MeanRed Productions presents…
Motor City Drum Ensemble
An alias of German house producer/dj Danilo Plessow, @motorcitydrum specializes in exquisitely crafted euphoric dancefloor odysseys.
Tickets on sale via
Eventbrite: https://
Resident Advisor: https://
SCI+TEC: Dubfire, Juan Maclean, Dave P
Tickets available on:
Eventbrite: https://dubfirekdc.eventbrite.com
Resident Advisor: https://www.residentadvisor.net/events/1263607
Performance Schedule
June 29, 7:30pm – 9:00pm | DJ Black Helmet Performance
July 7, 6:00pm | Zaid Islam Performance
August 18, 5:00pm – 8:00pm | The Modern School Jazz Trio Performance
See below for performance info
About the Exhibition
Knockdown Center is pleased to present Pigeonhole: The Life and Work of Bobby Alam, a new exhibition by Priyanka Dasgupta and Chad Marshall. Pigeonhole is a multidisciplinary portrait of Bahauddin “Bobby” Alam, a Bengali peddler and sailor and who arrived in the United States in 1918 and lived as a Black jazz musician in New York and New Orleans. The exhibition memorializes Alam’s career and explores his personal navigation of an especially precarious period in American history, prompting a reflection on the complexities of racial passing as a means for marginalized people to circumvent violence.
Alam is a composite of historical realities and imagined truths. His identity is inspired by the history of Bengalis passing as black in the United States, settling into communities of color in order to circumvent anti-Asian immigration laws, as recorded in Vivek Bald’s book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America. The artists deploy these histories to bring to light the ways in which passing can function as a strategy for survival.
The installation portrays Alam’s dressing room, rehearsal space, and performance stage in the kind of juke joint where he would have spent his evenings constructing and performing his adopted identity. Objects within the installation highlight Alam’s life and career as a musician: a zoot suit embellished with Indian kantha style embroidery, old handbills and concert posters, musical compositions, video documentation from Alam’s rehearsals, and private recordings. Clues within each of these objects reveal, upon close reading, the staged and dual nature of Alam’s identity, which subtly trespasses the lines between reality and fiction.
Over the course of the exhibition, contemporary musicians inspired by Alam will take the stage and perform live, enabling the past evoked by the installation to live once again, while resonating with Knockdown Center’s function as a music venue. Additional elements of the exhibition will extend into Knockdown Center’s outdoor spaces, restrooms, and bar.
Pigeonhole: The Life and Work of Bobby Alam is realized through collaborations with Elias Meister and Hammarsing Kharhmar, celebrated through performances by Azikiwe Mohammed, Zaid Islam, Christopher Hall, Michael Howell and Leroy Willams and additional musicians. The exhibition supported in part by Knockdown Center, Smack Mellon, Materials for the Arts, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
About the Performances
DJ Black Helmet Performance
Saturday, June 29 | 7:30 – 9:00pm
Artist Azikiwe Mohammed will perform as DJ Black Helmet at the opening reception to kick off a series of performances over the course of the exhibition inspired by Alam’s musical career. DJ Black Helmet will play a DJ set infused with Alam’s influences, including the sounds of New Orleans Dixieland jazz, blues, and Baul music from West Bengal and Bangladesh. The set is inspired by Alam’s roots as well as his musical career in the United States in the 1920s through the 1950s, and also includes original compositions by contemporary musicians whose journeys and influences resonate with Alam’s complex history and hybrid identity.
Zaid Islam Performance
Sunday, July 7 | 6:00pm
Zaid Islam will perform selection of Bengali Baul songs on the performance stage, transporting the audience to these mystic sounds from the east that were an early influence on Bobby’s life and music, and which he carried with him through his time in the United States. Zaid is a Bangladeshi artist based in New York, who has spent considerable amount of time and has strong bonds with Bauls and Fakirs from Kushtia (Lalon Fakir’s home) and other regions of Bangladesh, and India. Zaid is not a musician or an expert on the subject, but someone whose views and lifestyle have been greatly influenced by the philosophy and music of these mystic people.
The Modern School Performance
Sunday August 18 | 5 – 8pm
For the closing of Pigeonhole: The Life and Work of Bobby Alam, the jazz trio “The Modern School” will perform a selection of music on the performance stage in the installation, comprised of Dixieland Jazz and Dixieland inspired compositions, drawing on Alam’s career as a Jazz musician.
“The Modern School” is comprised of Christopher Hall (bass), Michael Howell (guitar), and Kahlil Kwame Bell (drums). “The Modern School” is named after the elementary school that inspired bassist Christopher Hall’s initial interest in jazz. Hall has been performing on the stage of the New Amsterdam Musical Association in New York City since 2003, and has been a fixture in the Harlem Jazz scene for over a decade. He has also performed on contrabass with the New Beginnings and Westchester Brassmen Drum, and Bugle Corps. Committed to teaching through music, Hall has worked with myriad cultural organizations including the National Council of Negro Women, the American Museum of Natural History, Concrete Timbre Performance Collective, and the 1st Stage Theatre.
