House of Mind // 2008

Premiered
2008
Location(s)
  • 5000 Sq Ft Warehouse, Seattle
    2008
  • DiverseWorks, Houston
    2009
  • Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan
    2011
Creation
Pat Graney
Choreography
Pat Graney
Site Design
Holly Batt
David Traylor
Video
Ellen Bromberg
Isadora Design
Craig Wollam
Sound Composition
Amy Denio
Lighting
Amiya Brown
Original Site Design
David Traylor
Engineering
Jeff Gerson
Bedroom Box Photos
Thomas Schworer
Performers
Michelle de la Vega
Sara Jinks
Jody Kuehner
Trinidad Martinez
Jenny May Peterson
Sruti Desai
Pictured:
Photographer:

Jenny, Jody, Sara, Michelle side sitting

Jenny stretching out her legs on the chair

Photographer:

Sara rocking chair

Michelle and Jenny walking

Sara & Jodi Chair House of Mind 12.08

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Pat Graney Choreographer
A longtime Seattle based choreographer, Pat Graney draws from a unique suitcase of sources—writers Julio Cortázar and Gertrude Stein, artist Henry Darger, American Sign Language, and the cross cultural art of tattooing—to make emphatically visual and kinetic dances. Grounded in collaboration with composers, writers, designers and visual artists, the work ranges from evenings of formally structured contemporary dance performed in theatres to a site-specific piece in a vast meadow for more than one hundred martial artists. Her latest project, House of Mind, will consist of installations and events (video projection, motion-triggered audio and live choreographed performance) in a 10,000 square foot warehouse transformed into a series of ‘memory rooms’.

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The Week Ahead: "House of Mind"
Visionary artist Pat Graney's site-specific work takes place in a vacant City Light building in Lower Queen Anne. Patrons will tour various rooms representing compartments of memory and then view an hourlong performance, which includes the onstage preparation of a meal. 

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Pat Graney Company House of Mind a Connecting Communities Collaboration
Dancers and dance aficionados ages 14 and up are invited to collaborate with internationally known, Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney when she returns to the Arts Center in September to create the House of Mind dance piece.  This Connecting Communities Collaboration explores the creation, accumulation, loss, and destruction of memory through a multisensory gallery installation, and a dance theatre work developed in collaboration with community members and performed in the gallery space.

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Pat Graney: House of Mind
Internationally renowned choreographer, Pat Graney, makes a grand return to Houston as she takes over DiverseWorks’ entire building with her latest site-specific exhibition and performance House of Mind.  In an amalgamation of female memory, collective unconscious, and family and cultural histories, Graney creates an expansive kinesthetic sense of her work that takes the audience on an intense and thought-provoking journey through her past, her mother’s battles with Alzheimer’s and the quirky imagination that Houstonians saw in The Vivian Girls (2005) and Sleep (1998).

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Pat Graney: House of Mind
House of Mind, Pat Graney‘s work in multiple media (installation, sculpture, video and choreographed performances), is probably the most ambitious project ever taken on at DiverseWorks. It’s an exhaustive tribute to memory — that of the artist, of her mother and of a lost bit of America — and it’s worth it to get down and see the show before it closes, even if you’re too late to catch one of the staged performances.

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Ambitious dance show to fill Houston's DiverseWorks
Amid the sounds of pounding hammers, Seattle choreographer Pat Graney navigates the rooms and hallways of what will become a huge houselike environment that takes up all of DiverseWorks’ public spaces — not just its theater but its main gallery and project space, which normally are devoted to visual-arts exhibitions. Created largely from her childhood memories, the rooms of Graney’s House of Mind have lots of projected imagery, sound scores and surreal touches thrown in.

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Pat Graney: House of Mind DiverseWorks, Houston
The walls of Pat Graney’s House of Mind seemed to murmur that familiar 2nd-wave feminist anthem, “the personal is political.” I couldn’t help but ask myself—is this still true? “The personal,” at least in the visual arts, has been an icky topic during the last decade. Many contemporary artists weave multi-layered narratives, but have preferred to explore the topic of identity in more abstract terms (think Mika Rottenberg or Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn). But House of Mind, Diverseworks’ most ambitious project to date, unabashedly embraces the personal. Graney, a Seattle-based choreographer, merges stunningly elaborate installation with contemporary dance, seeking to (obsessively) catalog the depths of her personal experience through epic visuals and movement.

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Pat Graney’s ‘House of Mind’ crosses genres
Seeing Pat Graney’s House of Mind at DiverseWorks reminded me that one of the perils of being a visual-arts writer is that you tend to get sucked into strictly going to arts events that pertain to your beat to the exclusion of, say, the performing arts. That’s one reason I’m grateful to Graney for crossing genres by creating an installation in which to stage her dance company’s terrific performance — and to DiverseWorks for encouraging her to do so.

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Pat Graney ends her successful year with the memorable 'House of Mind'
The year that is almost over has not been a banner year for many. Pat Graney is an exception. The choreographer, who moved to Seattle nearly 30 years ago and has been making dances ever since, won an Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance in June and a United States Artist Fellowship earlier this month. And the awards come with $175,000.

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Pat Graney's "House of Mind" promises unique arts experience
Is it a dance? A visual-arts installation? A ritual meal? With all-around artist Pat Graney in charge, you won't know until you show up and experience it. The work is titled "House of Mind," and it takes place in a vacant City Light building in Lower Queen Anne that's been renovated to Graney's specifications. Patrons will tour various rooms representing compartments of memory and then view an hourlong performance, which includes the onstage preparation of an elaborate meal.

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House of Mind / Dance Magazine
In House of Mind, Pat Graney once again uses memory and consciousness as her muse. The piece is really two works of art: a multi-media installation that's a mind-boggling array of art, and a dance performance. Graney has transformed a converted 5,000-square-foot warehouse to great effect, using bleached white sand and alternating hot air blasts in a maze of sometimes charming, sometimes haunting rooms.

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Performance Timeline