Rob Andrews Performance: A Walk from the Denver International Airport to Counterpath, Sunday, September 1, 2013

Performance artist Rob Andrews comes to Denver on Labor Day Weekend for a major performance involving a workshop on Saturday, August 31, at Counterpath at 4 p.m., and then a walk from the Denver International Airport to Counterpath on Sunday, September 1, followed by a closing ceremony and reception at Counterpath that evening, starting at 7 p.m.

Saturday’s workshop, free and open to the public, is for anyone interested in being formally part of Sunday’s performance, in doing all or part of the walk from DIA with Andrews, or (in particular) in being part of a “drone choir” at Counterpath at the Sunday closing event. The invitation to this workshop is here, and you can also email counterpath@counterpathpress.org to sign up.

On Sunday at about 11 a.m. Andrews will begin his walk at DIA, most likely near the murals. He will than have two main meeting points along the way for anyone interested in joining the walk. The first will be at the intersection of Xanadu and Colfax at about 4 or 5 p.m. and the second about a mile from Counterpath, at the intersection of Humboldt and Colfax, for the walk’s final segment.

Andrews will live tweet the entire walk, so it will be easy to track his location. Follow the piece on twitter @andrewsautomat with the hashtag #endofempire.

At the closing ceremony at Counterpath, scheduled to begin at about 7 p.m. Sunday evening, Andrews will join his drone choir and bury, in the Counterpath back yard, the “void seed,” which is a small statue he will carry with him during the entire walk and that will be further “energized” by the choir at Counterpath.

Please join us for part or all of this extraordinary series of events: Saturday’s workshop, on Sunday at one of the meeting points mentioned above, and the closing ceremony and reception at Counterpath Sunday evening.

Below is a description of the event from Rob Andrews:

Empire is all. We’re fashioned in its image. It kills us with its leases and ledgers. We’ve forgotten the old spirit stuff. The blood. The light. The balance.

Artist Rob Andrews plans to End the Empire in Denver on September 1, 2013. Involute it. Strip it down and deliver the same erasure it delivers into our children’s beds and heads.

On September 1st Andrews will visit Counterpath to reclaim our connections to the land and VOID and each other. He will carry a sculpture, the VOID SEED, 26 miles from the Denver International Airport, an apocryphal seat of Empire, to Counterpath in the heart of the city.

Part Johnny Appleseed of the Apocalypse, part penitent, part ascetic, Rob will plant the SEED in Denver and enact a charging ritual on it at Counterpath with other local artists and seekers.

The VOID SEED is a collection of objects. Heartaches. Distillations of the best that we are and the best we can do. At Counterpath, we’ll charge the SEED with ecstatic song and movement, and bury it deep in the ground: under the blood, under the wires, under the rot of Empire’s foundations.

The SEED will grow. Slowly at first, but once the door widens, Empire will lose clarity and surface tension. We will be free to transition. Free to Be VOID.

Please join Rob for the last mile of his walk to the gallery. You can meet him at (location TBD) on the 1st at 6pm. Together the group will walk to the gallery and begin the ritual.

When the Empire falls: sing VOID, thrum VOID,

BE VOID.

Drinks, snacks and discussion will follow the performance. RSVP

Rob Andrews (website here) lives and works in Brooklyn. He has shown work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Exit Art, Grace Exhibition Space, and is represented by English Kills Art Gallery. He recently enacted mass group feet cleanings in Union Square as part of Art in Odd Places, and in Bitola, Macedonia as part of the Exchange Radical Moments Live Art Festival on 11.11.11. He is a 2010-11 Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art recipient.

artist statement:

My practice is about fear, blood and spit–the susurration of gain and loss beyond language. I’m afraid we’ll lose the old stories, or they’ll change so much we’ll forget the stink of each other. I enact rituals and tell stories using my body and the bodies of others. If stories aren’t re-told and distorted, they petrify.

I steal from tradition, religious practice, and my collaborators. I get their stories wrong on purpose in order to make them right in another way. My practice involves personal intervention into the muck of inherited mythology, public actions, and volunteer and forced collaborations.

selected performances/exhibitions:

Collapsing Time in Search of the Miraculous
with Rishika Mehrishi
LUMEN Live Art Festival
Performance
Atlantic Salt Yards
Staten Island, NY
June 23, 2012
Duration: 3 hours

VOID COWL
with Valerie Keuhne
Grace Exhibition Space
Brooklyn, NY
April 14, 2012
Duration: 3 hours

Clean Bitola
Exchange Radical Moments
Performance
Bezisten Old Covered Market
Bitola, Macedonia
November 11, 2011
Duration: 11 hours

DOOR WORK
Solo Show – Performance, Sculpture,
Photography, Pirate Radio
English Kills Art Gallery
Brooklyn, NY
October 22-November 6, 2011

Clean Union Square
Art in Odd Places: RITUAL
Performance
Union Square, NYC
October 8, 2011
Duration: 12 hours

Grappling Door
Art in Odd Places: RITUAL
Performance
TheaterLab
September 30, 2011
Duration: 1 hour

an—bird
LUMEN Festival, Group Show
Performance
National Lighthouse Museum, Staten Island
June 25, 2011
Duration: 2 hours

Votive Door (K)
Deep/Shallow, Group Show
Performance
Gowanus Studio Space
April 29 + May 26, 2011
Duration: 3 hours

Void Door for Ben Vautier for Yves Klein
Group Show, Flux This
Performance
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
March 25, 2011

Be Void
Group Show, Flux This
Performance
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
March 24, 2011

Blood Draw
Group Show, Maximum Perception Performance Festival
Performance
English Kills Art Gallery, NYC
January 15, 2011

Rim Spirit Collection
Group Show, Marni Kotak’s MyHouse
Performance
Marni Kotak’s MyHouse, NYC
November 14, 2010

Scouring Spirit Release
Group Show, Your Third Eye Is A Dictator
Performance
Gowanus Studio Space, NYC
October 16, 2010

Eating the Wall Street Journal (Invited Participant)
Performance
New Museum, NYC
Performer in William Pope.L’s “ETWSJ” performance
October 5, 2010

Cusp (Invited Participant)
Performance
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC
Performer in William Pope.L’s “Cusp” performance
“landscape + object + animal”
May 10, 2010

Good Morning Song (Please Join Hands and Sing Along)
Performance
Grace Exhibition Space, NYC
April 2, 2010

Assembly
Performance
English Kills Gallery (in conjunction with SITE Festival)
March 6, 2010

Sehnsucht
Performance Documentation and Artist Writings
Online Artist Project
Launch: January 2010

Clean Dobill
Performance (in collaboration with Peter Dobill, Actionist)
Clean Humans Series. Gowanus Studio Space
January 23, 2010