Artist Gemma Marmalade Returns with DREAM OPERATOR –An Interactive, Telephonic Performance Art Expe

Artist Gemma Marmalade Returns with DREAM OPERATOR –An Interactive, Telephonic Performance Art Experience

Feeling anxious about the 2020 Election? Want to share your views and see how they stack up against some of America’s most powerful and historic speeches? Call Dream Operator – Where thought-provoking wisdom awaits

LAS VEGAS (October 13, 2020) – Following up her recent Rogers Art Loft virtual artist-in-residency project, VODA, contemporary British artist and scholar Gemma Marmalade is once again presenting a unique participatory performance art experience titled DREAM OPERATOR. Featuring a live telephone call center, the public is invited to call DREAM OPERATOR toll free at (888)-977-1074. Taking place on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3 from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. PST, callers are welcome to share their views and opinions and get thought-provoking responses utilizing the words and phrases from some of America’s most powerful historic speeches. DREAM OPERATOR aims to engage callers with time-tested affirmations extracted directly from past orations to help them reflect upon their election experiences. With a surprising artificial intelligence feel and tone, DREAM OPERATOR features a live team of local call center operators who creatively extract verbiage from their original contexts to weave into conversational dialogue for use in the verbal telephone exchange. “Gemma’s initial project VODA provided a great channel for personal connection telephonically and was really well-received,” said Residency Director Ryan Reid. “Her follow up project is equally as compelling and provocative. Gemma’s continued exploration of voice is particularly powerful when set against a backdrop of these tumultuous yet historic times.” Marmalade was the first Rogers Art Loft artist-in-residence to pivot to a virtual residency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, Rogers Art Loft has continued to virtually welcome and engage with additional resident artists including Kevin Goodrich, Daniel Melo and Ralph Farris. The brainchild of local philanthropist and patron of the arts Beverly Rogers, the Rogers Art Loft is made possible by The Rogers Foundation, dedicated to transforming lives through arts and education in Southern Nevada. Since launching with its inaugural roster of artists in June 2019, The Rogers Art Loft at The Lucy has successfully welcomed a number of artists from a variety of disciplines including printmaking, sculpture, video art, fiber arts, and collage, to share their creative insight and practice with the Las Vegas community. More About Gemma Marmalade Gemma Marmalade is a British artist and scholar currently undertaking doctoral research titled: In A Manner of Speaking: The Subversive Voice in Performative Art at the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University. This near-completed analysis examines the performing artists’ voice as, potentially, a subversive agent. It is motivated by a process of thinking, making, and showing performance-based art works that utilize voice in a way that deliberately skews meaning and a distorting of the conventional delivery of contexts and information. The agency of voice presents a great deal of ambiguity and nuance throughout its trajectory from conceptualization to its presentation to an audience. There are multiple and divergent ways art practice and theory has explored this territory. Against the contemporary condition of political doublespeak and verbal subterfuge, this work considers how the artist/performer finds the means to challenge conventions of orality, language and communication through a performed voice that seeks to subvert or revision meanings and intentions with illuminating purpose. With an active research profile, Marmalade is a Professor in Critical and Theoretical Approaches to Photography at the University of Derby. As an artist, she specializes in audacious spectacles in photography, video and performance which playfully negotiate the authenticity of hierarchical institutions with social and queer politics. Her practice is exhibited widely, including Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; The Photographers' Gallery, London; The Apulia Film Commission, Bari; and the State Museum of Gulag, Moscow.