DYLAN MORAN’S perspective is unashamedly unique. He observes life through the tinted hue of a glass of fine full-bodied red and then paints what he sees onto a deliciously cruel and rich life canvas. Blisteringly funny, and painfully accurate, this is like looking at a Canaletto painting whilst someone simultaneously punches you in the stomach and tickles you breath-less. Called “the Oscar Wilde of Comedy,” by the London Evening News, Moran is universally considered one of the foremost comics of his generation.Moran is best known in the United States for his roles in several well known films, including Notting Hill, the cult classic Shaun of the Dead, Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and David Schwimmer’s Run, Fatboy, Run.
In How Music Works, Byrne explores how profoundly music is shaped by its time and place, and how the advent of recording technology in the twentieth century forever changed our relationship to playing, performing, and listening to music. Writing as historian, anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, Byrne searches for patterns and shows how they have affected his own work over the years with Talking Heads and his many collaborations with the likes of Brian Eno and Caetano Veloso. Byrne sees music as part of a larger, almost Darwinian pattern of adaptations and responses to its cultural and physical context. His range is panoptic, taking us from Wagnerian opera houses to African villages, from his earliest high school reel-to-reel recordings to his latest work in a home music studio, with all the big studios in between.
The work of Kirk Nachman situates itself between the classic cartoon nostalgist and the formal self-consciousness of avant-garde practices. From the disjointed ‘stills’ – paintings rendered on drafting film, reminiscent of animation production art, to fragmentary serial animations which employ decontextualized snippets from old time radio shows, Nachman’s historical aesthetic populism collides with his background in the developments of 20th century fine-art.
In being alone (on a swing) together (in a field), we find a condition of the social that is… the event of a thread. Commissioned by the Armory, Ann Hamilton’s major new work fills the Drill Hall with a visceral and literal poetry. Set into motion by visitors, a field of swings, a massive white cloth, a flock of homing pigeons, spoken and written texts, and transmissions of weight, sound, and silence weave through this expansive space to create a fabric of experience
The current body of work was begun in 2007. These paintings and drawings feature human and animal figures in landscape and interior settings. Either alone or in groups, the figures do not tell a story. Rather, they form self-sufficient images with the power to shock, move, attract and repulse, without labels or explanations. The work constitutes an emotional research into the underlying motivations of human actions and interactions. This investigation goes beyond the rational, culturally and socially accepted surface, and looks closely at the irrational, unconscious and primitive animal instincts that ignite passion, violence and desire.
Praised by The New York Times for his “rich timbre” and “fine sense of line,” Mischa Bouvier is a winner of the 2010 CAG Victor Elmaleh Competition. A “delight to encounter for the first time” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). An advocate for new music, Mischa offers a series of concerts in 2012-13 at Barbes that focuses on contemporary music and explores American song in a collaboration with soprano Sarah Wolfson. Mr. Bouvier has performed with a wide array of ensembles including Anonymous 4, the Mark Morris Dance Group, American Handel Society, the Bach and the Baroque Ensemble of Pittsburgh.
YEAR TWO (Postcard Show) Fowler Arts Collective OPENING EVENT: Friday, Dec. 7th from 7-10pm EXHIBITION ON VIEW: Sat. + Sun., Dec. 8 + 9, 12-6pm
On Friday, Dec. from 7-10pm, Fowler Arts Collective presents YEAR TWO, a group exhibition of postcard-sized works sent from artists all across the United States, our annual birthday party celebration, and year-end fundraiser and raffle. All of the work in the exhibition will be affordably priced at $80 or below, so come ready to do some holiday shopping! Many local businesses have generously donated gifts and prizes to be raffled off at the end of the evening. See the amazing list of prizes below and RSVP on Facebook!
While you are enjoying your spoils from the upcoming NYCC 2012 weekend, make sure to take a break from the Javits Center mayhem for a spectacular evening at the opening of A Postcard from New Yorkshire, featuring new artwork by Dok A. The steampunk extraordinaire is getting adventurous with his work in the show, pushing boundaries and showcasing newly acquired skills. Anticipate intricate details in custom toys as well as ink drawings. Show opens on Friday, October 12 from 7 – 10pm. Dok A will be in attendance at the opening and make sure to welcome him because this will mark his first visit to NYC. Show runs until November 11.
A group of young noise-rock musicians moves into a old, ghost-filled house and sets up shop. Though the spooks are at first rattled by the blasts of guitar feedback and unhinged drummery, they soon begin to share their own beautiful, otherworldly melodies with the band and discover a musical common ground. As the group, ghosts included, fills the neighborhood with strange, electrifying sounds, curious neighbors and passers-by find themselves drawn to the rumbling, hypnotic rhythms emanating from the old dwelling. And so you find yourself here, outside the house, where a sort of Tim Burton block party is unfolding. Come on inside. The Octopus Project is just getting started…
A science book like no other, The Where, The Why, and The How turns loose 75 of today’s hottest artists onto life’s vast questions, from how we got here to where we are going. Inside these pages some of the biggest (and smallest) mysteries of the natural world are explained in essays by real working scientists, which are then illustrated by artists given free rein to be as literal or as imaginative as they like. The result is a celebration of the wonder that inspires every new discovery.
This is one of the museum’s most popular annual seasonal exhibitions. Butterflies and moths make up a large group of insects known as the Order Lepidoptera (lep-i-DOP-ter-ah). The name–from the Greek lepido, “scale”, and ptera, “wings”–refers to a prominent feature of adult butterflies and moths, the tiny scales that cover the wings and the rest of the body.
