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Mar 24

Beach House

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A series of performances taking place in art spaces and alternative venues during the Beach House North American spring tour. A specially designed room with light installation and projection sets the mood for this intimate set, with the audience seated on the floor (b.y.o. pillow). Maximum attendance of 200 for the two-piece performance, featuring songs from Thank Your Lucky Stars, Devotion and their self titled record.

A note from the band about the concept: It has always been difficult to carry the initial moments of creativity that inspire our music through the process of making and releasing a record. There are many chances along the way for the feeling to get lost. A lot of “bedroom” bands experience this when they get to the studio or the stage. This installation performance is an attempt to elicit this pure, embryonic state of mind for ourselves and our audience.

 

Mar 16

Authority Figure

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Authority Figure is a social psychology experiment that uses choreography, sound and installation to elicit emotional response from the audience. Monica Mirabile and Kinlaw have brought together 6 choreographers, 7 installation artists, original sound compositions by various musicians as well as a cast of 150+ performers to create a performance that motivates the audience to consider relationships to authority, obedience and each other. We are asking ourselves and the audience to be conscious of relationships to police brutality, big data, and surveillance as it mingles with the complexity of our psychology in regard to power dynamics.

During each two-­hour show, groups of 20 were directed into the space every 20 minutes. Each individual faced different durational and emotional challenges corresponding to the entry time and driven by intentional choreography. The performance began with ticket sales. In order to secure admission at all, the audience must first take the “Personality of Endurance Quiz” to determine which entry bracket will be most appropriate for their experience.

About Monica Mirabile and Kinlaw:
Mirabile and Kinlaw are two artists working in the congruous mediums of performance, dance, and sound. Having built upon this practice during the last 10 years inclusive of large scale production as individuals, they have decided to work on a larger project in collaboration.

Mirabile’s Interdisciplinary Sculpture degree at MICA lead her to producing large scale choreography installations sometimes leading up to 70 performers. Since graduating in 2011, she has produced many choreographic productions in a collaborative project known as Fluct as well as solo. Mirabile’s provocative performances have been seen in over 60 venues and have been recognized by numerous Museums including The Baltimore Museum of Art and The Queens Museum. Her work has been reviewed by Fader, Purple Magazine, Fact mag, Vice’s Creators Connect, among others. Mirabile is owner of Otion Front Studio (a dance/performance studio in Bushwick) as well as on the board as performance liaison at Stream Gallery in Bushwick.

Kinlaw’s extensive research in both operatic and choral arrangements pummeled towards directing choirs, composing her own experimental librettos as well as contemporary sound art, often accompanied by movement or moving choirs. This sound to movement medium expanded into high production video art, self produced recordings, and extensive touring throughout the US and Europe. Kinlaw has performed self­produced interdisciplinary music and choreography throughout the United States and Europe including the MoMA, MoMA PS1, Villa Medici (Rome), and Skylight One Hanson.

For further information about the project visit: authorityfigure.org

Mar 13

Deaf Club

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Wall, Future Punx and King Pussy Face play a punk show with ASL performers, inspired by a scene from Alison O’Daniel’s film. The scene is a re-enactment (with some fictionalization) of the final punk show hosted by artist Bruce Conner that took place at The Deaf Club in San Francisco in 1979. The Deaf Club was a deaf social club that hosted west coast punk shows for roughly 9 months. The manager of the punk band The Offs approached them, they agreed, and a legendary, though very underground, convergence of two disparate social groups occurred. It is fondly recounted that the union dissipated when the neighbors complained about the noise. The re-enactment was filmed in NYC at PS1’s printshop with more than 60 participants from the larger NYC Deaf community and a whole slew of enthusiastic NYC punks.

Mar 09

MAMI

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MAMI is an exhibition as offering to Mami Wata, a pantheon of water deities that originates from West and Central African matriarchal spiritual systems. Most commonly portrayed as part-woman/part-aquatic creature, Mami Wata is called upon by those pursuing wealth, wisdom, emotional guidance, and sexual liberation. However, contrary to monolithic representations, Mami Wata is the embodiment of hybridity. Informed by Mami Wata’s mystifying multiplicity, the work of Salome Asega, Nona Faustine, Doreen Garner, Aya Rodriguez-Izumi, MALAXA, and Rodan Tekle reflects on the process of discovering the Others within ourselves.

