177 Livingston Street, a 5,000-square-foot storefront space in downtown Brooklyn, is the home of the organizations Triple Canopy, Light Industry, and The Public School New York. Independently and collaboratively, the three groups present screenings, lectures, classes, artist talks, readings, and performances, all of which are open to the public. See the calendar below for upcoming events. 177 Livingston also hosts a library of books, magazines, artist publications, and film, video, and sound work, which is open during weekly office hours Thursday through Sunday, from noon until six o'clock (subject to change without notice).
Bill Kouligas & C. Spencer Yeh, with a film by Frans Zwartjes
New Humans, with Hiroshi Teshigahara's Otoshiana (The Pitfall), 1962
Purple Haze, with videos by Gary War & Taylor Richardson
Triple Canopy presents Double Features, an evening of audio-visual exchange organized by sound artist and composer C. Spencer Yeh. Duos Bill Kouligas & Yeh, New Humans, and Purple Haze represent an array of sonic-experimentation strategies. They will perform new works guided by (and in opposition to) the films of Dutch artist, musician, and filmmaker Frans Zwartjes, Japanese avant-garde filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara, and video artists and musicians Gary War and Taylor Richardson.
Purple Haze
Purple Haze is Marcia Bassett (Zaimph, Double Leopards, Hototogisu) and Taylor Richardson (Prehistoric Blackout, Fluid Human). A house band for bad trips and temporary psychosis.
New Humans
Formed in 2003, New York–based New Humans make collaborative works that explore the intersection of sound, installation, and performance. New Humans emerged out of Mika Tajima's art practice and is a moniker for her projects with curator Howie Chen, as well as musicians, artists, and designers including Vito Acconci, Charles Atlas, and C. Spencer Yeh.
Bill Kouligas & C. Spencer Yeh
Here making their collaborative debut, Kouligas and Yeh are most closely associated with their projects Family Battle Snake and Burning Star Core, respectively. Kouligas, a Berlin-based sound artist and graphic designer, has worked with Sudden Infant, Ralf Wehowsky, and Damo Suzuki, among others. He manages the electroacoustic noise label PAN, which will release a triple-LP set of the soundtracks of Frans Zwartjes this fall. Yeh focuses on the development of a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. His past collaborators include Tony Conrad, New Humans with Vito Acconci, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Amy Granat with Jutta Koether, and Justin Lieberman, among others. Yeh has performed at numerous international festivals and venues such as Sonar, FIMAV at Victoriaville, Frieze Arts Fair, No Fun Fest, High Zero, the 24 Hour Drone People at Fylkingen, the Kitchen, and ZKM Karlsruhe.
Image: Bill Kouligas; still from Frans Zwartjes, Living (1971).
A series of conversations, screenings, readings, performances, and provocations in Paris, Berlin, and Sarajevo, organized by Triple Canopy with Nine Eglantine Yamamoto-Masson.
Paris
Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, June 28
The Public School, Bétonsalon, June 29
Sarajevo
Duplex Gallery, July 18
Berlin
Program, July 8–29
Appartement, July 16
Paris, June 28–29
The Weight of Air
June 28 at Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers
As part of Walking Theory Platform's Illegal Cinema series, Triple Canopy editor Alexander Provan will present a screening of censored and marginalized works from the '60s and '70s that blur the lines between filmmakers and radicals, action and representation, propaganda and art. A discussion will follow, examining contemporary right-wing movements and their own modes of self-representation.
The Page and the Screen
June 29 at The Public School, Bétonsalon
Triple Canopy editor Alexander Provan will facilitate this class examining print culture in the digital era: the potential that new technologies offer for renovating reading and viewing; historical precedents for the transformation of print, and related publics and art practices; and the evolution and disaggregation of what we've come to call publishing.
Sarajevo, July 18
How to Read the Reading Room
Stefan Sulzer + Sandra Bradvić + Molly Kleiman
July 18, 4 p.m. at Duplex Gallery
How do we salvage and revivify archives that have been destroyed, diminished, or forgotten? A talk in conjunction with "The Reading Room," Stefan Sulzer's exhibit at Duplex. Sulzer will speak about his engagement with the volumes from Sarajevo's National and University Library, 90 percent of which was destroyed in 1992 during the siege of Sarajevo. Sandra Bradvić, the curator, will discuss appropriation and the potential of fragmentary archives. Triple Canopy editor Molly Kleiman will question how we read and remember in the digital era. Discussion will follow with students and faculty from the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Art, and a librarian from the Rare Books Department at the Sarajevo Library.
