For the final Sunday Service of the spring season, curated by Mariana Valencia, performance, film and sound artists explore notions of solid states. They ask whether something that’s solid is something that can be pressed into, dislocated or broken— Are solid states reliable?  Through observations of shorelines, the stages of ice and wax they find sustenance in time as the symbology of open chests attune us to the other. Imagery, live performance and sound interpret these transitions that find a homes within flux.

About the Curator

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.

About the Artists

Ayano Elson is a choreographer and designer. She was born in Okinawa, Japan, and is a 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow. Her work has been presented by Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance (Work Up), Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, Roulette (lec/dem), and AUNTS at Arts@Renaissance, Mount Tremper Arts, and the New Museum. As a dancer, Ayano has had the pleasure to perform in works by artists Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Jessica Cook, devynn emory, and Glass Ghost in places like BRIC, CATCH at the Invisible Dog, the Guggenheim Museum, the Kitchen, Lincoln Center, MoMA PS1, Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, New Museum, PS122, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and SculptureCenter.

Jordan Lord is an artist, writer, and filmmaker who works primarily in video, text, and performance. His work is concerned with the relationship between framing and support, historical and emotional debts, documentary and description. Since 2012, he has been a member of No Total, a collective of performers and a reading group that has both shown work and organized a number of performances at Artists Space Books & Talks and Arika Episode 4: Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. In 2017, he organized a series of screenings at the CUNY Graduate Center, entitled “‘Recording and Performing’: Apparatuses of Capture, Documentary, and Liveness in Artists’ Cinema.” He is currently working on an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College.

lily bo shapiro is a performance-oriented artist born and raised in New York City. Current obsessions reside in shifting constellations of archive, elision, rejuvenation and the strangely intimate (intimately strange). bo works at an ethic of ongoingness, togethering and care, approaching circulation as an antidote to the monumentals. [also, ‘i love you’ and ‘i am proud of you’ are important things i am saying a lot right now].

Jean Carla Rodea is an interdisciplinary artist with a research based practice. She is originally from Mexico City and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She works across disciplines such as music, sound, performance, photography, video, and sculpture. Her practice is informed by memory, identity, immigration, ritual, performance, and improvisation. Rodea’s work questions critical socio-political issues such as: the politics of the body, gender, and the asymmetry of human relations. She has performed and shown work at Roulette, Carnegie Hall, BRIC, Judson Church, Panoply Lab, Rio ll Gallery, The Clemente, El Museo de Los Sures, to mention a few.

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.

“We were peering into this darkness, crisscrossed with voices, when the change took place: the only real, great change I’ve ever happened to witness, and compared to it the rest is nothing.”
—Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

For some nine months now, Sunday Service host Janani Balasubramanian has been in residence with the brown dwarf research group at the American Museum of Natural History. (Brown dwarfs are celestial objects which are neither planet nor star but somewhere in between in mass and brightness.) There, a motley group of astrophysicists examine brown dwarfs, low mass stars, and other objects whose existence disrupts our very notion of what is planet and what is star—and consequently disrupts the story of the universe.

Here, Balasubramanian brings together artists, astronomers, and artist-astronomers to show and tell stories of transformation. A dataset becomes music; a telescope reading becomes Art Deco; dust becomes a system; a shift in planetary motion becomes a folk tale; a rock becomes a family. The evening becomes a great deal of magical fun.

About the Curator
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.

About the Artists

JP Ventura
Jean-Paul (JP) Ventura is a New York native and was born and raised in Washington Heights. As a kid, he was drawn to the mystery of waves after spending weekends with his father, a fisherman, on the Pilot II ship of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. This interest manifested artistically in exploring sound waves through DJing musical genres such as Chill-out, Disco, House, Electronica and Techno. Academically, JP is a senior undergraduate at CUNY Hunter College, where he is a Physics and Earth & Atmospheric Science double major. He is also currently interning at the American Museum of Natural History where he studies radiation signals produced by the magnetic fields of low-mass stars and uses that data to model the potential effects of those fields on the atmospheres of orbiting extrasolar planets. His hopes are to develop frameworks for the study of astrophysical data through sound for use in public outreach, and in the future, to help improve scientific access to the visually impaired community.

Ellianna Schwab Abrahams
After working for the better part of a decade as a graphic designer, Ellianna Schwab Abrahams moved to New York City to pursue a career in astrophysics. Curious about most anything physics, Ellianna has combined her two passions, observational astronomy and electromagnetic theory, in her research at the American Museum of Natural History, where she is a Helen Fellow. She studies stellar activity in the smallest, coolest stars, using light from across the electromagnetic spectrum to investigate large and small-scale magnetic properties. In her free time, Ellianna is an avid hiker and stargazer. She also likes to swim and visit the penguins in Central Park.

Bex Kwan and Sophia Mak
Bex Kwan and Sophia Mak are not the same person. However, being housemates and friends who are both queer, chinese, gender non-conforming performers of roughly the same height (Bex is half an inch taller), people kept confusing them for each other even though they had just met. Together, they peel back their alleged sameness to explore histories of foreignness, family mythologies and tender friendship. Through performance, they investigate where their mirrors of each other will fail, and where they will be transformative.

