What is P.C.D.?
P.C.D. is short for Post Carnival Depression – a phenomenon that usually afflicts Trinidad & Tobago Carnival participants. Symptoms vary from mild to severe and can occur soon after carnival is over or manifest itself in the weeks and months after Trinidad Carnival. ShorBlu Events, Back2Basics Ent, Live By The Henny & King Leo have the cure! Bringing you some of the hottest artists from Trinidad Carnival 2018 and the best Caribbean Dj’s from NYC and around the world!
Join us this spring for the return of Sunday Service, a free monthly series of live work across mediums in our bar, the Ready Room. The spring season curators include: Jess Pretty, Rena Anakwe, Janani Balasubramanian, and Mariana Valencia. Each month’s artist lineup to be announced soon.
Sunday Service Spring 2018 Schedule:
March 4, 7pm: Curator Jess Pretty
April 8, 7pm: Curator Rena Anakwe
May 6, 7pm: Curator Janani Balasubramanian
June 3, 7pm: Curator Mariana Valencia
About the Curators
jess pretty is on a quest for pleasure that transcends time and the spaces she claims to reside in. on her quest for pleasure she makes dances, performs and collaborates with with other artists (larissa velez-jackson, will rawls, leslie cuyjet, dianne mcintyre, cynthia oliver, jennifer monson and niall jones) and teaches dance art based in new york city where she moved after receiving an mfa in dance and queer studies from the university of illinois at urbana champaign. her free time is filled curating methodologies for living past survival through being as unapologetically black as possible.
Rena Anakwe, is an interdisciplinary artist and performer, working primarily with sound, visuals, and scent. Exploring intersections between traditional healing practices, spirituality and performance she creates works focused on sensory-based, experiential interactions using technology. A member of the artistic collective NON Worldwide, she is based in Brooklyn, New York by way of Nigeria and Canada.
Janani Balasubramanian is a writer and gamemaker whose work has been presented at more than 160 stages across North America and Europe, including The Public Theater, MOMA, Abrons Arts Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Red Bull Arts, Ace Hotel, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most recently, Balasubramanian premiered Heisenberg (an audio augmented reality game on uncertainty and chaos) at the New York High Line. Balasubramanian is currently a Van Lier fellow in new media at the Public Theater, and is working on Stargeit, a Cold War era novel about an extraordinary friendship.
Mariana Valencia, is a dance artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Valencia has held residencies at Chez Bushwick (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), ISSUE Project Room (2015) and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2016-18). In Los Angeles, she’s held residencies at Show Box LA and Pieter Pasd (2014). Her work has been presented at Danspace Project, Roulette, the Center for Performance Research, The New Museum, The Women and Performance Journal, Lec/Dem, Ugly Duckling Presse, AUNTS and The L.A.B at The Kitchen. As a performer, Valencia has worked with musician Jules Gimbrone; video artists Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, and AK Burns and in dances by robbinschilds, Kim Brandt and MPA. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading a partner of Artists Space Books and Talks and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). Valencia holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006) with a concentration in dance and ethnography.
Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Knockdown Center is pleased to present MATERIAL WITNESS WITNESS MATERIAL, a group exhibition on view March 3 – April 15, 2018. The exhibition brings together the work of Amber Atiya, Amy Khoshbin, Esteban Jefferson, DonChristian Jones, SomBlackGuy, Chris Watts, and Lachell Workman, all of whom embrace experimental and rigorous ways of considering how violence and resistance are inscribed on and internalized in the body. These artists employ diverse mediums to translate the aftermath of trauma and discrimination.
The exhibition considers the idea of a “material witness,” a legal term referring to an individual with valuable information that may aid in the outcome of a criminal trial. In testimony, a “material witness” recalls and articulates what was seen as it relates to the case. Their disposition and other physical cues also play a role in transmitting information—here, the ‘material’ refers to subjective information rather than physical evidence. Additionally, visual evidence is often considered insufficient in the court of law, as proven by recent instances of video documentation of police violence which rarely result in a conviction. If the video camera, a supposed ‘objective eye’ tasked with documenting reality and a material witness, an individual whose memory is inherently bias, both fail to uphold as evidence in the court of law, then what degree of representation is considered sufficient?
