Wrecked outdoor summer series continues with Leeon, August 8 in the Ruins at Knockdown Center.
TWO DAYS:
DAY ONE TICKETS (AND TWO DAY TICKETS)
DAY TWO TICKETS
**
The first day of the festival, September 16th, is curated strictly for R&B vibes, with breakout stars and New York natives, Fousheé, and Audrey Nuna atop the line-up. Day 2, September 17th, turns up with a hip-hop bill anchored by Brooklyn’s own Sheff G & Sleepy Hallow, as well as viral stars Yung Baby Tate and Doechii, and the prolific street lyricists Stove God Cooks and Rome Streetz, among others.
While last year’s inaugural Move Forward Fest was strictly virtual, this year we are back in the building, live and In-Person, AND also broadcasting the vibes to audiences around the globe via Twitch, and inviting you to virtually sneak backstage in between sets, and hang with the artists and ask them questions via the Twitch chat.
Outline: Summer will take place Knockdown Center’s backyard space, “The Ruins,” across the last weekend of August, Saturday the 28th and Sunday the 29th, 2021, featuring headline performances by NYC post-punk icons ESG, and Canadian dance-pop favorite Jessy Lanza, and specially selected daily lineups for a cross-genre party that pays honor to club music’s past, present, and future.
Joining the legendary Bronx pioneers ESG on Saturday’s lineup will be an exciting group of young performers that span pop, hip-hop, and R&B, including: rising L.A. synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay; Minneapolis-based songwriter, rapper, and poet, Dua Saleh; Philadelphia’s beat innovator Body Meat; and wildly prolific rapper Pink Siifu, performing with DJ Ted Kamal and special guest appearances from members of associated crew GKFAM.
Sunday’s lineup surrounds Jessy Lanza with an eclectic collection of artists from different corners of dance music. It will include: NYC house and hip-hop producer Galcher Lustwerk, performing a “100% Galcher” set of original material; mysterious left field pop artist Doss; Miami bass-music duo Basside, whose SOPHIE-produced, Fuck It Up EP, was released earlier in 2021; Cibo Matto founder and prolific solo artist, Miho Hatori; and L.A. synth-punk newcomers Provoker, whose debut record for influential Swedish label YEAR001 is expected later this year.
Two-day passes and single-day tickets for the Saturday and Sunday shows are on sale now.
Resuming a regular schedule from this Summer relaunch, Outline will return inside the Knockdown Center hall for Outline: Fall in November of 2021, and then continue with Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall events throughout 2022.
Please note: this workshop will be facilitated remotely
Due to rising concerns amid the COVID-19 virus, Knockdown Center will be temporarily closed to the public from March 14th through April 1st, 2020. It is with a heavy heart that we announce this news, however, we hope that this measure will ensure the safety of our staff and guests.
In conjunction with the exhibition Catalina Oyuang: it has always been the perfect instrument, dancer and performer Lu Yim leads a workshop in the gallery titled slow jam: active restfulness is its own kind of money.
In this sixty-minute movement workshop, participants will be led through a variety of breathing and somatic movement meditations to bring the nervous system to a more restful state. From this restful state the workshop will flow into an open movement jam, with feeling, sensation, and rejuvenative ease as a point of departure. Participants will be asked to work together to create a calm and restful atmosphere and to overall support the group’s interiority and individuals’ process, in order to experience the activity of rest and restful activity as an act of value making and reclaiming.
Space is limited, please RSVP to alexis@knockdowncenter.com.
Once signed up, you’ll get more information on what to wear and bring. We will ensure any access requests are met to the best of Knockdown Center’s ability.
About the exhibition
Catalina Ouyang: it has always been the perfect instrument presents sculptures made over the last two years alongside a new two-channel video installation that comprises Ouyang’s reordering of the nearly 40,000 words generated by the contributions to [Conclusion and Findings]. The works in the exhibition, however, instead grow out of a space where language fails and in resisting any overarching material, disciplinary, or tonal vocabulary, it has always been the perfect instrument trades linguistic and taxonomic control for a landscape of rhythm, texture, touch, and communion.
