LINDA'S BLOG

If interested contact Linda Mussmann. The TSL summer programs are open to volunteers, interns, and kids.
we will be working on theater projects, building projects, and kids projects in our various programs.
The theater & east gallery will be a project re: FAST FOOD. The ENVIRONMENT 400 parts per million and getting hotter. AND more.
e-mail for an interview…only a few spaces available.

I was thinking about the idea of “war” and how we think of it and speak of it and make art about it?
I was wondering about the Iraq War and how many have talked about it in the theater or the art gallery or at the supper table. It seems that “war” is not spoken of much anymore in the parlors or the salons. One wonders where the dialogue went about war and our the cost of fighting war and waging war and the torture of it all. One wonders where the statures are in the public square to commemorate the fight for “freedom”? Perhaps because we are in a perpetual war we cannot see the difference between this war and that war. It is a strange time when so much has been spent and so much has been lost that we have no “space” for the discussion of where we are and what has exactly happened in this war (w/Iraq w/Afghanistan), and to the warriors, and to the victims, and to the wounded, and to those that are harmed by the funds spent on blowing things to smithereens –rather than investing on building things and reconstructing things here and everywhere.  These clean wars do not exist. Blood is shed. Hearts broken.  These wars are the “dirty wars” of the 21st century. Don’t kid yourself.  We are deeply invested in “war” and we are deeply invested in the invisible warriors who wage war in our name.  Time passes and resources are lost.  The supper table needs to be restored and the dialogue re-started.

http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/Hudson-s-TSL-celebrates-40-years-4442552.php

We are so happy to have this article written about TSL. The Albany TImes Union has been a long time supporter of our work since we arrived in this little city of Hudson. It has been a way to reach out and get the message to people. We thank Amy Biancoli for the time spent on writing it. Not so easy. Join the party—we have some tickets left fyi@timenandspace.org

Reading this book now. Wow what an amazing journey is this event. I was a student at Purdue University when Prof. Gass was teaching there in the 1960′s. Gass spoke at a rally against the Vietnam War. I will never forget him. I still see him standing outside at Purdue University  in front of the brick buildings– speaking out. It is these images that  move us and change us. I am from Indiana and there are times when the book is like going home and leaving home. Then there is the question what is “home” and what do we call home . Where are we from is the question? I think about these ideas in the wasteland that we live now….the places we live are all scrubbed clean of any traces of who we are and what we have contributed. Time is harsh. Space is harsh. There is too much money in too few hands. We are all catalogued and googled until we have no defining characteristics…making everything including
“people”just kind of bland and flat and without hope and cash. Thank you Professor Gass for writing and speaking out. You changed my life.

Celebrate with TSL on April 20th. We invite you to our 40th Anniversary Party. Check in with the TSL website to order tickets. Time passes and we want to mark this time by gathering the friends of TSL together at join us for some time out. We look forward to seeing you on this day. In the meantime the space will host images of some of the work we have done both here in Hudson and in NYC. It is all in the works as I write this. In the gallery is AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR. We also have special programs on the local radio station here in Hudson. wgxc.org every Wednesday at 3pm. check in and check us out.

Houses that are built on sand are the ones that interest me. The impermanence of life is how I see the house I build. The house I build is a daily activity. Every day the sea washes up to the door and asks for some repair and renovation of something that needs to be fixed or propped up. This is the house of theater. The theater house is filled with chaos and dreams. The theater house is one that holds the moment and only the moment witnessed by those who see it and those who are the actors of those assembled moments. The theater house is the one that washes out to sea when done and the images are carried by those in the boat that have seen what there is to see.
Time passes and we drift with the images in our heads…some we share …some we bury…some we imprint on others. Life is tricky…a stream…a never ending ribbon on the spool…the spool with the tape on the end…and then it snaps and floats out into the infinite place called timelessness.

TSL Art Gallery Presents:
AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR
the dreamt. the hoped for.

A Multimedia, Interactive Performance Installation

In 1983, a lot of things were spinning around in Linda Mussmann’s mind. This is not uncommon for Mussmann, who has produced over 60 plays throughout the 40 year history of TSL. But at the time, life was knocking on Mussmann’s door in a big way. Her mother had experienced a stroke. She and her life partner and collaborator, Claudia Bruce, had purchased a house in upstate New York; they were experiencing the “threat of” and desire for change, of moving forward. They were considering moving further out from the safe haven of their avant garde theater world in New York. They asked themselves questions like, “Is it possible to establish a new home, away from New York, for our theater? They experienced the potential fear of losing NYC connections.

