Are you alive, or just existing?
Eventbrite: https://dystopianyc.eventbrite.com
Resident Advisor: https://www.residentadvisor.net/events/1189107
In conjunction with the exhibition Soft Territories, Sarah Zapata will perform a reading of recent texts that explore the limits and porousness of the body, and the interrelation between feet and femininity. Acting as a sort of guided meditation, Devotional will be a performance that engages the mind and body.
About the Exhibition
Soft Territories is a group exhibition presenting works by Victoria Manganiello, Simón Sepúlveda, and Sarah Zapata exploring the ways in which notions of movement, migration, and locality are expressed in contemporary textile practices. The warp and weft of the loom – the basic structure of textiles being composed of longitudinal and transverse components – echoes current critical thinking about verticality and horizontality in social and economic structures. In the artworks included, the intersection of the two planes of woven thread express ideas about politics, territories, technologies, and interactions, while enabling spaces of softness, warmth, and shelter.
Sarah Zapata makes work with labor-intensive processes such as handweaving, rope coiling, latch hooking, and sewing by intersecting theories of gender and ethnicity with pre-colonial histories and techniques. Making work with meditative, mechanical means, her current work deals with the multiple facets of her complex identity: a Texan living in Brooklyn, a lesbian raised as an evangelical Christian, a first generation American of Latin American descent, a contemporary artist inspired by ancient civilizations, an artist challenging the history of craft as “women’s work” within the realm of art. Zapata’s work has been exhibited at the New Museum (NY), El Museo del Barrio (NY), Museum of Art and Design (NY), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (NY), Boston University (MA), LAXART (CA), Deli Gallery (NY), Arsenal Contemporary (NY), and Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center (NY). Zapata has also completed recent residencies at MASS MoCA (MA), A-Z West (CA), and Wave Hill (NY), and is the recent recipient of an NFA Project Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. Zapata was an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2016.
Performance Schedule
June 29, 7:30pm – 9:00pm | DJ Black Helmet Performance
July 7, 6:00pm | Zaid Islam Performance
August 18, 5:00pm – 8:00pm | The Modern School Jazz Trio Performance
See below for performance info
About the Exhibition
Knockdown Center is pleased to present Pigeonhole: The Life and Work of Bobby Alam, a new exhibition by Priyanka Dasgupta and Chad Marshall. Pigeonhole is a multidisciplinary portrait of Bahauddin “Bobby” Alam, a Bengali peddler and sailor and who arrived in the United States in 1918 and lived as a Black jazz musician in New York and New Orleans. The exhibition memorializes Alam’s career and explores his personal navigation of an especially precarious period in American history, prompting a reflection on the complexities of racial passing as a means for marginalized people to circumvent violence.
Alam is a composite of historical realities and imagined truths. His identity is inspired by the history of Bengalis passing as black in the United States, settling into communities of color in order to circumvent anti-Asian immigration laws, as recorded in Vivek Bald’s book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America. The artists deploy these histories to bring to light the ways in which passing can function as a strategy for survival.
The installation portrays Alam’s dressing room, rehearsal space, and performance stage in the kind of juke joint where he would have spent his evenings constructing and performing his adopted identity. Objects within the installation highlight Alam’s life and career as a musician: a zoot suit embellished with Indian kantha style embroidery, old handbills and concert posters, musical compositions, video documentation from Alam’s rehearsals, and private recordings. Clues within each of these objects reveal, upon close reading, the staged and dual nature of Alam’s identity, which subtly trespasses the lines between reality and fiction.
Over the course of the exhibition, contemporary musicians inspired by Alam will take the stage and perform live, enabling the past evoked by the installation to live once again, while resonating with Knockdown Center’s function as a music venue. Additional elements of the exhibition will extend into Knockdown Center’s outdoor spaces, restrooms, and bar.
