12 Minutes Max

12 Minutes Max is a curated monthly performance series featuring short works by local artists in many disciplines.

One Sunday a month, we present three original pieces in a varied mix, chosen from music, dance, film, theater, performance art, writing, and the like — each 12 minutes or less with a short Q&A after each piece. The whole event is short and sweet, taking about an hour.

The City Library will present a live stream 12 Minutes Max on Sunday, October 18, at 2pm. Click here to watch the recording of this live event.

Ching-I Chang will present her short video Home: Creature, featuring her collaged drawings and music by Eldar Baruch. Ching-I is “made in Taiwan. Sometimes, she’s a human, dance artist, and visual artist; mostly, she’s a dreamer who loves bananas.” Her drawings have been her personal practice since she was little, and she also grew up witnessing her grandpa drawing with the Ink Washing Painting (IWP) method. She, as his granddaughter, was hugely influenced by his way of seeing fantasy in the most ordinary life. She calls her drawings, “creatures.” Every creature that she creates is a way to cultivate her own sense of harmony and tribute to her grandpa. During the pandemic, Ching-I has been drawing and creating short clips to share with friends for laughs or tears, and Eldar has been a huge inspiration. Their art is a form of an attentive dialogue. They wish to “intrigue dialogues between humans through and with their art”. https://www.chingichangbigelow.com and https://www.eldarbaruch.com

Vie Rabb and Jason Rabb will perform a set of tiny pieces of music from their project called Child Rabbit.  Vie is a 7 year old violinist, composer, and Charlie Chaplin enthusiast.  Jason is a “much much older” composer and percussionist who also plays guitar in the chamber/garage duo it foot, it ears.  These pieces are a “pops” and daughter collaboration using violin and prepared guitar. 

Film director and screenwriter Arthur Veenema will screen his film Tomorrow’s Shores, a short sci-fi film that reflects on the world we pass from generation to generation. The story is told through a loose vignette using "memories" and "images", and set in a future where most of the world's wildlife has gone extinct due to a slow-moving environmental catastrophe. In this world, a mother and daughter work to clean the shorelines, and the young girl finds something that she's never seen before… Arthur Veenema specializes in science-fiction and magical-realism narratives, and he is known for producing a series of short films examining the personal impacts of new technology. Arthur graduated from the University of Utah in 2015 with an Honors BFA in Film & Media Arts, and currently works in the Utah film industry.

This program is modeled after 12 Minutes Max, a performance laboratory originated by On the Boards in Seattle.