98.1034 Bottles of Beer on the Wall provides drunken encounters with compulsive systems. A program continually preens itself, inserting lines of code to change its visual representation, but along the way, introducing glitches and new patterns of behavior. A therapist program tries to dispense advice as her logic slowly breaks down. Sound editing software turns simple geometric shapes into hallucinatory landscapes. Photoshop generates intricate patterns in an attempt to hide visual compression. A book displays the abuses and absurdities of the DNS system, an addressing apparatus that has seemingly exhausted meaningful combinations of English words.
Picasso Black and White is the first exhibition to explore a remarkable focus that occupied the great Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, throughout his prolific career: the use of black and white. Few artists have exerted as considerable an influence over subsequent generations as Picasso, one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. While his work is often seen through the lens of his diverse styles and subjects—his Blue and Rose periods, pioneering investigations into Cubism, neoclassical figurative paintings, and explorations in Surrealism, for example, or the forceful and somber scenes depicting the atrocities of war, the allegorical still lifes, the vivid interpretations of arthistorical masterpieces, and the highly sexualized canvases of his twilight years—the recurrent motif of black, white, and gray is frequently overlooked.
Cabinet is pleased to present “Harry Smith: String Figures,” an exhibition drawn from the collection of John Cohen. Organized by painter Terry Winters, the show features twenty-two string figures created by Smith (1923–1991), the legendary artist, filmmaker, and ethnomusicologist.
BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2012, 10am-6pm
On Sunday, September 23, 2012, from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., a record 280+ top national and international authors and participants will join bibliophiles, booksellers and literary organizations on 14 stages at Brooklyn Borough Hall (209 Joralemon Street) and Plaza, Columbus Park, St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights Public Library, Brooklyn Law School, the Brooklyn Historical Society and St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church for the seventh annual Brooklyn Book Festival.
In his first novel in five years, beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author Michael Chabon provides a kaleidoscopic vision of urban America in transition, as witnessed by two intimately intertwined families in Oakland, California. Telegraph Avenue encompasses race, family, sexuality, gentrification, politics, jazz, funk, comics, kung fu, and a talking parrot, all with dazzling style and deep compassion. Chabon will read from his novel and answer audience questions before signing books.
On August 17, 2012 Molly Dilworth will begin work on Date the Time, as part of Recess’s signature program, Session. Session invites artists to use Recess’s public space as studio, exhibition venue and grounds for experimentation. For Date the Time, Dilworth will create a series of banners and flags, bearing patterns generated from user-submitted photos. Addressing digital content using traditional folk art techniques, Dilworth will distill issues of labor and consumer rights from unexpected sources.
In the large-scale “Fotobild” paintings, White continues to conjoin component canvases and then secures commercial storefront awnings above and atop painted canvases. These awnings and armatures, fabricated at a sign shop in Chinatown, feature human-scale snapshots that White has culled from her digital and print archives.
Stealth Reflections pulls back the layers of consciousness and exposes the viewer to an awakening of self reflection. Through his work, Miguel Ovalle seeks to reveal the inner psyche of the human condition through a myriad of interpretations and techniques. His steadfast approach defines his meticulous attention for detail.
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present ‘Control Over Nature’, an exhibition by Tessa Farmer in collaboration with an acoustical installation by Amon Tobin. For her second show at the gallery, Tessa has teamed up with Amon Tobin to mark his September 14th performance at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom. With his groundbreaking audio/visual live show ISAM 2.0, the electronic music pioneer joined forces with Farmer for an extraordinary collaborative installation combining his sound design and elements from ‘ISAM’, alongside Farmer’s trademark sculptures (constructed from bits of organic material, such as roots, dead insects and bones). Hovering with a rarefied, jewel-like beauty, Tessa’s tiny spectacles resound with a theurgist exotica: their specimen forms evolve as something alien and futuristic. The collaboration perfectly captures the themes surrounding ‘ISAM’: sensory deprivation, disorienting situationism and the mechanization of natural things.
Join us for the grand opening of Wondering Around Wandering, and don’t miss Pulled: A Catalog of Screenprinting, making its final stop after a year of traveling.
Fishtank Ensemble is a band that offers a unique blend of Gypsy, Balkan, Flamenco, Klezmer and original tunes. The arrangements are always surprising and include instruments from many countries such as violin, accordion, flamenco and gypsy jazz guitar, shamisen, bass, saw and voice./Baby Soda! Developed by hoboes, perfected through science… Baby Soda is on the cutting edge of a new movement loosely known as street jazz; with an eclectic set of influences ranging from New Orleans brass bands, jug music, southern gospel and hot jazz.
Randy Rosenthal (editor of The Coffin Factory) and panelists Lorin Stein (editor of The Paris Review), Rob Spillman (editor of Tin House), and John Freeman (editor of Granta) discuss the impact of literary magazines in contemporary culture.
In this exhibition, Hegarty takes her point of departure from themes of consumption, lust,reproduction and greed. Playing with traditional still life and figurative painting, Hegarty cites as inspiration the cult comedy Little Shop of Horrors along with current newsheadlines concerning the enhancement and mutilation of body and food. These four new paintings metamorphose sculpturally, as the paintings burst, grow and propagate in bodily gestures, leading the overgrowth to travel ominously beyond the canvas boundaries.
Through choreography and manipulation, master puppeteer Hanne Tierney conducts an intricate counterweight system of over 100 strings, transforming a full stage of inanimate objects into the players of two emotionally charged tales.
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open its 2012-13 season with Nancy Davidson, featuring her inflatable sculpture, Dustup. This will be the artist’s first exhibition at the Gallery. The artist will be present for the opening reception. Davidson, a sculptor and video artist, is known for her unique media – larger than life inflatable sculptures – and for her interest in American icons and gender issues. In 2005 with the support of a Creative Capital Grant, she began her exploration on the myth and reality of the cowgirl. After researching western women’s history Davidson focused on the rodeo cowgirl.