About Lu Yim
Lu Yim is a dance and performance maker based in Brooklyn, NY. They arrived at somatic movement forms from their own interest and experiences in trauma and chronic pain and have studied many perspectives and ideas around the subject from the Postural Restoration Institute, yoga, the Alexander Technique, et al. They are part of visual and performance collaborations Physical Education and Pidzn Club, and are currently working with artists Tingying Ma and Nam Pham. Lu is a certified Gyrotonic Teacher and Personal Trainer and holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Milton Avery School of Fine Arts at Bard College (‘19).
RSVP here!
Initially established in 2004 at The Eagle, an innocuous gay bar in London’s Vauxhall, Horse Meat Disco has evolved into a powerful force in queer and club culture as a whole, while staying local to its original home, each and every Sunday. Co-founded by James Hillard and Jim Stanton, and encompassing residents Severino and Luke Howards, the crew continue to maintain not only the weekly Sunday party, but a number of residencies in cities across the world, alongside a kaleidoscope of club appearances, festival dates and specially curated mixes.
Taking inspiration from a diverse, counter-cultural history of clubs and DJs, as well as from the sprawling, ever-expanding musical collections of it’s resident crew, the sound of HMD is impossible to place. Nonetheless their style is undeniable, as is a popper-scented air of sheer authenticity. Rooted in hedonism, rhythm, freedom and emotion, a Horse Meat Disco set reinforces everything invigorating about disco, as comfortable as shattering old-school mirror ball cliches as basking in their light.
A typical HMD set blends classics, italo disco, house, oddities and punk funk, to conjure their initial spirit of “a queer party for everyone”, including, but not limited to, “Homos and Heteros, club kids, bears, fashionistas, naturists, guerilla drag queens and ladies who munch.” They have made appearances on every notable club scene in the modern world, as well as those beyond, and have long been a key fixture at festivals including Glastonbury, Bestival and Festival No.6.
Outside of the club, the Horse Meat Disco train rolls across the airwaves on Rinse FM, where the crew hold down a weekly residency every Sunday afternoon, serving as a pre and post-club Sunday lunch accompaniment, often delving into the more soulful shades of their sublime taste, often encompassing rave groove, gospel and whatever they can’t get away with on the dancefloor (which, as the years have proven, isn’t much). A series of expertly curated and acclaimed compilations for reissue label Strut helped further cement HMD’s formidable but communal reputation as disco masterminds, spreading their sound and many enviable obscurities into front rooms and record bags across the world. Their latest, ‘Meat Me Down the Disco’, was released on Z Records in 2017.
After decades of crate digging, globetrotting and partying, the HMD story continues apace. 2017 also saw the crew record their long-awaited contribution to BBC Radio 1’s ‘Essential Mix’, as well as their first joint foray into production, ‘Waiting For You To Call’, featuring Roy Inc., and released on their own, self-titled imprint. They are currently working on new music to be released with Glitterbox, with the new single ‘Let’s Go Dancing’ released in December 2018.
Due to rising concerns amid the COVID-19 virus, Knockdown Center will be temporarily closed to the public. It is with a heavy heart that we announce this news, however, we hope that this measure will ensure the safety of our staff and guests. Please check back for updates and rescheduled events.
Correspondence Table is a program organized in conjunction with Laurel Sparks’ FiftyTwo Ft. commission titled Quad Relay. Sparks and sound artist Shawn E. Hansen maintain a collaboration that explores correspondences between sound, poetry, chance and visual systems. The artists will discuss their methods of using mathematical poetry, dice, string figures, sound and symbols to generate unpredictable structures. They will screen an excerpt from a video-in-progress that combines Hansen’s related sound and photos with their collaborative poems. The evening will conclude with a live sound performance by Hansen using historic Just Intonation and immersive drone systems to translate elements from Quad Relay.
About FiftyTwo Ft: Laurel Sparks
Quad Relay by Laurel Sparks is the most recent work in Knockdown Center’s FiftyTwo Ft. series of commissioned wall-based artworks in the East Corridor. Quad Relay is the artist’s largest work to date, and its compositional logic is derived from the sestina, a complex form of mathematical poetry structured by six stanzas organized in numbered sequences. Sparks assigns points and directional lines specific colors, numbers, and elements according to the sestina’s structure, creating a self-generating algorithm that determines the painting’s geometric tableaux. An irregular grid underlies the composition, producing an almost kinetic, shimmering presence akin to dazzle camouflage, refusing fixed identity and yielding instead to perceptual flux. Learn more about the work here.
