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THE WEEK/WEEKEND: Dec 7th-11th.
Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins & Ikue Mori // Pet Bottle Ningen
Roulette
Tuesday, December 11, 2012 @ 8:00 pm
Friends and colleagues since 1988, Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins are two of the strongest musical voices out of the downtown scene. Lynchpins of bands as diverse as DNA, Skeleton Crew, Electric Masada, Hemophiliac and Björk, each have been leading figures of the downtown scene since the early 1980s, and their collaboration, Phantom Orchard is the perfect outlet for their unique and personal musical languages. Tonight, Phantom Orchard presents duo arrangements of work from their most recent album,Trouble in Paradise (Tzadik), featuring Mori on live visuals and electronics and Parkins on harps, keyboard, and celesta.
Love Fail
BAM
Dec 6—Dec 8, 2012
The latest work from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, love fail marries evocative new music with timeless storytelling to tell a tale of love both found and unfulfilled, performed by the ravishing voices of legendary early music group Anonymous 4.
Andy Kehoe.
Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography – Pierre Cordier
VIDEO WEEKEND: Scale it back (DJ Shadow)/ Half Full Glass of Wine(Tame Impala).
THE WEEKEND: AUGUST 12-14.
SCREEN SLATE SIX MONTHS.
Saturday August 13th FREE. 9 pm – 4 am.
An open, no-cover party at Screen Slate HQ featuring live music byStrange Rivals, DJing by Colin Beckett and Max Diamond and 16mm projections by Ryan Marino. Spirits available including beer lovingly provided by Brooklyn Brewery. 15 Bushwick Ave., 11211, two blocks from the Graham or Grand L stops in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Introduction to Millinery @3rd Ward.
In this workshop you will be introduced to the old world craft of Hatmaking. The skills involved in making a hat evolved in the 14th century and have hardly changed since. Participants will become familiar with all the basic tools, materials and terminology. Over the four classes participants will handblock a Panama straw hat, and learn to finish and trim it just in time for the Fall.
Interested in more project examples? Check out students work from the class on our tumblr.
ENROLL.
The 2011 American Beatbox Championships presented by The World Beatbox Association (WBA) w/ Rahzel and Rakaa @LPR.
Co-Executive Producer – Kimberly Knox/ Ubiquita Worldwide
Executive Producer Co-Founder of WBA-Jim WildeSunday, August 14th 2011 at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City will see the undisputed Godfather of Noise Rahzel (the Roots) and Rakaa (DilatedPeoples) headlining the post-championship concert of the 2nd American Beatbox Championships. America’s top 16 beatboxers will battle it out live in an “8 mile style” beat down for the crown of America’s Best Beatboxer. Beatboxing’s finest will go mic to mic as Hasan Salaam and Eternia MC the evening with DJ Boo holding down the Red Bull decks alongside Colin Dean’s Roots & Grooves. (READ MORE.)

28th Annual Roots of American Music Festival
(FULL SCHEDULE, VARIOUS LOCATIONS.)
ABIGAIL WASHBURN
SID SELVIDGE & SONS OF MUD BOY
SUN RECORDS ORAL HISTORIES
Sat, Aug 13 at 2:00
Hearst Plaza Stage
FREE
Clawhammer banjoist Abigail Washburn has emerged as a gifted singer-songwriter after perfecting the most unlikely of fusions—between Appalachian music and Chinese folk. Soulful folk-rocker Sid Selvidge’s astonishing voice takes the Memphis blues to another level, joined by Luther and Cody Dickinson, the sons of the influential late producer-musician Jim “Mud Boy & the Neutrons” Dickinson. Roots of American Music producer Spike Barkin starts the day with an onstage talk with the pioneering alumni of Sun Records, whose stories and recollections are a historical treasure trove.
Radio Happy Hour: The Final Episode
August 12, 2011
Radio Happy Hour, the radio show not on the radio, has announced the end of their 2+ year run as the Village’s best variety show. After a US tour, appearances on public radio, feature articles in NY Post, Nylon, and many other places, the hit comedy show is ending its run. “Secretly, I was always surprised that anyone ever came to see a murder mystery on a fake radio show, or that anyone ever agreed to be on the show. Apparently, New Yorkers have a real appetite for idiocy,” says show host and head writer Sam Osterhout.

Friday, August 12th
COMPLIMENTARY “MIDNIGHT MARTINI’S” AND SPECIALTY DRINKS FOR ALL!
Please join us for the launch of the new web series “The Midnight Archives: Tales From the Observatory.” The series is the work of many time Observatory presenter Ronni Thomas (Alias Ronni Raygun) of the IKA Collective and is centered around the esoteric and always exotic personalities that spring from the Brooklyn Observatory. It attempts to briefly document some of the truly unique people, talents and objects from around the world who gather there on a weekly basis. Mummies, Taxidermy, 18th century robotics, early French demonic 3d horror… its all here.