Produced in collaboration with Sandra Bradvić.
Berlin, July 8–29
Unless otherwise indicated, all events will be held at Program, Invalidenstraße 115, at 7:30 p.m.
False Friends
Yoko Tawada + Uljana Wolf + Ken Okiishi + Sam Frank
July 8
Mistranslation and the in-between. Yoko Tawada will read a trilingual collage of her fiction, Uljana Wolf will read from and discuss her German-English DICHTionary poems, Ken Okiishi will read from One Season in Hell and screen an excerpt from (Goodbye to) Manhattan, and Triple Canopy editor Sam Frank will fail to speak Russian.
Spheres of Influence
Lene Berg + Andreas Bunte
July 15
How do the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' politicized aesthetics show themselves in the present? Berlin-based artists and filmmakers Andreas Bunte and Lene Berg will each screen recent works, with a discussion to follow, moderated by Triple Canopy editors Sam Frank and Sarah Resnick.
Who Cares, Redux
Triple Canopy + The Public School + Per-Oskar Leu + Hush Hush + 10-2-10 + Easton West
July 16 at Appartement
Digesting the creative economy in multiple courses: how art can act as an agent for social action; or, how that question can act as fodder for dinner-table conversations. A meal and discussion organized by The Public School, followed by installations, performances, and revelry. Installation by curatorial collective 10-2-10, performance by Per-Oskar Leu with Triple Canopy editorial and program manager Peter J. Russo, music by Hush Hush and Easton West.
Prenzlauer Allee 242. Dinner at 7:30, open to the public at 9:30. RSVP required for both (space at dinner extremely limited); send to contact@canopycanopycanopy.com.
Sounding Spaces
Jacob Kirkegaard + Steve Rowell
July 19
Obscure visual and aural phenomena, and the views they offer of the natural landscape, the built environment, and the power structures behind them. Sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard will present Bandera, composed from audio recordings of the flagstaff masts from the United States Interests building in Havana. Artist, researcher, and Center for Land Use Interpretation collaborator Steve Rowell will present a new video work. With a discussion to follow, moderated by Triple Canopy creative director Caleb Waldorf.
Print and Demand
Triple Canopy + 032c + XYM + Fillip
July 22
How is print culture being changed by the manifold forms of online publication? How are public spaces constituted around those forms? A discussion of the changing nature of publishing and related art practices and publics. 032c is a Berlin-based magazine of contemporary culture; XYM is a Norwegian online publisher of temporarily available PDF projects; Fillip is a Canadian magazine of art, culture, and ideas.
Of Death and Lasers
Triple Canopy + Jeremy Shaw
July 29
Triple Canopy presents a briefing and interrogation regarding the activities of the International Necronautical Society's Berlin Inspectorate, and the group's claim that the city is the World Capital of Death. Editors and suspected agents will present intelligence on the INS's plan to recruit citizens and occupy a major cultural landmark as part of its efforts to "map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit" the space of death. Then, on a different note, Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw will deliver a performative lecture on the history and future of laser technologies in and out of medical science, advanced weaponry, and visual culture.
Images: still from Robert Kramer, Ice (1969); sectional view of the New York Public Library from Scientific American (1911); collaged woodcuts by Otto Freundlich from Die Aktion, issue 37/38 (1918);
An evening of fish, birds, and large and small mammals. Jeffrey Yang is the author of the poetry collection An Aquarium (Graywolf) and is an editor at New Directions. Eliot Weinberger's most recent books of essays are An Elemental Thing and Oranges & Peanuts for Sale, both published by New Directions.
Friday, June 4
Saturday, June 5
Ann Liv Young and Triple Canopy present Sherry tries on Cinderella, an evening filled with performance and music on Friday and Saturday, June 4 and 5 at 177 Livingston, Brooklyn, NY. Doors at 7:30 p.m., performance at 8:00 p.m. each night. Tickets are a $10 donation. (Purchase tickets here.)
