July 27 - 30 Performance & Exhibition
We all Fall Down
July 27 - 30, 2017
July 27th - Artist Performance @ 6pm with reception to follow
July 28th - Film Screening, "Colorado Territory" (1949) @ 7pm
July 29th - Film Screening, "Ticket to Tomahawk" (1950) @ 7pm
July 30th - Installation with video @ 4 pm to 6 pm
A Performance and Screenings by Ligia Bouton
Station Independent Projects is pleased to present We All Fall Down which will launch
with a performance on Thursday, July 27 at 6pm.
Over the next three days sculptural objects and video used in this event will be on view
in the gallery. In addition, two early western films will be screened within the installation: "Colorado Territory" starring Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo on July 28 at 7pm, and
"Ticket to Tomahawk" starring Rory Calhoun and a young Marilyn Monroe on July 29
at 7pm.
This complex performance/installation project aims to explore the narratives of 1940s western films by positioning them in relation to our on-going ideas around American national identity and unified cultural heritage.
Artist Ligia Bouton draws on her own family history in the creation of We All Fall Down. Her performance explores the role her grandfather, a large animal veterinarian, played
in the creation of these films in the mountains around Durango, Colorado in the late 1940s. During this period, Colorado experienced a sudden boom in its film industry
as new technology made on-location filming easier and better roads and services
reached remote towns. The July 27 performance focuses on the opening scene
from the 1949 film "Sand" in which a horse was anesthetized by the artist's grandfather
so that it appears as dead. The veterinarian then stayed with the animal throughout
the shoot, remaining just outside the camera's frame, to ensure the horse safely
recovered from the drugs.
We All Fall Down reenacts this resurrection as a metaphor for larger ideas of
Manifest Destiny in the American West, and hopes to provoke a dialogue around
cultural narratives that employ extreme forms of fiction to uphold our idealized
national identity.