About the presenters
Shawn E Hansen is a composer, improviser, phonographer, and piano technician. His main instruments include synthesizer, organ, piano, and saxophone. He is the 2018 Charlotte Street Performing Arts Fellow. Practicing his own style of Great-Plains hermetic art known as Tangential Assertivism, he performs with Neal Wilson (L.A.), Chris Forsyth (PA), Laurel Sparks (NY), and makes films with Cyrus Console. Tangential Assertivism is the practice of observing the relationship between disparate thought-objects placed in close proximity spatially or temporally. Shawn runs KJEA-radio, a transmitted conceptual space first broadcast in 1984. He studied with Maryanne Amacher, Richard Teitelbaum, George Lewis, and Pauline Oliveros at Bard in 2001.
Laurel Sparks is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work embodies geometric symbol systems and the transmitting potential of pattern and materiality. She holds an MFA from Bard College and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in Boston, MA. Her exhibitions include solo shows at Kate Werble, NYC and group shows at Cheim and Read NYC; LX, NYC; Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, NYC; Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; Berman Museum at Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA; Elizabeth Foundation Gallery, NYC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; and Art In General, NYC.
We are currently seeking proposals for Group Exhibitions in our gallery space, Solo Projects + Installations in our gallery space, and short-term Main Spaces Projects!
Review the guidelines for open calls for gallery exhibitions and projects in our main spaces, and apply by December 6, 2020!
Take a look below or on our proposal page for full details and guidelines, or download a PDF of the guidelines here.
Submit your proposal here.
Proposal Guidelines
About the Exhibition Program – Group Exhibitions
The Group Exhibition Open Call provides curators the resources to organize group exhibitions (two or more artists) in our gallery space. Knockdown Center provides an exhibition stipend to cover curator and artist honorarium in addition to costs associated with shipping, materials, publications, and programming. Exhibitions are typically 6 – 8 weeks and allotted 5 days to install.
Knockdown Center Gallery Exhibition Budget Guidelines – Group Exhibition
Curatorial Honorarium: Curators receive a $500 curatorial honorarium per exhibition. In the case of a co-curated exhibition, the curatorial honoraria is divided between curators.
Artist Honoraria: Each artist included in an exhibition receives a $100 honorarium.
Shipping, Material, or Production Costs: KDC will reimburse up to $500 upon the submission of receipts for:
– Artwork shipping
– Material costs for special installation needs
Programming: KDC offers $400 to support exhibition-related programs. Programs may include but are not limited to: panel discussions, screenings, readings, performances, or a closing reception.
Knockdown Center Support
Knockdown Center provides the following exhibition-related support:
– Art handler for installation and de-installation up to 22 hours.
– Fine Art Insurance coverage for all dates of the exhibition.
– Title vinyl production and installation.
– Marketing support.
– In-house installation photography.
Please consider the floorplans when imagining your project:
Download Gallery Floorplans Here
About the Exhibition Program – Solo Projects and Installations
The Solo Projects and Installations Open Call provides interdisciplinary artists and collectives the resources to develop and present a new body of work or site-specific installation in our gallery space. Artists will work in closely with Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art to develop and realize proposed projects. Knockdown Center provides an exhibition stipend to cover artist honorarium in addition to costs associated with shipping, materials, publications, and programming. Exhibitions are typically 6 – 8 weeks, and allotted 5 days to install.
Knockdown Center Gallery Exhibition Budget Guidelines – Solo Projects and installations
Artist Honorarium: Artists receive a $500 curatorial honorarium per exhibition. In the case of a co-produced project, the honoraria is divided between artists.
Shipping, Material, or Production Costs: KDC will reimburse up to $500 upon the submission of receipts for:
– Artwork shipping
– Material costs for special installation needs
Programming: KDC offers $400 to support exhibition-related programs. Programs may include but are not limited to: panel discussions, screenings, readings, performances, or a closing reception.
Knockdown Center Support
Knockdown Center provides the following exhibition-related support:
– Curatorial support from Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
– Art handler for installation and de-installation up to 22 hours.
– Fine Art Insurance coverage for all dates of the exhibition.
– Title vinyl production and installation.
– Marketing support.
– In-house installation photography.