The exhibition’s title MATERIAL WITNESS WITNESS MATERIAL inverts this term to reflect the ways in which translation and interpretation are integral to both the legal process and the artworks included. Drawing from these same evidentiary sources—footage of police violence, legal documents, histories of discriminatory practices—the artists take various approaches to express the impact of systemic violence on the body. Some artists in the exhibition evoke familiar bodily forms through materials such as cracked asphalt and sheer fleshy textiles. Others infiltrate, alter, and revise government documents as a gesture of resistance, while some directly represent instances of police and legal injustice.
Exhibition Events
Sunday, March 25, 6:00pm
Artist Roundtable
In conjunction with the exhibition MATERIAL WITNESS WITNESS MATERIAL, participating artists Esteban Jefferson, DonChristian Jones, Chris Watts, and Lachell Workman will discuss their respective practices and overlapping concerns from racial discrimination to systemic violence within the criminal justice system. Details here.
Amber Atiya is a multidisciplinary poet whose work incorporates elements of performance, book arts, and visual arts. Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in Boston Review, Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Pen America, Poets & Writers Blog, and elsewhere. A proud native Brooklynite, she is the co-editor of Sinister Wisdom #107: Black Lesbians–We Are the Revolution! and a member of a women’s writing group that will be celebrating 16 years in 2018. Her chapbook the fierce bums of doo-wop (Argos Books) is currently in its second printing.
Morgan Bassichis is a comedic performer whose shows have been described as “out there” (by Morgan’s mother) and “super intense” (by Morgan). Morgan has performed at Artists Space, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, MoMA PS1, Poetry Project, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Whitney Museum. Morgan’s musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s 1977 manifesto-fairytale, “The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions,” was featured at the New Museum as part of Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. Morgan’s yearlong chronicle of unfinished business, “To Do 2017,” can be found at online. Morgan’s show, “More Protest Songs!,” will run at Danspace Project April 19-21, 2018.
Esteban Jefferson is a painter born, raised, and still living in New York. Lately, he has been making paintings of Raymond Santana. It was a celebration. All the guys jumped around, they’re “rahhhh,” they all cheering. “You goin’ home, it’s over, you goin’ home!” The corrections officer said “well you know, it’s a lot of people out there. You wanna go through the back? I’ll get a car for you, you know you can go out the back way.” And I said, “boy, I’m a free man, I’m going out the front! Open that door and let’s go.
DonChristian Jones is a Philly born, New York based, visual artist, rapper, singer/songwriter, and producer. His work spans musical and time based performance, rap mixtapes, video and public murals, blending genres of painting and hip hop, referencing classical and contemporary styles. Much of his work today is informed by his time spent painting murals on Rikers Island with youth inmates. Don has shown and performed at The Whitney Museum, MoMA Ps1, Webster Hall, and Danspace. Play These at My Funeral, Don’s debut album will be released this Spring 2018.
Amy Khoshbin is an Iranian-American Brooklyn-based artist merging performance, video, collage, music, and fabric arts to examine our individual and collective compulsion to create, transform, and sometimes destroy the stories of who we are and who we think we should be. She produces media and mythologies using humor and a handmade aesthetic to throw a counterpunch at the high-definition, profit-generating codes and signals that American audiences are trained and accustomed to consuming. She has shown at venues such as Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Times Square Arts, The High Line, Leila Heller Gallery, Mana Contemporary, National Sawdust, and festivals such as River to River and South by Southwest. She has received residencies at spaces such as The Watermill Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Anderson Ranch, and Banff Centre for the Arts. She is a 2017 Franklin Furnace recipient and has received a Rema Hort Mann Artist Community Engagement Grant. Khoshbin has bachelor’s degrees in Film and Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. She has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Tina Barney, and poets Anne Carson and Bob Currie among others.
Glory Day Loflin is an artist living and working in South Carolina. Since graduating from The Cooper Union in 2014, her art practice includes paintings, sculptures, and songs reflecting on her relationship with the South. While her current music focuses on her upbringing in the Evangelical South, her work in painting contemplates the relationship between Southern figurative language and its literal visual counterpart.
SomBlackGuy is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. SomBlackGuy is a term with infinite meanings—the expression begins with the idea that black people have an intense power within themselves to do and be whatever they may want to be, possessing the ability to be multi-purpose creators and innovators. My purpose is to show that we are much more than the narrative that’s been written about us by shedding light on issues of oppression and racial injustice.
Chris Watts is a New York based artist from North Carolina. He has installed solo projects at Davidson College, Davidson, NC; Duke University, Durham, NC; and Artspace Center for the Arts, Raleigh, NC. His group exhibitions include mood: B L A C K, Goodyear Arts, Charlotte NC (2017); Do you see me?, Diggs Gallery at Winston Salem State University, Winston Salem, NC, (2016); Art + Dialogue: Responding to Racial Tension in America, Greensboro College, Greensboro, NC, (2015) and High Point University, High Point, NC, (2016); Realities in Contemporary Video Art, Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, Paris, France, (2015); So Much to She, Flanders Gallery, Aaron Fowler and Chris Watts, Raleigh, NC, (2015). Watts has participated as an Artist in Residence at Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, New York NY (2017); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, New York, NY (2016-2017); the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL, (2014); and the McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC, (2010). Watts received training from the College of Arts + Architecture at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte and from the Yale University School of Art.
Lachell Workman (b. 1989, Bridgeport, CT) is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York and Connecticut. She received her BFA in Photography from the University of Connecticut in 2011, and her MFA from SUNY Purchase College in 2015. Her work consists of photographic and sculptural installations that consider the politics of monuments and memorialization within inner-city spaces. Her practice examines the materiality of traditional and contemporary ritualistic practices of mourning within the inner-city landscape as a site for radical visibility. Through deconstructing ephemera such as the family snapshots, t-shirts and infrastructural materials she works to disrupt and narratives of grief from a disproportionate trauma weighted in the black body. Her recent exhibitions include THREE. At We Buy Gold (2017), Where We Land, The Union for Contemporary Art, Queering Space at Yale University (2016), and Dineo Seshee Bopape, “Untitled (of the occult instability) [feelings]”, at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2016). She has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Lighthouse Works, The Shandaken Project at Storm King Art Center, Ox-Bow School of Art and the Vermont Studio Center.
Alessandra Gomez is an independent curator specializing in contemporary art and experimental dance and performance. Since moving to New York in 2014, she has assisted with the development of exhibitions and live programming at many museums and cultural institutions. Her exhibitions include: As If You Me at The Center for Performance Research (co-curated with Christina Yang, featuring work by DonChristian Jones, Morgan Bassichis and Sacha Yanow), and Public Setting: Dave Hardy at the Queens Museum satellite space. She was the 2015-16 Curatorial Fellow at The Kitchen and assisted with various projects from Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room to Maria Hassabi’s Solo. Gomez is currently an M.A. candidate in Columbia’s Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MODA) program.
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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.
Please note, this is a seated show. Seating will be available on a first come, first served basis.
About Mount Eerie
Phil Elverum’s evolution as a songwriter has hinged on a balance of boundlessness and intimacy. As Mount Eerie, and prior to 2004 as The Microphones, he has pioneered a distinct form of existential music that feels entirely homegrown. While each album has been unique in sound and approach, they all grapple with big questions in ways that are human and relatable. Death and conceptions of self are recurring themes, presented in direct and oblique ways. Over the course of two decades he has developed an international following almost completely divorced from the larger music industry, releasing and recording his own albums, and booking his own tours. Few songwriters can match the depth of both thought and emotion that Elverum puts into his work.
The death of his wife, Geneviève Castrée, in 2016 from cancer marked a monumental shift in his life and his music. In the months after her death, in the throes of grief and learning how to be a single parent to their young daughter, Elverum wrote and recorded A Crow Looked At Me, a devastating and raw expression of loss. “Death is real,” he sang into a microphone, and then to audiences around the world. The album became Elverum’s most acclaimed work, with the New York Times calling it “the work of an elegant songwriter knowing just how to render devastation,” and Pitchfork saying it “forc[es] the listener into the kind of magical thinking that transforms everything in the living world into a sign of the dead, only to snap back into a reality that for better and worse means nothing.” The intimacy implied by Elverum’s earlier work became the music’s overwhelming quality, with the words being sung creating a direct line between the listener and Elverum’s grief, presented clearly and unencumbered by flair.
Now Only, written shortly following the release of A Crow Looked At Me and the first live performances of those songs, is a deeper exploration of that style of candid, undisguised lyrical writing. It portrays Elverum’s continuing immersion in the strange reality of Geneviève’s death, chronicling the evolution of his relationship to her and her memory, and of the effect the artistic exploration of his grief has had on his own life. The scope of Now Only encompasses not only hospitals and deathbeds, but also a music festival, childhood memories of conversations with Elverum’s mother, profound paintings and affecting artworks he encounters, a documentary about Jack Kerouac, and most significantly, memories of his life with Geneviève. These moments and thoughts resonate with each other, creating a more complex and nuanced picture of mourning and healing. The power of these songs comes not from the small, sharp moments of cutting phrases or shocks, but the echoes that weave the songs together, the way a life is woven.
The music, fully realized by Elverum alone at home, is fleshed out texturally and seems to react to the words in real time. In a moment of confusion, dissonance abruptly makes itself known; in a moment of clarity, gentle piano arises. On the title track, the blunt declaration of “people get cancer and die” is subverted by a melody that can only be described as pop. As Elverum reinvents his lyrical process, he is also refining his musical vocabulary.
Elverum’s life during the period he wrote Now Only was defined by the duality of existing with the praise and attention garnered by A Crow Looked At Me and the difficult reality of maintaining a house with a small child by himself, as well as working to preserve Geneviève’s artistic legacy. Consumed with the day to day of raising his daughter, Elverum felt his musical self was so distant that it seemed fictional. Stepping into the role of Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie held the promise of positive empathy and praise, but also the difficulty of inhabiting the intense grief that produced the music. These moments, both public and domestic, are chronicled in these songs. They are songs of remembrance, and songs about the idea of remembrance, about living on the cusp of the past and present and reluctantly witnessing a beloved person’s history take shape. Time continues.
Two important events occurred during the making of White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood. I became “Simulated Reality” paranoid and I fell in LOVE.
Well a lot more happened during the process of writing and recording, but those are the two big ones. I also reached a healthy point of self-forgiveness for my failed marriage and became deeply educated in the lies of America the Great.
I feel like a switch was recently turned on in my brain and now I’m beginning to see through the lies that have been fed to me my whole life by the masters of media and by those who control and manipulate the narrative of our cultural identity and social order.
My paranoia began during the presidential election cycle and reached a dangerous peak shortly after the inauguration. In the meantime I watched and read countless works of art in a mad effort to be reminded of how many truly brilliant people there are living/struggling among us and to try to maintain a positive outlook. The works of Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Chris Kraus, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the Autobiographies of Malcolm X and Mark E Smith were all great inspirations, to name a few.
Musically, I was very inspired by the extended dance mixes that people used to make for pop singles back in the ‘80s. It’s so cool how a lot of the 80’s hits had these really intricate and interesting longer versions that wouldn’t get played on the radio and could only be heard in the clubs. I used that template with these tracks, I wanted them all to feel like the extended “club edit” of album tracks.
I also decided to abandon the “live band in a room” approach that I had been using on the recent albums and work more on my own or remotely with collaborators. I used the same drum sample packs throughout because I wanted the album to have a rhythmic continuity to it. I wanted the drums to have a strong and consistent identity, similar to how Prince’s Linn Electronics LM-1 drum machine played such an important role on his classic albums. Zac Colwell also played a huge role on this album, adding saxophones and synths to most of the songs. I also got a lot of help from long time collaborators, and “of Montreal” touring members, Clayton Rychlik and JoJo Glidewell.
The two title concept came to me when I was thinking about how difficult it is to frame the message of a song with just one title, because so often the songs are about so many different subjects. ‘White Is Relic’ was inspired by James Baldwin’s writings regarding the creation and propagation of a toxic American White identity. I’ve come to learn how it’s just a tool wielded by the 1% to give poor white people a false sense of superiority in an effort to keep the masses placated and numb to how deeply we’re all getting fucked by our capitalist rulers. An ‘Irrealis Mood’ is a linguistic indicator that something isn’t yet reality but does have the potential to become so.
I’m always searching for new identities so this concept of the death of “Whiteness” appeals to me greatly. Might be the only way to save the world.
-Kevin Barnes, January 2018
Knockdown Center and The Kitchen present Julius Eastman: Crazy Evil Gay, a concert of works composed by Julius Eastman. Eastman perfected his multifarious minimalism in three works of the late 1970s: Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla. Each work is scored for multiple instruments of the same kind. The concert features Evil Nigger and Crazy Nigger performed as a piano quartet by Joseph Kubera, Dynasty Battles, Michelle Cann, Adam Tendler as well as Gay Guerrilla in a version for a large electric guitar ensemble scored by Dustin Hurt.
