Who We Are and Where We Are Going
Just who are we and what are we doing here?
•Laura Isaac is an interdisciplinary visual artist living and working in Kansas City. With a background in printmaking she now uses installation, performance, digital imagery, drawing, and fibers to create her projects.
•Matt Hopper is a Kansas City native and accomplished jazz guitarist who has been active in Kansas City’s music-scene since he was 20 years old. He teaches guitar to K-12 students at Pembroke Hill and plays in multiple music projects.
•Maritza Ruiz-Kim is an artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. By researching subject matter such as anthropology and technology, she examines underlying social themes using drawings, writing, painting, photography and video.
Where I Am is an extension of the collaborative project You Are #NotHere by Laura & Maritza. In the Springs of 2013 and 2014 Laura & Maritza explored various cities vicariously through the other. Their interactions and the experiences of the psychogeography of the locations were posted live to Twitter with photography and video works remaining as the evidence of the project.
The collaborative team of Isaac & Ruiz-Kim initially came together through Twitter in 2010. Since that time, our working relationship and personal friendship has deepened and our interactions have moved to more private forms of interaction: texting, phone calls, and letters. Where I Am follows this progression by taking the concepts of You Are #NotHere into a more private, personal, and analog experience.
The Project
In May of this year, Laura will be following her partner, Matt, to the cities of Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Matt, will be teaching Brazilian musicians, music students, and local children Kansas City-style jazz in the traditions of Count Basie and Charlie Parker. He will also play in local music venues with Brazilian musicians blending Kansas City jazz standards, Matt’s original compositions, and Brazilian styles of music. Laura will record conversations with their Brazilian hosts, interviews with the local musicians, and the musical exchanges that Matt and the Brazilian musicians have. This music and snippets of the conversations will be compiled into an audio CD.
Each day over the course of our two weeks in Brazil, Laura will open a handwritten letter from Maritza which will share personal stories and guide her into exploring various aspects of her experience; exploring the displacement of her hometown into this new-to-her setting and culture. Does the familiar still feel comforting and familiar when it is out-of-context? Laura will document the experience through photography, video, and personal essays while creating original handmade collage works capturing the sights and sounds of following her heart to another continent.
Tying long-distance friendship, the displacement of culture, and travel-with-a-romantic-partner together into an introspective on-the-move residency, Where I Am will challenge Laura and Matt to create deeply personal work that hones-in on what it means to be from Kansas City.
What We Need & What's In It For You
Taking this project international and recording a live album is no small task. Our hosts in Brazil are helping us with what they can, but the costs of travel to Brazil, recording, and CD production still leave us with quite a bit of funding to cover. We’ve set a minimum funding goal of $4450 in order to really make this project happen. But we have an IDEAL goal of $6500 which would allow us to realize an even better CD package packed with photos and stories, but more exciting than that… we would be able to bring one of our Brazilian hosts, guitarist Antonio Flores, back to Kansas City to give a special concert with Matt! This would be AMAZING!
We know that when you back someone’s work, it’s making a strong statement of faith in what we do. We take that show of support very seriously. We’ve come up with some special incentive packages for you for helping us realize this project! (Including an evening playing tunes and sipping yerba mate with us out of traditional calabash mugs we will bring back for you from Brazil!)
Although Laura and Maritza have done their You Are #NotHere project in Kansas City, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Oakland… taking it international and to Brazil is a big step. And while Matt is no stranger to playing and recording music, having performed on multiple albums and produced his own album, recording the live sessions in Brazil while on the move will be a unique challenge. Thankfully, we like to overthink things and plan ahead:
•Technology. Well we certainly have the technology but having it all work on-the-move in Porto Alegre and Rio? We’re doing our research and getting all of Laura’s tech equipment set up with backups, extra storage, and all the necessary international adaptions. We’re stopping just short of making Laura herself bionic. (Although we haven’t entirely ruled that out.)
•Lost. We will fully admit it. We are Americans and we will be lost in Brazil… at least we would be IF we didn’t have amazing hosts there who will be with us every step of the way. We won’t be tourists; our team is taking us into their schools, homes, and lives.
•Ambition. Yeah, we know this is a really big undertaking. Art and travel and recording and producing a CD… what can we say, we like to do ALL THE THINGS. But if you look at our individual track records, we find ways to make it happen. This is a huge opportunity for us to create great art, deepen our study of Brazilian music, and share Kansas City with a special corner of the world.
Other Ways To Help
Share our project with your friends. Follow our journey on our social media feeds. Help us connect with anyone you know who would be interested in this Kansas City/Brazil arts & music cultural exchange. The greater the circle of friends… the closer home will feel, even when we are far away. Obrigada!