Curated by Ali Rosa-Salas and Dyani Douze.

Programming:
August 6: Opening reception, 7 – 12am
Join us for the show’s opening reception, with live performance by Aya Rodriguez-Izumi, a flag raising for MALAXA, music by SHYB0I, hosted by KUNQ

August 13: MAMI Market 12 – 7pm
Local designers and artists take residence at Knockdown Center for day-long market place, along with DJ sets, performances, workshops

August 20: P2P 7pm
Performance collaboration between sound artist Dyani Douze, new media artist Salome Asega, and world champion Floyd Little Double Dutch Team

September 3: FAKE ACCENT Presents: RUDE GYAL 8pm
MAMI’s closing party will be a Labor day weekend Caribbean fete hosted by arts collective FAKE ACCENT
LAST DAY TO SEE THE EXHIBITION!
About the artists:

Salome Asega is a Brooklyn-based artist and researcher whose practice celebrates multivocality and welcomes dissensus, using interactive installation and odd wearables. She is assistant director of POWRPLNT digital art collaboratory, co-host of Hyperopia: 20/30 radio, and one half of CandyFloss, a duo of creative technologists. Asega received her MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons and her BA in Social Practice from NYU. 

Nona Faustine is a photographer, visual artist, and Brooklyn native. She graduated from the SVA and received her MFA from the International Center of Photography at Bard College. Faustine’s photography explores the intersection of race, identity, womanhood, and representation in the 21st century. She gained widespread acclaim for her photo series “White Shoes,” in which she photographs herself in New York City sites which were central to the slave trade, nude except for a pair of white shoes. Faustine recently exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, participated in a residency at the Baxter Street Camera Club and was awarded a Director’s Fellowship at the International Center for Photography.

Doreen Garner is a Brooklyn-based artist born in Philadelphia, PA. Her current research project centers on the history of the black female body in medicine, and dynamics of race, sexuality, pathology, and fetishism. Garner is co-host of #trashDAY on Clocktower Radio and was recently a studio resident at Abrons Art Center and Pioneer Works. She holds two degrees in glass sculpture: a BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. 

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is an artist living and working in Harlem via Okinawa, Japan whose practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture and music using satire and whimsy to examine how our environments shape us.  She is currently an MFA candidate at SVA and has presented work at MoCADA, Skylight Gallery, Free Candy, and FLUX Fair.

MALAXA is a Johannesburg (occupied Azania) and Tel Aviv (occupied Palestine) based collective spearheaded by new media artists Tabita Rezaire and Alicia Mersy, whose work explores decolonial aesthetics and political resistance through digital culture, art, documentary and fashion.

Rodan Tekle is a digital artist, animator, video editor, and art director living and working in NYC via Sweden and Eritrea. Her work examines the screen environment within the African diaspora through motion and graphic design, 3-D rendering, and game engine based design. She received her BA in Performance Art Production from Malmö University and her MFA in Computer Art from SVA.

About the curators:

Ali Rosa-Salas is an independent curator from Brooklyn, NY. She has curated exhibitions and produced public programs for AFROPUNK, Barnard Center for Research on Women, Danspace Project, MoCADA, TOP RANK Magazine, and Weeksville Heritage Center. Her collaborations with Salome Asega, Chrybaby Cozie and Dyani Douze have been supported by AUNTS with residencies at the New Museum and Mount Tremper Arts. Her writing on dance and performance has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, The Dance Enthusiast, New York Live Arts Context Notes, among others. Ali is currently an MA candidate at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.

