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Space In The Living Room: Chung, Safety Scissors, Guy Car

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After finding a home at Jupiter Disco with its monthly occurrence… SITLR takes the spirit of the living room to the Ready Room of Knockdown Center for the first time. An unpredictable evening of music where boundaries between music genres are lifted to provide a richer experience where dancing, conversations and contemplation can coexist.
Chung
Safety Scissors
Guy Car

Formal Complaint

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Craft, scrap, and architectural minimalism coincide in Formal Complaint. Featuring work by Aria Dean, Female Background, Christopher Hanrahan, Mario Navarro, and Megan Pahmier, the exhibition returns handiwork to formalism, maintaining a sense of slackness. Metal armatures lean and bend precariously; a painting on unstretched canvas drags on the floor. Discarded materials and everyday objects come to conjure an upright but ‘bereft formalism’ (as Hanrahan calls it). Tenderness and despair coalesce in objects that can only just support themselves, much less make a claim for historical or philosophical significance. The works in the exhibition undermine past minimalisms from multiple directions—in terms of material, attitude, and dependence on context—but out of a care for and maintenance of form, rather than a casting off of it. Through these mergers of vernacular minimalism and sad design, work and supporting structure, Formal Complaint creates its own ecology of exhibitionary space.

Exhibition Events

April 15, 6-9pm
Opening Reception
May 25, 7pm
Artist talk

Aria Dean is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles, CA. She currently holds the position of Assistant Curator of Net Art & Digital Culture at Rhizome. Her writing has been featured in Artforum, The New Inquiry, Real Life Magazine, Topical Cream Magazine, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. She also co-directs Los Angeles gallery and project space As It Stands LA. Currently, Dean’s research, writing, and visual work explore the relationship and resonances between blackness, media, and communication and information technologies. She works primarily through text and sculpture to hypothesize an apocalyptic blackness.

Female Background consists of Gabriella D’Italia and Cameron Crawford. Their collaborative work has been exhibited at TEMP, New York; Doyers, New York; and Perimeter Gallery, Belfast. Publications include Mary Magazine, Bell School Press; Touch, See, Taste vol. 1 (anthology), Temporary Agency; and Maine Arts Journal Quarterly, UMVA. Readings include Interstate Projects, New York.

Christopher Hanrahan was born in 1978 in Mudgee, Australia, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Hanrahan was the recipient of a 2015 Australia Council Greene Street Residency, a 2013 New Work Grant, and a 2013 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas, notably at MONA, Hobart; PICA, Perth; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Recent exhibitions include Vitreous Humour at Kansas Gallery, New York, and Sequester, Embassy of Australia Gallery, Washington, DC.

Mario Navarro (b. 1984) is a Mexican-American artist based in New York. The formal aesthetics and syntax to which Navarro returns stand as alternative references to certain classes of objects, just as words do not refer to things themselves. In Navarro’s practice, objects and architectures operate as nodes of meaning and conceptual signification within a broader system of relations. His work belongs to collections such as The Petitgas Collection (London), Frances R. Dittmer Collection (Chicago), Sayago & Pardon (Los Angeles), ArtNexus (Bogotá), Dieresis Collection (Guadalajara), and Fundación Colección Jumex (Mexico City).

Megan Pahmier lives and works in New York. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College. Her work has been featured in the New York exhibitions Drawing for Sculpture at TSA Gallery and Future Fossils at Dutton Gallery as well as Hand, Finger, Digit at The Old Hairdressers in Glasgow, Scotland, among others. Most recently, she exhibited her work at Essex Flowers in New York in the two-person show Dust Stutter.

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Dana Kopel is a curator and writer based in New York, where she works at the New Museum. Recent exhibitions include If you want to do something, forget this debt, and remember it later, Celaya Brothers Gallery, Mexico City; Givens, AA|LA, Los Angeles; Abstract Sex*, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; and Care (curated with Marian Tubbs), Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY. She was an assistant curator for the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Art in America, friezeX-TRA, Modern Painters, and elsewhere.

Rachael Rakes is an independent critic, curator, and teacher based in New York. She is currently the Programmer at Large for the Film Society of Lincoln Center; an editor at the Brooklyn Rail; and Editor at Large for Verso Books. Rakes has written criticism in numerous outlets, most recently for Art-Agenda, Artforum, the Village Voice, and Ocula. With Leo Goldsmith, she is at work on a book on the collaborative practices and media critique of radical filmmaker Peter Watkins, which received a 2014 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

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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.

