100 sips, 4 Ways to Feed You, Pole Service | Kale Roberts
Kale Roberts (Tampa, FL)
August 2019. 100 sips: 100 cups and 100 locations from Elsewhere’s collection and surroundings as a digital montage. 4 Ways to Feed You: 19 Castings from the 3rd story flooring at Elsewhere warped and draped into plates on low fire earthen ware. Pole Service: Vertical pole happenings and public service engagement bringing on curious passerbyers to dance out of a re-imagined truck bed in different parking lots surrounding Elsewhere. In conjunction with Tailgate Projects. Documentation in Digital Video and Image Stills. 100 sips: 9m 27sec (short sips 2m 19sec) 4 Ways to Feed You: set of 4 6” plates Pole Service: 5 locations, 10+dancers.
We have to play in multiple ways; a freedom to incubate and activate the constant input from our daily navigations, without compression, without a need for perfection, as an act of self love and preservation. This infectious play has come into fruition in 3 different projects while swimming through Elsewhere. Let’s Play. Damn
I’m thirsty, but where to start. I considering the textures of things, the way it can change our perspectives. The ground we walk on shifts our gate, moving to our tippi toes, stumbling and dips our line of vision. A chair affects our posture and ability to melt into comfort. Elsewhere’s kitchen collection is a nose dive into infinite possibilities in a playground of embodied gestures trough dish ware. Inspired by Ely Kim’s Video ‘BOOMBOX’ I began my exploration of play in ‘100 sips’.
I drove my truck to North Carolina from Tampa, Florida as a tool to activate and queer the architecture. It is a mobile exhibition and performance space starting from the cab and extending out the truck bed. This project is meant to re-imagine masculine culture, to change the gaze, queer the architicuture, and celebrate visibility in all of our skins. In collaboration with 13+ artists and growing this Nissan Frontier is a departure from Truckin’ culture in the south tied to confederate flags and pin up mud flaps. This truck is a live lure that transforms the longer you sit with it; destabilization on wheels. Through Tailgate Projects, I have hosted a series of 5 pop ups called ‘Pole Service’; a public vertical pole dance inviting the public to jump in.
Performance is play, and storytelling is saturated with objects of significance that informs our history and navigations. On the third story of Elsewhere I casted 19 segments of the flooring. With clay, I warped the ground we walk on and transformed this material into a set of candy holders, cups, plates, coffee mugs, and bowls. Four of these new pieces will stay with Elsewhere as, ‘4 Ways to Feed You.’ A transformation of service and ritual adorned with a vortex in sgrifitto on the surface. You are invited to eat off the plates and document by posting to Instagram, documenting their new rituals and relationship to the body.