Dyani Douze is a Brooklyn-based DJ and multimedia artist working in sound art, music production, film editing, directing and curatorial projects. She has presented her work at AFROPUNK AFTER DARK, ALL GOLD Listening Room at MoMA PS1, Danspace Project, and Performa 15 among other venues. As a member of the New Negress Film Society, Dyani has most recently presented her films at Indiana University Cinema, Made in NY Media Center, South Dallas Cultural Center and Cooper Union as part of a series presented by Black Radical Imagination.

Mar 09

Transaction

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Energy is neither created nor destroyed; rather, it changes form…

This curatorial experiment will present 23 artists’ personal artifacts exposing small natural take-aways from a creative’s beloved landscape.

The suspended installation will showcase small physical remnants of a single journey, or moment in time, which an artist wanted to remember and take away, as opposed to the carefully crafted work they usually complete to show the public. Through these remnants, the artists willingly share their inspiration, intention and momentum with participants.

Viewers will be invited to explore and bask, if you will, in the echoing auras that these talismans cast.  There is a recreating of sacred space for each object, which ultimately has an intimate value to the artist, alongside their manufactured conception.

Just as chest x-rays of Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly’s glasses, Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels or Andy Warhol’s wig were sold at auction for a significant price tag, could these talismans of established artists become a valuable collector’s item? Or are these geographical remnants truly priceless? We invite you to discover the energy transactions.

Organized by Elijah Wheat Showroom (Liz Nielsen and Carolina Wheat)

Mar 08

Song and Cyclone

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An evening of performances by Morton Subotnick and Joan La Barbara, presented by Harvestworks and Knockdown Center.

CYCLONE (1977)
7pm

Joan La Barbara’s CYCLONE is a quadraphonic sound performance/installation of the newly restored multichannel work  scored for multiple voices, percussion and Arp 2600 synthesizer sounds, for “semi-live” performance on multiple speakers with the original light panning device custom designed by Ralph Jones. The work was last performed in 1977 at PS1 in NYC (Queens) and was an award-winning sound sculpture installation/performance work (independent artist submission) at ISCM World Music Days (Weltmusiktage) in Bonn, Germany. Both installation/performances were done with analog audio tape (mixed to mono) and moved in the space using light-panning device and penlight.

This installation will be on view before and after the performances.

SONG (2016)
8pm

Commissioned by Harvestworks, Morton Subotnick will present Song, an evening-length, site-specific composition for the Knockdown Center. The work features live electronics by the composer diffused in the space by 3D speaker arrays created by acoustic engineer Paul Geluso and performed by Ne(x)tworks, a collaborative ensemble of seven musicians.

Mar 08

All the more my thoughts multiply + The Audio Visual Matrix

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Knockdown Center and Harvestworks, in association with CT:SWaM, will present two audio-visual performance works that were commissioned and produced by the Harvestworks’ Artist in Residence Program.

All the more my thoughts multiply
by Jane Rigler and Elizabeth Hoffman with video by Anna Weisling

All the more my thoughts multiply is a work for flute, electroacoustic sound, and interactive video that explores the psychology of a lone character from the Noh play “Aoinoue”, taken from the massive and influential 11th c. Japanese epic “Tale of Genji.” Possessiveness is a challenge to overcome. Spirits and Shamanic exorcism evoke opportunities to explore the elements of such possessions. In this mono-drama the gestural significance of both the spatialized sound and the movements of the flutist weave together textures of light and music through an ancient Japanese folk story.

The Audio Visual Matrix
diNMachine (Michael Schumacher and Nisi Jacobs)

The Audio Visual Matrix (AVM) is an interdisciplinary performance system commissioned by the Harvestworks Artist-in-Residence TEAM (Technology, Engineering, Art and Music) Lab. The system enables fast and flexible interconnections of audio and video data streams to modulate content. The inspiration comes from the “pin” type matrices found on synthesizers like the EMS Synthi, where players patch any modulation source to any destination. The AVM uses a similar grid system to create paths between elements (instruments, computers, cameras, etc.) and allows for feedback loops as well as typical modulation. See: http://avm-dinmachine.tumblr.com/

diNMachine will perform in eight-channel sound. It will be the first performance with the Audio Visual Matrix software diNMachine developed with Tommy Martinez in residency at Harvestworks. A short Q&A will follow.