Mark Popinchalk
Mark Popinchalk is a science educator and PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center. He analyzes brown dwarf and exoplanetary atmospheres with the Brown Dwarf NYC research group, usually by comparing them to computer models. He is a planetarium presenter at the American Museum of Natural History, and a co-host of Astronomy on Tap NYC. He plays ultimate frisbee, enjoys nerdy games, has more liquid water than Mercury but fewer rings than Saturn, and his favorite color is sky-blue-pink.

Moiya McTier
Moiya McTier grew up in a log cabin in the middle of the woods in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania. From there, she went on to Harvard University where she combined her lifelong passion for fantastical narrative storytelling with her newfound interest in space to become the college’s first ever double major in folklore and astrophysics. After graduating, Moiya continued her education in the Astronomy PhD program at Columbia University, where she specializes in exoplanets and galactic dynamics. In her spare time, Moiya enjoys communicating science, cooking, and looking at pictures of dogs online.

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 is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.

In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
(Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”, chapter 14)

Join us on April 8th for an evening of live art and sound curated by Rena Anakwe. Anakwe is interested in the ways in which people manifest their healing. This quote from Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ speaks of an event of destruction that must first occur before healing and resilience begins in our own lives. We all have our own life experiences, ancestral and present, that form our current healing practices in all forms. While the world spins out around us, the ways in which we ground ourselves, tell our stories and survive are what reconnect us to our humanity and the humanity of others. This Sunday Service offers a glimpse into the ways that five artists evoke their own healing and discovery through various forms of media, storytelling and ritual.

About the Curator

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.

About the Artists

Sharon De La Cruz
Sharon Lee De La Cruz is an artist and activist from New York City. She earned a BFA from The Cooper Union, is a Fulbright scholar, and obtained her Masters at NYU’s ITP program (Interactive Telecommunications Program). Sharon’s work ranges from comics, to STEM education, to interactive sculptures. She works at the intersection of tech, art, and social justice. She currently lives in New Jersey and is the Assistant Director of The StudioLab, a creative tech lab, at Princeton University.

Johann Diedrick
Johann Diedrick makes installations, performances, and objects that let people play with sound. He shares his work through workshops, listening tours, and open-source software and hardware. He is a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Fellows grant and has been featured in Wire Magazine and Musicworks Magazine. He has exhibited internationally in numerous group exhibitions, conferences and festivals, including the Soundscapes symposium at Yale University, the NIME conference in Daejeon and Seoul, Korea, and the Invisible Places conference in Viseu, Portugal. He studied at the ITP program at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU focusing on sound art. He was a researcher at the InterLab at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) in Yamaguchi, Japan and worked as an interactive software developer at Qosmo in Tokyo, Japan. He is currently a senior developer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Delphine Fawundu
Adama Delphine Fawundu is photo-based visual artist and activist born in Brooklyn, NY. She is the founder and author of the book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Ms. Fawundu is a New York Foundation of the Arts Photography Fellow.

Her multimedia fine art work uses photography, video and sculpture to interrogate identity with the African African Diaspora.

Her extensive New York City 90’s hip-hop archive includes photographs of artists such as Nas, The Notorious BIG, Big Daddy Kane, Jay Z, Lil’Wayne and Mobb Deep. Since 2008 she’s been documenting the urban music scene in several African cities including Nairobi, Lagos, Freetown, Accra, Bamako, Johannesburg, and Dakar. As an activist, Ms. Fawundu has used art a vehicle to mobilize her community to fight against gentrification through her project, “Tivoli: A Place We Call Home: A Community Faces Gentrification.” She’s collaborated with the Women’s Institute/GMHC create a traveling photographic series “touched: Women affected by HIV” to spread awareness around HIV. She has also organized and facilitated photography and social awareness workshops for women and youth in Nigeria, Colombia and Sierra Leone.

GENG
Geng is a New York City-borne and currently-residing sound artist and founder of PTP (formerly, Purple Tape Pedigree), a collective, plus imprint, acting as “purveyors of weaponized media.” With roots in the city’s underground hip hop and then experimental electronic/metal/punk communities since the mid-90’s, his sonic narrative typically spills forth a cocktail of these influences, with a focus on meditative confrontation of traumatic histories, sleep paralysis, aquaphobia, and the communication bridge between self-actualized identity and spirit. In a live setting, one may be challenged by disembodied vocals piercing through a collage of field recordings, ASMR tape loops, and walls of distorted dread from various hardware – once reviewed as a “brutal ritual … drawn from dystopian nightmares … this is metal machine music meant for catharsis, not escapism” by Washington City Paper.

Pamela Liou
Pamela Liou is an artist and technologist living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work examines tensions between craft, emerging platforms, and pursuit of self-actualization. Through digitally fabricated machines, analog video, and virtual environments Pamela’s work offers alternative modalities for recoupling and reacquainting the individual with a sense of creative efficacy.

Pamela is a former resident at Eyebeam, Museum of Arts and Design, and DBRS Labs. She currently teaches hardware and environment design at Parsons School of Design in the Design and Technology department.

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 is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.

Image: From the Ashes, Rena Anakwe. Courtesy of the artist.

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.