2B — Thursday, March 10, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
It’s a crisp afternoon in
October, and I am sitting on a
bench near the center of campus.
I watch a small group of students
huddled in the center, gesturing
to different areas on the ground
below them. Every few feet
across the Diag, there are long,
wide strips of plastic bubble
wrap.
Groups
of
students
slow
down
and
step
deliberately
on
the
bubbles,
laughing
ecstatically with every loud
pop. When somebody shoots
by on a longboard or a bike, the
explosion of plastic sounds like
machine gunfire. What sticks
out the most to me, though,
are the solitary students, the
random guys stepping gingerly
on the plastic and smiling a little.
The simple, small reactions.
This is “Bubbled,” the first
installation of Art on the Diag,
or D/ART, a new club on campus.
Like the Do Random Acts of
Kindness club filtered through
an artistic lens, the group plans
elaborate pieces of art using
interactive materials. So far, the
group has only planned one piece
each semester due to the scale
and ambition of the projects.
The president of D/ART is
Daniel Sharp (a junior in the
Ford School of Public Policy)
with a minor in Art History.
Sharp first conceived of the club
as a sophomore, wanting an
outlet to explore contemporary
art in visible areas. Transferring
to the School of Art & Design
was one option, but most of the
Stamps artwork is displayed
in their own building rather
than on Central Campus, where
most students live and work.
Working at the University of
Michigan Museum of Art would
enable him to facilitate or sell
artwork, but not actually create
any. None of the arts student
groups on campus were focused
on creating large-scale works in
public spaces, so Sharp and a few
other friends decided to make
their own.
“It would hopefully create
an outlet for any student, in any
major, to directly practice and
hone their skills in large-scale
art creation and facilitation,”
Sharp said.
There are between 10 and 15
dedicated members of the group,
most of whom joined the group
at Festifall. Several others joined
after the October installation.
“Bubbled”
was
originally
Sharp’s
idea,
but
it
was
workshopped
for
over
two
months
between
Sharp,
D/
ART
Vice
President
Sarah
Rusinowski,
Treasurer
Holly
Sterling and Central Student
Government.
After
changing
the installation’s specifications
so it complied with fire codes
and handicap protections, the
group spent some time applying
for grants. Once the materials
were purchased, though, it was
just a matter of waiting for 6,000
square feet of bubble wrap to
arrive at the door.
“Naturally, it arrived when
I was in class,” Sharp said. “My
roommate was a bit surprised
when
a
Uline
bus
began
depositing rolls and rolls and
rolls of bubble wrap on our front
lawn.”
Now, D/ART ideas go through
a very collaborative process
before they come to life.
“Anyone in D/ART can submit
an artwork idea,” Sharp said.
“Then, for one entire day, we
discuss the possible works for
next semester, tweak or change
some designs, materials and
conceptual concepts, and arrive
at some amazing ideas.”
Rusinowski, a LSA junior,
emphasized the low stress of the
club, partly due to its low time
commitment.
“We meet semi-regularly to
discuss upcoming projects, but
involvement usually depends on
the
installation,”
Rusinowski
said. “In general, D/ART is a
super low-stress organization
because
it’s
so
reliant
on
collaboration. We all participate
because it’s fun.”
Creating large-scale public
installations
doesn’t
come
without its challenges. According
to Rusinowski, D/ART has been
able to count on grants from Arts
at Michigan, a program within
the Office of New Student
Programs, and CSG. In addition
to planning and holding most D/
ART meetings and organizing
the building and maintenance
of
the
installations,
Sharp
finalizes grant applications and
deals with the purchases and
reimbursements of art materials.
“We
actually
collaborated
with
the
Rackham
Student
Government to apply to the
Michigan Bicentennial Student
Grant Initiative for next year,”
Sharp said, explaining his hopes
for the future of the club. “If we
win the grant, D/ART’s funding
will be secured and expanded
for next year. So expect quite
the hubbub and excitement next
year, if this comes to fruition.”