Mar 02

Alison O’Daniel – Room Tone

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An Art in General New Commission presented in collaboration with Knockdown Center. “Room Tone” refers to the moment on a film set when crew and actors pause in order for the sound mixer and boom operator to record room tone, the subtle location-specific sound present in every space. Weaving narrative between film segments and object-making, O’Daniel will create a layered and immersive installation. Based on collaborations with three contemporary composers, Steve Roden, Christine Sun Kim, and Ethan Frederick Greene, O’Daniel builds a visual, aural, and haptic vocabulary through varying levels of access to information such as color, sound, and storyline.

O’Daniel’s engagement with different mediums is a type of call-and-response, building upon and transforming the specific language of one onto another. Experimental and documentary film collapse and coincide with sculpture and installation, in a collaborative process that highlights the inevitable loss or re-creation of information as it passes through various channels. The presentation purposefully disables audience members’ normative perception of events and materials in order to present new modes of listening and seeing. Emphasizing subjects’ relationship to silence or unavailable sonic elements, Room Tone draws on O’Daniel’s own experience as a hard-of-hearing artist. The project’s form of exploded storytelling results in a performative arc that is less reliant on traditional script structure and more on physical choreography and collaboration. The audience is guided through narrative holes, unknowns, and missing parts in order to engage in a process of deep listening that aims to extend far beyond the aural realm.

Click here for the full press release and to learn more about Art in General.

Performance: The Deaf Club featuring Future Punx,
Wall, and ASL storytellers. Thursday, April 28, 7:30-11pm

Feb 20

Anna Mikhailovskaia & John Schacht

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Knockdown Center presents sculptural work by Anna Mikhailovskaia alongside works on paper by John Schacht. The pairing starts an unlikely dialogue where shared sensibilities and visual energies become apparent despite contrasts in the artists’ backgrounds.
 
This exhibition is the posthumous debut of John Schacht, a relatively unknown self-taught artist working primarily in Chicago until 1981 when he relocated to rural Iowa until his death in 2009. Schacht participated in the Chicago art scene during the 60’s and 70’s alongside the Chicago Imagists and the Hairy Who. On the periphery of that scene, Schacht’s work is similarly committed to a fantastical, vibrant, vulgar, and personal aesthetic. Like many of the Chicago Imagists, Schacht’s work was inspired by a home filled with trinkets and antiques.
 
Mikhailovskaia was born in Kiev, Ukraine, raised in Brooklyn, and has been working in Brooklyn since her 2007 MFA at RISD. In a different era of art-making than Schacht, Mikhailovskaia investigates sculpture and its relationship to installation, performance, painting and architecture. Her work is inspired by the sculptural work of Cy Twombly, the artist James Lee Byers, the Japanese movement Mono-ha as well as Brutalist Architecture. An artist, writer and curator, Mikhailovskaia has produced public sculpture at Fidelity Investment’s Certified Wildlife Habitat in Smithfield, RI and exhibits regularly around New York City.
 
Where Schacht’s intimate works on paper are flowing and organic, rawly emotional and indulgent, Mikhailovskaia’s sculptural works are concise and geometric, exuding efficiency and restraint. Schacht’s works are diaristic and explore sexuality. Mikhailovskaia’s works appear as architectural fragments or found objects, but reveal themselves as carefully crafted to challenge the viewer’s perception of weight and surface.
 
Both artists manifest a similar mystical quality through pattern and contrast. Schacht mixes abstract and representational imagery using decorative patterns and rich, saturated colors in a stream­-of­-consciousness style. Mikhailovskaia’s minimal color relationships are paired with intense and uneven textures, bold patterns, and extreme material experimentations.
 
This exhibition is a rare chance to see work by two under-recognized artists, one from a few decades ago and the other contemporary. In this odd juxtaposition, the viewer can wander between intimate and large-scale works to find unexpected similarities between two artists making sincere work.
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