NJN - New Jersey Public Television and Radio
Television Radio Community Support NJN Store
Watch Online Listen Online Podcasts PBS NPR
   
DATE: June 11, 2007
CONTACT: Arlene Carollo (973) 377-3300; ACarolloZGF@optonline.net
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Printer Friendly
Out There
On NJN’s State of the Arts

Wednesday, June 13 at 11:30 pm

STATEWIDE – NJN’s State of the Arts looks at creative work that takes unusual directions in Out There. The program focuses on the curious and the fascinating from the cult magazine Weird New Jersey to a ballet inspired by the music of The Lounge Lizards. Out There was nominated for a 2005 Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for outstanding magazine; and one of the stories, Weird New Jersey, was nominated for outstanding feature: informational. This encore presentation airs on Wednesday, June 13 at 11:30 pm. State of the Arts marks twenty-five years on NJN this season. The series has earned 26 Regional Emmy Awards, including New York Emmy Awards in 2007 and 2005, and a 2006 Mid-Atlantic Emmy.

• Weird New Jersey
First there was Weird NJ, a homegrown magazine and travel guide for people interested in things like abandoned asylums, backwater roadside attractions and other hallmarks of modern folklore throughout the Garden State. Then there was Weird NJ: The Exhibition at the HERE Art Center in New York City, featuring 17 artists whose work is inspired by and connected to all things Jersey – from the industrial landscapes surrounding the New Jersey Turnpike to the mythologies of the Pine Barrens. State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa talks to magazine founders Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran, curator and frequent Weird NJ contributor Phil Buehler, and one of the weirdest of the Weird NJ artists: self-proclaimed “techno visionary king of art” Stephen “Hoop” Hooper.

• Vista
Graham Lustig has created a physical, colorful, jazzy, multi-movement new dance work called “Vista,” choreographed especially for the elite professional dancers of the American Repertory Ballet based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Lustig is the artistic director. The work is set to the music of the eclectic jazz group The Lounge Lizards. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz visits the troupe in rehearsal and interviews Lustig about the choreographic process.

• Ebony Hillbillies
African-American music usually evokes jazz, gospel, or rhythm and blues. That is, until you hear the Ebony Hillbillies – a modern country string band that plays old-time dance music on banjo, mountain dulcimer, fiddle, string bass, as well as on Ricky Gordon's homemade percussion set consisting of a washboard, an array of cymbals, triangles and chimes, and a pair of tambourines strapped to his feet. State of the Arts producer Amber Edwards caught up with the Ebony Hillbillies at a concert at The Newark Museum.

• The Bots
Eva Sutton and Sarah Hart are an artist team who create “bots” – robots that are art and can even make art! For instance, “Chance Transmission: An I Ching Reading With Two Small Robots” have the bots painting symbols with sumi ink. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz visits the artist team in their New York studio, and finds out more about how and why they create their robots, which were featured in a 2005 group show at Clinton, New Jersey’s Hunterdon Museum of Art: called “Almost Human: Dolls and Robots in Contemporary Art.”

State of the Arts, the award-winning, half-hour arts magazine, airs every Friday at 8:30 pm, followed by an encore presentation each Wednesday at 11:30 pm.

The current episode of State of the Arts can be viewed online at www.njn.net. Individual stories will be available to view following their broadcast by visiting the program online at State of the Arts.

Funding for State of the Arts is provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The series producer is Susan Wallner and the executive producer is Nila Aronow.

NJN is available on all New Jersey cable systems, satellite systems, and Time Warner Cable channel 750 in NYC.
State of the Arts is also available via video streaming at njn.net after the original broadcast.
Additionally, the program is repeated on NJN’s JerseyVision available on Comcast Digital Cable in New Jersey.
(Check http://www.njn.net/digital/schedule.html for detailed listings.)
NJN – Uniquely New Jersey
# # #

NJN Home | Television | Radio | Community | Support NJN | Store | Watch Online | Listen Online
TV Schedules | News & Public Affairs | Arts & Culture | NJN Kids | Education | About | Feedback | Contact
Privacy Policy | Copyright © 1996-2007. NJN Public Television and Radio, all rights reserved.