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Feb 11

Bring Your Own Beamer

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On Saturday, October 6th 2012, Knockdown Center presented Bring Your Own Beamer featuring live projections by almost 30 artists accompanied by live music.

Projections by: Sam Ashford, Ivana Basic, Beauty Today, Lily Benson, Dora Budor+Maya Cule, Victoria Campbell, Micaela Carolan, April Childers, Tomashi Jackson, Deborah Johnson, Anna Liberman, Rebecca Leopold, Amanda Long, Hannah Manfredi, Andrew Ross, Wadih Sader, Saki Sato, Joao Salema + Sofy Yuditskaya ,Taylor Shields, Anthony Simon, Nikita Vishnevskiy +more! Live Music by: Lydsod, Trabajo, Raft, Jeanann Dara, Skip LaPlante, and Insect Deli

Feb 11

Holiday Sculpture Farm

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In December of 2013, Knockdown Center presented Non-denominational Holiday Sculpture Farm. 

The original press release…

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Hanukkah, Festivus, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve… the list goes on and on but what does it all mean? Although each insular observance claims agency over its calendar dates and rituals there are many similarities and narrative cross-over points adding to the general cacophony of geographic, financial, and emotional obligations. Non-denominational Holiday Sculptures seek to toy with this insularity by sussing out the universal traits of celebratory ritual and incorporating them into our everyday lives. Non-denominational Sculptures are access points to these universal traits and are meant to remain on view throughout the calendar year to encourage sustained tolerance and appreciation for this unanimous human desire to assemble and celebrate our various cultures.

Feb 04

Live Nation & Honda Stage Present: Deadmau5

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Presented by Live Nation and Honda Stage, progressive house music DJ Deadmau5 played a free concert for fans in celebration of his upcoming double album, 5 Years of Mau5.

Deadmau5 gave his fans a taste of his newest tracks mixed in with some old favorites in an exciting performance that was streamed live on YouTube.

Jan 30

And The Villagers Never Liked You Anyway…

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In partnership with Knockdown Center, Sorry Archive presented And the Villagers Never Liked You Anyway, an archaeological excavation of a 10’x10’ bed of dirt overseen by Dr. Ulf Hueber. The space was gridded into 10 plots, each with its own curator. The plots acted as experimental test pits for heterogeneous creative practices.

Exhibitions are historical sites: they reveal with varying degrees of transparency the events and personalities that produced them. A wide range of curatorial perspectives are situated here within the same set of physical constraints. The objects that emerge are not emblems. They are substances articulated over time and forced into tight quarters, and their materiality cannot be ignored.

Sorry Archive’s scientific approach to this exhibition aimed to reorient viewers in their relationship to art objects. Viewers became excavators, grounded in the real, negotiating strata of cause and effect. Yet they were faced with an array of microcosmic histories and impossible mythologies. There could be no endpoint of knowledge gathered from this paradoxical dig, where factual time was altogether disturbed. New works fell into seeming ruin. Gaps in knowledge pocked all surfaces with expanses of the unknowable. This site was populated with artifacts of the future, a reverse archaeology of the present.

Jan 28

Carnegie Hall presents: West Side Story

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As a celebration of Carnegie Hall’s 125th anniversary season, Weill Music Institute (WMI) presents The Somewhere Project, an exploration of West Side Story that spans across all five boroughs of New York City.

This new vision for the timeless Broadway classic with music by Leonard Bernstein immerses audiences in a community celebration that’s equal parts exhibition, theater, and special event. The performances take place at the Knockdown Center, a restored factory in Queens, and features professional artists in lead roles—including Skylar Astin as Tony, Morgan Hernandez as Maria, and Bianca Marroquín as Anita—with students and community members from around the city joining them on stage. Marin Alsop, a former protégée of Bernstein’s, conducts and Amanda Dehnert, a nationally renowned theater director, leads this visionary new production.

Created in an effort to bring New York City students and world-class artists together for musical exploration, The Somewhere Project is the latest installment of creative learning projects from WMI. Throughout the 2015–2016 season, WMI will also support the creation of new works by students and community members, each inspired by “Somewhere,” the classic song that forms the affirmative core of West Side Story. This original music, created by participants in WMI programs and workshops, will be featured in free Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts in all five boroughs.

An open companion course offers free resources and music classes via Soundfly, including interviews with the world’s top experts on West Side Story, creative challenges, printable resources, discussion prompts, and further reading to explore.

See clips from the production:

Videography by Mehmet Salih Yilidirim

Jan 28

Zimoun [KE]³

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Zimoun [KE]³

Knockdown Center, in partnership with bitforms gallery, presented a new site specific installation by Swiss artist, Zimoun.

Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of simple and functional materials, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life.

For Knockdown Center, Zimoun presented an immersive environment of 250 motorized wood beams and ropes. Each unit cyclically strikes the floor, producing a sonic experience reverberating within a 10,000 square foot atrium – Zimoun’s largest site-specific project in the US to date.

In conjunction with this monumental work Zimoun also presented new projects at bitforms (opening Sunday, February 8) and Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University (opening Thursday, February 5). Click here for the official press release.

The exhibitions are generously supported by swissnex boston, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, KulturStadtBern, and Swisslos – Amt für Kultur Kanton Bern.

Jan 28

Live Nation Presents: MIA

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Presented by Live Nation, hype man A$AP FERG and rapper MIA performed to a packed house in The Knockdown Center’s main space.

Named one of the ten defining artists of the 2000’s decade by Rolling Stone and one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine, M.I.A. has been nominated for an Academy Award and two Grammys (“Paper Planes” and “Swagga Like Us”).

Jan 21

The Lost Lectures

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In partnership with Hyperallergic, The Lost Lectures presented 6 world-class speakers, performances, interactive demos and art installations.

The evening’s lineup featured musical sensation Blood Orange (aka Dev Hynes), writer and publisher Choire Sicha (of The Awl), photographer Barbara Nitke, scientist Marc Abrahams, and Brooklyn dance sensations Flex Is Kings + filmmaker Deidre Schoo.

For more information on the speakers, visit the The Lost Lectures.

Jan 21

Red Bull Music Academy Presents: Hardcore Activity

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Presented by Red Bull Music Academy, Hardcore Activity presented a sampling of the most extreme recording artists in jazz, techno, metal, noise, classical, hip hop and beyond.

Artists included:
Kranky’s ambient prince Tim Hecker
Grindcore legends Napalm Death
Gunplay – the Maybach rapper with a Bible on the dash
Scandinavian free jazzers The Thing all feature
Wolf Eyes, Regis, Bastard Noise, Lubomyr Melnyk, Skullflower, Joe McPhee/Chris Corsano, Okkyung Lee, Clipping, Yoshiko Ohara, Reg Bloor, and Gnaw, with visuals provided by Nuit Blanche.

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