We are multi-media performance artists. Through performance art (music, movement, projected stop-motion animation & storytelling) & through artifacts (recorded music, sculpture & instillations) we engage audiences in the act of creation via participatory art-making events which themselves attempt the origination of new art works. These participatory performances have led to the emergence of a performance art collective, named Iris Freeheart. Iris Freeheart is composed primarily of musicians, visual artists and dancers/choreographers.

Our art works and performances are predicated by the belief that art is an event that calls for the active engagement, intention, and interpretative insinuation of the artist as well as the people engaged by the work of art (e.g. the audiences, viewers, listeners, etc.). In this way, we have come to see our re-creation of our work in performance as itself a form of origination. In support of this we have been developing a new model for Iris Freeheart’s engagement with audiences. We base this model on the Community Supported Agriculture model—but in the case of Iris Freeheart—it is Community Supported Art. Furthermore, since audience engagement with our works and in our performances seeks to produce new artwork, and new, expanding communities of artists, we have come to understand this communally created art experience as essentially Art Building Community (ABC).

Our Projects

Recent multi-media art emerging from Iris Freeheart springs out of their decade long love affair and fascination with the metaphors and experiences engendered by the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. This body of work is trying to give voice and image to the majestic human experience of the profound interconnectedness of all things, the entanglement of all things. These experiences are demonstrated in physical matter by quantum entanglement phenomena.

Events:

Art in Unconventional Places

We are planning two Entanglement performance art events with music and movement, projected painted stop-motion animation, and sculptural installation art. Each element in these events will give voice different aspects of the entanglement experience via the unique characteristics belonging its media. The first of these events will be held during the Maine harvest season at the newly renovated Spencer Building in Fairfeild, Maine. The 2nd of these events will be held at Bartram’s Gardens in West Philadelphia during the late fall. Both of these events will be celebrating the release of Entanglement and geared towards engaging the emerging Iris Freeheart community of members. The various media used in these performances will themselves be participatory (e.g. Iris Freeheart ABC members will be manning the bows for the bowed piano & xylophone performances and playing the products—the Iris Freeheart Entanglement Box records).


Artifacts:

Entanglement, aims to produce a series of new multi-media artifacts and hold participatory performance events to celebrate the release of these works and further engage the growing ABC of Iris Freeheart. The multi-media artifact series, also named Entanglement, is composed of four musical movements tied together by a single heartbeat, with each movement expressing various social/relational and emotional elements of our every day human experiences of entanglement. Entanglement will be a limited edition press of a 10-inch vinyl packaged in hand-painted resonant wooden and metal boxes that have the capacity to play the record! Using a telescoping, collapsible amplifier cone and a hand-cranked flywheel on 6 small bearings, the record can be played, in all its analog purity, right within its artful box. Among other things, this artifact will serve as a mechanism for collaboration and creation with our audience and a vehicle for them to reanimate their own entanglement experiences.

VIP Membership:

VIP members will be exclusively privy to Iris Freeheart's Entanglement Events in Unconventional Places Series. Members will receive a limited edition press of the 10-inch vinyl packaged in hand-painted resonant wooden and metal boxes that have the capacity to play the record! Using a telescoping, collapsible amplifier cone and a hand-cranked flywheel on 6 small bearings, members can play the record in all its analog purity, right within its artful box. Among other things, this artifact will serve as a mechanism for members to engage in collaboration and creation with our audience and a vehicle for them to reanimate their own entanglement experiences.