Please consider the floorplans when imagining your project:
Download Gallery Floorplans Here
About Main Spaces Projects and Application Process
Knockdown Center’s Main Spaces are our most active spaces. Because they are in extremely high demand, projects proposing for the Main Spaces should plan to use them as efficiently as possible, and should not exceed 2 weeks in duration. Main Space projects can take the form of large-scale temporary installations, dance, theater, readings, talks, screenings, conferences, etc.
The Main Spaces proposal is a multi-step process. In the first round, we invite artists and organizers to submit a letter of intent describing the project they wish to produce. After a first round of reviews, a shortlist of selected applicants will be invited to submit a more detailed proposal, and the opportunity to engage in a more in-depth conversation with Knockdown Center’s staff about the nature of the space and what kind of support Knockdown Center can offer to realize the proposed project.
Please consider the following logistical factors and spatial limitations when conceptualizing your proposal:
– The Main Spaces are in extremely high demand and should be used as efficiently as possible. Developmental residencies and extended rehearsal periods are therefore not feasible.
– The Main Spaces are open-plan, multi-use, and often shared.
– The Main Spaces receive abundant natural night. Please consider this aspect of the space when conceptualizing multi-day projects that might require light control such as video and light installations.
Please consider the floorplans when imagining your project:
Download Floorplans Here
Postponed: Due to rising concerns amid the COVID-19 virus, Knockdown Center will be temporarily closed to the public. It is with a heavy heart that we announce this news, however, we hope that this measure will ensure the safety of our staff and guests. Please check back for updates on rescheduled dates.
Pixelated Petals is an evening organized in conjunction with the exhibition Dakota Gearhart: The Sextant of the Rose. Through lecture, video, and performance, Eva Davidova, Mo Kong, and Cori Olinghouse will unravel some of the conceptual threads within Gearhart’s exhibition like environmental collapse, digital and material promiscuity, and embodied absurdity.
Interdisciplinary artist Eva Davidova will give a short presentation of her VR and animation works, which use interactivity and mythological characters to address ecological disaster, cruelty and manipulation of information. Artist Mo Kong is propelled by scientific research and often addresses environmental collapse. Kong will present See Sun, and Think the Shadow (2017), a video of accumulated imagery of sinkholes and earthly openings. Embodying a humor-driven and queer performance practice, artist Cori Olinghouse performs a selection of new and returning characters in dialogue with Gearhart’s installation.
About the exhibition
Dakota Gearhart: The Sextant of the Rose investigates beauty as economic capital through the ubiquitous figure of the rose, speculating on whether the rose may have a hidden evolutionary agenda of its own. This exhibition, the artist’s first solo presentation in New York, features a new series of video-sculptures that incorporate psychedelic videos as well as living and dying roses to create an immersive world that viewers can become submerged within.
About the presenters
Eva Davidova is a Spanish/Bulgarian interdisciplinary artist with focus on new media(s), information, and their socio-political implications. The issues of her work—behavior, cruelty, ecological disaster and manipulation of information emerge as paradoxes rather than assumptions, in an almost fairy-tale fashion. Davidova has exhibited at the Bronx Museum, the Everson Museum the Albright Knox Museum, MACBA Barcelona, CAAC Sevilla, Instituto Cervantes Sofia, La Regenta and Circulo de Bellas Artes Madrid among others.
Mo Kong is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher.They have been the subject of solo exhibition at CUE Art Foundation, Artericambi Gallery, Gertrude Gallery and Chashama. Their work has been included in Queens Museum, RISD Museum,SFMOMA, Minnesota Street Project, Spring Break, ARTISSIMA, Make Room Gallery and Rubber Factory Gallery. They also received fellowship/residency from Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Triangle art association,Mass Moca Studio,Vermont Studio Center, Gibney Performance Center and AAI. Their work mentioned in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Cultured magazine, Artnews, CoBo Social, Wall street International, SFMoMA Public Knowledge.
Cori Olinghouse is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist, and curator, who received her MA in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University. Olinghouse performed for the Trisha Brown Dance Company for several years and participated in a dancing dialogue with theatrical clown and actor Bill Irwin, researching a variety of improvisation forms that explore shape-shifting and transformation. Her performance works have been commissioned by BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Movement Research. Last year, she collaborated with video artist Charles Atlas on a moving image installation of Trisha Brown’s archival materials for “Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done,” at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2017 she founded The Portal, a curatorial platform dedicated to reimagining the archiving and contextualizing of performance practices and embodied histories in motion. She serves as visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.