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.