Students in a fall Princeton Atelier course, led by filmmaker/video designer Kaz Phillips-Safer and singer/songwriter/composer Heather Christian, present Memory House, a series of immersive, experiential installations drawn from domestic memories of childhood through which the public is invited to journey.
Reservations are recommended, but not required, for specific tour times. Free and open to the public.
Showings will take place on Saturday, December 12 and Sunday, December 13 at 1:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. each day in the basement of New South, located across University Place from McCarter Theatre, on the Princeton campus.
Throughout the fall, undergraduate and graduate students in the course discussed personal narratives from their childhood as source material. In conjunction with the teaching artists, they designed re-constructions of those memories using a range of media to invite an audience to share and experience those reminiscences. The installations include:
- “Crayon Engine: A little girl finds a colorful way to combat boredom” by School of Architecture graduate student Jessica Colangelo
- “Great Adventures: A family’s road trip to the Land of Enchantment” by senior theater designer Wesley Cornwell
- “Mudchild: A girl discovers a newfound freedom in her own backyard” by freshman Kyra Gregory
- “From the Next Room: It’s a normal family gathering, so why does something seem off?” by senior filmmaker Charlotte Levy
- “Unleavened tears: A church boy resents the affliction of his relentless crying” by Nathan Yoo, a junior in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
- “after the fall: a deadened red winter night” by Lily Zhang, a graduate student in the School of Architecture
Kaz Phillips-Safer is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and theatrical video designer. As a filmmaker, she has made four short films that have screened at festivals domestically and abroad and directed a number of music videos. She has also received several fellowships and grants including from American Film Institute, Cinereach, Eastman Kodak and the Jerome Foundation. As a video designer she has presented work in France (Theatre de Chaillot, Paris; Les Subsistances, Lyon; Le Quartz, Brest), Poland, Denmark, Russia, Australia (Queensland Theater Co, Brisbane; Legs on the Wall, Sydney), the United Arab Emirate, and across the U.S. (American Repertory Theater, Cambridge MA; Bumbershoot, Seattle, WA). She has been the video artist-in-residence with the internationally acclaimed New York City-based dance theater company, Witness Relocation, since 2007.
Heather Christian is an Obie-Award winning composer, performer and singer with the New York City-based ensemble Heather Christian & the Arbornauts. Her recent composing credits include Gertrude Stein’s The World Is Round (BAM) for which her score received a 2014 Obie citation; Of Mice and Men (The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds); Daily Life Everlasting (Norwegian Theater Acadamy, Norway and LaMama ETC, NYC); Mud (IAmA Theater Company, Los Angeles); Labyrinth (Abrons Arts Center); as well as numerous compositions for short films including Gregory Go Boom, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this past year. She is currently staging her own concept album, Animal Wisdom, which she and the Arbornauts will premiere at the Transform Festival in Leeds in spring of 2017.
