Venice, CA

sago i-iii

An ongoing experimental series that uses video + sound art, movement and visitor engagement to bring to life a dark comedy I wrote. Through the voices of plants living inside a walled garden run by a gardener they have trouble respecting, Sago Plastico addresses the experience of weighing the comforts of living by someone else's agenda vs mobilizing for one's own purpose.

Sago Plastico i-Sago Plastico iii, May - Septempber 2017
Video, found and recorded sound, flora, paper, colored pencil, performance in a garden

The story, told by plants through a plant transmitter, challenges viewers to think about the confines of comfort zones. Each participant and contributor had to get outside of his or her personal comfort zone to make the piece possible. The script’s narrative: In order to escape the authority they’ve outgrown under a gardener’s supervision, plants in a garden must recognize their complacency and uplift one another.

an excerpt:

“We envied the lawn grass. No not the LONG grass, the grass on the lawn in the gardener's front yard. All it knew was two inches. Everything it needed, everything it was, everything it wanted, which was respectfully based on every blade around it—all of that—was two inches. The minute one blade peeked atop the crew cut of its obedient green fellows, the Gardener and his mower brought it back down to the level of the others. And the blade and the Gardener lived satisfied with its humility via uniformity.”

In a pursuit to make contemporary art more accessible, I'm conducting interviews with visitors before the performance. People avoid contemporary art and, these days, most forms of entertainment and education outside of the corporate consumption comfort zone. If we all gather inspiration from a tiny corporately curated patch, new ideas have trouble growing. Questions relate to the theme of exiting one's comfort zone to increase independence and, appropriately, may cause discomfort. People like to relate.

The discomfort of the participation and personal questioning about how the theme relates to the visitor leads to the viewer to feel more freedom to understand and to be comfortable with the performance.

The discomfort of the participation and personal questioning about how the theme relates to the visitor leads the viewer to feel more freedom to understand and be comfortable with the performance.

_{PLANTS (film)
Jazmine Bailey

Iris Alden
Miranda Friedman
Kadesha Goins
Esa Lewis
Stephanie Montero
Yasmin Onbirback
Annie Pho
Diandra Torres

VIDEOGRAPHY (film)
Trenton Foon
Miranda Friedman

SOUND DESIGN
Roy Sugihara

STYLING + MAKE UP + HAIR
Adeel Khan
Annie Pho

ILLUSTRATIONS
Iris Alden

STORY + SCREENPLAY
+ DIRECTION + SET
Miranda Friedman

PLANTS (performers)
(Sago i)
Jazmine Bailey
Annie Pho
Savannah Washington

(Sago ii)
Rachel Celotto
Neda Yazdani
Negin Yazdani

Miranda Friedman (Sago i - iii)

CHOREOGRAPHY
Jazmine Bailey
Annie Pho
Miranda Friedman

PLANT VOICES
Jazmine Bailey
Miranda Friedman
Annie Pho

GARDENER VOICES
Conrad Cunningham
Vince Roush

MOTHER NATURE VOICE
Sylvie Targhetta

VFX (film)
Dante Graves

LIVE SCORE
Myra Hasson (DIGITAL SOUND ART) (Sago i)
Dillon Cahill (BANJO) (Sago ii)

Emma Diamond (BASS + SYNTH)(Sago iii)

VIDEOGRAPHY (event)
Shira Shane (Sago i-ii)
Dante Graves (Sago iii)}