The installations themselves
involve
the
whole
team’s
collaboration on the day they go
up.
“We
always
have
D/ART
members present,” Rusinowski
said. “We have to take care of
setup and tear-down because
our installations typically only
stay up for one day.”
“The day of the installation
went by in an instant,” Sharp
said. “Everyone was absolutely
excited, running on adrenaline
and amazed at how many people
— at least eight for me — came up
and told us how much popping
bubble
wrap
turned
their
day around. It was absolutely
rewarding in the end to see how
a specific, niche organization
could still impact a wide range of
people.”
D/ART has also had to deal
with the absence of Sharp this
semester, as he studies abroad
in Berlin, meaning the group is
only doing one instead of two
installations this semester.
However, the “D/ARTboard”
has a number of members who
have stepped up to the plate in
Sharp’s absence, and Rusinowski
and LSA freshman Anne Tsaloff
have played a major roles in
putting
together
D/ART’s
second big installation, “Mirror
Mimesis,” which will come to
fruition on March 17. For the
installation, D/ART will put
50 reflective cubes on the Diag
open for anyone to tear down
into different shapes and sizes.
Passersby can build the cubes
into structures or deconstruct
them in creative ways.
“We
want
to
start
a
conversation
about
what
constitutes
art,”
Rusinowski
said. “Just because we put
bubble wrap on the ground
and call it art, does that make
it valid, or is it just garbage?
Art is always constructed, and
for so long I didn’t get that.
There is no real explanation for
valuing a prestigious symphony
performance that costs $50 to
attend over a talented street
performer. I think starting that
conversation has been one of
my favorite things about being
involved with D/ART.”
As the team started to clean up
the bubble wrap at the end of the
first installation, Sharp looked
out at the Diag and beamed.
“I just wanna give people art,”
Sharp said. “I just wanna give
people weird-ass things that are
super fun.”
As I sat and looked at the joyful
reactions of random passersby,
the wild bursts of laughter and
the tentative grins, I knew that
D/ART was accomplishing just
that.
To get involved with D/ART,
e-mail sjrusino@umich.edu or
request membership on Maize
Pages.
Additional reporting by Sam
Rosenberg.
DIAG
From Page 1B
By HANNAH SPARKS
Daily Arts Writer
“Chic” and “comfort” are
two words that describe
Chloé’s latest collection
perfectly. The first look to
grace the runway was a huge
poncho. I’m not quite sure
how anyone under 5’8” would
look in this. For someone
of my short stature, it may
appear like I’m drowning, but
you know what? I don’t care
because the poncho is flawless.
Not everything was made
with comfort and flattery
in mind. Within the first
minute, a full-on leather zip-
up jumpsuit came down the
runway. This was slightly
unflattering on the stick figure
model, so I try not to picture
myself in this garment. The
idea of this piece is great, super
chic with an edge.
Oversized ponchos and
capes seemed to be a big theme
throughout the show, if you
haven’t caught on already.
Whether they were worn
on top of a beautiful chiffon
dress or paired with cropped
leather pants, they were
certainly a dominating factor.
These capes and ponchos
were truly inspiring, bringing
the oversized look into high
fashion this season. I’m not
exaggerating when I say
this: immediately following
the show, I went to my dad’s
closet looking for oversized
sweatshirts. Maybe, just
maybe, they could somehow
resemble this look to a fraction
of a degree. I can try, can’t I?
Many of the fashion-obsessed,
such as myself, would truly try
anything to look Chloé-esque.
Almost every piece, aside
from the classic leather
ensembles were oversized
and feminine. So if you are a
couple of pounds over your
“summertime goal weight,”
it won’t matter in these free-
flowing Chloé pieces. Another
theme of the show was the
scarf tied tightly around the
model’s neck. If you can picture
the Pink Ladies from “Grease”
and the scarves they wore on
their necks, that’s what these
Chloé scarves resembled. It’s
no wonder the fashion world
has been favoring scarves as
of late. Think about it: you can
literally wear a scarf like this
with anything, and your outfit
will be effectively 10 times
cooler (don’t believe me? Try
it). Almost everything in this
collection was constructed
from soft colors and loose
edges, which lent a sense of
boho-chic. Carefree and cool
vibes radiated off of each
garment, perfectly curated for
this collection.