Allen’s signature use of cutting and repurposing book illustrations has not vanished. Instead of the pulp fiction genre, Allen plays with 50’s era versions of clean cut youths and domesticated moms. His unmistakable talent for creating the illusion of 3D in photography with his deft cuts and crimps, establishes a magical world in which a boy and girl play tag creating their own kind of electricity, a milkman makes a very special delivery in space, young toughs play marbles with the solar system and a mother busily sews her own version of “string theory.”
David Stoupakis is an internationally recognized painter who creates eerie portraits of beings that appear wise beyond their years. The self-taught artist adds both haunting imagery and grim fairytale-like elements to his work to juxtapoz childhood innocence with macabre surroundings. InAshes to Sorrow, his new collection of drawings and oil paintings, David creates a continuation of his previous body of work-Walking with These Shadows./With his new work, Matthew Bone continues to explore the visual language he created as a child when massive unmonitored media consumption informed his worldview. A latchkey kid from an early age, pornography, comic books and movies formulated his ideas of sexuality, masculinity, and femininity- in essence reality and perception were sculpted by imaginary worlds steeped heavily in sensationalistic imagery.
In the split second stitching when night greets the dawn, in that
seam, is where the pain resides. Shining white as teeth, this enamel
stutters open the day, creaks open this guilt. We sing as miniature
stuntman, flinging our bodies through the apologies of the afternoon,
the slight off-kilter yawning of space in the blue, blue sky. Sling
madness through evening, dust off that fine linen. The rooms we reside
in now we call home. Through the opening of atoms at nightfall,
splitting off of cells, we create what we do not know in the
moonlight. Tell your lovers to quit forsaking the dawn and your family
to carry forward the dead humbly and with purpose. For it’s our love
basking there in the streetlights; it’s your jaw that’s wishing
forward these words.
Terra Brigando recently received her Masters in English and Creative writing from Mills College. Her previous work can be found or is forthcoming in Fogged Clarity, apt, decomP, FourtyOunceBachelors, Chamber Four, and Word Riot.
Holi is the Hindu festival of colors. It celebrates the coming of spring, fruitful harvests, unity, joy, and a tale from the Bhagavad Gita. In addition to the throwing of colored powder (Holi Gulal) it is traditional to light bonfires in celebration of the miraculous escape that young devotee of the god Vishnu. A demon tried to throw him into a fire, but he escaped without any injuries due to his unshakable devotion. In most areas, Holi lasts about two days. One of Holi’s biggest customs is the loosening strictness of social structures, which normally include age, sex, status, and caste. Holi closes the wide gaps between social classes and brings Hindus together. Together, the rich and poor, women and men, enjoy each other’s presence on this joyous day. Additionally, Holi lowers the strictness of social norms. No one expects the decorum of normal life; as a result, the atmosphere is filled with excitement and joy.
HAZMAT MODINE draws from the rich soil of American music of the 20′s and 30′s through to the 50′s and early 60′s, blending elements of early Blues, Hokum Jugband, Swing, Klezmer, New Orleans R & B, and Jamaican Rocksteady. The band is fronted by two harmonicas which use call and response, harmony, melody, and syncopated interweaving rhythms. The band includes tuba, guitar, and percussion, claviola and Hawaiian steel guitar. The band’s sound reflects musical influences ranging from Avant-garde Jazz to Rockabilly and Western Swing to Middle-Eastern, African, and Hawaiian musical styles.
Nuit Blanche, the tenth annual city-wide art exploration (“art walk” is a gross understatement when over 125 artists’ works are sprinkled all over the City of Light), was a personal success this year than the last (as I was stuck in an apartment with ex-pats waiting to leave for hours as they pre-gamed and played horrible music – see article: Waiting for Nuit Blanche). I took precautions not to invite too many friends and to plan an accurate itinerary of the exploration that began in northern Paris and ended in the center. The journey clocked in at about ten hours, shedding three or four people in the process, leaving me with three others at five in the morning.
Here’s a brief description of the pieces we encountered and where they were located:
Known for his strong and sensuous depictions of women, Brian M. Viveros is a master of contemporary iconography paying homage to the femme fatale. While he almost exclusively paints portraits, within the expressions of his women is conveyed such deep emotion and overwhelming sexuality that his work is undeniably erotic. Often without even a hint of nudity, the viewer is seduced with a mere pout and gaze from his subject’s faces.
In what will be Brian’s second showing at the gallery, the opening will feature an all new collection of original paintings, as well as special rare prints from the artist’s own collection; poster giveaway and signing; live “Smoking Army” performance; screening of Brian’s films along with his new short, and much more.
It must be something about the waterfront. Those Monetesque ripples, ripe for reflecting and dizzying one up with shifts from screen to scene. Something about the water makes everything seem so much more romantic and, in general, that’s what video festivals tend to need.
(TOP video, Song: The Surface of the Ocean
Matt Lavelle: composition and alto clarinet
Jason Kao Hwang: viola
Lola Danza: vocals
Francois Grillot: bass
Recorded,mixed,and mastered by Francois Grillot http://www.myspace.com/mattlavelle
Friday May 27th, 8pm: François Grillot Contraband
Catherine Sikora – reeds
Roy Campbell – trumpet
Anders Nilsson – guitar
Daniel Levin – cello
François Grillot – bass and compositions
Jay Rosen – drums
Rhythm in the Kitchen Music Festival @ The Church of All Nations 410 West 57th Street, $10
The ever-changing arena of contemporary art presents endless challenges for those who find themselves caught in its currents. From white cube gallery exhibits to brick wall paste-ups and graffiti, the push and pull of what is important, relevant, or dismissible can be both distracting and empowering. (READ MORE.)
