BUFFER
CONCEIVED AND DIRECTED BY XAVIER CHA
CO-COMMISSIONED BY BAM & PERFORMA17 FOR THE 2017 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
PRESENTED AT BAM FISHER THEATER, NOV 1-4, 2017
An analogue theater representation of the private consumption of digital media, Buffer alternates between intimate conversation, dance, opera, and a love scene that each freeze, loop, and stutter in real time by the virtuosic skill of the performers on stage.
Music by Aaron David Ross | Libretto byJuliana Huxtable | Opera Singer: Michael Maniaci
Costumes by Avena Gallagher | Lighting by Joe Levasseur
Cast: Cassandra Freeman, Babs Olusanmokun, Cory Koons, Cutler X
Dancers: Dylan Crossman, Stanley Gambucci, Nicholas Grubbs, Cori Kresge, Joshua Tuason
SELECT PRESS FOR BUFFER
“Not content only to test boundaries — between public and private, audience and performer, real and imagined — Cha’s Buffer probes the spaces between, inhabiting interstitial worlds in which humanity is paused, subverted, syncopated or unfiltered and served up raw. There’s much to feed upon.”
— Stephanie Berg, Flash Art
“The title made sense to me because it refers to the literal buffer that happens when you’re viewing things online and they freeze. You have the patience for it, for some reason, at home—I guess because you can go and do something else, like check your phone. I began thinking about how that would feel in a public viewing experience. But then buffer, to me, also implies this weird alien space between humans. I think of it like this puffy sac between us, like we’re negotiating these weird buffers between humanity.”
— Xavier Cha, interviewed in Artforum
“With her work, artist Xavier Cha is striving for an analog expression of something we’re experiencing in contemporary life.”