A Spoonful of Sugar

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features work by nine artists who strategically employ humor as a means to engage political debate, inspire hope and provide momentary respite from the boundless barrage of imperial war vocabulary.

Packard Jennings

Julia Page

Mads Lynnerup, Michael Arcega, Steven Lambert, Kristin Lucas.

Guest Curated by Jackie Sumell.

As San Francisco struggles to maintain itself as the epicenter of progressive thought, this show brings together the work of nine Bay Area artists who strategically employ humor as a means to engage political debate, inspire hope, and provide momentary respite from the boundless barrage of imperial war vocabulary.

As the imperial war machine actively redefines patriotism through compelling propaganda and berhawk information generators, perhaps never before has it been so important to interrupt the homogenized sentiment of an emotionally paralyzed society and activate political criticism.

As intolerable global realities confine parts of society to a frustrated state of political apathy and threaten progressive momentumA Spoonful of Sugar provides the opportunity to revitalize consciousness and celebrate absurdity.

Kristin Lucas:

The Dispatcher: Carrying Green is a political satire and comedy set inthe near future. New York City is nicknamed The Big Orange afterdecades of relentless government-issued orange alert status. The playchronicles the day-to-day engagements of a radio dispatcher for hire(private contractor of the airwaves). Among dispatch clientele are aneighborhood vigilante patrol of canine-identified humans formed outof a therapeutic support group. They call themselves the Sniff Squad.

The original Sniff Squad patrol debuted in March 2004 for a publicperformance on New York’s Lower East Side while Lucas was aparticipant of the Artists Alliance Rotating Studio Program. Theinitial objective was to sniff around for missing civil liberties. TheSniff Squad characters in this script were also informed by an artclass exercise on University of Texas campus, Spring 2004. Theperformance focused on understanding the power and authority that camewith a uniformed presence in a post 9-11 era, balancing canine andhuman behavior, inventing jargon and wordplay, setting up and breakingour own rules as performers on the fly.

This radio play was commissioned by 6th Werkleitz Biennale(http://www.werkleitz.de/events/biennale2004/index.html/) which tookplace September 1 – 5, 2004 in Halle (Salle), Germany under thisyear’s festival theme Common Property. Written and directed by KristinLucas. Sound recording by Tom Roe at free103point9 studio inWilliamsburg Brooklyn. Animals of the Bible of San Antonio and ZomZoms of Austin provided the music.

The Dispatcher: Carrying Green is also streaming athttp://www.pair.com/klucas/radioplay. Visitors to the site can alsodownload the radio play as an mp3 file.