Shannon Jackson's New Retrospective of "The Builders Association"
BCNM's Shannon Jackson has just released a new critical retrospective of the award-winning intermedia theater performance company, the Builders Association, together with the company's artistic director and founder, Marianne Weems. Founded in 1994, the company has forged a reputation for work that blurs medium, genre, and temporality through masterful video, architecture, sound, and text intergation into live performance. The company has staged many performances of both classic tales and refashionings of contemporary events and the book explores some highlights including from MASTER BUILDER (Ibsen by way of Gordon Matta-Clark), SUPERVISION (an exploration of dataveillance), and HOUSE/DIVIDED (the foreclosure crisis juxtaposed with the Joads of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath). Each production is explored from its initial conceptualization to the actual performance, delving into the artistic process and decision-making at each critical juncture. The book also includes critical meditations from such artists and scholars as Elizabeth Diller, Pico Iyer, Saskia Sassen, Kate Valk, and many others.