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GRACKLE CALL is a 90 minute performative audiovisual tour that directs audiences to the roosting locations of the Great-tailed Grackle.  Mimicking a birding experience, participants will be provided with binoculars, iPods, and a printed program guide that will direct them to experimental performances, installations, radio stories, and soundscapes examining local grackle lore, appropriation, human impact on species behavior, migration, land use, and the many failed human attempts to control the species.  

GRACKLE CALL is directed by Steve Parker and will premiere at the Fusebox Festival on April 19, 20, and 21 at 7PM.

This project is augmented by a series of free community workshops that explore birding, listening, and writing & a free iOS app that responds to the user's GPS coordinates and plays original audio content directing them to grackle roosting locations throughout Austin.  


 ARTISTS

Steve Parker (Lead Artist) creates communal art to examine behavior, control, and history. His projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening sculptures made from salvaged marching band instruments; and transportation symphonies for cars, pedicabs, and bicycles.  

Yuliya Lanina is a Russian-born American multimedia artist. Her projects are not confined to one art form but exist at the intersection of visual and performing arts, technological innovation, and social issues like gender perception, sexual objectification and violence, loss, and motherhood.

Austin Soundwaves provides high quality music education to artistically-underserved youth as a means to strengthen resiliency and awaken intrinsic motivation to learn, create, and achieve.

Martin Rodriguez received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2003.  His most recent works include the use of mixed media, photography, and video.  His art is part of both private and public collections.  Martín is assistant to the Curator for the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Art Collection.  

From sanitation workers to firefighters, Allison Orr creates award-winning choreography with unlikely performers. Inspired by the beauty and virtuosity in the practiced, habitual movement of labor, Allison’s dances feature the choreography of work that sustains our everyday lives.

Mose Buchele is KUT's energy and environment reporter. He has been on staff at KUT since 2009, covering local and state issues.  He's has also worked as a blogger on politics and an education reporter at his hometown paper in Western Massachusetts. 

Alex Keller is an audio artist, sound designer, curator and teacher based in Austin, Texas. His work is in the media of performance, installation, and recorded release, and reflects his interests in architecture, language, abstraction and music.

Heloise Gold lives in Austin, Texas. She is a performing artist, choreographer, dancer, comedian, T’ai Chi/Qi Gong instructor and co-founder of Art From the Streets, a project for homeless artists. In 2015 she was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame.

Verena Gaudy is a contemporary ceramic artist, currently enrolled in the MFA program at UTSA, San Antonio, Texas. Born in Graz, Austria in 1975, she moved to Great Britain after Highschool graduation and achieved her BA(hons) from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff in 2005. 

James Brush lives in Austin, TX where he teaches high school English. He earned his MA at the University of Texas at Austin where he was a James Michener Fellow at the Texas Center for Writers. He is author of several published books, including Birds Nobody Loves.

Martin Byhower  is a science and environmental educator, writer, and editor; professional birding guide, habitat restoration specialist, consultant, and marine biologist. He is a past Audubon President.

 

Luke Quinton is a print+radio journalist in Austin, Texas & St. John's, Newfoundland.  He writes for the Austin American-Statesman, Gramophone, Maclean's, & produces stories for fine radio programs: Marketplace, NPR, & PRX,

Vladimir Rannev (*1970, Moscow) is a composer and a lecturer at the St. Petersburg State University. Rannev is a recipient of a Gartow Stiftung scholarship (Germany, 2002), the winner of the Salvatore Martirano Award of the University Illinois (USA, 2009).

Cecily Parks is the author of two collections of poetry and editor of The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses (Everyman’s Library, 2016). Her poems appear in The New Republic, The New Yorker, Tin House, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State University.

 

Andrea Ariel, choreography consultant.


 WORK SAMPLES


 WORKSHOPS

Leading up to the premiere, we will partner with the Hispanic Alliance for the Performing Arts and Austin Soundwaves to offer a series of free community workshops that will explore birding, field recording, Deep Listening, and composition.  These workshops will be taught by ASW Teaching Artists Sarah Brown, Doug Laustsen, and the project artists above.  

Workshop Schedule:

 


 FACULTY

Originally from Australia, Sarah Brown studied trumpet at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the University of Melbourne before moving to the US to attend the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Following this, she came to Austin to make music with friends, and eat tacos. 

 

Doug Laustsen is a musician and educator living in Austin, TX. As a composer he writes music for interactive electronics and electronically assisted musicians. He also performs in a variety of groups as a trombonist. Recently he's been spending a lot of time thinking about the weather. 

 


 PARTNERS

The Hispanic Alliance for the Performing Arts serves the Hispanic community of central Texas through three innovative signature programs: 

  • Emprendedor U addresses the unique barriers faced by Hispanic entrepreneurs through business education and mentorship. 
  • Austin Soundwaves brings high quality music education to Austin’s artistically and educationally underserved youth.  
  • OLEH tailors resources to holistically support personal and entrepreneurial development for Latinas including wellness, business skills and work-life balance.

Fusebox champions artists exploring fresh terrain from a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives. We present contemporary theater, dance, film, visual art, music, literature, and everything in between. This cross-disciplinary approach is central to our understanding of creativity, innovation and meaningful dialogue.


Our primary program is an annual hybrid art festival that takes place in Austin each April. The 2014 Fusebox Festival featured 60 unique events, 24 venues, 300 local, national and international artists, and reached 30,000 people. Fusebox primarily serves populations in Central Texas, however 25% of our audience comes from outside of the Austin metro area.

Travis Audubon was founded in 1952 by visionary Central Texans who recognized the vital connection between conserving wildlife habitat and the ecological balance necessary for healthy, sustainable, and habitable communities. Travis Audubon promotes the enjoyment, understanding, and conservation of native birds and their habitats through:

  • Land Conservation
  • Habitat Restoration and Management
  • Environmental Education
  • Conservation Advocacy

Soundyarn is a platform for creating, sharing and experiencing interactive geolocation-dependent soundscapes, audio tours, music compositions, sound games or any other content that is best enjoyed in audio format in the real world. As a creator you'll use the iPad app with a simple graphical user interface and as a user you'll experience your own or others' creations with the iPhone app when out and about, whether you are walking, jogging, cycling, or driving.


 SPONSORS

     

This project is generously supported by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the Mid America Arts Alliance.