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FEBRUARY 16, 2001--Cutting-edge visual artists, conductors, choreographers, and performance groups will present works-in-progress at Oberlin College this semester. The free public performances are part of the Maverick Artists/Visionary Educators Series, sponsored by the Henry Luce Initiative in the Emerging Arts.

"'Emerging arts' are two words that generate a disproportionate amount of curiosity and confusion," says Linda Weintraub, Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Arts. "The term emphasizes that the arts change over time, which is true, but--more importantly--the nature of change has also changed. It has accelerated rapidly, embracing new mediums and exceeding the limits of traditional forms. Seeking strategies and approaches that are synchronized with these realities is the mandate of the Henry Luce Initiative in the Emerging Arts at Oberlin College."

The Maverick Artists/Visionary Educators Series also will host workshops for the Oberlin College faculty, exploring innovative ways to teach the arts at a college level. The program will build on Oberlin's distinguished tradition of pedagogical experimentation.

Guest artists in the series include:

• Goat Island, a Chicago-based performance group that will demonstrate its improvisational techniques Monday, February 19, at 8:00 P.M. in Wilder Main. Goat Island's works orchestrate dance, drama, mime, and spoken text. Each work develops around a spoken theme, and explores ways in which the theme appears in history, literature, film, science, and the performers' personal lives.
• Choreographer David Dorfman, will perform Monday, March 5, at 8:00 P.M. in Wilder Main. As founder of the David Dorfman Dance Troupe, Dorfman encourages performers to speak and play musical instruments while they dance, and to portray their own emotions and personalities.
• Rirkrit Tiravanija will lecture Monday, March 19, at 8:00 P.M. in Philips Gymnasium. Tiravanija has earned the reputation of an internationally acclaimed artist, despite the fact that he does not generate product. Instead, Tiravanija creates opportunities for interactions between strangers, a maverick art form that includes offering free food and providing musical instruments for museum-goers to play. During his Oberlin presentation, "Come Eat His Lecture," Tiravanija will be cooking.
• Walter Thompson, a conductor and composer, will demonstrate a multidisciplinary system of conducting known as Sound Painting Monday, April 2, at 8:00 P.M. in the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies. The system, which Thompson developed, allows musicians, dancers, poets, actors, and visual artists to work in the medium of structured improvisation while performing together onstage.
• Alix Lambert, a photographer and filmmaker, will lecture Monday, April 23, at 8:00 P.M. in the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies. Lambert undertakes each project as a learning experience on the training ground of life, and generates documentation of the results in photography, film, or video.

Media Contact: Sue Kropp