An innovative and skillful guitarist from Kansas City, Michael Howell was inspired and taught by his father, noted guitarist, Herley Dennis. Howell has recorded three solo albums: “Alone” on Catalyst Records, and “Looking Glass” and “In The Silence” on Mile Stone Records. He also performed with musicians including Bobby Hutchenson, Hampton Hawes, Art Blakey, George Duke, Gene Ammons and Woody Shaw. Howell has also worked closely, and toured with one of the great bebop inventors – the music genius and master entertainer – Dizzy Gillespie.
Kahlil Kwame Bell, having made numerous recordings with musical icons and legends as well as with his own talented band, has been called “one of the most prolific musicians in the industry today.” Bell plays over numerous percussion instruments and has experimented with wood and clay flutes. His musical output varies from jazz to rock to hip hop; from European classical to world music; from spirituals to spoken word accompaniments. His layering of sounds and instruments, sometimes blended with unique rhythms, reflects his view of the unity of cultures through music.
About the Artists
Priyanka Dasgupta and Chad Marshall began collaborating in 2015. Their work is located in the gaps between history and story-telling, and draws from archival texts, sociological conventions, oral histories, postmodern theory and postcolonial studies, to examine power and privilege in the United States, and its relationship with image, and appearance. Exhibitions of their collaborative work include Pigeonhole, Dodd Galleries, University of Georgia (2019), Sunroom Project Space: Paradise, at Wave Hill, New York (2018), How to see in the dark, at Cuchifritos Gallery, New York (2018), Not an edge but a hinge, at Abrons Arts Center, New York (2018), In Practice: Another Echo at Sculpture Center, New York (2018), Loving Blackness and A More Perfect Union at the Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia (2017), Ornate Activate at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, Milwaukee (2017) and Shirin Gallery, New York (2015). Residencies include the Artist Studio Program at Smack Mellon (2018) and AIRspace at Abrons Arts Center (2018).
This exhibition is organized by Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
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Knockdown Center’s exhibitions are selected through a competitive open call for proposals. Through a multi-round process, exhibition proposals are reviewed by Knockdown Center’s Curatorial Advisory Board and selected based on quality, distinctiveness, and response to Knockdown Center’s unique site and context within an ecosystem of live events.
Founded in 2015, the Knockdown Center’s Curatorial Advisory Board is currently comprised of seven sitting arts professionals with diverse but overlapping interests and fields of expertise. The Curatorial Advisory Board meets bi-annually to provide critical feedback on a wide range of proposals as well as contributing to discussions about larger programmatic goals. To learn more about proposing an exhibition or short-term project please visit our Proposals Page.
La Luna is a sultry summer dance affair.
Independently minded, we promote the elevated dance music we love.
Purposeful in our production, we care about spirit, romance, and sustainability.
This is a celebration of summer.
BUSHWIG NYC 2019
SHAKE. THE. HOUSE.
September 7th and 8th at the Knockdown Center.
This year Bushwig will be even more legendary than ever before with over 300 iconic performers.
Featuring live music from Slayyyter, Mykki Blanco, AJA, Christeene.
Drag shows from Nina West, Bubble T, Charlene, Tammie Brown, Lady Bunny, Horrorchata and all of your Brooklyn favorites.
Join us for 23 hours of drag, dancing, live music, shopping with over 30 vendors and more.
♥ Dance to sets by Iconic DJs like Jasmine Infiniti & Justin Cudmore.
♥ Carry at the Ketel One Bar.
♥ Over indulge with our food vendors.
♥ Get your desserts in the dark room.
Ride our FREE SHUTTLE from Jefferson L Train Station (Jefferson St. and Wyckoff Ave.) to the venue or alternatively use our code “WIGRIDE19” on LYFT for a 20% discount.
Bushwig is a safer space with LGBTQ friendly security, wheelchair access, and designated space near the stage for guests with disabilities. For reservation please email: Simon@Bushwig.com
Final tickets on sale now!
Bushwig NYC is an adults only 21+ event.
#shakethehouse #bushwig2019
Knockdown Center welcomes back techno-queen Nina Kraviz and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy for a supercharged night of techno and dance music with support from Justin Cudmore.
In the Ready Room:
Museum Of Love (DJ Set)
Shit Robot
In Texas:
Fabe
Mike Huckaby
Upcoming Exhibition Events
June 23, 5:00pm – 8:00pm | Closing Reception
with jazz by the Rodrigo Recabarren trio
More details here
About the Exhibition
Knockdown Center is pleased to present Soft Territories, a group exhibition presenting works by Victoria Manganiello, Simón Sepúlveda, and Sarah Zapata exploring the ways in which notions of movement, migration, and locality are expressed in contemporary textile practices. The warp and weft of the loom – the basic structure of textiles being composed of longitudinal and transverse components – echoes current critical thinking about verticality and horizontality in social and economic structures. In the artworks included, the intersection of the two planes of woven thread express ideas about politics, territories, technologies, and interactions, while enabling spaces of softness, warmth, and shelter.
