Nasty Women + Newark Printshop collaborate for one day at Knockdown Center to assist the community in the production of flags, banners and signs – just in time for the Women’s March on Washington on January 21st .

NASTY WOMEN
This is a group exhibition that serves to demonstrate solidarity among artists who identify with being a Nasty Woman in the face of threats to roll back women’s rights, individual rights, and abortion rights. It also serves as a fundraiser to support organizations defending these rights and to be a platform for organization before the Trump Presidential Inauguration in January. Started by Roxanne Jackson and Jessamyn Fiore with a facebook post that read: “Hello female artists/curators! Lets organize a NASTY WOMEN group show!!! Who’s interested???” The massive response has taken this call to arms into an ever expanding network of Nasty Women Artists & Art Organizers.

NEWARK PRINT SHOP
The Newark Print Shop (NPS) is a community fine art printmaking studio in Downtown Newark, NJ. Founded in August 2012, our goal is to support the fine art of printmaking by providing affordable and accessible workspace, educational programming through classes and workshops, and exhibition space dedicated to the fine art of prints. Newark is home to one of the most extensive fine art print and book arts collections housed at the Newark Public Library, and we wish to expand on this opportunity to put Newark on the map for printmaking!

S/team: neutrality and antagonism
A workshop facilitated by non/studio

Artists, activists, and thinkers share contemporary responses to Zoe Leonard’s influential 1992 text I want a president…

Originally conceived in response to the cultural and political climate of the early 1990’s, Leonard’s text urges us to ask: what has changed and what remains the same? Leonard notes, “I am interested in the space this text opens up for us to imagine and voice what we want in our leaders, and even beyond that, what we can envision for the future of our society.”

Engaging with this timeless text in the wake of the upcoming inauguration, this reading highlights the necessity of speaking out, of looking to the future, and the importance of coming together in mourning, rage, and action.

Speakers include:
Sol Aramendi, Albina Mateo, and  Irwin Sanchez
Christopher Cole
Shannon Matesky
Meera Nair
Melissa Ragona
Kameelah Janan Rasheed
J. Soto
Diya Vij
and more!

This event is part of a fundraising series of music, performances, and workshops accompanying NASTY WOMEN exhibition, on view at Knockdown Center January 12-15th, 2017. Day time performances are free and open to the public, while evening programming can be experienced through the purchase of a $20 all-access pass that grants you access to every performance happening in the building that evening. Proceeds in benefit of select charities working towards women’s reproductive health and community health initiatives.

In conjunction with the exhibition Read My Lips artists Kerry Downey and Loren Britton have organized a reading with five queer poets whose practices address marginalized bodies and problems of language. Featuring readings by Ana Božičević, Wo Chan, Rin Johnson, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, and Jespa J. Smith.

About Read My Lips
Read My Lips is a two-person show featuring work by Kerry Downey and Loren Britton that considers queer abstraction as an investment in indeterminacy, which allows for an expansive sense of embodiment, including but not limited to, the slipperiness of gender, affect, desire, and language.

About the Artists
Ana Božičević, born in Croatia in 1977, is a poet, translator, teacher, and occasional singer. She is the author of Stars of the Night Commute(2009), the Lambda Award-winning Rise in the Fall (2013) and Joy of Missing Out, forthcoming with Birds, LLC. She is the recipient of the 40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism award from the Feminist Press, and the PEN American Center/NYSCA grant for translating It Was Easy to Set the Snow on Fire by Zvonko Karanović, forthcoming from Phoneme Media. The anthology of translations The Day Lady Gaga Died: An Anthology of Newer New York Poets she co-edited with Željko Mitić appeared in Serbia in Fall 2011.

Wo Chan is a queer Fujianese poet and drag performer. They hold fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda Literary, and the Asian American Writers Workshop. As a member of Brooklyn-based drag alliance Switch n’ Play, Wo has performed at venues including Brooklyn Pride, The Trevor Project, and Vox Populi. Their all Asian American experimental theater piece WHITEFLAG/WHITEFACE debuted at the Dixon Place HOT! Festival in 2016.

Rin Johnson is a Brooklyn based sculptor and poet. Moving between Virtual Reality and sculpture, Johnson has exhibited and read widely in Europe and the US. Johnson has a BFA in photography and urban planning from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Johnson is an MFA Candidate in Sculpture at Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts. Johnson is the author of “Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People” from Inpatient Press and the forthcoming VR book, “Meet in the Corner” from Publishing House.Johnson writes for the Brooklyn Rail and teaches image literacy and photography at Bruce High Quality Foundation University (BHQFU). Johnson runs Imperial Matters with Sophia Le Fraga.

Julian Talamantez Brolaski is the author of Of Mongrelitude (forthcoming, Wave Books April 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards (Litmus Press / Belladonna Books 2009).  Julian is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist in the country band The Western Skyline (www.thewesternskyline.org). Currently in Queens, NY, Julian also sometimes lives in California.

Jespa J. Smith is a poet, visual artist and part-time philosopher. They were born in Germany, where they studied Philosophy and Anthropology, and are currently living in Montréal, Canada.Their poetry focusses on the small, personal interactions, on transitional and surreal situations.

This will be a donation based workshop lead by Richard Kennedy as part of Amplify: SIREN x Discwoman x Brutaż. All donations received for this event will benefit Standing Rock.