SUPERCODA PRESENTS:
Show 1 (Friday, 5/27. 9-midnight) : Mamie Minch, Eliza Rickman (LA), Anomylos @CAFE ORWELL.
http://www.myspace.com/mamieminch -
As devilishly funny, irrepressible and irreverent as the former Roulette Sisters frontwoman is live, a lot of this album is rivetingly dark. Minch’s solo debut is a sparse, terse collection of both original and classic acoustic blues songs, several of them imbued with Minch’s signature wit, but it also shows off an altogether different side of her writing. As any good blueswoman knows, the blues can pack a mighty emotional wallop, and Minch sings with an unflinching honesty, even anguish in places. Minch’s soulful, passionate alto voice resounds over old-school instrumentation.
Come celebrate the end of another season at the Poetry Project! The Poets’ Potluck is an opportunity for New York City’s poetry community(ies) to come together for an evening of readings, performances, and delicious food. An array of writers from the Poetry Project series as well as other local reading series will read/perform their work. Any one interested in bringing a dish for the potluck will contribute to an amazing feast. If you’re interested in bringing food, please email Brett Price at fridaynightseriesp@gmail.com.
VIDEOROVER: Season II Curated by: Rachel Steinberg
May 27 – Dec 17, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, May 27, 7-9 PM
Screening begins at 8 PM
910 Grand St Brooklyn, NY
NURTUREart Non-Profit is pleased to present VIDEOROVER: Season II, the second installment of its semi-annual video series. VIDEOROVER: Season II is curated by Rachel Steinberg and features artists: Fatima Al Qadiri and Lyndsy Welgos, Cecilia Bonilla, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Derek Larson, Dana Levy, Pernille With Madsen, Colin Snapp, and JULIACKS.
VIDEOROVER seeks to present a wide range of works from artists locally and internationally who are all working to expand the perceptual limitations of video. This season’s selection aims to disorient viewers by removing an essential reality context, only to redeposit them into seemingly familiar settings.
Dana Levy, Fatima Al Qadiri and Lyndsy Welgos explore the pluralism of eastern and western conventions by looking at traditions through a contemporary perspective. Cecilia Bonilla examines our relationships to the seductive nature of commercial images of women through minimal manipulation, while Juan Pablo Echeverri shows us a self-projected fantasy of mass-produced femininity. Colin Snapp acts as a ‘journalist’ of sorts, documenting moments of real-time, but relieving the viewer of imposed intentions. Pernille With Madsen dizzies and disorients us with a vision of how to imagine architectural surroundings. Derek Larson’s playful experimentations extend through other worldly humor while JULIACKS’ narrative pulls back and forth between a character’s inner psyche and external world. (READ MORE.)
See “Knitting is for Pus****” for the last time (in NYC) and like never before… with a **SPECIAL BLACK LIGHT PRESENTATION!**
On Friday May 27th, 2011 Christopher Henry Gallery NYC will host a Closing Party for Celebrity Artist OLEK. Olek’s acclaimed installation “Knitting is for Pus****” has created a total sensation since it 1st opened back in September 2010. It traveled to SCOPE MIAMI, and was extended repeatedly due to pop…ular demand and endless press requests… next it will be highlighted in a traveling museum show called “40 Under 40″ opening at The SMITHSONIAN Museum in 2012!
Two terrific improvisers are on tour and will be performing one night in NYC , Joe Burgio and Andrew Eisenberg, two of Boston’s most creative and strongest performers.
Carol Liebowitz (pno)
Adam Caine (gtr)
Claire DeBrunner (bsn)
Ratzo Harris (bs)
Joe Burgio (movement/dance)
Andrew Eisenberg (percussion/found objects)
Chris Welcome (gtr)
Shayna Dulberger (b)
Elliot Levin (sx)
Tom Zlabinger (b)
John Wagner (dr)
Take the 61 bus to Ryerson from jay street the AC and F trains transfer at jay street. The 54 bus is also a good option. You would take it to the bus stop b/t ryerson and grand. the subways that transfer are the 2 and 3 at Hoyt St as Well as the BMQR at Dekalb ave. Also the L train takes you to the 61 bus at N 6 and Driggs. You Could also take the G Train to Classon.
Join Marguerite Dabaie and tons of rad zinesters at Pete’s Candy Store for the upcoming Mini Zine Fest!
Saturday, May 28th
3PM – 7PM More info
Pub(l)ic Identities: Reading Medical Representations of Sex
An illustrated lecture with medical artist Shelley Wall Date: Saturday, May 28th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
“It’s a girl!” “It’s a boy!”… The genitals, those body parts conventionally expected to remain most hidden, are also the first and most powerful shapers of our public identity. In this illustrated talk, medical artist Shelley Wall considers how sexual anatomy, gendered bodies, and dimorphic sex have been represented in the visual discourse of medicine. From early anatomical atlases through to present-day clinical illustrations and the Visible Human datasets, medical imagery has influenced ideas about sexual identity and what it means to be “normal”.