The questions of memory, identity, and borders are central to Zapata’s symbiotic practice of textile making and writing. Manganiello uses hand-spun yarn and mixed natural and synthetic color dyes to create hand-woven textiles that explore intersections between materiality, technology, geography, and storytelling. Sepúlveda mixes digital and organic elements to create tapestries –a historical artifact for narrating epic tales– that reflect on experiences of migration.
Past Exhibition Events
May 4, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Opening Reception
May 4, 6:30 pm | Curator Tour
Curator Carolina Arévalo will lead visitors on a tour of the exhibition
May 5, 5:00 pm | Devotional with Sarah Zapata
More details here
About the Artists
Victoria Manganiello is an installation and mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been exhibited throughout the USA and internationally including at the Queens Museum, Tang Museum, Pioneer Works, and the Museum of Art and Design. Victoria was recently named one of Forbes list 30 under 30 artists for 2019. She is an adjunct professor at both NYU and Parson’s The New School. Exploring the intersections between materiality, technology, geography and storytelling, Victoria’s installation work, abstract paintings, and kinetic sculptures are made meticulously with hand-woven textiles using hand-spun yarn and hand-mixed natural and synthetic color dyes.
Sarah Zapata makes work with labor-intensive processes such as handweaving, rope coiling, latch hooking, and sewing by intersecting theories of gender and ethnicity with pre-colonial histories and techniques. Making work with meditative, mechanical means, her current work deals with the multiple facets of her complex identity: a Texan living in Brooklyn, a lesbian raised as an evangelical Christian, a first generation American of Latin American descent, a contemporary artist inspired by ancient civilizations, an artist challenging the history of craft as “women’s work” within the realm of art. Zapata’s work has been exhibited at the New Museum (NY), El Museo del Barrio (NY), Museum of Art and Design (NY), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (NY), Boston University (MA), LAXART (CA), Deli Gallery (NY), Arsenal Contemporary (NY), and Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center (NY). Zapata has also completed recent residencies at MASS MoCA (MA), A-Z West (CA), and Wave Hill (NY), and is the recent recipient of an NFA Project Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. Zapata was an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2016.
Simón Sepúlveda works on textile mixing bold graphics, with social and personal issues, like migration and identity. His work is a hyper-awareness of the precarious nature in trying to find a personal balance and also worldwide balance across migration, economics, and human rights issues. This worldwide perspective and artist direction within textiles has led him to fulfill a sense of purpose with his work. Sepúlveda’s work has been exhibited at the Chilean Museum of Contemporary Art (Chile), Museum of Fine Arts (Chile), Visual Arts Museum (Chile), and Aqui Gallery (Chile). Sepúlveda is currently living and working at San Francisco as a designer for Apple. Previously he has worked as a Designer at Sagmeister&Walsh (New York), Javier Jaén Studio (Barcelona) and Felicidad (Santiago).
About the Curator
Carolina Arévalo is a researcher and curator. Her approach towards the idea of image as a mental state is center in the fundamental concepts of forms: the reinterpretation and representation of societies explained through historical styles, as they occur in art, design, and architecture. All objects and images communicate and can be recognized as texts; artifacts weave the public and private aspects, social and cultural conventions and the way in which people and position themselves in a context. Currently, Arévalo is also curating Sheila Hicks: Reencuentros at the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art (2019), which aims to establish dialogues between contemporary textile art and pre-Columbian textile art. Recently, she has published in Hilos Libres: Sheila Hicks (Puebla, Mexico: 2018), Jaume Xifra: Cat. Exhibit (Girona, Spain: 2018), and the article Anni Albers: Influjos Precolombinos y Legado (Goethe Institute, Colombia: 2019-upcoming).
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Knockdown Center’s exhibitions are selected through a competitive open call for proposals. Through a multi-round process, exhibition proposals are reviewed by Knockdown Center’s Curatorial Advisory Board and selected based on quality, distinctiveness, and response to Knockdown Center’s unique site and context within an ecosystem of live events.
Founded in 2015, the Knockdown Center’s Curatorial Advisory Board is currently comprised of seven sitting arts professionals with diverse but overlapping interests and fields of expertise. The Curatorial Advisory Board meets bi-annually to provide critical feedback on a wide range of proposals as well as contributing to discussions about larger programmatic goals. To learn more about proposing an exhibition or short-term project please visit our Proposals Page.
Barbercon 2019 – Presented by BarberShopconnect
Barbercon is the premier global festival of the barbering community. Launched in 2016 by Lee Resnick as the live networking event for Barbershopconnect, the first social site exclusively for barbers, Barbercon brings together thousands of high-profile and amateur barbers, cosmetologists, and brands from around the world. 2019 will be the biggest and most dynamic Barbercon to date, 2 days and growing to include 3 stages for live hair tutorials and product demonstrations, an even larger Barbercon Marketplace, two full days of intimate education classes and workshops, an outdoor festival area, the prestigious Barbercon Awards, and so much more.
VIP Package:
– (1) 2-Day General Admission ticket
– (2) Guarantee Entry Education Classes
– Early entry (1.5 hours before General Admission doors)
– (1) VIP Barbercon gift bag with products
– On-site concierge
– (1) custom VIP laminate
