un•rest. A play in three acts. Actually…let’s call it an expression……
We are on the cusp of something much bigger than us. All of us. One might just call this a very large…very queer…collaboration.
What’s our trademark? Otherness. What’s our slogan? Try harder. Where can you find us? In your (and for that matter…everyone’s)
emotional landscape. Truly.
un•rest is a play in three acts. A roving performance, a shift that takes place in an oversized, underused parking lot near the Ports of Oakland, a concrete slab with a history that we’ve only just begun to break apart. This space creates its own boundaries, not belonging to a business, a set of cars, left standing, unattended, empty, ready. Ready. For a full transformation. A makeover. This performance is an invitation. An invitation to acknowledge sites of struggle. Realities that live, like us, in the in-betweens. To survive we must learn to adapt, to anticipate. To live in spaces of vulnerability. We are building a language for the shades of our intimacies, together.
Written, directed, and produced by curbAlert (J Shelley Harrison + Emji Saint Spero)
Alexander Paris : Co-Writer + Performer
LOTUS BOY : Co-Writer + Performer
Frida Ibarra : Composer + Performer
Dana Iwaniec : Co-Writer
Alsea Raible : Videographer
Special thanks to Brontez Purnell for consulting on choreography, to Mama Celeste for consulting on outreach and promo, and to Tiare Ribeaux for assistance with art direction.
un•rest is part of the 2021 CounterPulse Festival. Learn more at counterpulse.org/festival2021
About curbAlert
curbAlert is a collaboration between J Shelley Harrison and Emji Saint Spero. We curate site-specific performances, interactive events, and roving installations. We seek to find embodied modes of connection with the unacknowledged spaces of the urban landscape. curbAlert is the built environment and our resistance to it. We explore how our movements and interactions shape our environment and how it, in turn, shapes us.
Banner Photo: un•rest : not your average tiktok | Oakland CA | 2021 Performer: Alexander Paris (they/them) | Videographer: Alsea Raible