the temporary space hosts American Rifle 3 by Marcus Civin in collaboration with Low Lives 2 curated and organized by Jorge Rojas and Complicity With Anonymous Materials, a conceptual cinematic project presented by 13 Houston-based artists.

American Rifle 3, a text and prop-based performance, explores human violence and human resourcefulness as informed by colliding research into the Great Depression, gruesome Los Angeles Sunset Strip murders, the Underwear Bomber, radical psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, and the silent film comedy of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Over the past year, Civin has performed parts of American Rifle at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Francois Ghebaly Gallery and Sea and Space Explorations in LA. In American Rifle, a rifle is a weapon, a noun, but also think: to rifle through, verb, to look for something. In American Rifle, Civin—a clown—sings, dances, demonstrates and practices survival rituals.

Informed by the historical performance innovations of Happenings and Fluxus, in American Rifle 3, Civin deals with the symbolic presence of a rifle, a rifle of America, but in the performance, there is no rifle. At the temporary space, Civin will symbolically and metaphorically play with magically-attractive-but-unfulfilling aspects of the American Dream, referencing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and enlisting co-conspirators to regularly interrupt a song-and-dance number by throwing him against a wall-sized target. Civin will perform unnecessary hardship, futility, and dogged persistence, pulling erratic items out of a suitcase labeled “Snake Oil Salesman” and making these items work. Civin will perform LIVE at 8:45 PM, April 30th at the temporary space, assisted by two local volunteers and the writer, Saehee Cho. The performance will last for 40 minutes. There will be seats for all; bring a friend and please come on time. A section of the performance will be simulcast.

American Rifle 3 will be broadcasted through ustream.tv as the Internet live stream network project Low Lives 2 curated and organized by Jorge Rojas, a multidisciplinary artist / curator. The selected projects will be displayed at the participating venues in Low Lives 2. You can also access to the live performance wherever you are through the Internet access.

To view the live streaming : http://www.ustream.tv/channel/low-lives-2

Complicity With Anonymous Materials is a cinematic platform focused on temporal viscosity and spatial feedback, presented by 13 Houston-based artists: Ted Closson, Jeremy Deprez, James Diedrich, Francis Giampietro, Chuck Ivy, Natali Leduc, Grant MacManus, Abinadi Meza, Richard Nix, Eduardo Portillo, Brit Ragsdale, Hana Shoup and Thais Verissimo.

* Low Lives 2 will be on view from 7 pm to 10 pm.

** American Rifle 3 by Marcus Civin will start at 8:45 pm.