red poppy residency

red poppy residency /

Artist Residency in San Francisco, California

Nicole Lambrou was invited to a year-long residency at the Red Poppy Art House (RPAH) in SF, CA, the same year it was a collaborating partner of the De Young Museum’s James Irvine Foundation’s Innovation Fund. Entitled ‘The Thread,’ her residency was inspired by the important foundational elements found in textiles, mechanics, and computing. As fine strands of fiber, threads are obvious in practices such as sewing and weaving, with different pieces interlaced and passing each other to create fabric. In mechanics, threads are used to bring two separate pieces together (as can be seen on the outside of a screw or a bolt or inside a cylindrical hole), and in online communication and computing threads represent a string of messages that make up a conversation, a sequence of posts, or processes linked together. Visible and invisible, threads and the lines they can form are also used to connect thoughts, ideas, inquiries, and people, and as a way to describe the course of individual existence.

‘The Thread’ was an inquiry following the impact that our awareness and identity have on our connections and creativity, including studying what happens when we experiment with our habitual ways of being and how we interact with the immediate environment and the world around us.

The Residency began with a facilitated and interactive performance discussion with Colm Ó Riain, an Irish-born violinist and composer who was concluding his own residency, and where the boundaries of the fourth wall were unraveled. A co-exploration of what lies beneath and beyond the work being presented — from solo Bach to “Over the Rainbow” — and using both a traditional and a five-string electric violin with Indian tuning, it was a first foray into merging the acoustic and technological parts of his life which include robotics and artificial intelligence, and would be a stepping stone for his “Human and Machine” artist partnership at Cal Performances almost a decade later.

A deeper understanding of our connection to the spaces and places we inhabit, including personal real-time impressions, the merging of different parts of ourselves, and global topics such as how migration and movement could change over time were included in the intimate exploration with everyone who participated in the evening.

“Although musicians usually access their depths in non-verbal or non-literary ways, it is often in writing and talking about things that we realize what it is we think about important issues and, as a corollary, realize who it is we are.”

^{-Colm Ó Riain}

_{Videos provided by Colm Ó Riain - press play to watch / listen.}

Discussion - Art & Our Lives

J.S. Bach - Partita in D minor for solo violin, Sarabande

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