Pigeonhole: The Life and Work of Bobby Alam is realized through collaborations with Elias Meister and Hammarsing Kharhmar, celebrated through performances by Azikiwe Mohammed, Zaid Islam, Christopher Hall, Michael Howell and Leroy Willams and additional musicians. The exhibition supported in part by Knockdown Center, Smack Mellon, Materials for the Arts, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
About the Performances
DJ Black Helmet Performance
Saturday, June 29 | 7:30 – 9:00pm
Artist Azikiwe Mohammed will perform as DJ Black Helmet at the opening reception to kick off a series of performances over the course of the exhibition inspired by Alam’s musical career. DJ Black Helmet will play a DJ set infused with Alam’s influences, including the sounds of New Orleans Dixieland jazz, blues, and Baul music from West Bengal and Bangladesh. The set is inspired by Alam’s roots as well as his musical career in the United States in the 1920s through the 1950s, and also includes original compositions by contemporary musicians whose journeys and influences resonate with Alam’s complex history and hybrid identity.
Zaid Islam Performance
Sunday, July 7 | 6:00pm
Zaid Islam will perform selection of Bengali Baul songs on the performance stage, transporting the audience to these mystic sounds from the east that were an early influence on Bobby’s life and music, and which he carried with him through his time in the United States. Zaid is a Bangladeshi artist based in New York, who has spent considerable amount of time and has strong bonds with Bauls and Fakirs from Kushtia (Lalon Fakir’s home) and other regions of Bangladesh, and India. Zaid is not a musician or an expert on the subject, but someone whose views and lifestyle have been greatly influenced by the philosophy and music of these mystic people.
The Modern School Performance
Sunday August 18 | 5 – 8pm
For the closing of Pigeonhole: The Life and Work of Bobby Alam, the jazz trio “The Modern School” will perform a selection of music on the performance stage in the installation, comprised of Dixieland Jazz and Dixieland inspired compositions, drawing on Alam’s career as a Jazz musician.
“The Modern School” is comprised of Christopher Hall (bass), Michael Howell (guitar), and Kahlil Kwame Bell (drums). “The Modern School” is named after the elementary school that inspired bassist Christopher Hall’s initial interest in jazz. Hall has been performing on the stage of the New Amsterdam Musical Association in New York City since 2003, and has been a fixture in the Harlem Jazz scene for over a decade. He has also performed on contrabass with the New Beginnings and Westchester Brassmen Drum, and Bugle Corps. Committed to teaching through music, Hall has worked with myriad cultural organizations including the National Council of Negro Women, the American Museum of Natural History, Concrete Timbre Performance Collective, and the 1st Stage Theatre.
An innovative and skillful guitarist from Kansas City, Michael Howell was inspired and taught by his father, noted guitarist, Herley Dennis. Howell has recorded three solo albums: “Alone” on Catalyst Records, and “Looking Glass” and “In The Silence” on Mile Stone Records. He also performed with musicians including Bobby Hutchenson, Hampton Hawes, Art Blakey, George Duke, Gene Ammons and Woody Shaw. Howell has also worked closely, and toured with one of the great bebop inventors – the music genius and master entertainer – Dizzy Gillespie.
Kahlil Kwame Bell, having made numerous recordings with musical icons and legends as well as with his own talented band, has been called “one of the most prolific musicians in the industry today.” Bell plays over numerous percussion instruments and has experimented with wood and clay flutes. His musical output varies from jazz to rock to hip hop; from European classical to world music; from spirituals to spoken word accompaniments. His layering of sounds and instruments, sometimes blended with unique rhythms, reflects his view of the unity of cultures through music.
About the Artists
Priyanka Dasgupta and Chad Marshall began collaborating in 2015. Their work is located in the gaps between history and story-telling, and draws from archival texts, sociological conventions, oral histories, postmodern theory and postcolonial studies, to examine power and privilege in the United States, and its relationship with image, and appearance. Exhibitions of their collaborative work include Pigeonhole, Dodd Galleries, University of Georgia (2019), Sunroom Project Space: Paradise, at Wave Hill, New York (2018), How to see in the dark, at Cuchifritos Gallery, New York (2018), Not an edge but a hinge, at Abrons Arts Center, New York (2018), In Practice: Another Echo at Sculpture Center, New York (2018), Loving Blackness and A More Perfect Union at the Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia (2017), Ornate Activate at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, Milwaukee (2017) and Shirin Gallery, New York (2015). Residencies include the Artist Studio Program at Smack Mellon (2018) and AIRspace at Abrons Arts Center (2018).
