kb Thomason & Denise Larson
kb Thomason. In short, kb Thomason occurs within the blood group, AB negative. As a maker and director, she is deeply engaged in deploying omni-disciplinary channels as strategies to consider scores for reconsecrating the mundane. Through an indeterminacy of mediums and methodologies she is informed by an extensive and intuitive research practice and an ongoing interest in reimagining modes of experimental investigation. Her work surfaces from within a leaky silhouette of time-based and experience driven applications, endeavoring a re-fashioning of our social and interpersonal rituals of relating to concepts such as time, presence, identity, duration and alternative archives/ documentation. She is co-founder of the creative entity Saint Profanus, The Screen Magazine (a forth-coming atemporal cultural archive) and The House of ia. She is currently surveying notions of rest in Marfa, Texas.
Denise Larson. I’m a native Californian: elementary school in the Los Angeles suburb town of Torrance, high school in the San Joaquin Valley city of Manteca, finally college and adulthood in San Francisco. With a B.A. in Drama from San Francisco State University, I pinned my dreams on becoming an experimental theater artist in the ‘70s counterculture milieu of the Bay Area. Along that path I founded Les Nickelettes. Immersing myself in this feminist theater company, I took on the roles of actress, playwright, producer, stage director, and administrative/artistic director.Within this all-women comedy collective, I collaborated in the writing of five full-length musical plays, as well as dozens of satirical comedy sketches and skits. I gave it all up to become a mother and a teacher. After a twenty-year career in Early Childhood Education, I retired, and embarked on an adventure to write a memoir about my escapades in Les Nickelettes during the cultural upheaval initiated by second- wave feminists. I still live in San Francisco with my husband and our cat. I’ve also returned to my first love; theater. Besides brushing up on theatrical skills in an improv class, I am collaborating with other performers to form a new theatre group: Cosmic Elders
Gift
Denise received the physical elements of my gifts via mail. She received a costume I created for her in reference to two Goddesses of Mirth, which she and I dug into and unearthed together through our conversations; one handmade garment slathered physically & energetically in the likeness of our beloved Baubo (the Ancient Greek goddess of mirth; Demeter's "fool" (the bawdy, jesting, sexually liberated crone figure); and one handmade mask assumed to form one's face into a rendition of our mirthful Okame or Ame-no-Uzume-no- mikoto, the Japanese goddess of the dawn, the shamanic jesting strip-teaser who rescued the Earth. To accompany these costumes, which I described as "Vesting for Jesting” (expounded upon along with their intended application in the document), I prescribed Denise a solo score in homage to the craving of a sensation which she expressed to me early on in our conversations. Prior to sending these items, I created and performed a gesture, or rite, as an homage to Denise and her work with Les Nickelettes. Devised through bits of our conversation and utilizing reference points from her last piece of theater work, I recapitulated the information in the context of a sort of invocation or conversation with these two Goddesses and past/present narratives sparked through our dialogue. The costumes/vestments, now in Denise's possession, were worn to impart an experiential imprint and thus suffused with this lewd performance gesture as a way to communicate an experience/sensation beyond words/text/sound/image with consideration to this time of social distancing. For this performance gesture, I also created costume situations that referenced works Denise shared with me, which seemed to bring her to laughter and fondness (the breasts, the vulva, the skirt color, the wig, etc.). The occasion acted as a sort of potential for imaging what happened after the last scene of the last play Denise wrote—the lead role's dreamscape, if you will—for the sake of the rite, we'll call it a reverie. Special thank you to Ria Leigh, who contributed her performance presence to the action and documentation of the rite. The zoom documentation you have here are snippets from our gift exchange, and the rite, documented via VHS (in honor of Denise’s last applicable video documentation mode), acts as a process video. Our phone conversations are documented, also in snippets, in the video titled “Connection.”