Surprisingly, no handbags
came down the runway with
any of the models. This was
disappointing; the world has
never seen a Chloé bag that it
wasn’t immediately impressed
with. Most of the shoes in the
show were boots; most boots
had a high shaft, above the
ankle but still below the knee
for more wearability. They
came in different colors, such
as black, brown and tan.
However, the coolest
piece of all came out nine
minutes into the show. It was
a multicolored, oversized coat
that stopped at the knee. Made
of a thick wool-like material,
the coat was completely and
unapologetically fringed. This
jacket was by far the biggest
statement piece of the show
this season.
To sum it up, I basically
want everything that came
down the runway. The
oversized and free-forming
designs bring about a pure
form of femininity, which is
something I can get behind.
These high-end fashion
garments are something that
you can wear out to a gala, or
wear inside when you’re alone
in the apartment eating your
leftover Chinese food. Now,
that’s versatility at its finest.
This collection receives an A
from me. The designer really
had every kind of woman in
mind while creating these
pieces, and I know I am among
the many women who hope to
be lucky enough to wear them
one day.
Chic comfort key at
Chloé runway show
FASHION RECAP
By DAYTON HARE
Daily Arts Writer
The early and middle 20th
century was a period of profound
darkness. The spasms of war
wracked the whole of the spin-
ning globe,
washing
the world in
blood as vio-
lence spread
like a con-
tagion. The
carnage of
the Second
World War
shattered
nations
— human-
ity heard
“Rolling
Thunder” in
the distance
and saw
an “Iron
Curtain”
descend-
ing. And
of course, after a fateful August
morning on Honshu Island, the
world came to live with the omni-
present menace of Oppenheimer’s
monster.
While this temperament is
present in visual arts, dance,
music, poetry, literature and other
areas, it is perhaps most noticeable
in theatre. Starting around World
War II, existentialism and absurd-
ism began to surface in dramatic
art. In France, Sartre’s “Huis Clos”
explored a personalized existen-
tialist Hell of people and Albert
Camus’s “Le Malentendu” probed
the depths of the absurd. The
Irishman Samuel Beckett incorpo-
rated both Sartre’s existentialism
and Camus’s absurdist outlook
into his masterpiece “Waiting for
Godot.” But in English language
arts, the culmination of absurdist
theatre is possibly Tom Stoppard’s
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead,” a tragicomedy first
staged in 1966 in Edinburgh that is
coming to the Arthur Miller stage
in Ann Arbor this weekend.
“Because it’s absurdist theatre
at its heart it doesn’t have the arc
to it that people often expect from
theatre. And the characters by the
end aren’t necessarily changed
by it — Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern never escape their fate,” said
David Widmayer, the director of
Ann Arbor Civic Theatre’s pro-
duction of the play, in an interview
with the Michigan Daily.
Widmayer started acting in
eighth grade, and continued
throughout high school. As a stu-
dent at the University of Michigan
— though not a theatre major — he
joined the improv group Witt’s
End in its inaugural year. Fol-
lowing his time at the University,
Widmayer auditioned for a role in
“The Tempest” at the Ann Arbor
Civic Theatre, where he has been
working ever since. “Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern” will mark Wid-
mayer’s directorial debut at the
Civic Theatre.
“I’ve always loved it. I first saw
scenes from it in high school,”
Widmayer said of his decision to
stage Stoppard’s work. “It’s very
much about sort of discovering
the play.”