Lately you might think it's been tough for Sherry, with the yelling and the stitches and the scars and all, but she's been great, truly great, actually she's never been better, and now she's going to prove it to y'all. On June 4 and 5 at 177 Livingston, Sherry will host her own event, Sherry tries on Cinderella, and show you what Southern hospitality is all about. Hearts, balloons, candy, booze, cake, music, glitter, kitchen knives—it'll be a fairy tale, a therapy session, a dance party, a triumph.
In Sherry tries on Cinderella, Sherry will be presenting fragments of her newest performance, Cinderella, which premiered in Sweden in April and will be performed in full at an abandoned house in Jersey City in late August/early September. Sherry's interpretation of Cinderella is set to be Ann Liv Young's most personally revealing and explicit work so far. Alongside performance excerpts from Cinderella, Thomas will debut his DJ skills, a bar will provide a steady flow of alcohol, and exclusive Sherry memorabilia will be available, including T-shirts, jewelry, DVDs, and the opportunity to get a personal photograph with Sherry herself.
Come along, meet Sherry, hang out, get loose, and decide for yourself what you really think. She can take your honest opinion—she can take anything.
Choreographer Ann Liv Young has performed at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, Judson Church, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, the American Dance Festival, and prominent venues throughout North America and Europe. A 2003 graduate of Hollins University's prestigious dance program, Young has also studied at Laban Centre London. Her work has been praised by the New York Times, the Village Voice, and The Guardian, among other publications, and was featured in Michael Blackwood's documentary New York Dance: States of Performance (2010). She's reinterpreted the stories of Snow White (2006–2008), George and Martha Washington (in The Bagwell in Me [2008–2009]), and, now, Cinderella.
The Theater of the Oppressed is an effort to further the Brechtian project of an activist theater without trafficking in alienation. Born in Brazil in 1971, TotO is now practiced in more than seventy countries. Triple Canopy will present an open rehearsal (2–5 p.m.) and performance (6–8 p.m.) by Red Hook–based Falconworks Artists Group, an organization for social change working in collaboration with Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory in Manhattan. Falconworks is led by artistic director Reg Flowers, a graduate of Yale's theater program and 2006 recipient of the BAX10 Award for arts education.
Walser biographer and translator Susan Bernofsky teams up with writer Rivka Galchen (Atmospheric Disturbances) to introduce stories from and about Walser’s enigmatic microscripts, late texts written on scraps of paper in a millimeter-scale hand, which will be published on May 25 by New Directions and Christine Burgin Gallery. Stories, a trivia quiz with prizes, larger-than-life secret manuscript pictures, and a German penmanship lesson. Advance copies of the book will be available.
Molly Springfield, an artist and Triple Canopy contributor, discusses Paul Otlet's Mundaneum and her own work: text-based drawings and installations that reveal visionary moments in the history of how we experience, organize, and reproduce information. Springfield combines a labor-intensive drawing practice with an investigation of problems related to reproduction and originality, seeing and reading, technology and labor. Her most recent project is a translation of the first chapter of Proust's In Search of Lost Time in the form of drawings of photocopies of every existing English translation of the novel.
If we're all living the same reality, why does realism mean different things to different people? Is an experiment still an experiment if the book is good? Joshua Cohen and Joseph McElroy read and discuss. Cohen is a Triple Canopy contributor and the author of the novels Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto (Fugue State Press, 2006) and A Heaven of Others (Starcherone Books, 2008). Witz, which tells the story of the last Jew, will be published in May by Dalkey Archive Press. McElroy is the author of nine novels, including A Smuggler's Bible, Hind's Kidnap, Ancient History: A Paraphrase, Lookout Cartridge, Plus, Women and Men, The Letter Left to Me, Actress in the House, and Cannonball (forthcoming). A volume of short fiction, Night Soul and Other Stories, will be published in the fall and a chapbook, Preparations for Search, in June.
Friday, April 23
Saturday, April 24
Sunday, April 25
Performance at 8 p.m. each night, followed by discussion at 10 p.m.
RSVP is required. Please email bartleby@canopycanopycanopy.com to reserve seats and receive ticket-purchase information.
