Retirement Bash
2009
A collaboration with Culver City High School art students from the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts (AVPA)

Commissioned by the Community Outreach Program of the Education Department at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and AVPA

  

Retirement Bash was a performance project created through a collaboration between Elana Mann and Culver City High School Art Students from the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts (AVPA). Mann and the students developed Retirement Bash during a five-week workshop, which included learning about performance art, community outreach, and in-class experiments. At the end of the workshop, the students and Mann presented a three-hour interactive event, where each student performed an original artwork. During the Retirement Bash performance, outdated sayings, symbols, images, and mottoes were performatively “retired” by the students, while new sayings and ideas were introduced.

A book documenting this project is forthcoming from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in the spring of 2010.

 
The students involved in the Retirement Bash project were:
Irum Ahmed, Neha Ahmed, Daniella Algarate, Charlene Amarasekara, Angela Bac, Isabel Bennett, Beth Bolas, Jasmine Cheng, Steven Clary-Wilson, Victor Delgado-Lopez, Lara Evans, Roxanne Friedmann, Tulito Garcia, Sarah Hattem, Kate Johannesen, McKinley Jordan IV, Ahin Ju, Anisa Khanmohamed, Marilyn Liu, Sequoyah Madison, Max Malsich, Della Martinez, Slaveya Minkova, Jacqueline Monge, Berkeley Oceguera, Marisa Okano, Jennifer Song, Stanton Welsh, Azalie Welsh, and Emily Wood. 

Retirement Bash, 2009 from Elana Mann on Vimeo.

  
Stills from the performances
Taste the Rainbow, Lara Evans (photo credit: Vivian Babuts)
Cosmetic Plague, Victor Delgado-Lopez
ISO, Slaveya Minkova (photo credit: Vivian Babuts)
Purfekshon/Perfection, Irum and Neha Ahmed (photo credit: Vivian Babuts)