The title of “Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead” is taken
from a line in the final scene of
Shakespeare’s famous tragedy
“Hamlet,” and the action of Stop-
pard’s play mostly occurs on the
sidelines of Shakespeare’s, with
the title characters largely isolated
from the events of the elder trag-
edy. Woven throughout the play,
however, are scenes and lines from
“Hamlet,” interspersed between
the philosophical contemplations
of the two title characters.
“[Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern] move inexorably from the
start of the play to the end where
they die, constantly sort of futilely
fighting against the idea that they
can’t do anything about their fate,”
Widmayer said. “It shares a lot in
common with ‘Waiting for Godot’
… because it’s not about the plot,
it’s about what the characters are
going through and their internal
struggle and the way that Stop-
pard uses that to make us think
about death or destiny or prede-
termination.”
Widmayer and his colleagues
have approached much of the set
design for the play with a mini-
malist, abstract perspective which
lends itself to the somewhat intan-
gible nature of the play’s setting.
“We brought in a minimal
amount of set pieces,” Widmayer
said. “Mostly what will occupy
the thrust stage are very simple
rehearsal style blocks, which can
represent tables or chairs, and sort
of fit the character of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern being in a loca-
tion of no particular character.”
The Civic Theatre’s production
will also use updated costuming,
eschewing traditional Shakespear-
ean garb for 20th century fashion.
“I’ve got a really great costum-
er, Anni Fox, who has sort of taken
us in a little bit of a modern direc-
tion,” Widmayer said. “We were
originally thinking we would go
with a more Elizabethan feel for
it … but as she started to develop
it she pitched to me a little more
modern feel, with some designs
inspired by current designers
making fashion for runways, high
fashion stuff with deconstructed
suits and things like that.”
A large portion of the play
features a group of tragedians —
ostensibly the same who feature
in Act III of “Hamlet” — and this
presented an opportunity for a
great deal of original music and
musicians in the cast.
“We wrote all original songs for
it as a group … singers would go
off and look at Stoppard’s text and
also the text from “Hamlet and
pick out phrases that they liked for
the lyrics, and the instrumental-
ists would work together on laying
out a basic instrumental part,”
Widmayer said. “Then we’d bring
everyone back together and jam
it out until we [had our songs] … it
has sort a modern American folk
music feel to it, but each song has
its own character.”
Widmayer and the cast also use
the music to provide commentary
on the play, exploring many of the
questions raised within the script.
“[Listening to the lyrics, one
will] notice that they either have
just heard some of the things that
they’re singing or they’ll find that
just afterwards the lyrics appear
in the text … so the songs either
seem to be echoing something
that’s just happened or predicting
something that’s about to hap-
pen.,” Widmayer said. “That’s a
feel I really enjoy with it, because
it plays up some of the metathe-
atrical issues that we’re dealing
with in the show where there’s a
lot of playing with place and play-
ing with time and playing with
the idea of ‘has all this happened
before?’”
By the end of the play, con-
cepts ranging from the differ-
ences between art and reality
to the extent of an individual’s
significance are explored, leaving
audience members with plenty of
material to ponder.
“There isn’t necessarily an
answer to the questions raised
by it — or at least we don’t have
one answer in mind that we
want them to come away with,”
Widmayer said. “What we want
them to come away with is having
asked interesting questions, hav-
ing made them think about things
in a different way, particularly
about what the value of knowledge
is — if you had perfect knowledge
about how everything was going
to turn out, would that make you
happier or not?”
‘Dead’ performance
COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW
By ARIANA ASSAF
Daily Arts Writer
“We had playdates. It was tight,”
Aseem Mangaokar said in an inter-
view with The Michigan Daily
of his early days with childhood
friend turned musical collabora-
tor Chris Gavino. Now producing
together as DJ duo Hotel Garuda,
you could say their playdate activi-
ties have progressed beyond swing
sets and sandboxes to a playground
of nightclub stages and music fes-
tivals.
