FPCoA. » Fake Art

You Are Not Dead is on stage now. Please help promote it.

danreetz — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:21:33 +0000

Black Pants Productions with The Fakeproject Corporation of America presents:

YOU ARE NOT DEAD: A Guide to Modern Living

(Photos by Gabriel Collins!)

“Your dreams and dangerous notions, our cutting-edge advice”

VANCOUVER, BC: You are invited to view and review Black Pants Productions’ presentation of You Are Not Dead: A Guide to Modern Living, the theatrical wellness seminar.

You Are Not Dead is a site-specific, seminar-style performance inspired by civic duty propaganda, self-help manuals and popular theories on life management. Actors Adam Bergquist and Jessica Harvey will lead you through an efficient eleven steps that encourage you to embrace cognitive dissonance and be Not Dead. Topics covered include:

* Breaking the Five-Year Fail
* Assessing Your Mediacation
* Recognizing Your Debit to Society
* Stopping Identity Theft Before You Happen

…and much more.

Based on an e-book of the same name by writer/librarian Meg Holle and musician/hacker Daniel Reetz, the dynamic theatrical adaptation of You Are Not Dead offers incisive and humorous social commentary on pop-psychology and superficial empowerment. Produced and directed by UBC graduate and Yvonne Firkins Award-winner Danielle Marleau (Black Pants). Adapted for theatre by Meg Holle and Danielle Marleau with dramaturgical contributions by Rachel Peake (Solo Collective). Original audio-visual presentation by Daniel Reetz, and PowerPoint AI programming by Brandon Marback.

The show runs May 27 – June 5, 2010. All shows at 7:30 p.m. except May 30 at 2:00 p.m.
Tickets $18/20 in advance at Tickets Tonight or $25 at the door.

www.youarenotdead.ca

You Are Not Dead is Making Its Stage Debut THIS WEEK.

danreetz — Sat, 22 May 2010 16:06:50 +0000

This should have been posted weeks ago, but I’ve been busy moving and now busy helping some friends. Better late than never.

THIS week You Are Not Dead: A Guide to Modern Living hits the lecture hall stage as a live-action seminar/evil-genius play in Vancouver. The original project—a music, image and text collaboration I did with Meg Holle—was conceived and executed primarily in 2005, but my adventures in Russia put it on hiatus until its online release in 2008. Soon after it caught the attention of Black Pants, a theater company in Vancouver. Not to mention Metafilter, stumbleupon, and lots of other sites.

Over the past several months, we have worked furiously on adapting the project for live performance. The guide—a self-help manual meets social control propaganda—lends itself beautifully to an immersive, seminar-style experience of superficial empowerment and underhanded hilarity. Fakeproject Corporation representatives lead the audience through eleven steps of self assessment, attitude maladjustment, questionable life improvement and cognitive dissonance.

Check out the clickers I lasered for the faux personal response system:

Illusory audience input is “collected” throughout the seminar by the HAL-like character PowerPoint, for which I created dozens of slides. Brandon Marback programmed the artificial intelligence for PowerPoint in Flash. These images and others are also incorporated into a printed version of the guide—fully expanded, deadly sharp and on sale.

(this is PowerPoint)

(this is the book)

I went to Vancouver a couple weeks ago to tighten the screws on the technical bits at a test run of the show. Actors Adam Bergquist and Jessica Harvey are phenomenal. You don’t want to miss this.

The show runs May 27 – June 4. Learn more. Hope to see you there — I’ll be attending June 5th.

Update: Graf Paper, A Coloring Book For Graf Artists.

danreetz — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:22:50 +0000

In 2007 I released a coloring book for graffiti artists.

Since that time, many, many graf artists have printed it, extended and enhanced the drawings, and dropped the results in their sketchbooks. Some have shared the results online in a private forum. You’ll have to find out where yourself. All works copyright their original owners:

Some have chosen to share their work publicly. Today, I saw this link in my referrer logs:

Which was drawn on this image from the coloring book:

It’s pretty gratifying to see what people are doing with this project.

Free Entry To A Place No One Goes

danreetz — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:50:16 +0000

Just noticed I’m on Art Fag City with a contribution to Peter Coffin’s project on getting into museums for free. That’s the second bit of collaboration I’ve had that’s graced the Suburban Gallery.

Being a toilet-cleaner there was clearly worth it. Being a curatorial assistant wasn’t bad, either.

Vote For Daniel Reetz!

danreetz — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:45:57 +0000

Engadget is giving away some Amazon Kindle ebook readers. Please vote for me! I’m #2 (Assembly).

UPDATE: To thank everyone for their votes, I have released this artwork into the public domain. It is now free to use for anything by anyone.

EPS
PDF

I worked pretty hard on my contest entry. First, I made a 3D model of the Kindle:

From the model, I created this illustration, which will be lasered on a Kindle, should I win.

Currently, I’m #1.

We Work For Very, Very Smart People.

danreetz — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:28:10 +0000

There’s a big, new project coming to life. (I’ll announce here shortly). It gives some much-needed attention to Meg’s writing, and takes Not Dead to a whole new level.

In the meantime, follow the Corporation as it overseas your existence. You didn’t need that life, anyway.

Sneak Preview

danreetz — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:35:49 +0000

Poodus and I are working on a little project together. Had to throw a teaser up here.

Fargo Winter Carnivale 2009 Features Fake

danreetz — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:35:33 +0000

I’ll be performing at the Fargo Winter Carnivale. The show will be at the historic Fargo Theatre on January 10th. If all goes well, I’ll be playing a later slot towards when the films will be playing, though I can’t give a specific time. As usual, the show will consist of live music set to several video pieces. If you missed the last two shows I played, consider showing up to this one. I had to borrow money and equipment just to play, and I won’t be willing or able to do that again until I graduate or run into a chunk of money. In other words, this is the short storm before the long calm. A break from music.

The Carnivale, as originally conceived and executed by Mike Dagen and Amber Fletschok, has been a big deal for Fake. Aside from the recent L.I.V.E event at the Plains Art Museum, it is perhaps the only event with the right kind of venue to play (and experience) my kind of work. For that reason, I am dedicating this show to the Abandoned Scout Camp and Casey Borchert/Sursumcorda.

This year, for better or for worse, I will be playing alone. It will be killer.

Fight Christmas With Guns

danreetz — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:57:23 +0000

Conservatives and the religious right imagine a world in which Christmas is under attack. For Christmas last year, I decided to give them the gift of validation: I helped make the straw man stand up on his own.

Freedom of religion means Freedom From Religion. Happy Holidays.

Aiming Gracefully

danreetz — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:35:38 +0000

For Wolfgang’s birthday, I virtually blew up his house.

Bigger and Bigger.