"It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener's business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair." —Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
"Rereading, an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us 'throw away' the story once it has been consumed ('devoured'), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors), rereading is here suggested at the outset, for it alone saves the text from repetition (those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere)." —Roland Barthes, S/Z
New York-based theater collective Group Theory probes the psychosonic landscapes of Herman Melville's classic novella Bartleby, the Scrivener in an intimate chamber ritual that transforms the private act of reading into a communal encounter. A strange literary-theatrical hybrid, this Bartleby is a performed palimpsest of rereadings, a hyper-lucid window onto a famously difficult text in all its haunting ambiguity and violent comedy. Followed by drinks and conversation with invited respondents, including Paul Chan, Edwin Frank, Lynne Tillman, Abha Dawesar, John Bryant, Vivian Gornick, Joseph McElroy, Alice Boone, Graham Parker, Molly Springfield, McKenzie Wark, and Greg Wayne.
Conceived and directed by Ben Vershbow
Created with the ensemble: Jeremy Beck, Daniel Larlham, and Craig Pattison
Designed by Ben Vershbow and Dorit Avganim
Download the event program.
A special, print-on-demand edition of Bartleby, the Scrivener, designed by Rebecca Gimenez , is available from Lulu.
Friday, April 23
Paul Chan (artist, Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, Sade for Sade's sake), Edwin Frank (editorial director, New York Review Books), Lynne Tillman (novelist and critic; author of American Genius, a Comedy and Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeanette Watson; fiction editor of Fence magazine)
Moderated by Abha Dawesar (novelist, Family Values, That Summer, Babyji)
Saturday, April 24
John Bryant (professor of English, Hofstra University; author of The Fluid Text; editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies), Vivian Gornick (critic and memoirist; author of Fierce Attachments, The Situation and the Story, The Men in My Life), Joseph McElroy (novelist, A Smuggler's Bible, Women and Men, Actress in the House)
Moderated by Alice Boone (PhD candidate in English and comparative literature, Columbia University; editor of the New York Public Library's Candide 2.0)
Sunday, April 25
Graham Parker (artist; author of Fair Use [notes from spam]), Molly Springfield (artist; author of "Inside the Mundaneum"), McKenzie Wark (professor of culture and media, the New School; author of A Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory)
Moderated by Greg Wayne (PhD candidate in neurobiology, Columbia University)
Group Theory is a new New York–based theater company founded by Ben Vershbow and Dorit Avganim. Before coming to 177 Livingston, Bartleby was premiered at IRT Theater, then performed at the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy and Brooklyn Social Therapy. Bartleby was in part inspired by Vershbow's work at the Institute for the Future of the Book and the New York Public Library.
Celebrate the publication of Triple Canopy's eighth issue, "Hue and Cry."
Free admission & cheap drinks & fluorescent chandelier.
Readings by Lucy Ives and Anwyn Crawford. Rolled-r performance and text-sound DJ tour by C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), after Joe Milutis's "R, Adieu." A continuous film work by Karthik Pandian; equally continuous video projections by Patrick Smith.
Publication Studio, a print-on-demand publisher based in Portland, Oregon, will be in residence at 177 Livingston on Friday and Saturday, making books and hosting two events.
Pop-up store hours:
Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Friday, 7 p.m.
Free admission, $1 drinks
"What is publication?" "What good are bookstores?" A conversation led by Mattathias Schwartz (Philadelphia Independent) with Publication Studio, Colin Robinson (cofounder of OR Books ), Larry Rinder (curator and Publication Studio author), Colin Beattie (What We Are Learning), Pravin Jain (former Enron executive), and the editors of Triple Canopy. Live music by Dragging an Ox Through Water.
Saturday, 8–11 p.m.
$5 suggested donation
Publication Studio is having a party. Live music by Dragging an Ox Through Water. People, drinks, and new art and lit by Publication Studio authors: paintings by Dana Dart-McLean; prints by Israel Lund; projected photos by Ari Marcopoulos; new video by M Blash; very short readings by Christine Hou, Pravin Jain, Matthew Stadler, and What We Are Learning. New video selections curated by Cleopatra's.
