Performed at Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe as a part of Currents 2011 International New Media Festival.

Duration: 18 mins
Excerpt: 7:50 secs

FOLD {Live} is an on-going project by Surabhi Saraf – a series of site-specific public performances where performers (volunteers) fold laundry per a choreographed routine. FOLD {Live} celebrates the mundane by taking a private, solitary activity and presenting it, multiplied, in a public space.The performances are conversations with the city’s architectural diversity and embrace the unique characteristics of each space. The nature of each conversation changes with the location: the space acts not just as a backdrop for the performance but also informs various aspects of the performance, including choreography, duration and number of participants. Each site thus adds something unique to the dialog.

FOLD {Live} humanizes Surabhi’s recent project, Fold, a video installation inspired by the multiplication and the repetition embedded in everyday life. In context of the theme of TIME exhibition the pieces have evolved as a study of movement, different body rhythms and what it means to find your own pace. The movement in these performances is deliberately slow. Performers are encouraged to be really absorbed in the textures and details of the fabrics, at the same time also being aware of this group they are part of, sharing the energy and the rhythm of the group.

Four FOLD {Live} performances were held on four consecutive Sundays in four sites around the city of San Francisco in September. The works presented at the LAB include a series of prints called Unfold (in collaboration with Ronit Citri) and video documentation based on each of the four performances. Finally, a performance on the opening night, choreographed in collaboration with Sarah Woods and restructured for the Lab‘s gallery space.

Four FOLD {Live} performances  were also held in Parramatta, located in Greater Western Sydney, Australia in November 2011.

For more information on the project please visit http://foldliveproject.net/

For reviews  and text on the performances please see the link below:

KQED Arts

Stretcher.org

San Francisco Bay Guardian: The Performant

Mission Local 

Excerpts from video installation @ Root Division Gallery, San Francisco

*Headphones recommended

Fold is the second video in the series Video Choreographies. It is single channel audio visual installation composed of a gird of 96 small videos. Fold creates a multifaceted view of a single day’s solitary act of folding laundry; the mass repetition of small videos magnifies subtle nuances while blurring the whole ensemble into a swarm of activity. The elementariness of simple gestures of a seemingly mundane daily activity (such as those of pulling out a t-shirt from the laundry bag or putting hair behind the ear), gets morphed into a complex choreography when multiplied. Fold is an attempt to create layers of structures and overlaying patterns, patterns that are always evolving.

Screenings & Exhibitions:

2011
Video Installation, Currents 2011, The 2nd Annual Santa Fe International Media Festival, Santa Fe (June 10-19)
No Dialogue, ArtPadSF, San Francisco
Video Installation, The Athens Video Art Festival 2011, Athens, Greece
Competitive Shorts Program, The Disposable Film Festival, San Francisco
Say Something, Gallery E6, San Francisco
Emerging Video Artists, Big Screen Project, New York

2010
Espacio Enter: art tech media, Canary Island, Spain
The International Streaming Festival, The Hague, Netherlands
7th Busan International Video Festival, Space Bandee, Busan, South Korea.
Introductions 2010, Root Division Gallery, San Francisco

Original audio – ” Easy” by Anushka Shankar and Norah Jones

Processed by Surabhi Saraf

Peel is a multi-channel audio-visual installation, it presents a visual echo of the present instance: it takes an unexamined moment and gives it life. The transitional motion of going to the fridge to get an ingredient is stretched into the echo of an unforgettable instant, and what emerges is an examination of the subtlety and hidden beauty of that moment. The mass repetition of small videos magnifies subtle nuances while blurring the whole ensemble into a mass of activity. For instance, the elementariness of simple gestures of a seemingly mundane daily activity (such as those of stirring, or putting hair behind the ear) get morphed into a complex choreography when multiplied. The effect of this process is mirrored in the dense and rich textured sound that emerges from the layering of the audio from the individual videos.

Exhibitions & Screening:

2011
Taste 2011, Root Division Gallery, San Francisco

2010
Art Killed The Video Star@Riff Raff, Grosenberg, Tel-Aviv, Isreal
VideoZone @MUV music and digital arts festival, Florence, Italy

2009
13th International Video Festival VIDEOMEDEJA,
Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia.
Espacio Enter: art tech media, Canary Island, Spain
Not Still Art Festival, Micro Museum, Brooklyn, New York,
Celeste Prize Finalists Exhibition at the Alte AEG Fabrik, Berlin, Germany
Without Borders Festival: Conjunction, Lord Hall Gallery,
University of Maine, Orono.
MFA Show, Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, Chicago

The work was announced as the winner of Art vs Design organized by http://www.artistswanted.org/ at the New Museum.

PEEL  voted as the winner of Celeste Prize’09 http://celesteprize.com/artwork/ido:27351/

Watch full video here http://vimeo.com/5293796

Rain Grain Song- Excerpt

Rain Grain Song- Excerpt

Lullaby Daze – Excerpt

Lullaby Daze

Lullaby Daze mix by Mark Franz

Lullaby Daze mixed by Mark Franz

Department Store: Street Markets

Department Stores: Street Markets

The video was an attempt to re-encapsulate a optical turbulence which was toyed upon in my paintings. The major thrust of my focus was to maintain a rhythmicity of the light movements without loosing on the randomness of the two dimensional compositions.

The visual narrative of “Tunneling” is defined through the process of cutting through the wall of the performance space from inside to outside, the different layers within the building wall slowly exposed until the outer, nighttime street is reached. This image is constructed in a live fashion through use of a green-screen setup, a specially constructed table and custom software which “memorizes” the appearance of each layer of material as it’s being cut. The audio narrative consists of a multitude of voices singing verses, which are at first multiplied by many thousands, and slowly decimate while the wall is exposed until only one, the real voice of the audio performer, is left when the street outside is finally reached. An additional layer of domestic cooking sounds is intertwined with the voices, juxtaposed with the sounds generated by the cutting of the wall-layers.

Performers: Surabhi Saraf- audio,Nadav Assor- video and objects,

Exhibited: In “New Blood II”, Links Hall, Chicago

TUNNELING in Bologna @ NETMAGE 10 International Live Media Festival, 2010

Food Sounds Good is a composition of the sights, sounds, and gestures of cooking. The isolated, juxtaposed, and rearranged steps of cooking come together to produce sonic and gestural movements. They reveal the rhythms of domestic life.