Camel Collective Brings Together Performance, Theory, and Labor Conditions at REDCAT

Lucy Tiven

Opening Jan. 23 at REDCAT, Camel Collective: Something Other Than What You Are is a meta-narrational multi-channel video installation reflecting on the status of theater, stage and show.

The collaboration between Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats renders a story via soliloquies across the creative field in conversations between production and technical crews while the work is shot in REDCAT’s theater, adding yet another layer to the conversation of theater as form and subject.

The exhibition includes video vignettes as well as drawings and props. Pieces explore the formality of light and stage while capturing the often invisible labor of production and technical work that goes into a theatrical performance.

Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats have been working as Camel Collective since 2005. Their works reflect conditions of labor, production and power, citing influences including social portraiture of Weimar Germany and Bertolt Brecht. Their research-based projects merge history, criticism, and forms and techniques of the dramatic arts. 

Their exhibitions and performances include The Second World Congress of Free Artists at Casa del Lago, Mexico City (2013), Una Obra Para Dos Pinturas at the Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan (2012), A Facility Based on Change at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, MassMoCA (2011), and Howls for Bologna at Overgaden Institut for Samtidskunst (2010). Camel Collective has also exhibited works at Artist’s Space, Art in General, Exit Art, and the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, Mexico.

Camel Collective: Something Other Than What You Are opens REDCAT Jan. 23 with a reception from 6-9 p.m. and is on view until March 27.