This exhibition is organized by Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
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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.
The General Public (TGP) presents Dopebbq featuring Trey Songz & Friends!
Nothing says Memorial Day Weekend like a fun filled barbecue or cookout with family, friends, and the Dopebbq family. DOPEBBQ is the definition of a high-energy and high quality barbecue experience with delicious food, great music, and beautiful people. This is a one of a kind party in NYC and a guaranteed sell out event.
If you were there last year, you know the deal, but this time the surprise is bigger and better!
Complimentary Food served for minimum time only and while supplies last. Food also available for sale by participating vendors.
La Luna is a sultry summer dance affair.
Independently minded, we promote the elevated dance music we love.
Purposeful in our production, we care about spirit, romance, and sustainability.
This is a celebration of summer.
Quo Vadis returns with another foray into the wilds of the sonic jungle at Knockdown Center on May 11th.
Lawrence English
Australian composer and curator Lawrence English’s ouvre spans well over fifteen years with countless installations and original works to his name, and has seen him collaborate regularly with Ben Frost, Alessandro Cortini and most recently William Basinski. His dynamic performances use walls of intense noise, dense fog and heavy sound pressure interspersed with moments of silence and field recordings. Bathing his crowds in these visceral and deeply emotive sensory experiences, he will be conjuring the otherworldly
Antenes
Lori Napoleon’s stunning live sets combine her innate sense of layering and flow as a killer techno DJ with a mad scientist zeal for creating new sounds from hardware, including building her own synthesizers out of vintage telephone equipment. Crafting each show differently, we don’t know which of her brilliant machines will be communing with us this evening, which only makes us all the more excited to have her on the lineup!
Omphalos
Every artist we’ve worked with is truly special, but Omphalos gets that little extra bit of love from us since it involves our beloved core Quo Vadis member Mike Amacio. Stepping out from the mixing console to the stage, Mike is joined by cellist, Matthew Robinson of Opal Onyx.
Boiler Room and iconic cult lifestyle brand Places+Faces are forming the latest power duo. Once a Tumblr blog photographing the biggest names in hip-hop, now a cultural phenomenan, a Places+Faces collab means you’re getting nothing but the best. Expect performances from the most exciting fresh artists in modern hip-hop, certified legends AND big DJs.
Join us for the closing of A Continuous Stream of Occurrence, with a sound intervention by Roarke Menzies, who will be engaging Luba Drozd’s installation.
Roarke Menzies is a New York City-based artist and musician who incorporates his voice, mouth and body with audio tools and toys to create electronic and electroacoustic works. His music has been described by The New Yorkeras “a layered electronic throb, coming and going, always enhancing but never overpowering.”
Menzies’s work has been presented at the Material Art Fair in Mexico City, the Spring Break Art Show in New York City, the Untitled Art Fair in Miami, VOLUME in Los Angeles, Quiet City in Vancouver, CHANNEL in Toronto, and many other venues. His music has also been presented on KCHUNG Radio, KFFP Freeform Portland, WNYU’s Bentwave FM, and on BBC Radio 3 as part of the series “New Year New Music: exploring iconic masterpieces, avant-garde experiments and the next generation of talent.”
About the exhibition
A Continuous Stream of Occurrence is an exhibition that brings together the works of Luba Drozd and William Lamson to explore how time manifests in natural and physical phenomena. The artists have created site-specific, time-based works that modify Knockdown Center’s gallery space into an uncertain laboratory, where architecture, light, piano cords, copper, salts, and glass create an ever-evolving environment that unveils time as materially constructed. By focusing on sound and vibration, or on crystallization and geological transformation, the exhibition invites visitors to experience the sensory elements that make up these living systems.
The Gardens of Babylon is a global family that co-creates mythical events around the world. Their magical NYC premier will feature performances from Red Axes, Kerala Dust, KMLN, Wild Dark, Carlita, and Gabriel Belmudes, plus meditations, ceremonies, a Market of Curiosities, and much more.