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Nov 13

Private Nationalism

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Private Nationalism: Pressing Issues in Central European Contemporary Video Art

Video screening and panel discussion
Co-presented by Edit András, Ilona Németh, Viera Levitt, the Clakula-Gauthier Art production and Magdalena Moskalewicz

Including the work of Tibor Horváth, László Nagyvári Nosek, Csaba Nemes, Bálint Szombathy (Hungary) /András Cséfalvay, Matej Kaminský, Ilona Németh, Martin Piaček, Tomáš Rafa, Mark Ther, Matej Vakula (Czech Republic and Slovakia /C.T Jasper. And Joanna Malinowska (Polish Pavilion of the Venice Biennial, 2015)

Private Nationalism Project initiated by Approach Art Association, Pécs (project leader (Rita Varga) took place as an exhibition series at arts venues throughout Central Europe and beyond. Using visual artworks, discussions, and publications, the project directed attention to the urgency of totalizing nationalist developments of the former Soviet bloc by shedding light on overlooked issues of the daily life, and the subtle processes by which ideologies infiltrate and are absorbed into the citizenry.

Knockdown Center hosts a screening and discussion generated from this expansive project that involved the work of many curators and artists as it traveled and changed shape in each city: Budapest, Bratislava, Dresden, Krakow, Košice, Prague.

The presentation is divided into 3 parts focusing on Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Each screening section will be followed by a 15min discussion.

  • Hungarian part will be presented by Edit András (Hungary/USA, art historian)
  • Czech and Slovak part will be presented by Ilona Németh (Slovakia, artist), Matej Vakula (Slovakia/USA, artist) and Viera Levitt (Slovakia/USA, UMass Dartmouth Gallery Director)
  • Polish part will be presented by Magdalena Moskalewicz (Poland/USA, art historian and curator)

Supported by Trust of Mutual Understanding, NY

Nov 10

With and For

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With and For features three dual- or multi-vocal, call-and-response-like performances. Based on a dialogic framework, the program foregrounds various formations of intimacy – partnership, family, and friendship—setting the stage for polyphonic interplay in the form of song (recorded, performed, improvised), script, and theatre in translation.

Featuring Charity Coleman, Malik Gaines and Alex Segade, and Jordan Lord and Arias Abbruzzi Davis
Curated by Rachel Valinsky
Presented in collaboration with NYPAC

Arias Abbruzzi Davis and Jordan Lord: Ideas of Reference
Arias Abbruzzi Davis and Jordan Lord met six years ago in an intermediate French class. They became friends after collaborating on the final class project—an assignment to demonstrate mastery of the imperfect past tense, the future, and the future anterior. Their project was a short piece of absurdist theater about a jellyfish and rabbit. Returning to the script for the first time since their friendship began, they will perform a live translation of the script from French to English, remembering and speculating on the coded intimacies once exchanged.

Charity Coleman: Forever My Heart and Rebirth
Charity Coleman performs communion with the living voice of her mother, channeled through recordings from childhood and present-day conversation.

Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade: Choir Practice
Gaines, Segade and friends form an amateur choir singing from the repertoire of anti-racist, feminist activist, vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock. The audience joins in to sing protest songs, folk songs, spirituals, and blues. Choir Practice was first performed in 2013, during Gaines and Segade’s Courtesy the Artists residency at Recess Art, New York.

Above Image: Charity Coleman, 2015

Nov 04

Days the World Went Mad

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A free 16mm screening brought to you by 3TON Cinema

A 1965 British documentary on natural disasters, projected on glorious 16MM!  “Compiled of film gathered from all over the world, including unique footage of an Alaskan earthquake taken by a sailor who was filming people on a jetty only a few seconds before the disaster occurred. The camera ran on during the first onslaught of the earthquake.” (TRT 51 mins.) …To be accompanied by archive shorts, cartoons, and other ephemera from the California-based 3TON archive.

3TON Cinema is a roving DIY microcinema with a collection of roughly 1,000 ephemeral films from the 20th century, all on 16MM. Founded in Oakland in 2009 by Laskfar Vortok and Montgomery Cantsin, 3TON has exhibited in a variety of venues across the United States. This screening concludes their cross-country fall tour.

 

Nov 03

Pollinis

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Evelyn C. Lewis presents Pollinis in J McDonald’s A Way From Home trailer. Thinking of honeybees as art makers and artists as beekeepers, she exhibits “one woman’s collaboration with her Brooklyn bees.”

Nov 03

Around Flat

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A new exhibition curated by William Staples brings together visual art works in two and three dimensions to reflect on how those two formal approaches engage the viewer. The properties that define each medium and the demands they make are distinct, whether flat or in the round. In the case of painting or other two-dimensional work, the beholder stands in front of the surface, encountering the composition vis à vis their position before a solid vertical plane. By contrast, three-dimensional art works occupy the same space as the viewer, who must circle the object to consider its various angles and surfaces. Ultimately, both formats are unified by their visual generosity toward a thoughtful viewer.

