KIKUKO TANAKA “Traumatic Encounter Forever!” 7:00 – 9:00 PM
“Traumatic Encounter Forever!” is a part of an open-ended multimedia tragicomic epic “A Tragic Bambi,” which revolves around recurring images of urination of the dismembered body of Bambi as an idée fixe. Originated out of lovers’ absurd longing to eradicate their own discontinuous beings, “Traumatic Encounter Forever!” examines our passionate aspirations expressed in the conjunction of aesthetics, politics and religion. Why do we aim for transcendence or sublimation through art? Why do we believe that art could or should bring social change? “Traumatic Encounter Forever!” does not answer those questions, but examines the symbolic structure that generates such questions.
Born and raised in Japan, Kikuko Tanaka is a frantic artist currently based in New York. She has performed and exhibited in various venues, including Smack Mellon, Momenta Art, NARS Foundation, Amelie A.Wallace gallery at SUNY Old Westbury, Vox Populi, and Arario Gallery, Panoply Performance Laboratory among others. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Info, and Hyperallergic. She was a nominatee for a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Art Grant in 2010. Her open-ended multi-media tragicomic epic, A Tragic Bambi, is fiscally-sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts. She has an interdisciplinary background, holds a BA in Landscape Design from Chiba University, and has studied fine art at the School of Visual Arts, and various academic disciplines including art history, anthropology, philosophy, and literature, at Hunter College. She is also a co-founder/ co-director of a not-for profit organization, Agape Enterprise, in Brooklyn, New York.

MATTHEW SILVER 7:00 – 8:00 PM
I work for the UNIVERSE. I’m on a spiritual journey to make the entire world LAUGH at NOTHING. We all need people! And people need us! Seeing people laugh is what makes me happy and is my dream. My goal is to only make more people laugh. And one day, the entire planet. Matthew Silver gets most of his experience performing on the street where he performs for tips as a clown/village idiot. He's been spotted at the Astor Place Cube, Union Square, Washington Square Park, and the subway L-line. He has also performed at local bushwick venues, Goodbye Blue Mondays, and Cafe Orwell.

ADAM ROSE “NEMESIS” 8:00 – 9:00
An alien spaceship lands in a cornfield in Iowa. This is the overhyped expectation that we collectively hold for the year 2012. But this same scenario already happened a long time ago. The aliens are us, and the spaceship is Iowa.
Adam Rose is the Artistic Director of Antibody Corporation, a non-profit organization specializing in movement arts and occult research. He is a graduate of Antioch College (2008), where he earned a B.A. in Dance/Theater. He has shown work at many venues in Chicago including High Concept Laboratories, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery,the 1901 Gallery/Theatre, Praxis Place, and in Mexico at the Festival de TeatroSusana Alexander. He was awarded a 2009 Link/Up Artist Residency and a 2011 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Greenhouse Grant.