Triple Canopy is pleased to announce the opening of an office space and venue at 177 Livingston Street, in downtown Brooklyn. The 5,000-square-foot storefront will be operated in partnership with Light Industry and The Public School New York and will regularly host artist talks, screenings, workshops, lectures, classes, and performances. 177 Livingston will also host a library of books, magazines, artist publications, and film, video, and sound work, which will be open to the public starting in March. (Visit the 177 Livingston website for more details and a calendar of upcoming events.)
On February 20, Triple Canopy, Light Industry, and The Public School will throw a benefit party to celebrate the opening of 177 Livingston and help the organizations cover the costs of building out the space's interior, which was designed by Rachel Himmelfarb and Gabriel Fries-Briggs with support from Common Room.
The evening will begin at 8 p.m. with readings by Ed Park and Lynne Tillman. Next, there will be a rare stateside presentation of Lis Rhodes's Light Music (1975, pictured above). Rhodes's double projection is a seminal exploration of 16-mm optical sound—the on-screen abstraction is "read" by the projector as audio—and a classic of British expanded cinema. The "Anti-Matter Cabaret" of Ambergris and a set by the avant-pop ensemble Skeletons will follow, as will DJ sets by Josh Kline and Gary Murphy & Tim Lokiec.
Readings at 8, film at 9, music at 10
Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days and a founding editor of The Believer.
Lynne Tillman is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, and three nonfiction books. Her most recent novel, American Genius: A Comedy, was published in 2006 by Soft Skull Press.
Lis Rhodes has been at the forefront of British experimental cinema since the early 1970s, working as part of the London Filmmakers' Co-op and later cofounding Circles, the first organization in the UK dedicated to distributing artist's film and video made by women. She lives and works in London and teaches at Slade School of Fine Art.
Ambergris is a band conducting spelunking tours into fluorescent lagoons of narrative imagination. Citing influences from Gilbert and Sullivan to Flipper, Ambergris has performed its "Anti-Matter Cabaret" in locations such as the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Issue Project Room in New York, and the Fumetto Festival in Lucern, Switzerland.
Skeletons is a New York-based avant-pop ensemble. The band's sixth full-length record, Money, was recently released on Tomlab.
Light Industry is a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has evolved into a series of weekly events, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media. Bringing together the worlds of contemporary art, experimental cinema, new media, documentary film, and the academy (to name only a few), Light Industry looks to foster an ongoing dialogue among a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.
The Public School is a school with no curriculum. It has chapters in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Brussels, Paris, Puerto Rico, and other cities around the world. Via the Public School New York website and its discussion boards, members collaboratively generate ideas for free reading groups, skill-based workshops, seminar-style discussions, lecture-driven classes, and participatory projects. The Public School is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that everything is in everything. The Public School is a project of Telic Arts Exchange.
Common Room was established in 2006 as a space for collaboration with a focus on the built environment.
Very special thanks to Katie Dixon and The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Sébastien Venuat, and Brooklyn Brewery.
Triple Canopy’s development has been inspired in part by a critical engagement with the legacy of Aspen magazine (1965-71). Artists and writers contributed projects to Aspen in the form of easily distributable media such as flip books, flexi-disc records, and paper sculpture. These projects coincided with a broader contemporaneous phenomenon: artworks intended to appear exclusively in magazines. The Medium Was Tedium examines how this move from the exhibition space to the printed page has been subsequently repeated by artists in relation to other media, such as television programming and the Internet. Triple Canopy’s editors will discuss practices that traverse mediums and the media with artists Mel Bochner, Daniel Bozhkov, and Erin Shirreff.
This event is presented as part of the New Silent series, organized by Lauren Cornell, director of Rhizome.
$6 New Museum members, $8 general public
Press release
Image: Erin Shirreff, 2008
"The question of whether Crude Oil by Wang Bing is an installation or a film screening is basically trivial. It is an important and grand work and the label is not that relevant. What is relevant is how an exhausting work like this can best be presented. And how it can live on." —International Film Festival Rotterdam
From November 4 to 8, Triple Canopy and Light Industry present the East Coast premiere of Wang Bing's Crude Oil, a fourteen-hour film installation tracking a fourteen-hour workday of crude-oil extraction in northwest China. Wang's film will be on view from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. each day, running five times in its entirety.
