Through Oct. 31, Atlantans can enjoy a six-day event featuring experimental, socially conscious live performances — indoors and out — in-person conversations with artists, and a free community meal cooked in an art gallery. This is what Atlanta-based artist platform Glo is offering in the West End in its eighth chapter of Tanz Farm.
Tanz Farm, glo’s production wing, invites artists from around the world to present workshops, performance installations and conversations on whatever subjects they please. Returning artist-in-residence Morgan Bobrow-Williams will present a continuation of “The Running Project: A Living Gallery,” the trans-disciplinary work begun last November at the historic Rhodes Theater.
“I’m looking forward to sharing these ideas in a more concentrated way,” said Bobrow-Williams, who uses they/them as their pronouns. “I’ve set up a lot of space for conversation with the community to hear and dialogue with them, which is really important to me.”
The week’s events will alternate between Gallery 992 — a space created for the arts by Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Kebbi Williams — and the Westview Corner Grocery, with most of the performances in the former. It marks Glo’s first time in an indoor space since the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020, as well as the platform’s first time taking a performance to the West End.
“Our community needs it,” Williams said. “It’s definitely an artsy neighborhood — it’s just not on the radar for high art like Glo is...so for them to come to us is just spectacular.”
While the Tanz Farm program centers around Bobrow-Williams’ work, the week will also feature conversations within the community — speakers include Glo founder Lauri Stallings and Gallery 992 owner Williams — and civic actions such as handing out art supplies and healthy snacks as part of Glo’s Play Kit initiative.
It’s a multifaceted program that puts community at the forefront.
“I think about bodies of work as well as the more-than-human positions choreography is able to occupy in 2021, and that has inspired me to make the kinds of things I do,” Stallings said in a press release. “Making this Tanz ..with Kebbi, Morgan and Westview Corner Grocery, is for West End families and people.”
Bobrow-Williams, a visual, conceptual and performance artist based in New York, has been working on “The Running Project” since last November. While the Augusta-born artist’s first Tanz Farm residency largely involved taking time to research and develop ideas, this time around Bobrow-Williams will present a more directed and intentional work.
But as the name suggests, “The Running Project: A Living Gallery” is alive, constantly evolving and never static. It’s an element Bobrow-Williams is fond of, one that’s exemplified in the documentary of the artist’s creative process by Annette Brown that’ll be screened on Oct. 30 at Gallery 992.
“It feels like a part of (the work) to have that process shown,” Bobrow-Williams said. “I connect with Glo a bit in not needing to polish anything and showing the rawness and essence as is.”
The core of Bobrow-Williams’ solo work was birthed out of reflections on the artist’s identity as well as events that were going on in the political sphere. Running plays a big part in “The Running Project,” both literally and metaphorically, as a way to present the dichotomy between someone wanting to live life freely and having an outside reality imposed on them.
Movement is only one facet of the project, though; sound, a sculpture and Brown’s documentary are also a part of this trans-disciplinary iteration, which Bobrow-Williams described as work that “fuses all the mediums and forms (together) to create something that is beyond those mediums and must also exist together.”
The work will be slightly different each night as it involves improvisational elements, mirroring glo’s own improvisational and, in Williams’ words, “experimental” style. Additionally, like Glo’s past site-specific work — in 2019, the group occupied Peachtree Street in front of the High Museum of Art — Bobrow-Williams’ “The Running Project” will leave the gallery for a day on Oct. 29 and take to the sidewalk outside of Westview Corner Grocery.
The week’s events will culminate on Oct. 30 at the gallery with a brunch that Bobrow-Williams will cook for the West End community as a way to give back and bring everyone together. The hope is that, by the end of the program, the wall between artist and audience will vanish, and those sharing the space can interact person to person.
“We (should) all remember that you have to give back, because you got it from somewhere,” Williams said. “Uplifting the community and engaging them through arts — that’s what we should do as artists.”
PREVIEW
Tanz Farm: A Contemporary Anthology. Through Oct. 31. Multiple locations. gloatl.org/
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
Working closely with the American Press Institute, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is embarking on an experiment to identify, nurture and expand a network of news partnerships across metro Atlanta and the state.
Our newest partner, ArtsATL (www.artsatl.org), is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. Founded in 2009, ArtsATL’s goal is to help build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be introducing more partners, and we’d love to hear your feedback.
You can reach Managing Editor Mark A. Waligore via email at mark.waligore@ajc.com.