540 W. 26th Street, Chelsea
In Nocturnes, Bickerton’s third solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, the artist revisits mankind’s antithetical attraction and repulsion to the grotesque, exotic, and sexual. Whereas previous works depicted abundant worlds of health, happiness, family, and cohesion, Bickerton has become disillusioned with the brilliance and wholesomeness that colored these preceding works, now drawing inspiration from the phrase ‘twisting and flapping in the neon wilderness’. For more information and to view images from the the exhibition,Click here
Show 2 (Saturday, May 28th 9-midnight): Nick Lyons Trio, Yoni Kretzmer Double Bass Quartet (Yoni Kretzmer/Ruben Radding/Sean Conly/Mike Pride), Jessie Nelson Trio (Jessie Nelson/Todd Martino/Conner Martinez)
Works by: Chris Astley, Carlton DeWoody, Ethan Long, Steven and William, Suzanne Sattler, Chris Dunbar, Antonia Wright, Ruben Millares, Wayne Adams, Paul Bloodgood, Sally French, Allyn Bromley, Stephen Freedman, Deborah Nehmad, Evan Ryer, Michael Joaquin Grey, Project Lab @ PS58, Aaron Padilla, John Silvis, Anne Pearce, Andrew Zuckerman, Jennifer Mills, Robin Kang, Ian Trask. Artists Bios here
Through a variety of processes connected to the act of weaving, Through The Warp presents seven different approaches to the same overarching structure—material building upon material via linear repetition and overlap. From woven fibers and pigments to language and pixels, artistsJoell Baxter, Karl Erickson, John Houck, Beryl Korot, Jamisen Ogg, Mike Paré and Lawrence Weiner engage with this ancient framework in ways that warp prior perceptions of familiar structures, or even put forth a new language altogether. (READ MORE.)
SUNDAY: MAY 29th
Class: Mummification @OBSERVATORY
Date: Sunday, May 29th (sold out, but see newly added class info here)
Time: 1-4 PM
Admission: $60 *** Must RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com in order to attend this class; Class size limited to 15 people
In today’s class, learn the mummification process as described in the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” (Book of Coming Forth By Day). Instructor Sorceress Cagliastro will guide students in the use of the traditional materials–such as natron salts, canopic jars, oils and herbs, dried flowers and linen or gauze wraps–and traditional ritual–such as ritual of the opening of the mouth–in the creation of an authentic and perfectly respected animal mummy. Each student will leave class with an animal mummy of their own making. (READ MORE.)
Sunday, May 29th, from 6-1030, Papacookie Hosts a Special Super Coda Soundproofing Benefit Wonderful Show Time Vegetarian Potluck, Festively. Featuring:
Papacookie is a private residence apartment fantasy world atop the Upper West Side. Here’s the address:
201 W. 86th st. The Belnord
Apt. 806 (tell the doorman you are here to see Jonathan Vincent)
Non-flesh potluck at 6
Exquisite Music to begin at 7.
We will be asking everyone for donations. This show is a fundraiser to soundproof Cafe Orwell so the Super Coda may continue.
Here’s the Kickstarter campaign we’ve been running so you know what I am talking about -http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/827158541/keep-the-super-coda-living-through-creative-soundp
Jim Sullivan at Nancy Hoffman Gallery
May 26-July 1, 2011
The next exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery will be new graphite drawings of trees by Jim Sullivan, opening on May 26th and continuing through July 1st. This is the artist’s
first solo show in six years, and reveals a new vista onto nature. His last show included a series of horizontal landscapes, wide cinematic views into invented
detailed oriented oils. The artist delighted in painting myriad details. These were obsessive paintings,
and as the artist says: “The new drawings, the work of the past five years, present the same viewing issues
as the long landscapes, in that they have normal viewing distance but offer a close scrutinizing experience
(of infinite detail) on closer examination.”
When: Tuesday, May 24 Where: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65 St., upper level (between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.), New York City What time:7 p.m.With Russell Banks, Col. Morris Davis, Peter Godwin, Beth Gutcheon, Rula Jebreal, Dahlia Lithwick, John Buffalo Mailer, Kati Marton, Jack Rice, Lili Taylor, Dianne Wiest, and others, with original artwork by Jenny Holzer.
Tickets: $12 general; $9 students; $8 seniors; $7 ACLU/PEN/FSLC Members. More information and tickets at www.filmlinc.com/films/series/reckoning-with-torture
“Reckoning With Torture: Memos and Testimonies From the ‘War on Terror,’” an evening of readings from formerly secret government documents detailing the scope and human cost of the United States’ post-9/11 torture program
Acclaimed director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Fair Game) will direct this performance of “Reckoning” for the stage and is filming the event for a future documentary. Celebrated writers including Russell Banks, Peter Godwin, Beth Gutcheon, Rula Jebreal, Dahlia Lithwick, John Buffalo Mailer, and Kati Marton will join actors Lili Taylor and Dianne Wiest, along with former CIA case officer Jack Rice and former military prosecutor Col. Morris Davis for readings from formerly secret government documents detailing the scope and disastrous human cost of the U.S. torture program. The artist Jenny Holzer, whose work was the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2009, has created original artwork for the “Reckoning” project.
Come learn about how to apply for housing opportunities through The Actors Fund, including The Schermerhorn, a permanent housing residence in downtown Brooklyn with reserved affordable space for actors and entertainment professionals. The Schermerhorn is co-sponsored by Common Ground and the The Actors Fund.
Housing at the The Schermerhorn is available to actors,screenwriters, musicians, dancers, editors, composers, set designers, producers, singers, directors and other performing arts and entertainment professionals. (READ MORE.)
WHERE: The Schermerhorn, 160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Map.
WHEN: Tuesday, May 24th
Doors open and networking, 6:00-6:30 pm
Presentation and Q&A, 6:30-7:30 pm
The F Word The Legacy: Feminism in Literature Today 24 May, 2 p.m., Book Expo America, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 W 34th Street, New York 10001
Julie Otsuka, Francine Prose and Karen Russell talk about which writers passed feminism down to them, and what the word means to them today. For tickets, visit http://www.bookexpoamerica.com.