Though
living
on
opposite
coasts — in L.A. and D.C., respec-
tively — Mangaokar and Gavino
began working together in Janu-
ary 2014. Since then, they’ve made
a name for themselves putting
out a variety of remixes — of Lana
Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness,”
Chromeo’s “Jealous” and Galantis’
“Gold Dust” to name a few — and
already have a set at EDC Vegas
under their belts (real talk, I didn’t
know that until after our interview,
which is probably good consider-
ing EDC is practically Mecca and I
don’t know how to process having
talked to someone who’s reached
it). Hotel Garuda’s relatively rapid
rise has most recently landed
them on their first-ever tour with
Amtrac, who released his Lost in
Motion EP about a month ago. A
six-week engagement, the Lost in
Motion tour made a stop at Popu-
lux last Friday, drawing crowds
from the local Detroit area and
as far as East Lansing — plus Ann
Arbor …*waves*.
Last summer, Gavino temporar-
ily left D.C. to work on music with
Mangaokar in L.A., and together
they’ve set off on a journey away
from remixes and into the world
of their own original music. Hotel
Garuda’s first single began to take
shape in September, after Gavino
was already back at school in D.C.
Working remotely, they completed
the track by January, but as of now
it’s still tantalizingly mysterious to
most of the world.
“There’s a method to the mad-
ness,” Mangaokar said of his agen-
cy’s marketing strategy behind
new releases. “Now that we’re
involved with a label, there’s a lot
more that goes into it than us just
making a song and putting it up.”
Luckily, that means tons of sup-
port and industry resources for
their work which — combined
with undeniable talent, seems to
be a recipe for success. The single
is set to be officially released on a as
of yet undisclosed date in the near
future, and I can only imagine it
will benefit from the hype coming
off the tour.
Of course, it will also benefit
from the fact that it’s a total jam.
That’s right, the Populux crowd
was treated to an early listen of the
very first Hotel Garuda original,
and I must say my ears felt honored.
Imagine an echo-y, liquid tune that
quickly opens up to Emily Warren-
esque vocals held together by an
overall dance vibe that perfectly
leaves listeners wanting more, and
you’ll have a sense of the song that
will (hopefully) hold you over until
it you can listen for yourself.
Before Hotel Garuda, local duo
Golf Clap warmed up the room
with their deep house stylings.
Apparently I’m totally out of the
loop because they play at Can-
tina with some regularity and I’m
embarrassed to say I’ve never been.
They’ve got plenty of upcoming
shows scheduled around here—I’m
particularly excited for the Hash
Bash Official Afterparty at The
Blind Pig (who wouldn’t be?). Any-
way, the room continued to fill as
Hotel Garuda took the stage, and I
can only imagine that from an art-
ist’s point of view watching people
flock to your music is as promising
as watching the sun rise. The set
that followed was as refreshing as a
Sunday morning, and as energetic
as a Friday night in your twenties
should be.
Characterized by quick transi-
tions and plenty of opportunities
to sing along, Hotel Garuda estab-
lished a steady flow of house beats
mixed with fun samples (not the
kind from pop songs that the radio
beats to death), creating an envi-
ronment that buzzed like a great
college house party, but with bet-
ter music and LED lights. Amtrac
finished off the night, working the
crowd into a frenzy by letting his
build-ups simmer until they were
good and ready to explode; it really
did have something of a detonative
quality, like a glitter bomb of music
raining down over a happy crowd.
Perhaps one of the most won-
derful things that comes from talk-
ing to an artist about their work is
the chance to get a sense of their
passion behind it. Sure, watching
a DJ rock out in the booth is great,
but listening to them geek out over
their own music and that of their
friends is pretty cool, too. Though
still in the early stages of his career,
Mangaokar seems committed to
keep the good times coming.
ARTIST
PROFILE
IN
A
Rosencrantz
and
Guildenstern
are Dead
March 10 7:30
p.m., March
11-12 8 p.m.,
March 13 2 p.m.
Arthur Miller
Theatre
Students $11,
Adults $17-22