About the workshop:

There’s something about screaming that we don’t understand. It struck us that we haven’t ever screamed in our life, just because we felt like it. It struck us that we can’t even imagine the scream of our friends. It struck us that we can’t scream together. It struck us that it seems the only screams that are acknowledged are those of the powerful.

Why isn’t it a socially-accepted action when feeling anxious, vulnerable or just strange? Why do we feel like we have to bear the shit quietly, if we’re unable to change the course of events? Why do we have to shut up?

It’s because we’re not meant to hear each other, united, it’s because we’re potentially unsafe, potentially irresistibly strong. It’s because we’re supposed to feel weak. Fuck that. Let’s scream it off.

We, SIREN (London), Discwoman (NY) and Brutaż (Warsaw) are three techno collectives usually channeling loud sounds through speakers. This time, however, it’s about YOUR noise. We’re hiring professional coaches to help you scream loud and clear, for many reasons and for no reason. Come and build a wall of noise with us. Together, let’s take up space, express our rage, feel powerful and be LOUD. Let’s AMPLIFY each other.

Please note: These workshops are intended as a performance for group empowerment & are not intended as therapy for those with PTSD. We have people on hand throughout the sessions to ensure everyone is doing okay!

2MF is a series of community meetings – open and participatory experiences – organized by artists Sonya Derman and Maria Stabio, encouraging pro-emotive and ante-academic conversation among artists in New York City. Knockdown Center hosts it’s second 2MF meeting titled “The Office,” in collaboration with Sister Gallery:

“[management is] the art of getting things done through people” – Mary Parker Follett

As artists our professional and personal spheres have collapsed, our day jobs/incomes giving way to our more serious occupation: making the art, getting it shown and supporting our fellow impresarios. We do this work as solitary entrepreneurs or sometimes in small groups but we participate in a system that appears from a distance to share similarities with larger consolidated structures and seems to constitute our positions into a form of organized labor.

With this in mind it could be said that what is missing from this art world of object/idea producers, disseminators and aggregators is a quality middle management position: someone whose job it is to direct the flow of labor towards useful ends and serving as a communicative device between the various tiers.

In lieu of this we propose an employee skill-building exercise designed to facilitate group interaction that sharpens personal motivations while simultaneously considering the whole. Modeled on the popular game “Mafia”, “The Office” will be sure to unmask team players, weed out social climbers, reward clever deception, and bring stability and hierarchy to the nebulous world of artist-cum-laborers.

Pre-Meeting Reading:
Mark Panay, “5 Psychological Theories of Motivation to Increase Productivity”

About the Artists:
Sister Gallery consists of partners, Zuriel Waters and Jenny Lee. From 2014 to 2016, the gallery space held bi-monthly exhibitions in a window at 69 Irving Ave, in the heart of Bushwick. Waters and Lee met at Rhode Island School of Design, and moved to New York City in 2010. In addition to curatorial projects, Lee and Waters also write and paint.

About 2MF:
2MF, co-run by artists Sonya Derman and Maria Stabio, is a practice that encourages pro-emotive and ante-academic conversation among artists in New York City. Collaborating with selected facilitating thinkers, 2MF organizes periodic community meetings – open and participatory experiences – alongside post-meeting discussion aired and archived at Clocktower Radio. More information is available at 2manyfeelings.com.

Come make sun-prints on fabric with the artist Liz Nielsen. This workshop will include hands-on experimentation with the archaic photographic mark-making process called the Photogram. It is easy and non-toxic. 

Liz is a photographer whose own works are printed in the analog color darkroom with handmade negatives and found light sources. Meeting together at high noon, Liz will guide you through a process of making colorful works using the sun as a natural superpower!

Bring your ideas and an open mind. Come with a plan, or don’t, and we will make one.

Space for 15 people
All Ages. (Kids under 8 must be accompanied by a non-participating adult)

Come enjoy a handmade meal, sit down with friends and strangers alike gathered around community tables, and even get a peek into the fresh pasta making process. This supper will feature two handmade pasta dishes served family style as well as a salad of lush greens and edible flowers.

The Da Prato Test Kitchen is a monthly supper club series presenting food and examining sensation. The dinners test various recipes, present odd and beautiful ingredients, and bring together an interesting calico of people to celebrate food, conviviality, merriment, and perception. Join us for a special installment at Knockdown Center.

Menu is as follows:

Handmade pappardelle with wild boar ragu; rich gamey wild boar, stewed for hours in a sauce of chianti and juniper berries, fresh herbs and tomato. Served over delicate ribbons of handmade pappardelle.

Handmade maccheroni with porcinis and pine nuts; these are not the little elbow pastas you are thinking of but rather a very rustic, traditional Tuscan pasta shape of elegant hand torn sheets folded beautifully atop the dish and topped in layers with wild porcini mushrooms in a light cream sauce with toasted pine nuts and fresh herbs.

Salad of greens and roses; torn bitter greens tosses with buttery leaf lettuces, pickled shallots, a medley of fragrant and herbal edible flowers, fine herbs, and toasted pistachios tossed in a champagne vinaigrette.

These dishes draw upon the verdant mountains of northern Italy, bringing together wild mountain mushrooms, wild game, the unbelievable pine nut as well as the flora of the woods themselves. We’ll be in the tops of trees, rummaging through the brush, and rolling about the forest floor in this delightful and homestyle feast to warmly escort you into fall. We hope you can join us.

The cost of this meal is $35. Wine available for purchase. We kindly ask you to purchase your seats in advance.