Failure to Identify is proud to present Gabrielle Civil and Julio Serrano Echeverría at Alabama Song at 2521 Oakdale Houston TX 77004 on Sunday, April 30 at 6:30pm.
Both of these artists are from out of town and will be here in Houston as part of two local art shows/performance events. Failure to Identify and Alabama Song are providing them a space to present their own work in an intimate environment.
Julio Serrano Echeverría will be making a visit to Houston from Guatemala as part of One Stone and the Rain/Una piedra y la lluvia, an exhibit at Lawndale Art Center curated by Laura Wellen. He will be reading poetry in Spanish, with translations into English (by various translators).
Black feminist performance artist Gabrielle Civil will be in town as part of Wura Natasha Ogunji’s House of Wahala at DiverseWorks. For her F2I performance, Civil will activate her new book, Swallow the Fish, a memoir in performance art. Incorporating reading, storytelling and performance gestures, this event will crack open her text and explore creative process within her beating heart.
The event is free.
All are welcome.
For questions, please contact John Pluecker.
GABRIELLE CIVIL is a Black feminist performance artist, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over 40 original solo and collaborative performance works around the world. Recent works include “Oration (a ritual of ancestors),” at Black Intersections in California (2017); “Northern Oracle (a ritual of nest and flight)" in Toronto (2017); “…hewn and forged….” at the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (2016); and “Say My Name” (an action for 270 abducted Nigerian girls)” performed around the world (2014-ongoing). Her writing has appeared in Small Axe, Obsidian, Asterix, Rain Taxi, and other publications. Swallow the Fish, her memoir in performance, was selected for the #RECURRENT series of Civil Coping Mechanisms Press (2017).The aim of her work is to open up space.
JULIO SERRANO ECHEVERRÍA is a Guatemalan writer and multidisciplinary artist who works in spaces related to film and the visual arts. Serrano's books of poetry include Estado de materia (2017), Ser el tiempo (2015), Central América (2013), and Actos de magia (2012), among others. He has published numerous children's books, including En botas de astronauta (2016) and the collection of Maya narratives Desde los orígenes, Desde las aguas, and Desde el mundo de los espíritus (2015). As audiovisual producer, Serrano has worked between news documentary, cinematic essay, fiction, and video art; many of these projects have been shown in international film festivals and exhibition spaces.
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Since May 2012, Failure to Identify has been an experiment in creating spaces for innovative, interdisciplinary & risk-taking writers & artists to perform for Houston publics. Usually these events feature writers from out-of-town, often in conjunction with locally-based folk. The series has no fixed schedule and is super-occasional and super-dependent on happy coincidences and friendly participants. Events have sometimes been held on the back patio of Kaboom Books or at other times in conjunction with local organizations like Art League, Project Row Houses, Fotofest and more.
This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers.