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Aug 29

Sunday Service Fall Season

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Join us this fall for the return of Sunday Service, a free monthly series of live work across mediums in our bar, the Ready Room. The Fall season curators include: Alexis Convento, Jonathan Gonzalez, J. Soto, and Camilo Godoy. Each month’s artist lineup to be announced soon.

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.

Sunday Service Fall 2017 Schedule:
September 10, 7pm: Curator Alexis Convento
October 1, 7pm: Curator Jonathan Gonzalez
November 5, 7pm: Curator J. Soto
December 3, 7pm: Curator Camilo Godoy

About the Curators
Alexis Convento is a Filipina-American producer, administrator and manager working within contemporary performance, and is founder and curator of the CURRENT SESSIONS, a platform for emerging and established movement-based artists. Her creative direction has led to sold out houses, close artist relationships, and the cultivation of new audiences with an enduring interest in connecting the performing arts, culture, and community. Additional curation includes La MaMa Moves!, Center for Performance Research’s Fall Movement, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and Gowanus Art + Production’s FIRST LOOK, among others. Alexis holds a BFA in Dance from Fordham University with the Ailey School. Alexis’ work seeks to activate new conversations between genres which strengthen the relationship between art production and community, doing so through her own practice as well as her commercial efforts. She welcomes inquiries from individuals and organizations whose work also seeks to connect art, culture and the public.

Jonathan Gonzalez is a choreographer and Bessie-nominated performer based in his native New York City. He has been a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist in collaboration with EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, BAX/Dancing While Black Fellow under the direction of Paloma McGregor, Diebold Award recipient for Distinction in Choreography & Performance, Rema Hort Mann Foundation nominee, as well as a POSSE Leadership and Bessie Schonberg Scholar; he is currently a BAX/SUBMERGE! artist. He has performed in the works of Ligia Lewis, Cynthia Oliver, Isabel Lewis, Alex Baczyinski-Jenkins, Phillip Howe, Ni’Ja Whitson, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Grisha Coleman, among others. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

J. Soto is a queer brown transgender interdisciplinary artist, writer, and arts organizer. He has curated and performed work for The National Queer Arts Festival (San Francisco), Links Hall (Chicago), as well as Vox Populi (Philadelphia) among others nationally. His collaborative writing project, “Ya Presente Ayer” can be found in Support Networks, Chicago Social Practice History Series (University of Chicago Press). His organizing projects include the Latinx Artists Retreat (LXAR), which he recently launched with a group of Latinx artists and administrators and the Latinx Artist Visibility Award (LAVA) for Ox-Bow School of Art in partnership with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also a recent Fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Advocacy Leadership Institute (ALI). His recent writing can be found in Original Plumbing and Apogee Journal: Queer History, Queer Now Folio. He is currently Programs Coordinator for Equity & Inclusion Initiatives at Movement Research and Production & Access Coordinator at Eyebeam.

Camilo Godoy is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is concerned with the construction of political meanings and histories. His work engages with conceptual and choreographic strategies to negotiate questions that confront the politics of citizenship, imperialism and sexuality. Godoy analyzes and challenges past and present historical moments to imagine different subversive ways of being. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is based in New York, United States. He is a graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012; and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, 2013. Godoy is currently a resident at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) and was a 2015-2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence; 2014 Keyholder Resident, Lower East Side Printshop; 2014 Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program Fellow, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU; and 2012 Fellow, Queer Art Mentorship. His work has been presented at venues such as Center for Performance Research, New York; Judson Church, New York; La Mama Galleria, New York; Donaufestival, Krems; and Mousonturm, Frankfurt, among others.

Aug 24

RELOCATED: &Me, Adam Port

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Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been relocated to 217 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205. All tickets will be honored, we apologize for any inconvenience. Please check the Facebook event for further updates.

&ME

Adam Port

Aug 22

The Three Matadores

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Knockdown Center is pleased to present the New York premiere of The Three Matadores, a new piece by Chicago-based performance company Every house has a door, led by Lin Hixson, director, and Matthew Goulish, dramaturg.

The Three Matadores stages a short bilingual (English and Spanish) play embedded in the book-length poem The Presentable Art of Reading Absence (2008) by American poet Jay Wright. The performance unfolds in two acts: the first made up of four original solos by the performers – Sebastián Calderón Bentin, Stephen Fiehn, Tim Kinsella, and Anna Martine Whitehead – that introduce and respond to Wright’s text, and the second a physical realization of the play. Like much of Wright’s writing for theater, this play has never been staged, a detail indicative of the company’s ongoing interest in historically neglected subjects. The script incorporates Wright’s words exactly as written, including stage directions and a bracketing selection of the poetry. The choreography, under Lin Hixson’s distinctive direction, in a circular arena bisected by a long table, alternates between mathematical pattern permutations and intricate movements derived from bullfighting maneuvers, while the language oscillates between the speech of the matadors and the voice of the poetry. The Three Matadores offers a microcosm of Wright’s inventive work, written from the multi-cultural imagination, and uncovering the complex weave of quantum physics, numbers theory, African and American ritual, and emotion felt in solitude.

Performance Dates:

Friday, October 6 – 7:30pm
Saturday, October 7 – 7:30pm
Sunday, October 8 – 7:30pm

Aug 16

The Arena and Everyday People Present: Crosstown Cookout

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The Arena, Everyday People, Trillectro, & Electric Circus Present: Crosstown Cookout
The premise of a cookout is simple: come as you are, eat what you want, drink a lil bit, and dance a lotta bit. Crosstown Cookout is a collaboration of party crews from near and far coming together to turn up under the sun for one last time before the summer comes to a close. Expect heavy helpings of community vibes, hip hop and global beats spun by NYC’s best, delicious food by the Drive Change crew, and maybe even a pop-up performance by a VERY special guest.

Aug 16

Black Meteoric Star – No More White Presidents

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Join us for the debut screening of Gavin Russom’s new film “Black Meteoric Star – No More White Presidents”. The 60 minute film contains a soundtrack by Black Meteoric Star, one of Russom’s aliases. A panel discussion with panelists Kali Holloway, Khury Petersen-Smith and Christopher Danowski will follow the screening.

About the film
“Black Meteoric Star – No More White Presidents” is a multi layered abstract film that I, a White, recently out Trans-Woman completed in January of 2017. For the film I developed what I am calling the “flash film” technique. Initially it was a structural device similar to the chance operations used by composers such as Joh Cage to get out of the practice of creating “slick” edits or “moves” predetermined by overarching institutionalized aesthetic norms. However, as I worked with it I began to discover that the technique, although certainly “experimental”, has more kinship with craft techniques I have practiced such as beading, knitting, weaving and braiding. Although on the surface it could simply be a long form music video for my Black Meteoric Star project it is in fact a complex of evocative and energetic themes gathered around the necessity for abolition and reparations. The themes that are “braided” or “beaded” together include a repetitive meditation on death, an assessment of global capitalism as so overburdened by the karma of the triple legacies of slavery, land theft/genocide and imperialism that it can no longer function, an invocation of several of the Orishas prominent in my path of priesthood in the Regla Lukumi and an exploration of my emerging Trans-Feminine identity. The intention of the film is to open up a territory for exploration and interpretation around our current predicament, allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the specific details and possible solutions, both individually and through discussions with others. In the service of unpacking these themes in a group context I have invited three panelists; Kali Holloway, Khury Petersen-Smith and Christopher Danowski to participate in a discussion of the film following the screening. The panelists and myself will also take questions from the room.

About Gavin Russom
Gavin Rayna Russom is a New York based multimedia artist and composer of electronic music. She has produced some of the most interesting and influential art and music of the last 15 years both in collaborations such as Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom, Black Leotard Front and The Crystal Ark and as a solo artist under aliases such as Black Meteoric Star, Hail of Arrows and under her own name. In July of 2017 she publicly came out as Transgender. Much of her work is informed by her deep relationship with the analog synthesizer, a tool she has applied herself to not only as a composer and player but also as a designer and builder since 1999. In addition to recording and performing music she also creates the visual elements for her work including installations, music videos, record covers, costumes, sets and props. Russom is also a member of the groups Arthur Russell’s Instrumentals Directed by Peter Gordon, Sacred Ar†icle and LCD Soundsystem.

About the Panelists
Kali Holloway is Senior Writer and Associate Editor of Media and Culture at progressive news site AlterNet. She is co-curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s MetLiveArts 2017 summer performance and film series “Theater of the Resist,” and producer on the documentary Sunset and the Mockingbird. Previously, she was Director of Outreach and Audience Engagement for the HBO documentary Southern Rites, PBS documentary The New Public and the Emmy-nominated film Brooklyn Castle, and Outreach Consultant on the award-winning documentary The New Black. She worked in production and programming on the long-running PBS documentary film series POV. Prior to that, she was speechwriter for a New York City Commissioner and Deputy Director of Communications for the New York State court system. Her writing has appeared in AlterNet, Salon, The Guardian, TIME, Huffington Post, The National Memo, Yahoo! News, Jezebel, Truthout, Raw Story, xoJane, Google Music, Rhapsody and numerous other outlets.

Khury Petersen-Smith is a geographer and activist who lives in Boston. His forthcoming book, Rocket’s Red Glare: An introduction to U.S. empire (Haymarket, 2019), explores different dimensions of U.S. power on the world stage. His activism is wide-ranging, but has focused in particular on opposing U.S. empire, resisting racism, and solidarity with Palestine. Khury is the co-author of the 2015 Black Solidarity Statement With Palestine, which was signed by over 1,100 Black activists, artists, and scholars.

Christopher Danowski is a media/performance artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. He has written over eighty texts for performance works, and has presented work in living rooms, galleries, and unusual spaces (sometimes in theaters) in Phoenix, Brooklyn, Mérida, Dublin, Berlin and Kraków. He was artistic director of Theater in My Basement from 1999-2013, and now serves as a founding member of Howl Theatre Project. His book of writings, ‘Dog’s Ear’ is forthcoming this spring from Four Chambers Press. He has been teaching performance, theatre, and art in university settings since 2003. In June, 2017, he completed his doctorate from Plymouth University in the U.K. in Art and Media, linking together Afro-Cuban ritual techniques for spirit possession and method acting as transcultural performance methodology.

Aug 15

Wastedland 2 – Immersive Art Installation and Film Screening

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Wastedland 2 is a detritus-strewn, site-specific, immersive film installation transforming spaces into a three-dimensional post-apocalyptic graffiti wonderland. Questions of fate and self will collide with graffiti folk lore through wordplay, sculpture, artifacts, and characters – all centered around thematics from the existential fantasy film of the same name. Created by Andrew H. Shirley, and his actors and members of the notorious Brooklyn-based 907 graffiti crew – this environment allows the viewer to enter the psychology of the narrative, to identify and ultimately re-define the way one traditionally engages with film and artwork.

"The Beginning, If Not the End" by UFO 907 and William Thomas Porter in Detroit (photo by Jaime Rojo of Brooklyn Street Art)

“The Beginning, If Not the End” by UFO 907 and William Thomas Porter in Detroit (photo by Phil Conners)

Following its debut in Detroit last September, Wastedland 2 has spent the past year touring across the U.S., featuring artists and new material specific to each location. This event at Knockdown Center will be the culmination and a celebration of that national tour.

About Wastedland 2
Shirley’s Wastedland 2 (30 min/ Color/ 2016) follows three solitary vandals (played by Wolftits, Avoid, and Smells) who cross paths while searching for the meaning of a trail of enigmatic artworks left behind by UFO 907, another nomadic artist. Roaming from one decaying zone to the next in a never-ending search for beer, weed and a wall to paint, the vandals form a pact with the rest of the surviving seekers (played by other recognized graffiti artists Rambo, Noxer, EKG, and others) to attain the answer to their unanimous question of their futility- “what’s the point?” www.wastedland2.com

WASTEDLAND 2: 2017 TRAILER from andrew h. shirley on Vimeo.

About Andrew H. Shirley
Andrew H. Shirley finds an obsession in living experimentation through a primarily nomadic miscreant lifestyle detached from material pop culture. His multi disciplinary work has appeared in PS 1, MOCA, Museum of Sex, and films have screened in over 300 cities worldwide. As a social architect, he has curated the underground into public events from institutions such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music to a secret tree house art gallery he built in upstate NY.

Image: Amoeba and Wolftits encounter the UFO spaceship somewhere in a field. This scene was shot in Marbletown, NY- facing west towards Slide Mountain. Scultpure was built by William Thomas Porter and UFO907 (film still).

Aug 15

großer Lauscher Closing Reception

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Please join us for a final opportunity to experience the immersive spatialized sound installation großer Lauscher with artist Alyssa Miserendino.

About großer Lauscher
großer Lauscher (“big Eavesdropper” in German) is a spatial sound installation created by interdisciplinary artist Alyssa Miserendino. The piece was recorded in the main radar dome at the Field Station Berlin, a listening station built during the Cold War by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Exhibited in the darkness, the piece is comprised of five narrators from five different continents reciting the story of Echo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, while the protracted echos created by the architecture allow visitors to visualize the space of the Field Station.

 

Aug 11

6×6: The Final Launch

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Join Ugly Duckling Presse for a party to celebrate the release of the 36th and final issue of their long-running poetry periodical 6×6. There will be readings from poets published in recent issues of the magazine and musical performances from some of today’s hottest acts.

Readers
Anna Gurton-Wachter
Anselm Berrigan
Bridget Talone
Chia-Lun Chang
Katy Lederer
Sarah Wang
Ted Dodson
Thibault Raoult
Tony Iantosca
Kristen Gallagher

Bands
Horse Lords
Foamola
Daniel Carter and Loren Connors
I Feel Tractor


About This Issue
6×6 #36 features poems by Anselm Berrigan, Chia-Lun Chang, Cheryl Clarke, Lisa Fishman, Vasilisk Gnedov (translated by Emilia Loseva & Danny Winkler), and Sarah Wang.

Suggested entry fee:
$5 – entry and 1 issue of 6×6
$10 – entry and 3 issues of 6×6
$20 – entry and 6 issues of 6×6 + 6×6 tote bag

Aug 09

Rubblebucket Dream Picnic

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LPR Presents:
Rubblebucket Dream Picnic feat. Rubblebucket, Delicate Steve, Hess Is More, Alexander F, Kalbells + yoga & more!

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