Oct 28

Tragedy and Healing In Nantucky

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Comdy Central Pretends and BHQFU (The Bruce High Quality Foundation University) present:
an evening of experimental comedy inspired by Bloch

Tragedy and Healing in Nantucky

Nantucky is a small, quiet town. It’s the kind of place where everybody greets their neighbors, and no one locks their doors. But, it was recently discovered that Nantucky is home to the worst, most deranged and truly evil criminal in history. While the residents of Nantucky will never forget the hundreds of lives that were taken and destroyed by this monster, the town is ready to move forward from this tragedy. It’s time to let the healing begin.

Oct 23

Contemporary Temporary Sound Sessions

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Lectures: Presentations: Workshops: Experiments: Studies: Concerts: Exchanges: 

Under the guidance of Daniel Neumann, CT-SWaM founder and accomplished sound engineer, this 3 day workshop is catered to sound artists, noise producers, composers of electronic and electro-acoustic music, as well as experimental musicians and sound designers, interested in deepening their practice and exploring spatialization as a creative element.

The workshop will give a historical overview on the subject with some technical background and explored aesthetics and techniques for spatialization. One objective is to practice listening as a phenomenological activity: the listener immersed in inner spaces / distance and continuity / sound as intersubjective space.

For more information on attending the workshop click here.

The workshop itself is now closed to the public but participants and guest performers will present work at Knockdown Center on the following days:

Sat, Nov 14
4p-6p: performances by participants
6p-8p: Pedro Lopes (Berlin), lecture and performance

Sun, Nov 15
2p-6p: performances by participants

Tue, Nov 17, $7 suggested donation

Kamron Saniee
Michael Hammond
Gus Callahan
Matthew Gantt
&
Gabe Raines

7pm Gabe Raines will present “Sun Castle – Room of a Thousand Doors – Door Two”. His sound project describes various spaces inside an imaginary castle. The spaces can be together into a functional audio map of the cavernous circular room.

8:30pm Jenn Grossman: multi-channel pieces

9pm Woody Sullender’s “Variations on Furniture Music” is a series of multi-channel electronic music performances utilizing arrangements of modular cardboard forms outfitted with audio transducers. His work encompass a variety of media including music, sculpture, performance, theater, installation, architecture, origami, and even sonic weaponry. Among other activities, he is founding co-editor (will Bill Dietz) of the sonic arts publication Ear | Wave | Event (earwaveevent.org).

All performances are open to the public.

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Follow the activities:
Blog: https://ctswam.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CT_SWaM
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ctswam

Oct 21

Kids’ Halloween party

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Free and open to the public! Come in costume.
Photo portrait booth!

Trick or Treating!!

Fun sensory games:

TOUCH: guts, brain, eyeballs, and more!
HEAR: Play our spooky Theremin!
TASTE: Bob for an apple, and have it candied… in blood!
SEE: Hand-print spider craft project

3:30-4:30pm Free shuttle to Mt. Olivet Cemetary gates: the starting point of the Maspeth Lions Club Halloween Ragamuffin Parade
Exhibitions also on view 2-6pm:
Maybe I’m Amazed
Things with Claws

 

halloween15v2print

Oct 19

Things with Claws

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Things with claws don’t just scratch us but get deep inside of us.  They cling to our bodies and we walk around simultaneously burdened and accompanied by them, never alone, always with this thing attached to us. J McDonald presents some of these things as Part II of the A Way From Home project.

 

 

Oct 09

Herman Kolgen and Nicolas Bernier

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As part of Quebec Digital, New York (October 22 – 25), Elektra and FuturePerfect co-present two audiovisual masters from Montreal — Herman Kolgen and Nicolas Bernier. Kolgen performs his acclaimed Dust, an audiovisual masterpiece inspired by Man Ray’s photograph “Elevage de Poussiere.” Concerned with giving form to what the eye cannot capture, Kolgen creates a spectacular world from mere dust particles, revealing their fibrous networks, deep structures and hypnotic complexities. At the threshold between the invisible and the visible, Dust becomes intoxicating and the video surface a veritable accumulation of x-rays. Simultaneously emotional and conceptual, audiences will never see or hear dust again in the same way.

Nicolas Bernier’s Frequencies (synthetic variations) is a part of an ongoing process that draws upon basic generative systems. Performed in real-time, this is Bernier’s first laptop performance, a dialogue between sound, light and material. Frequencies consists of pre-written sequences of synthetic sounds with light synchronized within small acrylic structures; a digital work visually translated into physical elements. With incredible precision and minimal means, Bernier creates a mesmerizing work where audiences can either hear the light or see the sound.

 Click here for more info.

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