Flight Over Wasteland

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Flight Over Wasteland is a project by visual artist Liliya Lifanova in collaboration with composer Hiroya Miura, and choreographer Davy Bisaro. This collaborative team reimagines T.S. Eliot’s modern epic poem The Waste Land in a series of evocative tableaux vivants, choreographed gestures, actions, sculptural objects, and sound.

Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land reflects the complexity, brokenness, and collaged nature of the present moment, with its multiple voices, points of view, quotes, and histories. In revisiting this monumental text, Flight Over Wasteland offers an immersive experience to contemplate this literary and cultural inheritance anew.

The project is centered around an open rehearsal format whereby the audience is invited to observe and even engage with the work over the course of a week. The work culminates at the end of the week in a live performance which will unravel through different sections of Knockdown Center’s main space.

Performance and Open Rehearsal Schedule

Wednesday April 12
Open Rehearsal (free): 2-6pm

Thursday April 13
Open Rehearsal (free): 2-6pm

Friday April 14
Open Rehearsal (free): 2-6pm

Saturday April 15
Performance (ticketed): 3pm
Followed by a Q&A with the artists, Michael Merck, and Jovana Stokic. Moderated by Jodi Waynberg.

Sunday April 16
Installation on view (free): 2-8pm

Artist Bios
Liliya Lifanova
lives and works in New York. A multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses performance, painting, drawing and sculpture, she received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2010), and is a Fulbright Scholarship recipient (2011-2012). Lifanova has been an artist-in-residence at Gridchinhall Artist Residency, Moscow, Russia (2012), Triangle Arts Association, New York (2013), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, Artist’s Alliance, New York (both in 2015), and more recently at Illinois State University, Normal, IL (2016) and Residency Unlimited, New York (2016). Recent exhibitions include: Time + Space (Beginnings), Bemis Center, Omaha, NE; Rumour from Ground Control, Rooster Gallery, New York, NY; Pixel, Elga Wimmer Contemporary, New York, NY; It’s a Bored Nation, Kunsthalle Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Arte al Centro, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy; Victory of Caïssa. Homage to Marcel Duchamp, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia; Anatomy is Destiny, Museum of Contemporary Art, Saint Louis, MO; Artists Choose Artists, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY. Her work is included in the Permanent Collection of the US Embassy, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Art in Embassies, US Department of State, and in several private collections. Since 2009 Lifanova directed several large scale participatory video and performance projects and taught workshops in the United States and Europe.

In her solo pursuits and collaborative projects, Davy Bisaro combines thoughtful, elegant movement with the disciplines of music, installation, sculpture, film, video, and interactive new media. She received her BFA in Dance from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in 2008 and has since choreographed and directed both trained and untrained performers.

Hiroya Miura, a native of Sendai, Japan, has been active as a composer and performer in North America. Acclaimed by Allan Kozinn of New York Times as “acidic and tactile,” his compositional output typically mirrors his multiple musical roles, and creates “the charm resulting from continuous changes of balance.” Miura has composed works for Speculum Musicae, New York New Music Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Members of Reigakusha (Gagaku Ensemble based in Tokyo), which were presented in venues and festivals such as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Miller Theater, Annenberg Center, and Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery, Carnegie Hall’s Japan-NYC Festival, Sendai Mediatheque, Tome Art Triennale (Miyagi, Japan), Centro de Arte Pepe Espaliú (Córdoba, Spain), Vacances Percutantes (Marmande, France), Centro Cultural Moca (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Sogakudo Hall (Tokyo). He is also a founding member of the Electronic Improvisation Unit, No One Receiving, whose debut album from The Grain of Sound has won critical acclaim in Europe and the United States. He holds D.M.A. degree from Columbia University, and he is Associate Professor of music at Bates College, where he teaches music theory and composition, and directs the college orchestra.

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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.