JAMES BROWN dance party w/JAMES CHANCE live and more @Zebulon
Sat Aug 13

AND ON SUNDAY NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN’S DJ MR. JONATHAN TOUBIN! @ UNION POOL.
August 14
Twig Terrariums @MAD.
Saturday, August 13, 2011 – 11:00 am to 6:00 pm
Each Saturday in August join Brooklyn based artist collaborative Twig Terrariums as as they reveal their processes in creating small worlds within antique, vintage, and new glass containers.
Generative crowd sourced sculpture with music performances @ Devotion.
Opening: Friday, August 12th, 2011.
Sol LeWitt knew that artists of many diverse types use simple forms to their own ends. Musician and multimedia artist, Morgan Packard believes that simple rules, when allowed to unfold, create the splendor of the world. In Euclidean geometry the simplest non-curved flat shape is the triangle, and the simplest non-curved three-dimensional shape is four triangles connected by their edges—the tetrahedron. In this crowd-sourced artwork the public is invited to create tetrahedrons from recycled office paper and a few pieces of tape while musicians perform. Under Morgan’s direction the participants will attach the vertices of the tetrahedrons to create a constantly expanding sculpture, filling the gallery with a geometric wonderland intersected by sonic vibrations.
InDigest 1207 Reading Series w/ Matt Bell , Michael Czyzniejewski and Robert Lopez
Sun., August 14, 2011 / 7:00 PM FREE
InDigest 1207 Reading Series
InDigest also presents InDigest 1207, a reading series that takes place monthly in New York City and quarterly in Minneapolis. In addition to their own work, readers are encouraged to bring in something that has informed or influenced them in some way. The result is often funny, sometimes strange, but always interesting, showing us how we are all constantly influenced by what we see, hear, and read.
PORTAL: Perspectives on Video Performance Contemporary Video from Sydney @ Regina Rex.
Friday, August 12th
Curated by Janis Ferberg, organized by Stephen Truax
Portal is pleased to present a one-night screening of video works by Sydney-based artists engaged with performance mediated through video at Regina Rex in Ridgewood, New York.
This selection of work offers an alternative point of entry to the practice of performance, whereby video is used not as a medium for documentation, but rather as an end in itself.
Saturday August 13th6th Annual Celebration of Progressive Culture
Now a Manhattan mainstay, the Dissident Arts Festival was founded in upstate NY in 2006 with a primary goal of establishing an annual showcase of politically progressive music, poetry and performance art—perhaps the only such vehicle in the nation. This Festival has sought to bring together a wide variety of sounds and styles, tearing down boundaries, bending rules and infusing the arts with the strongest, most radical activism, where folk-protest song meets free improvisation and contemporary composition. Featured among our past performers and speakers were actor/raconteur Malachy McCourt, folk legend Pete Seeger, poet Louis Reyes Rivera, revolutionary hip hop group ReadNex Poetry Squad, protest/garage band The Last Internationale, labor luminary Henry Foner, topical singer Bev Grant, ‘anti-folk’ singer Lach, jazz artist Ben Barson and filmmaker Kevin Keating (“Giuliani Time”). And we presented tributes to Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht and Phil Ochs along the way. As of 2010, the Festival became affiliated with NYC’s Brecht Forum, a center of Left education and culture which has proven itself the perfect host of the Dissident Arts Festival. This year, Dissident Arts focuses on the improvisational and modernist heart of Protest Music while also featuring topical folk/acoustic performance, radical film and revolutionary poetry.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Sanda Weigl@ Cornelia St. Cafe.
Saturday, August 13, 9:00 PM
OH THE SHARK HAS PRETTY TEETH DEAR, SONGS OF THE WEIMAR ERA
Sanda Weigl, vocals; Anthony Coleman, piano
Noam Faingold Presents a night of Chamber Music plus a Rock Orchestra @ CAFE ORWELL.
SATURDAY 8/13. 8-midnight.
From Noam: The Noam Faingold Orchestra will play a set, then it’s members and some special guests will play contemporary chamber music by Jeremy Forbis, Jacob Druckman, Kurtag and others, and then we will play another set of Aleatoric pieces by Christian Wolff, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen and others.
Saturday, August 13th
Noon through much much later…
$10 arrive before 3pm : $20 after
Sunday, August 14th
Noon through Midnight
$10 all day + Cheap Drinks
3rd Ward, Macro-Sea, Artists Wanted, TheDanger and Chashama have spent the past several weeks building out a fantastic oasis in the creative heart of Queens. A couple blocks from PS1, we are opening The Palms, a late summer ode to the Boca Raton Resort Pools of the 1940’s (with more music, spectacle and hedonism).

