St Elizabeths East Opens its Gates for Summer Celebration!

St Elizabeths has always been a place enshrouded in mystery to me. I didn't know much about it except that John Hinkley, Jr., was kept there, and that whenever I drove by the East Campus, it looked so beautiful and serene behind the ominous fence. The eery, beautiful, abandoned buildings and perfectly manicured lawn added to the mystery. That's all going to change. For the first time in nearly a century, the gates will open to the public and we'll get to wander around the grounds and check it out.

Spreading out over 182 acres and owned by DC government, St Elizabeths East is slated for development. Because the project is still very much in the planning stages, the neighboring community has the opportunity to shape the development, which will take many years. This Saturday is the first major opportunity for the public to experience the space and start imagining what could happen there. Hope to see you!

WHEN: SATURDAY, July 28, 2012, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

 

SUMMER CELEBRATION opening the gates to historic St Elizabeths East and a festival of food, music, art, and a weekly farmer’s market. The Summer Celebration is part of a Season of Discovery, which offers unprecedented access to the landmark campus in advance of its redevelopment as a new center for community, innovation, education, enterprise, and security and sustainability. For more information, visit

www.stelizabethseast.com.

 

Scheduled events include:

• Ward 8 Farmers Market (second location)
• Live Performances by African Heritage Dancers and Drummers, Southeast
• Trinity, spoken word artist Lamont Carey, and others.
• Interactive Art/Outdoor Galleries by Pink Line Project, East of the River artists
• Children’s and Family Activities including face painting and balloon artists

 

WHERE: ST ELIZABETHS EAST, 1100 Alabama Avenue SE, Washington, DC, adjacent to Congress Heights Metro station (Green Line) in Southeast Washington 

Students National Collegiate Prep PCS, a high school in neighboring Anacostia, will participate in the event by engaging the visitors in discussions about the art displayed at the St Elizabeths campus. This interaction will be prompted by the high school students and instantly posted on Twitter (and other online media resources). By generating these discussions and propelling the conversation to the larger community, my art students hope to strengthen community relationships, build a dialog about art within the community, while simultaneously acting as a billboard to the greater DC area by utilizing various social media outlets. In turn, the online community will be invited to join the online art-tastic dialog!

Come and Go (Go) will be a short and jarring relational aesthetics piece engaging in the aspects of music, movement and performance related to the context of community and culture in Washington, DC.

 

Come and Go (Go) situates itself in the art historical lineage of works including Allan Kaprow's Happenings, Adrian Piper's Funk Lessons, and Nick Cave's Soundsuit street performances.

 

Come and Go (Go) engages in the cultural context of DC, with it's proximity to hotbeds of Go-Go music culture such as the Berry Farm, Anacostia, Congress Heights and Ward 8 in general.

 

The contents of the performance are as follows:

The artist DJs classic Go-Go hits, starting abruptly and without announcement.

Agents simultaneously make themselves present in the crowd of attendees through which they quickly disperse themselves. They perform improvised choreography of a style whose origin lies with Go-Go culture.

The agents' presence and dancing, in connection with the music ignites a participatory dance party.

At the height of the minutes-long happening, the music cuts to a spoken mantra - a meditation - a pallet cleanser.

During the mantra, the agents exit the space.

Once the mantra ends, the piece ends.