the lovers

long beach lovers/march 07

long beach 07 lovers

  

 

 

kathe izzo

 

Over the last six years, I have traveled extensively as a conceptual performance/installation artist using love as a performance medium. Beginning as a purely long distance project, I proposed to love the world, one person at a time, for a day, and afternoon, an hour or an evening (www.trueloveproject.com). These "performances" were available for commission (though unpaid) by both strangers and also those familiar to me.  I vowed to fall in love with (virtually) anyone who approached me.  Soon, in public venues as varied as experimental theatre festivals, homeless facilities, art galleries/museums and the lingerie department of a major high end department store, I began to set up my True Love Project physically, inviting the public to experience private appointments with me in order to be loved unconditionally with as complete and simple presence as I was capable of. 

There are times when I find my creativity almost unbearable.  It rises up inside of me like a Tesla Coil and it's bigger than my physical body can endure.  It can work me, run me, a kind of wild intensity that sometimes gets away from me.  The daily practice of loving keeps me sane.  The more I love, the more I can maintain the ferocity of my own provocation and the more of a chance I have of discovering myself, the secret I didn't know I knew.  I want to live on that edge and I want to know how to find it in the dark.  I want that intimacy with the world and myself and loving brings me there, loving keeps me there.

 

 

israel bull-tail gillette

 

kathe writes:

I met Izzy last March right before I left for the first Public Love Project.  She and my daughter Jules became friends while on a trip to rebuild New Orleans for Habitat for Humanity.  Jules brought Izzy to my house for a night and we had a short conversation about her mother, her sister, her glass eye, the reservation, menthol cigarettes and owning a house.  A few months later I asked her if she would perform in a love project with me.  I don't know that much about Izzy.  What I do know is that  she is passionate, spiritual, 19 years old, a Taurus, Native American, grew up in Montana on several reservations, is a  competitive and ambitious track star and  basketball player.

izzy writes:

 

 

. . .The only natural talent I possess is the determination to better myself . . .

I have to experience things to either believe or learn from them, most of the time I run on impulse. I recently discovered myself and am now more than ever closer to mine and everyone else's heart. I'm a man at heart if you play against me you better play to win cause I'm going to knock you on your ass and then I'm gonna blow right past you. All I know is the answer to life is happiness and I'm finally reaching a point in my life where I feel content.

 

 

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london 06 lovers

 

 

 

 

london lovers/march 06

kathe izzo

Poet, filmmaker and conceptual performance/installation artist Kathe Izzo works with love: childhood, motherhood, sex, and community. Izzo has realized her commitment to the idea of direct energetic transmission as art in various other performances and installations, most recently The Loving Theater @ Chapter/Cardiff, Wales, Theatre of Love @ Harvey Nichols Department Store/Manchester (as part of Queer Up North)  The Garden of Love/Cinders Gallery, Brooklyn, This is Forever/Movement Research, NYC and her newest project, www.mettartlove.com, extending her rigorous self-examination and love practice into the very art world itself.

All are under the guise her the most ambitious work so far, The True Love Project, an ongoing participatory conceptual theater piece featuring a series of private performances in which Izzo promises to love the world, one person at a time, for one day, one hour, morning or afternoon, concentrating on live love and commuting telepathically and virtually throughout the world.  In addition to her love work, Izzo is a collaborative founder and member of the participatory collective BE SOMETHING.

Transcripts of some of her early performances have been included in the infamous Jack Smith collection of writings, WAIT FOR ME AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL/Serpent's Tail. She is currently working on a memoir, LOVE ARTIST.

paul hurley 

Paul Hurley studied Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent, Canterbury and at Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands; he then went on to do a Masters in Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art and Design and is currently undertaking a PhD in collaboration with University of Bristol and Arnolfini.

Based in Cardiff, Hurley is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is primarily concerned with the body as organism, as signifier, as site of action and resistance. He has for some time been working on a series of 'becomings-invertebrate' (performances, durational actions, videos and installations) as physical explorations of post-structuralist philosophy, psychoanalysis and queer theory. More recently Hurley has been making investigations into love, sexuality and desire, through the medium of the performance lecture and the cookery show.

Hurley has been supported by Artsadmin, London, and has shown work independently in galleries, theatre spaces and festivals in the UK and abroad. Hurley's work and his writing have also been published internationally and have attracted media attention across the globe. He is actively involved with a number of art spaces in Wales and is a founder member of Hotel Antelope, an artist-led organisation facilitating international residencies, exhibitions and exchange.