MORE:
THE MAST/AMAYO FU ARKISTRA/DJ MICKEY PEREZ @ZEBULON.
DANIEL CARTER, MAX JOHNSON & FEDERICO UGHI @UNIVERSITY OF THE STREETS.
BAMBOO KAYAK BUILDING WITH MARE LIBERUM
ARLEKINO THEATER TROUPE PRESENTS: CARNEVALE!
TIMOTHY ATTICUS: UNZIPPED
Pay Day / Sunnyside / The Idle Class & Modern Times in HD @ Symphony Space.
Manhattan Graphics Center First Annual Juried Show
George Kuchar, Occasions @Mulherin + Pollard.
Local Party on the Block @Local Project.
Lemonaids: A collaboration between Jason Fritz/Matthew Momchilov
Going Green@ Crossing Art.
SANKALPA: Art Therapy in India.
Music in the Garden Series @ The Noguchi Museum
The Official Bass Island After Party featuring: FreQ Nasty (Giveback.net) , Virtual Boy (Alpha Pup records) , Proper Villains (Nightshifters/Play Me Records) andWilly Whompa (Muti Music) @LPR
CAN’T HEAR THE REVOLUTION.
FLOAT: FIELD OF DREAMS
I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing
LAST CALL:
Accrochage @Carolina Nitsch
Matthew Brand, Christine Nguyen and Letha Wilson: Every Photo Graph Is In Visible, at Churner & Churner
Im Schatten der Made (In the Shadow of the Maggot)
THE WEEK: August 8-12th.
Social Hijinks! A screening and live action lecture night
Wednesday August 10, 7:30 pm
In conjunction with the exhibition Why Participate?, Angela Washko has organized a lineup of videos and live performative lectures by artists whose projects take place within social spaces. The works being presented and discussed are mischievous, critical, occasionally hilarious, and examine the boundaries of legality. Artists Jason Eppink, Nate Hill, Ann Hirsch, Jaime Iglehart, Action Club, Paolo Pedercini, and Jeff Stark present and talk about their works discussing surveillance, costumed public service, reality television, knock-off culture, collaboration, video game evolution, protest, and performance in public spaces.
Free + Bring your own beverages and snacks
(images courtesy of Jeff Stark)
Gian Luigi Diana, electronics & Ben Gerstein, trombone
Wednesday, August 10, 10pm
SEEDS:Brooklyn – www.seedsbrooklyn.org
617 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn (preceded at 8:30 by Jacob Garchik, trombone/computer)
All Star Poetry: A Benefit at the Bowery Poetry Club.
Tuesday, August 9
Nine poets from the First Annual New York Poetry Festival join forces to raise funds for the Festival and Bowery Arts + Science. Featured poets include Lisa Marie Basile, Jassie Harris, Meghann Plunkett, Rita Mercedes, Sarah Feeley, Ayala Sella, Nick Adamski and Bob Holman w/ Molissa Fenley.
Books will be available for purchase after the reading.
Admission: $8
The Bowery Poetry Club is located at 308 Bowery (between Houston and Bleecker)
THE WEEKEND May 13-14.
MakerBot Make-A-Thon // Experience Cutting-Edge Rapid Prototyping
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.
Learn more about the MakerBot and the 3rd Ward Make-A-Thon in The New York Times here.
Plus, win prizes from MakerBot, Apress Books, and MAKE Magazine!
RSVPs are required at http://www.3rdward.com/rsvp
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.
Buy the Catalog
Admission & Gallery Hours
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, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln 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.
THE ART OF MONEY: PERSONAL FINANCE RESOURCES FOR ARTISTS
WEBSITE
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.
CROSSING ART GALLERY
Saturday, May 14 from 6 to 9 PM
136-17 39th Avenue
Flushing, NY 11354
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.)
Shadow-stalkers and Resurrected Chickens:
Animals on the Road to Paradise
Saturday, May 14 at 7 pm
$5 admission
MAP
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.
SXIP SHIREY’s B-DAY at Joe’s Pub.
Saturday, May 14 at 9 pm
MAP
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.
THE 22 MAGAZINE PRESENTS: The Three Furies, Writing with a Vengeance
Sunday, May 15—5:00pm
A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East Third Street (between Ave C & D) #2
(212) 674-3778
A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES
THE 22 MAGAZINE
MAP
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.
Ansel Elkins
has poems appearing this spring in Boston Review, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, The American Scholar, The Believer and The Southern Review. She is one of four winners of the 2011 “Discovery”/Boston Review poetry prize. She lives in North Carolina.
Jamey Bradbury
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.
Kara Walker at Lehmann Maupin/Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Lehmann Maupin Gallery in collaboration with Sikkema Jenkins & Co.,is pleased to present, Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale, a joint exhibition of new works by Kara Walker, on view 21 April – 4 June, 2011 at 201 Chrystie Street. At Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Walker will present three new video works, which draw on her own experience in the Mississippi Delta, “a region mythologized in song and popular culture but tragically depressing.” She explains, “I drove down to the Delta thinking about the terrors of Jim Crow and slavery, yet the silent indifference of the landscape and the economic stasis, lack of mobility, and the persistence of a racist memory in the area was what stuck.”
The exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Dust Jackets for the Niggerati- and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker, will feature new graphite drawings and hand-printed texts on paper. This body of work grew out of the artist’s search for understanding of the way that power asserts itself in interpersonal and geopolitical spheres. As she embarked on this quest the figural elements began to disappear from her work. Now, they emerge again in what Walker describes as a “giddy embrace” of the figural and the narrative.