The F Word Launch Party in NYC 25 May, 6.30 p.m., Paragraph, 35 W 14th Street, New York 10011
Join Julie Otsuka and Francine Prose to celebrate the launch of the issue.(READ MORE.)
NEBULOUS TUSSLES@ CULTUREFIX. On May 25th in 1977, Star Wars came out in the theaters. I saw it in a drive-in theater two years later. And now I couldn’t care less. This is so much more exciting:
CULTUREfix & Jonathan Wood Vincent present:
NEBULOUS TUSSLES!
a night of unique song and dance
First: there will be:
Self-obsessed Jonathan Wood Vincent, playing the accordion and talking story-like about things of no particular importance just to wet your bustles.
Then: Enid Ellen, http://www.myspace.com/enidellen
In 2008, Enid Ellen was born: “I was writing poetry about specific men, and channeling a woman’s [point of] view,” says David Mramor about the feminine, earthly perspective that led him and pianist Greg Potter to create the songs on Enid Ellen’s debut album, Cannibal Disease. “There was a lot of anger and Mother Nature came forth and needed a vessel to speak through.” (READ MORE.)
Gonzalo Puch lives in Madrid, teaches at the University in Cuenca, and is a native of Sevilla. He creates situations or “incidents”, generally in neutral environments such as classrooms, or his own apartment, which he then records photographically and presents as large, color photographic prints. Although his working methods and environment are hermetic, the work itself addresses and tries to make order of the chaos of the world. His themes are linked to various traditional academic subjects such as math, science, music, biology and environmental studies. The settings are sparse and practical, well lit and benign. Recently he has been working in the landscape more immediately addressing environmental themes. However, the events taking place are inscrutable rituals or quiet procedures which are both serious and comic. They appear to have their own logic in which we can recognize the elements, but not their organization, like words without syntax.
Beginning in the fall of 2010, Puch maintained a year long artist’s residency at Location One in New York. As the title of the resulting series.A Temporary Garden suggests, Puch’s new work draws on the world of plants for its operative leit-motif. Leafy plants combine with busy line-drawings and assembled objects in one photograph; a bell pepper is carved into an ephemeral sculpture in another; and in yet another a twig and bits of colored thread are precariously organized into an image that brings to mind the traditional Chinese landscape drawing. In A Temporary Garden the line between the natural world and the world of artistic creation is not so much blurred as bridged — as it is in fact in any garden. (READ MORE.)
Date: Tuesday, May 24th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
Tonight, join Dr. Rolf ter Sluis--curator and director of the Netherlands based Groningen University Museum–for a virtual tour of the museum’s historic and amazing anatomy and pathology collections. The majority of the collection consists of preparations in spirit, but also includes dry preparations where the veins have been injected with coloured wax, wax and Papier-mâché models, skeletons and skulls, preserved tattooed skin, and much more. (READ MORE.)
During the golden age of safaris in the early twentieth century, one man set out to preserve Africa’s great beasts. In his new book Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals, Jay Kirk details the life and adventures of naturalist and taxidermist Carl Akeley, the brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed African Hall we visit today at New York’s Museum of Natural History. The Gilded Age was drawing to a close, and with it came the realization that men may have hunted certain species into oblivion. Renowned taxidermist Carl Akeley joined the hunters rushing to Africa, where he risked death time and again as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. In a tale of art, science, courage, and romance, Jay Kirk resurrects a legend and illuminates a fateful turning point when Americans had to decide whether to save nature, to destroy it, or to just stare at it under glass. (READ MORE.)
Dana Rossi hosts a monthly merging of stories and songs in this legendary music venue. Six artists–writers, comics, actors and musicians–tell the stories they associate with songs of their choosing. There’s the song, the story behind the song, and the story inspired by the song. We’re the third one.
The storytellers and their songs for May 26, 2011 are…
Matthew Trumbull – Look Away/Chicago
Jon Baker – I Wanna Dance With Somebody/Whitney Houston
Julie Kraut – Keep the Car Running/Arcade Fire
Marc Landers – Gonna Make You Sweat/C + C Music Factory
Dana Rossi – Edge of Seventeen/Stevie Nicks
Lane Moore – Little Red Riding Hood/Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
The Vinyl Frontier
Tickets are $10 online and at the door Buy tickets here
Thursday May 26th 2011 7:00 PM
At the dawn of the 21st century, renegade toy designers, bored with the G.I. Joe status quo, boldly remixed and reassembled the toys of their parent’s generation. Birthing a new format of toy and medium of artistic expression, these artists were the first to explore The Vinyl Frontier. A world where Art is Fun!
By exploring a landscape inhabited by a wide range of artists, their creations, and obsessive collectors, the documentary examines the hybrid objects’ artistic and commercial value, as well as the creative process of art-toy making. The Vinyl Frontier is a comprehensive look at a fresh and exciting art movement that anyone young at heart and imaginative can enjoy. (READ MORE.)
See “Knitting is for Pus****” for the last time (in NYC) and like never before… with a **SPECIAL BLACK LIGHT PRESENTATION!**
On Friday May 27th, 2011 Christopher Henry Gallery NYC will host a Closing Party for Celebrity Artist OLEK. Olek’s acclaimed installation “Knitting is for Pus****” has created a total sensation since it 1st opened back in September 2010. It traveled to SCOPE MIAMI, and was extended repeatedly due to pop…ular demand and endless press requests… next it will be highlighted in a traveling museum show called “40 Under 40″ opening at The SMITHSONIAN Museum in 2012!
