updated: mendi+keith obadike: four electric ghosts

Posted on | May 4, 2009 | No Comments

On the evenings of Thursday through Saturday, May 14—16, The Kitchen
will present the world premiere of Mendi + Keith Obadike’s Four
Electric Ghosts.

Press Contact: Blake Zidell & Associates
tel: 718.643.9052
fax: 718.643.9502
blake@blakezidell.com

Drawing from Amos Tutuola’s novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and
the arcade game Pac-Man®, Four Electric Ghosts creates a composite
world at the intersection of game culture, the folktale and pop songs.
Part of a series of “opera-masquerades,” Four Electric Ghosts
extends the performance duo’s experiments with layered narratives,
online performance and popular culture. With four dancers, live video
processing and a band, three vocalists tell a story from the perspective
of four ghosts. The narrative evolves through masquerade, movement, live
music and video interviews. The story, told in six short vignettes,
details the ghosts’ encounters with a voracious mortal who invades
their territory, disrupting the Land of the Dead.

Commissioned by The Kitchen, the piece features Keith on laptop; text
and vocals by Mendi joined by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Karma Mayet
Johnson; choreography, stage directions, and dancers from Angela’s
Pulse Performance Projects (Paloma McGregor, Patricia McGregor, Maria
Bauman, Catherine Denecy, Marjani Forte and Keisha Turner) and new music
created in collaboration with bassist/producer Melvin Gibbs and musician
Guillermo E. Brown. Pianist Shoko Nagai, bassist Keith Witty and Brown
will perform the music live. The design team includes Kate Cusack
(costumes), Paloma McGregor (choreography), Patricia McGregor (stage
direction), Yuki Nakajima (animation and projection design), Alexandre
Delaunay (scenic design), and Ryan Schmidt (lighting). Curated by
Rashida Bumbray, performances will take place at 8:00 P.M. at The
Kitchen (512 West 19th Street). Tickets are $10.

Mendi + Keith Obadike create music art, and literature. Described as
“daring, funny and innovative” by the Washington Post, their
projects employ techniques from conceptual art, pop music, and
documentary practice. They are currently working on a series of
“opera-masquerades”, of which Four Electric Ghosts is one. Built
around a cycle of songs, each work has a theater module, a gallery
module, a book module and an album module. Past works include The Sour
Thunder (2002), an internet opera commissioned by the Yale Cabaret, on
Bridge Records; Big House/Disclosure (2007), commissioned by
Northwestern University; Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge
Records) and Armor and Flesh (Lotus Press), a poetry collection. They
also created the new media art suite Black.Net.Art, which includes:
Blackness for Sale (2001), The Interaction of Coloreds (2002) at The
Whitney, and The Pink of Stealth (2003) for Electronic Arts Intermix, NY
African Film Festival. Keith received a BA in Visual Art from North
Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from the Yale
School of Drama. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and
a Ph. D. in Literature from Duke University.

Funding Credits
This program is made possible with generous support from the Amphion
Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Aaron Copland
Fund for Music, The Greenwall Foundation, and with public funds from the
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State
Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Four Electric Ghosts has also received support from Toni Morrison’s
Atelier at Princeton University.

ABOUT THE KITCHEN
The Kitchen is one of New York City’s oldest nonprofit performance
and exhibition spaces, showing experimental work by innovative artists,
both emerging and established. Programs range from dance, music, and
theatrical performances to video and media arts exhibitions to literary
events, film screenings, and artists’ talks. Since its inception in
1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural
landscape of this country and has helped launch the careers of many
artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.

Box Office Information:
212.255.5793 ext. 11
Tue-Sat, 2-6pm

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.thekitchen.org <http://www.thekitchen.org>
http://events.nytimes.com/gst/nycguide.html?detail=events&id=3194430&d=9

I finally got to meet Mendi & Keith this week at their presentation in Berkeley as part of Leigh Raiford’s Black Visual Culture Speaker Series (see below) this spring. Though I’ve known of their work for so long it was my first opportunity to hear them speak about it, and, okay, ridiculous—I love them! Are they for real? They’re so genuine, warm, and smart, smart, smart—I’m sorry I didn’t have more of a chance to chat with them. So they spoke about this upcoming performance at The Kitchen in NYC, curated by Rashida Bumbray, and then Jet Blue went and dangled the possibility of $79 tickets from SFO in front of me only to quickly dash those hopes, so needless to say I wish I were going but am not. But if you are there and can, you should.

There’s one more speaker in the series next week, John Jennings. Congrats to Leigh on organizing such a great group of speakers.

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