Accompanying Crude Oil in an adjacent room will be a film program by Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Lucy Raven (7:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 4; reception to follow), as well as the American premiere of Wang Bing's Coal Money (4 p.m., Saturday, November 7; discussion to follow with NYU professors Rebecca Karl and Zhen Zhang) and a screening of Wang's nine-hour West of the Tracks (12 p.m., Sunday, November 8). A curated DVD library of related films will be available for viewing throughout the week.
Full press release and schedule
Triple Canopy is pleased to present The Invisible Grammar: A Tribute to Aspen's "Time, Silence and Reduction, and Language" Issue on its Forty-Second Anniversary, as part of Printed Matter's annual NY Art Book Fair. Ten issues of Aspen were published between 1965 and 1971. The famed "multimedia magazine in a box" generally contained vinyl recordings, writing, artworks, film, and other objects. Today, Triple Canopy editors, contributors, and friends will read, perform, play, and otherwise interpret works from issues five and six, which were edited by Brian O'Doherty and published together in the fall of 1967. These endeavors will take place throughout PS1 as well as in The Classroom, where the fair's programs will be held, and where select editions derived from the interpretations listed below will be available.
Tom Roberge: The Death of the Author, by Roland Barthes • Catherine Czacki: "Text for Nothing #8," by Samuel Beckett • Adam Helms: Seven Translucent Tiers, by Mel Bochner • Nicole Russo: "Nova Express," by William Burroughs • Molly Kleiman: "Conditionnement," by Michel Butor • Dan Torop & Alexander Provan: "Fontana Mix-Feed," by John Cage • Georgia Sagri: "Space, Time and Dance," by Merce Cunningham • Nolan Simon & Oliver Newton: "The Creative Act," by Marcel Duchamp • Summer Guthery: "A L'infinitif" by Marcel Duchamp • Nathan Gwynne: "The King of Denmark," by Morton Feldman • Peter Simensky: "The Realistic Manifesto," by Naum Gabo • Caolan Madden: "Poem, March 1966," by Dan Graham • Julia Weist: "Jealousy," by Alain Robbe-Grillet •
Forté Magazine: "Phantastische Gebete," by Richard Huelsenbeck • Nadja Millner-Larsen: "Style and The Representation of Historical Time," by George Kubler •
Kate Shepherd: "Serial Project #1," by Sol Lewitt • Andrea Merkx: "The Russian Desert: A Note on Our State of Knowledge," by Douglas MacAgy • Natalie Campbell & Bridget Lewis: "Lightplay: Black-White-Grey," by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy • Zack Rockhill: "Site," by Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek • Hannah Whitaker & Sam Frank: "Structural Play #3," by Brian O'Doherty • Andres Laracuente: "Linoleum," by Robert Rauschenberg • Jessie Stead: "Rhythm 21," by Hans Richter • Rachel Owens: "The Maze," by Tony Smith • Alexander Provan: "The Aesthetics of Silence," by Susan Sontag
Filmmaker Ben Russell & musician Joe Grimm (a.k.a. The Wind-Up Bird) perform "Mazes," a double 16mm projection that uses photo-sensitive electronics and film loops to produce a transcendent barrage of flickering white light and audio signals.
Grimm & Lauren Carter perform "Mirror Phases," an exchange of feedback and exercise in boundary loss.
Lichens performs a song cycle for one vocalist.
$5 donation | $3 drinks
Beer generously donated by Kelso.
Ben Russell is an itinerant media artist and curator. He has made films about Maroon tribes in Suriname, the divining powers of Richard Pryor, and the end of the world. He began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence in 2003 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. He currently resides in Chicago.
Joe Grimm is a composer and performer based in Chicago. He has collaborated with Lucky Dragons, Glenn Branca, and Alvin Lucier, among others. His most recent record is Brain Cloud (Spekk).
Lauren Carter is a Chicago-based sculptor and installation artist. She works in sound, film, and video.
Lichens is Rob Lowe. His most recent record Omns (Kranky). He lives in Brooklyn.
Press release
Featuring a film program curated by Light Industry, visuals by Michael Bell-Smith, video games by Mark Essen, and DJ sets by Josh Kline, Ceci Moss, and others. Musical performances by The Tourettes and Tanlines.
7 p.m. film | 9 p.m. music
$7 donation | $3 drinks
http://www.gowanusstudio.org
Beer generously donated by Union Beer Distributors and Kelso.