The Divided Self, Sam Lisabeth, Frank Hurricane, Dougie Poole

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The Div Self comes back 2 NY! This is the last show of our bebe tour 😀 New album out meow take a peep. This is a v spiritual show✨

✿ the divided self (PVD/WORC) ✿ jangly psychic freak rock. happy goth trash hippies.
https://thedividedself.bandcamp.com/

✿ sam lisabeth (NYC) ✿ guitar pop songmaster. “this is the devil’s music” –tim, war vet, drawer of satanic imagery.
https://samuelboat.bandcamp.com/album/alphabet-beach

✿ frank hurricane (NYC) ✿ “spiritual mountain psychedelic gangsta folk.” this copy’s too perfect to change
https://hurricanesoflove.bandcamp.com/

✿ dougie poole (NYC) ✿ lo-fi space cowboi
https://dougiepoole.bandcamp.com/

 

VIRTU: 6 Nights of Music in April

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Knockdown Center’s newly minted monthly music series, VIRTU, features a cross section of the finest and most cutting-edge artists and DJs from a wide array of musical communities in New York and beyond.  Featuring simultaneous musical gatherings throughout the month, uniting various and sundry outsiders beneath Knockdown Center’s giant roof!

 

APRIL 1

Bardo Pond headlines with M AX NOI MACH, ERIC ARN in the Old Gallery, tix: http://bit.ly/2ncQA5p. Meanwhile Chthonic Streams’ “No Workers Paradise” release show fills the room we call “Texas” w/ harsh noise featuring WORK/ DEATH, THE VOMIT ARSONIST, GNAWED, & more tix: http://bit.ly/2lNfXdd

 

APRIL 6

Rapoon: Pas Musique: House of Blondse: On A Clear Day: Lucienraga: Live Visuals by Jim Tuite – An evening of expansive ambient noise headlined by former member of Zoviet France. Tix: http://ticketf.ly/2o4aShA.

 

APRIL 8

Worlds collide as Fake Accent celebrates their 3 year anniversary with rap artist Jay Boogie, Ase Manuel, Tygapaw and more takes the stage (tix: http://ticketf.ly/2nnCIqW) at the same time as composers and instrumentalists David Grubbs, Eli Keszler, Das Audit, and Mary Jordan pay tribute to late composer and visionary Tony Conrad, tix: http://ticketf.ly/2nzXfZV.

 

APRIL 14

Popgun Presents: Pavo Pavo, Charlie Looker Ensemble, & Ziemba. A showcase of masters of craft not to be missed. Plus, we hear Ziemba, who last year released a line of incense to accompany her album Hope is Never, will play a set that is especially fragrant. Tix: http://bit.ly/pavopavo.

 

APRIL 15

Young Magic makes a guest appearance to DJ our bar, the Ready Room (Free!), while On the Sly presents a showcase of club killers behind the decks, with DJ J Heat, Eaves, Gooddroid and more! Tix: http://bit.ly/2lA4Mop.

 

 

 

Aïsha Devi

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GROOVY GROOVY presents Aïsha Devi

AÏSHA DEVI (Danse Noire, Houndstooth) – US Debut
Aïsha Devi emerged in 2013 with the EP Aura 4 Everyone on her own sanctuary-label Danse Noire followed by the 12″ Hakken Dub/Throat Dub in Summer 2014. Danse Noire is dedicated to exploring abstracted club structures, and Devi’s own music mines her Nepalese-Tibetan heritage, using her machines to transmute deep meditation. Whether they are guttural or soprano, Devi’s warped pop mantras instruct us to find the unseen through a tense, visceral musical landscape that is often gnarled and industrial as it is danceable. Her debut LP ‘Of Matter And Spirit’, a “materialisation of her initiatic journey through her spiritual and origin quests”, was released October 2015 via Houndstooth and followed by March 2016′s lauded remix EP and video game by Emile Barret. Her live collaboration with Beijing artist Tianzhuo Chen (the artist behind her ‘Mazdâ video) and his collective Asian Dope Boys was debuted during CTM 2016 at Berghain. The A/V show featuring the visual artist Emile Barret- a declination of the videogame that includes material by Tianzhuo Chen – has since gone on to be presented all over the world including Montreal, Moscow, Mexico City and Tokyo as well as at prestigious festivals across Europe. We are excited to have her on this side of the pond for her US debut performance.
https://soundcloud.com/aisha-devi

GENG (PTP)
https://soundcloud.com/genggrizzly

EMBACI (NON)
https://soundcloud.com/embaci

GREG ZIFCAK
http://www.gzifcak.net/

PARTS 1&2 (SWEAT EQUITY)
https://soundcloud.com/sweat-equity

VESNA (GROOVY GROOVY)
https://soundcloud.com/vesnadj

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