Per usual during all this, Mussmann/Bruce were creating a new theater piece, which would eventually be titled, “AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR.” A representational image of the internal and cerebral spinning going on with Mussmann, was a huge windmill she and Bruce had filmed while on tour in New Mexico. The windmill was later projected in gigantic dimensions during the “AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR” performance. The circling of the windmill’s blades embodied the fear of what was to come next, the unknown, the possibility of an ominous fate.

Claudia Bruce, the featured performer in the piece, as she is in all of the Mussmann/Bruce repertoire, danced with electricity, often barely avoiding the movement of the blade. The giant blade spun around her as she moved forward and back, the threat of being sliced to bits following her at every turn. The threat was reminiscent of tornados from Mussmann’s Indiana childhood home, wildly careening across the prairie, with no certainty of what would lie in their wake.

On top of all this, the “graphic jitters,” had gotten hold of Linda Mussmann. Mussmann used the phrase to describe the state she was in as she began wondering how to “write” her script graphically. An earlier piece titled “Room/Raum,” was her first purely graphic text, but the new piece would combine elements she devised while under the influence of artists like John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Barthes and Foucault. There were experiments of language applied to the body and unexpected objects like stones or dirt used to produce sound. There was also the prepared piano, a concept developed by Cage of altering the sound of a piano by placing objects between its strings or hammers.

When “AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR” was first presented at Robert Whitman’s studio in New York City, a former ice house and what would later become The Kitchen, critic Jack Anderson of the New York Times wrote in a review, “Miss Mussmann delights in enigmas, her theater pieces eschew conventional narrative, yet are rich in dramatic tension.”

The “AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR” currently on view at TSL, has many of the original elements, including the deconstructed, prepared piano, as well as new additions. It is an interactive installation and performance. On Friday, March 29th at 7pm, Linda Mussmann will give a presentation of the work. She will be joined by Claudia Bruce, Bryce Courbois and Gerald von Stoddard, who will be reading, moving and most likely, doing something else surprising. There will be musical accompaniment by strings, jars, stones, paint cans and other assorted instruments from the exhibit.

The title of the piece comes from a line of text in the installation: “Avoidance & peculiar were ways of opening doors and thinking about others. The dreamt. The hoped for.”

Please join us for a remarkable evening of unexpected theater.

EVENT DETAILS: “AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR,” on view daily 11am – 3pm; 1 hour prior to weekend events and by appointment. On March 29, 2013, at 7:00pm, a live presentation by Linda Mussmann will take place, with readings by Claudia Bruce, Bryce Corbois and Gerald von Stoddard. Musical accompaniment by prepared piano and objects from exhibit. 434 Columbia Street, Hudson NY (between 4th and 5th streets). Admission is FREE. For information contact TSL at 518–822–8448 or visit www.timeandspace.org

TSL 40th Anniversary celebration is on April 20. check in get a ticket and help us celebrate the first 40.  We just mailed the invitation out today.

School’s here are in crisis as they are everywhere check Zimbardo a TED TALK
http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge.html?quote=1030 and see what he has to say about what boys/men and where we are in the 21st century with our boys and men.

On March 22 we will be hosting a Women’s History celebration starts at 6:00 potluck followed by readings of WOMEN such as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf & more– hosted by Linda & Claudia.

In the meantime I will be bringing CHASING ICE back sometime in April. One of the most important environmental movies that I have seen.

And we will be screening another kids movie on Sunday April 14th at Noon….we hope to develop our next generation of movie lovers.

And now in the gallery AVOIDANCE & PECULIAR will have a performance on March 29th Friday 7pm.

And we are on WGXC every Wednesday at 3pm to 3:30 with works form the TSL /Mussmann/Bruce Archive and some new projects that we are programing. So tune in WGXC it can be streamed live as well. okay Happy Day.

Eternity is a trick
time is a button
like all other buttons
it begs
to be pushed
and
then the door opens
it does not spring back.
Illusion
is the hope
that destiny
will ride on the sleeve
with the help
of the heart……
Then
enters
the fog
of dreams
and the rain
of reality.
Do we see
really what we
see?????
or
is myth
on the back
of a horse like
mercury?
The message
is delivered
from the wings
of the messenger
as he/she gallops by
It says:
one simple word
“MAYBE”
and with that
little word
we agree
to go on
and hope
for light
at the end
of the tunnel.

When all is said and done
and done and said
we are at last silent
as the night closes
the door on day
we sing ourselves
to sleep
like sleepy children
swimming into the night
in the shade
of the blue inky sky
we fall
head over
heels in time
to return again
on the wings of angels
to be delivered
again
to the work
of day light.