Thomas Beard and Ed Halter of Light Industry present Reductions. Created for home viewing, digest films transformed theatrical features into short subjects, bumping down the originals from 35mm to Super-8, often stripping them of color and sound, and re-editing the narratives into a concise ten to fifteen minutes, in the process changing their meaning in subtle, strange, and surprising ways. This selection includes a range of miniaturized movies, including Jerry Lewis vehicles, horror films, kung-fu pictures, and ‘70s disaster epics.
Michael Bell-Smith is an artist who uses digital forms to explore contemporary visual culture and the way in which it is mediated through popular technologies. His works have been shown at the New Museum, Foxy Production, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Mark Essen makes video games. Tonight he's showing Scrap Collector, a game about making money, and The Thrill of Combat, a game about flying a helicopter and collecting organs. Since 2008, his work has been featured in group exhibitions at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, Canada and Light Industry, Brooklyn. His work is currently on view at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
Josh Kline plays upbeat social justice jams from the 80s and 90s about topics including homelessness, famine, and rampant inequality. Expect dance party mega-hits by Arrested Development, KLF, Crystal Waters, Public Enemy, Tom Tom Club, Inner City, and others who bummed out while getting down.
Tim Lokiec is a painter based in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited at de Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich, Saatchi Gallery, London, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York and Oliver Kamm 5BE, New York. He received his MFA from Columbia University.
Ceci Moss plays the psychedelic-scientific explorations of 60s musicians who took stereo-channel panning over the edge, including Apryl Fool, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Harumi.
The Tourettes broke your heart nearly fifty years ago, when they came on the da-doo-ron-ron-core scene with their relatively flat hair and voices, and a boundless enthusiasm for a world you, as a sheltered and joyless Boomer teen, could have hardly imagined. Now that you've grown up, test the seams that you've carefully stitched around your heart as these surprisingly youthful-looking grandmas take the stage again, yelping and crunching and clapping through the wreckage of your adolescence.
Tanlines is Jesse Cohen (Professor Murder) and Eric Emm (Storm & Stress, Brothers production) playing electrified island sounds, synthesized live. Their first single, New Flowers, is out now on Young Turks.
Press release
For this event, expanding on an issue devoted to new and old forms of urbanism, Triple Canopy excavates real, unrealized, and potential spaces: a planned mega-eco-city in the desert Southwest, a grand Utahan suburb nurtured by copper-mine tailings, an aerial view of the architecture of Texas oil fields, the spiraling sprawl of Mexico City, the coincidences of megachurches and office spaces, and more. Participants include the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Joseph Clarke, Nine 11 Thesaurus, Lucy Raven, Emily Richardson, Melanie Smith, the VPL Authority (Thomas Moran & Rustam Mehta), and Zs.
Also available: Wrong Place, Right Time (2009), a digital print by José León Cerrillo in an edition of 100.
7 p.m.
Free and open to the public
http://www.thekitchen.org
Literature programs at The Kitchen are made possible with generous support from the Axe-Houghton Foundation and with public funds from The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Press release
Performances by New Humans (Mika Tajima and Howie Chen with Nick Phillips), Orphan, Bob Nickas, and Mark Ibold (Sonic Youth, Pavement). Art by Colby Bird, Jonah Groeneboer, Jacob Kassay, Andres Laracuente, Rachel Owens with Matthew Lusk and Lucy Raven, and John Powers.
Press release
Gil Blank presented remote photography. Andrew Maxwell read literary product trials. Laura Steenberge showed slides of words.
Video by Keren Cytter, Jen DeNike, Lucky Dragons, Michael Robinson, Ben Russell, Felipe Zuniga, and others. Music by Hecuba, Peter Kolovos, and Revolutionary Patriots.
Art by Wennie Huang, Natalia Porter, and Julia Samuels. Video by Lene Berg, Keren Cytter, Kate Dollenmayer, Hannah Frank, Dan Hoy, Ara Peterson, Emily Richardson, Michael Robinson, Ben Russell, and Jessie Stead. Music by Puttin' on the Ritz, Sebastian Mlynarski, and Ted Turner.
Featuring Anthony Auerbach, INS Chief of Propaganda, and Simon Critchley, INS Chief Philosopher.
