Presented as part of RE:NEW RE:PLAY Performance Residency Series, LEWIS FOREVER conceived and created a new evening-length interactive performance every Thursday night throughout the month of June, in response to the goings on at the New Museum during the run of 2009 New Museum Triennial “Younger Than Jesus.” Performances included imagined interactions with artworks, placing them in literal conversation with current events and the day-to-day goings-on in the Lewis siblings’ lives and fantasies. A special artist-led tour of the exhibition was organized in collaboration with Cris Scorza and preceded each performance.

The content of LF’s residency focused on the simultaneous development of a series of a solo projects and a video/live performance project. Throughout, LF employed a variety of different strategies for investigating and expanding this material in front of a live audience. Each presentation offered new insights and alterations to the material, which then informed the following week’s rehearsals and presentation. The audience was involved as observers and critics had the opportunity to participate and directly interact with LF. LF used that feedback and responded to it for each subsequent step. On certain days, LF opened the rehearsal process to willing participants in one of many approaches they were investigating to develop the process of working collectively. Throughout the residency, LF explored the process of devising and shaping new material as a collective and a family, sharing the unique pleasures and challenges of such a process, while developing new material that was presented in its finished form later in 2009 in Berlin.

The two projects under development were:

SCREEN TEST

A small bit of text, the representation of a man in a chair, and a mysterious faceless figure in the background engaged in a game of composition with a camera operator, a sound guy, and a strain of jazz music. These are the basic elements of this performative/filmic circumstance where each element is carefully considered as a character. Four main characters emerge: the seated man, the faceless figure, the camera operator, and the sound guy. The four members of LF cycle through, performing each of these characters in a live filmmaking performance that unfolds as a meta-neo-noir murder mystery.

LEWIS FOREVER: Solo

After their experiments in collective vision in Freak the Room, LF proposes a new working model for themselves as a constellation of individuals working independently. Each member of LF will conceive and produce a solo project within an agreed time frame. The completed solo projects will be presented to one another, after which LF will collaborate as a team of curators to work towards finding a unique and specific format for the presentation of the solo work.