PROGRAM
Julius Eastman: Evil Nigger (1979)
Adam Tendler, Dynasty Battles, Michelle Cann, and Joseph Kubera, pianos
Julius Eastman: Gay Guerrilla (1979)
Version for electric guitar ensemble scored by Dustin Hurt. Featuring Cristian Amigo, John King, Taylor Levine, Lisa Liu, Ava Mendoza, James Moore, Eleonore Oppenheim, Jade Payne, Brandon Ross, Kenji Shinagawa, and Vorhees (Dana Wachs).
Julius Eastman: Crazy Nigger (1979)
Adam Tendler, Dynasty Battles, Michelle Cann, and Joseph Kubera, pianos
This concert is part of “Julius Eastman: That Which is Fundamental,” a performance series and a two-part exhibition including both archival material and contemporary works curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Dustin Hurt, organized by The Kitchen with the Eastman Estate and Bowerbird
About “Julius Eastman: That Which Is Fundamental”
A large-scale and interdisciplinary project that explores the life, work, and resurgent influence of Julius Eastman, a gay, African-American composer and performer who was active internationally in the 1970s and ‘80s but who died homeless at the age of 49, leaving an incomplete but compelling collection of scores and recordings.
This project brings more than four years of research by curators Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Dustin Hurt to The Kitchen, an early supporter of Eastman’s work, with contributions from Katy Dammers, Tim Griffin, Matthew Lyons, and Christopher McIntyre.
“Julius Eastman: That Which is Fundamental” is made possible with the generous support of Robert D. Bielecki Foundation; endowment support from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust; annual grants from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., Howard Gilman Foundation, and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Original support for “That Which is Fundamental” was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia.
Pianos for this performance have been generously provided by Yamaha.
Photo: Kevin Noble from Eastman’s performance of Crazy Nigger at The Kitchen, February 8-9, 1980.
The Coldest Winter Ever Part III: The Tundra
Categories:
More info and rules here.
#1 Billboard star and homegrown rapper Cardi B graces the stage at Knockdown Center this New Year’s Eve. Tickets will not last!
Come early for complimentary passed hors d’oevres, and enjoy a free champagne toast at midnight.
VIP ticket holders can enjoy a express entry, a champagne open-bar from 9pm – 12am, and special section or get your friends in on thee VIP Bottle Service package.
The story began in Ibiza this past summer. Launched at Heart, every Sunday night throughout the season, SAGA, with Bedouin at the helm, quickly became one of the island’s most successful new parties.
SAGA is a musical odyssey, feeding the senses and elevating the collective experience. Now SAGA leaves Ibiza for the very first time.
Bedouin’s Rami Abou-Sabe and Tamer Malki expressed their excitement bringing the SAGA event to their hometown:
“The summer we just spent in Ibiza hosting our SAGA series at HEART really surpassed anything we could have imagined. The response from both our industry peers and our fans has been truly amazing and overwhelming. Being from Brooklyn, New York is a city that means so much to us and so we couldn’t think of a better place than our hometown to recreate the magic of SAGA for the first time outside of Ibiza.”
– Mixmag
It’s not all about New Year’s Eve! Keep the party going with this New Year’s Day party at Knockdown Center. Brooklyn-born producer and DJ Victor Calderone crosses the border into Queens to ring in 2018.
About Victor Calderone
The words “world-renowned” and “influential” get thrown around all too often these days, to the point of almost becoming cliché. While few artists actually measure up, all it takes is one look at Victor Calderone’s 20+year track record and the facts speak for themselves. From past collaborations with some of the biggest names in pop like Madonna, Sting and Beyoncé Knowles, to more recent collaborations with the likes of Adam Beyer, Richie Hawtin, Nicole Moudaber and Paco Osuna, Victor’s constantly evolving approach and contributions to the worlds of house and techno music has earned him a place firmly at the top among the world’s most prolific DJs and producers.
Introduced to New York nightlife at only 15 years of age by his older brother Cesar, Victor quickly developed an intense passion for dance music that would form the foundation for the Brooklyn native’s remarkable career. While his accomplishments as a remixer, producer and DJ are well known among those in the scene, Victor understands and appreciates the importance of continually evolving. He has reinvented his musical style and now treats listeners to an edgier darker sound.
