believed in young people’s ability to learn.” Ms. Kemper met Alvina Krause after graduating from Northwestern University in 1976. Together, they relocated to Bloomsburg, Pa. During Martha’s stay there, she would experience a radically life-changing event; she was violently assaulted. However, it would be Alvina who would help guide her through the traumatic aftermath. While Martha was in the hospital, it was Ms. Krause who encouraged Martha to write down her feelings. It was there that the groundwork for Me, Miss Krause and Joan was laid.

Read the rest here and then go check out the show.

For tickets to Me, Miss Krause and Joan, the Fringe Festival box office is located at the lot next to the national show room on 127 N. 2nd St. and can be contacted at 215-413-1318 or by email at info@livearts-fringe.org.

Next StorySlam: September 23rd

August Winner Sam Malissa will host!

First Person Arts is proud to welcome Angel Hogan to the First Person Salon at the Gershman Y this Wednesday from 7-9pm at 401 S. Broad St.

She will present Perkasie Dirt: Growing up Brown in a White Town

I will show a 5-minute award winning documentary Love and the Lamb (about my childhood experiences growing up adopted and mixed /black in a surprisingly unforgiving rural white town in the 1980’s), read a short memoir piece which is part of a book I am working on, as well as three autobiographical poems.

In addition to telling the winning story at our special Kimmel Center “Summertime” Story Slam, she also tore up the stage as a guest storyteller for the “Caught” Slam in July.  You can see her in the Festival Grand Slam on November 15th as part of the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Arts.  (Tix Available Now!) But her history with First Person Arts goes back even further, to 2006, when her short memoir earned 3rd Place in the annual memoir competition.  Angel is a superstar of memoir and documentary, and she’s earned her stripes in fiction as well!  Make a night of it this Wednesday at the Gershman Y!  Also featuring a short documentary film by Andrew Schwalm and Shannon Kane-Meddock called Hooked: Philly’s Urban Anglers, Poetry by Robert Wright, and stand-up-comedy from real-life with Steve Gerben and Pat Barker

Put it on your Google calendar so you don’t forget:

First Person Salon at the Gershman Y

401 S. Broad St (Broad and Pine)

September 10th, 7-9pm

Cost: $5-$10 sliding scale

Beer available by donation from our friends at Flying Dog!

Maybe you noticed us out on the street in Old City last Friday, or at 40th and Walnut the Friday before collecting complaints.   We’re organizing a Complaint Choir!  You can add your own video complaint at the Viddler group Philly Complaint Choir or comment at the Philly Complaint Choir Blog. Here’s one of the first complaints we collected:

Find out more about the Philly Complaint Choir here, and sign up to sing by sending us an email!