VIDEOROVER: Season II Curated by: Rachel Steinberg
May 27 – Dec 17, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, May 27, 7-9 PM
Screening begins at 8 PM
910 Grand St Brooklyn, NY
NURTUREart Non-Profit is pleased to present VIDEOROVER: Season II, the second installment of its semi-annual video series. VIDEOROVER: Season II is curated by Rachel Steinberg and features artists: Fatima Al Qadiri and Lyndsy Welgos, Cecilia Bonilla, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Derek Larson, Dana Levy, Pernille With Madsen, Colin Snapp, and JULIACKS.
VIDEOROVER seeks to present a wide range of works from artists locally and internationally who are all working to expand the perceptual limitations of video. This season’s selection aims to disorient viewers by removing an essential reality context, only to redeposit them into seemingly familiar settings.
Dana Levy, Fatima Al Qadiri and Lyndsy Welgos explore the pluralism of eastern and western conventions by looking at traditions through a contemporary perspective. Cecilia Bonilla examines our relationships to the seductive nature of commercial images of women through minimal manipulation, while Juan Pablo Echeverri shows us a self-projected fantasy of mass-produced femininity. Colin Snapp acts as a ‘journalist’ of sorts, documenting moments of real-time, but relieving the viewer of imposed intentions. Pernille With Madsen dizzies and disorients us with a vision of how to imagine architectural surroundings. Derek Larson’s playful experimentations extend through other worldly humor while JULIACKS’ narrative pulls back and forth between a character’s inner psyche and external world. (READ MORE.)
Come celebrate the end of another season at the Poetry Project! The Poets’ Potluck is an opportunity for New York City’s poetry community(ies) to come together for an evening of readings, performances, and delicious food. An array of writers from the Poetry Project series as well as other local reading series will read/perform their work. Any one interested in bringing a dish for the potluck will contribute to an amazing feast. If you’re interested in bringing food, please email Brett Price at fridaynightseriesp@gmail.com.
MakerBot Make-A-Thon
Saturday, May 14th, 2:00 – 6:00 pm
195 Morgan Avenue, Brooklyn NY
FREE
The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic is 1) a modern manufacturing breakthrough, and 2) also a lot of fun.
The 3rd Ward MakerBot Make-A-Thon is your chance to see these tiny factories in action, print awesome 3D objects and even a 3D portrait of yourself.
MakerBot Artist-in-Residence Kyle McDonald will be presenting his work turning the Xbox Kinect into a 3D Scanner. He will scan you in his 3D Photo Booth, then print you using the MakerBot.
The Makerbot prints anything up to 4”x5”x5” with ABS and PLA (biodegradable) plastic. All you do is hit print, and the machine does all the work. Print 100 butterflies, an entire chess set — anything! And see a 9 foot-wide geodesic dome, printed entirely on the MakerBot.
MakerBot Industries was named one of the top 20 startups in NYC, and has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, Make: Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, IEEE Spectrum, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, The Economist and others. For more information on MakerBot, click here and see photos of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic here.
Learn more about Kyle McDonald’s Xbox Kinect hack in this 3rd Ward blog post.
BYE BYE KITTY @JAPAN SOCIETY. Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art
Friday, March 18 — Sunday, June 12
Bye Bye Kitty!!! is a radical departure from recent Japanese exhibitions. Moving far beyond the stereotypes of kawaii and otaku culture, Japan Society’s show features sixteen emerging and mid-career artists whose paintings, objects, photographs, videos, and installations meld traditional styles with challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future.
MY W. B. YEATS
Timothy Donnelly, Philip Levine, and Rosanna Warren, with Eamon Grennan Saturday, May 14, 2:30pm MAP
An event curated by noted Irish poet Eamon Grennan, with American poets reading and responding to Yeats’ work and exploring the influence of this literary giant on their own poetry.
Co-sponsored by Culture Ireland, theDorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center atLincoln Center, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Admission is free.
Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Avenue and 65th Street
THE BLACK LIGHT LOUNGE@ SECRET PROJECT ROBOT. Saturday, May 14 8-11pm.
How awesome would it be to walk into a room filled salon style with black light posters and art!? This Spring Secret Project Robot creates the long awaited fluorescent opulence. Over 30 artists participate to transform the gallery into a black light cocktail lounge.
Join the Department of Cultural Affairs, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, and Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Financial Empowerment for a day of FREE financial counseling sessions and workshops designed to help working artists, arts administrators, and independent workers reduce debt and manage credit.
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011
Information Fair, Workshops and Counseling Sessions 12 PM – 5 PM
Post Event Reception 5 PM – 7 PM
Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation | 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216
OPENING REMARKS BY Kate D. Levin, Commissioner, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Borough President Jimmy Van Bramer, New York City Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries & International Intergroup Relations Domenic M. Recchia, Jr., New York City Council Member and Chair of the Finance Committee Colvin Grannum, President, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Danny Simmons, Chair of New York State Council on the Arts and Artist
Love Your Library Day! Saturday, May 14, 10 AM – 3 PM Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza
As Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) faces a city budget cut that could reduce library hours, materials and free programs, we need your support!
Show your elected officials how much you love BPL by coming to this important, fun event on Central Library’s Plaza.
10 AM – 3 PM:
Book, T-shirt and tote bag sale
10 AM – 12 PM:
Performance by BPL’s own Lost in the Stacks
12 – 1 PM:
Advocacy rally
1 PM:
Performance by Vo-Duo, a group inspired by the vodou music traditions of Haiti
You can also use our computers to email your elected officials to say NO to budget cuts and remind them how much your library means to you.
Suggested donation for the event is $5. This donation, as well as proceeds from book, T-shirt and tote bag sales, will help purchase new library materials.
QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development, in partnership with Crossing Art Gallery, presents the First Annual Performance Art Festival of Queens featuring new works by local, national and international performance artists. This year’s program, ITINERANT, focuses on works that treat notions of displacement, delivery, and transformation. Participating artists use performance narratives and actions that evoke immediacy and intimacy to bridge the gap of communication and distance. (READ MORE.)
