new from mydadsstripclub

[Ange Taggart]

My Dads Strip Club

up & coming:
PRAYERS TO PRODUCTS Commercially Zoned Works

23 March Glasgow
26-30th March 2003 Version 03 Festival Chicago USA

'Prayers-for Products' is a series of site specific works, inspired by
and devised for the local commercial zone. Artists from CZW* come
together to work with participants to generate a series of subtle
disruptions to the shopping cycle.

In Chicago CZW will take inspiration from the high tech electrical
produce avaliable in the area. Responding to the promises of
technology offered by stores in the immediate vicinity, we will
instigate an intervention. Working together participants devise an
appropriate response based on the themes of 'sincerity' and 'desire',
a comment on the futility of faith, and willingness to trust in the
forces of technological evolution.

Thursday 27th:
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
12-1.30pm Workshop.
Representatives from performance art/activist groups, Whirl-Mart, My
Dad s Strip Club & The Vacuum Cleaner present past performances and
critical theory regarding their unique and inventive forms of
activism. Organizers demonstrate how the integration of performance
art and technology has blurred the lines between performance and
protest. Attendees have the opportunity to plan and organize their own
"commercially-zoned" performance action, planned to take place later
in the festival.

* Commercially Zoned Work are disenfranchised consumerists that have
lost the ability to functionally consume. They engage in intervention,
performance, installation and disruption amongst themselves and with
the misguided collaboration and support of commercial enterprise. In
Chicago CZW are represented by Ange Taggart My Dads Strip Club, James
Leadbitter The Vacuum Cleaner, Andrew Lynn Whirl-Mart with UK support
from Allen Coombes
http://www.versionfest.org

BED - Ange Taggart

4 April 2003 1/Quarterly Gallery, Chicago USA

'Bed', a mixed media installation utilizing tactile stimulation and
performance art. The piece like much of the Taggart's earlier work
involves blurring the boundaries between performer and audience
participant. Sometimes thrilling, sometimes disturbing 'Bed' is like a
sophisticated peep show where the passive and active roles of both
performer and audience are constantly challenged and ever changing.
Taggart bites at the safe passivity you were expecting with this work,
forcing you instead to be active, to be vulnerable and to confront a
variety of human sensations from sensual desire to irrational fear.
http://www.54n.org.uk/

OVER THE COUNTER CULTURE - Ange Taggart

2 April 03 School of the Art Institute of Chicago USA
5 April 03 1/Quarterly Gallery, Chicago USA
7 April 03 16 Beaver St Project, New York City USA
8 May 03 Q- Arts Gallery, Derby UK
18 May 03 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London UK

Taggart presents video and tales of a set of culture-jams with a focus
on surveillance and the excesses of consumer culture. She introduces
the work of both UK and North American based artists from
organisation's such as Adbusters, Fanclub, My Dads Strip Club, Retag,
Rev Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping, Space Hijackers,
Surveillance Camera Players, The Vacuum Cleaner and Whirl-Mart.
http://www.mydadsstripclub.com/watchny.htm

WINDSOCK

8 - 11 May 2003 Avecom REAL Festival, Arnhem Netherlands.

A new collaborative digital piece with the artist Jon Burgerman
www.avecom.nl

STOP SHOPPING TOUR 03

May 2003 UK tour : nottingham - derby - glasgow - liverpool -
manchester - newcastle - london

The Stop Shopping UK Tour is a short, sharp traveling intervention
featuring UK and USA performance artists and anti-shoppers who
question and interrupt the usual patterns of consumption. Often they
perform in contested public space or right in the heart of corporate
chain stores, where the "shopping experience" is most ritualized. The
core artists-Ange Taggart, William Talen and Andrew Lynn- intensify
the secular rituals of consumption to the point of ecstatic fervour.
They pray to cat food, sermonize against sweatshops, and solemnly push
empty shopping trolleys down supermarket aisles.

Each artist questions the shared assumptions propping up consumer
culture, often holding aspects up to ridicule by putting them in high
relief. My Dads Strip Club, for example, purchases and returns
boycotted Nestle products by carefully arranging the order each item
is put through the check-out creating subversive messages spelt out in
the receipt. Reverend Billy leads his congregation and a gospel choir
into Starbucks for an impromptu sermon on the evils of transnational
coffee and hormone-injected milk. Whirl-Mart's silent trolley
processions mesmerize shoppers struggling with their own overloaded
shopping trolleys.

The artists will be appearing in stores and supermarkets around the UK
to be joined by special guest artist shoppers including Conglomco,
CZW, Emily Beckmann, How+Why, Jon Burgerman, Lord Biro, NATO, Rev
Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping, Retroactive Logo Distribution and
The Vacuum Cleaner.
http://www.breathingplanet.net/tour