Stories about the journey to paradise, in religious and literary traditions, feature animals as both obstacles and allies.
In Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, Grendel is the “shadow-stalker” the hero must slay
to prove himself and attain an earthly paradise; on the medieval pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela, Spain,
there is still an ornate chicken coop housing a pure white rooster and hen in the cathedral in one town
to commemorate a pilgrim’s miraculous escape from disaster.
What beasts block our roads or assist us on the way?
Rev. Craig Townsend presents an evening of tales, images, and soundscape evoking and exploring
the human-animal interactions that illuminate both the journey and its goal.
Craig Townsend is an Episcopal priest serving as Vicar at St. James’ Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
He has a Ph.D. from Harvard that, while focused on American religious history, also entailed
the study of the world’s major religious traditions.
Please visit the Proteus Gowanus website for more news and information about upcoming events.
It’s my birthday next month and as a present to myself I’m doing a big “solo show” at Joe’s Pub with some of my very favorite NYC artists who I haven’t had a chance to perform with much or at all. (Aside from Adam but…he’s ADAM) Adam Matta, Ned Rothenberg, Terry Dame, Rachelle Garniez, Racheal Price, Sonny Singh and Xavier.
I will be presenting an expanded version of the Sxipenspiel. I also have a new device called a gravity marble tree…and a perfect Sam Cook styled R & B tune to be sung by Xaxier. I am going to do “Ring My Bell with Rachel Price and I’ll be performing an improv piece with the amazing Ned Rothenberg. PLUS I do a rendition of a composition by Shelley Segal.Very exited to announce that Mathias Kunzli will be the percussionist for the evening.
A brief interview with Sxip about the show and participants:
THE 22: Variations and experiments in breath seem to play a large role in both yours and Ned’s work. Besides the fact that you both play reed instruments do you feel you push the boundaries of the human body as a musical tool?
SXIP SHIREY: I don’t think I am pushing the boundaries of the human body honestly. Back in my 20s when I wanted to be a punk Michael Hedges I ended up with tendinitis for two years. The first time Ned saw me play he commented on how tense I held my body when I played. He plays with such a focused relaxed quality and puts the intensity just in music. He circular breaths beautifully, which is pushing the body in a sense, but really what is great about him is the calm control of tones that are ever evolving and unwieldy. My playing is definitely a product directly of what my body is doing. Modern dancers sense this and they love my performance, but I don’t think I’m pushing the body, I am pushing the instrument. Oh shit..I just reread the question. I see what you are asking now. I didn’t think of breath as pushing the boundaries of the human body as a musical tool, I just did it. Breath is a rhythm we all understand deeply, it is the most intimate rhythm we make that we can easily hear (unlike a heart beat), there is incredible power in making this intimate sound epic. I am ever creating a palette of compelling of sounds that that I can draw from to take me and the audience to effective places.
THE 22: What are you thoughts on the traditions in music versus the basic elemental pleasure of sound? Is either more important?
SXIP SHIREY: I am finding this question hard to answer. It’s not that either is important or not important. It’s just not the issue. I make sound and music because I have to. It’s what I have to do, sometimes it’s a song with guitar, sometimes it’s playing folks songs, sometimes it’s rolling marbles in glass bowls, sometimes it’s tweaking virtual synths on the computer. It’s all the same to me.
THE 22: What about each of these musician’s appeal to you in collaboration and why did you chose to share this birthday celebration with them?
SXIP SHIREY:They are musicians who have an immediately strong seductive presence the moment they play or sing. They are people I simply like hearing and will go out to hear when I am in NYC. I thought it would be great to actually play with them. Most of them are not my normal collaborators.
THE 22: Can you tell us a little about the SxipenspieI and gravity marble tree?
SXIP SHIREY: The Sxipenspiel is perhaps my favorite birthday gift of all time. I was on tour with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webely’s Evelyn Evelyn tour and my birthday fell on a day we were in Berlin. Amanda and Neil went to a flea market in Berlin and bought these great bicycle bells that do a trilling long tone. They mounted them on a candlestick with a bent copper pipe at the top and dubbed it “The Sxipenspiel”. It’s a totally awkward instrument that sounds somehow amazing. I’ve learned to play it gracefully and I play it a lot. There is something magical sounding about it.
Bells historically are used to give us directions. “it’s time to go to church” “come to the door I am here” ” the egg is done cooking”. There is certain power to use them as a compositional element because their sound stimulates those parts of the brain.
Known as “the Angry Ones” in Greek myth, the Furies were a trio of vengeful women born from the blood drops of the castrated appendage of Uranus (whose Titan son, Cronus, did him a dirty turn). They were psychological tormentors, the personification of vindictiveness and retribution. In art they were represented as winged creatures wearing nothing but snakes. In this reading by emerging writers Jamey Bradbury, Ansel Elkins, and Thera Webb—recent graduates of the MFA program in creative writing at University of North Carolina-Greensboro—they will forego niceties and read from an unforgiving selection of their latest work. If you’re bored with bucolic love poems, or have recently be wronged by a paramour, this Gathering of the Tribes is the place to savor the sweet taste of revenge.
has appeared in Black Warrior Review and is forthcoming in Zone 3. She is a literary assistant in Vermont, and is working on her first novel and a collection of short stories.
Thera Webb
is a radical feminist and resident of Brooklyn. She received her MFA in poetry from UNC Greensboro, and has had work in Fiction (JP) and Forklift, Ohio. Her chapbook, On The Shoulders of the Bear, was released this fall from Fractious Press.