Skip to main content
Feb 28

Hospital Fest

By

HOSPITAL FEST 2018

Hospital Productions — the cult NYC record label specializing in underground music, founded in 1997 by Dominick Fernow — returns for its annual festival showcasing the interconnectivity of cold music subcultures. Voyeurs will discover a diverse and heavily curated cross section of the noise, electronic, and metal music landscapes hardening before the December solstice

EARLY SHOW – 12PM [Early show tickets include entry into the late show]

Featuring: Power Trip with Prurient & Iggor Cavalera (of Sepultura), Merzbow, Jesu with special guests [Justin K Broadrick], Kelly Moran, Linekraft, Final [Justin K Broadrick], Autoerotichrist, 51717, Zohra Atash, Country Club, Nikki Sneakers, Ron Morelli official – Live

LATE SHOW – 11PM

Featuring: Silent Servant (Official) – Live, Shifted, Becka Diamond, Ancient Methods

+ More To Be Announced

all day: all night

Feb 28

Andy Stott / Demdike Stare / Nick Klein / rrao

By

Quo Vadis and Knockdown Center Present

Andy Stott – Live
Demdike Stare
Nick Klein – Live
rrao – Live

21+

Andy Stott [Modern Love] With a sound that’s both worldly and underworldly, elegant and hauntingly distorted, Andy Stott is one of dark electronic music’s most cherished producers. The Manchester native deconstructs the traditional elements of dub and techno—analog Roland synths and Elektron drum machine grooves—compounding them with idiosyncratic melodies and field recordings, resulting in a sound that’s infinitely listenable yet boldly provocative. Moments of sentimentality recall the glory days of rave and euro-house before deliberately and unceremoniously decomposing into a stark sonic void

Stott’s dancefloor mastery and left-field sensibility have made him a cult favorite, with adherents everywhere from the obscure nooks of Berlin’s Berghain to the pages of Pitchfork, who awarded their Best New Music designation to both his 2014 album Faith In Strangers and 2012’s Luxury Problems. His new record, 2016’s Too Many Voices was lauded by Tiny Mixtapes, who described it as “home to some of his most severely commanding and disturbingly tender songs to date.”

Demdike Stare [Modern Love] A Quo Vadis favorite back with us for the fourth time, Demdike Stare is equal parts rhythmic noise and occult black magic. Miles Whitaker and Sean Canty grew up in Manchester and bonded over a love of crate-digging. In the late aughts, they formed up as Demdike Stare, named for the Pendle witch coven matriarch Demdike (née Elizabeth Southerns). Their sound meshes syncopated breakbeats with primal pounding, slick-wet ambiance with dusty samples, luscious drones with expansive orchestral passages. Allmusic praised their 2016 Wonderland, saying, “Demdike Stare sound like they’re having an enormous amount of fun coming up with the most off-the-wall bangers they can summon from their machines.”

Nick Klein [LI.E.S/Bank/Alter] A prodigy of gritty electronic textures with roots in Miami, Nick Klein is a producer, event curator, and co-founder of the Primitive Languages imprint based in Brooklyn. He has been putting out a stream of experimental noise contraptions and infectious minimal tech bangers since 2013. Labels that have published Klein include ALTER, BANK Records NYC, and Ascetic House, as well as LIES Records News who released his 2016 EP Rhinestone Cowboy, an underground hit. Krossfingers calls his 2018 EP Lowered Flaming Coffin a “phenomenal release,” adding, “it feels fresh after listening.” He recently performed a b2b set with Cienfuegos broadcasted by Boiler Room from the eighteen-hour Fourth World party series

rrao [The Bunker New York] Known primarily for working soundboards at dancefloors and underground boîtes, rrao is currently releasing her first original tracks, and she’s letting the music do the talking. Her debut single “Anita”, a track rich with stereoscopic drones, driving tablas, and immersive found sounds, appeared on the 15 Years of The Bunker compilation. She’s often seen spinning alongside her labelmates from The Bunker at Brooklyn most beloved spots

Feb 28

Universal Skin Salvation: A Conversation

By

Join Knockdown Center and BOMB Magazine for an evening celebrating Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin’s exhibition Universal Skin Salvation — the artist’s first large-scale solo exhibition featuring a custom line of K-beauty products and a fully immersive sauna. In the spirit of BOMB’s interviews, Knockdown Center and BOMB host a conversation with artists Valery Jung Estabrook, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin and scholar So-Rim Lee to discuss their respective practices, intersecting areas of research, and topics prompted by the works in the exhibition such as cultural possession, concepts of beauty and the cosmetic industry, and technology and management of the self.

Reception to follow in Knockdown Center’s bar, the Ready Room.

Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin explores the porousness of bodily boundaries and the ceaseless movement of living processes, like fermentation that echo the history of colonialism. Shin is interested in entangling the history of conquest and the literal digestion of material – herbs, medicine, and food – into a new system of relations that emerge from a complicated history of entanglement. Shin has exhibited at SPRING/BREAK, New York, NY (2018), Disclaimer Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2018), AC Institute, New York, NY (2017), Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY (2017), Miranda Kuo Gallery, New York, NY (2017), and many others. Forthcoming shows include Phantom Limb at Cody Dock, London, England and Ghost in the Ghost at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY. Shin lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Valery Jung Estabrook was born in Plantation, Florida, and grew up on an organic Asian pear farm in rural southwestern Virginia. She holds an MFA in Painting from Brooklyn College and a BA in Visual Art from Brown University. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including New York, Los Angeles, Lagos, Bilbao, and Melbourne. In 2018 she received the Gold AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Award, an annual award recognizing artists of Korean heritage in the United States. She currently resides in New Mexico.

So-Rim Lee is the 2018-19 Center for Korean Research-Academy of Korean Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. Lee researches on contemporary popular culture’s complex embodiments of neoliberalism through performance studies and visual culture, with a focus on South Korea. Lee’s doctoral dissertation, “Performing the Self: Cosmetic Surgery and the Political Economy of Beauty in Korea,” weds historiography, cultural studies, media studies, and performance analysis to construe cosmetic surgery as a mode of performing one’s subjectivity in contemporary Korea. Lee has previously written for New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, and Theatre Survey, and is a recipient of the Ric Weiland Humanities and Sciences Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, and the Charlene Porras Graduate Scholar Award from the El Centro Chicano y Latino at Stanford University.

About the exhibition
On view November 10 – December 16, 2018
Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin: Universal Skin Salvation features a custom line of K-beauty products and a fully immersive sauna alongside new video, photo, and collage works. Visitors are invited to apply the beauty products and enter the sauna installation, absorbing small amounts of home-brewed lactic acid. For Shin, the active bacterial agent acts as a stand-in for bodily rehabilitation from the Korean War, and as an extension of the Korean “flesh” enlivened by biological matter.

Feb 28

I Am Soca: Flashback

By

A retro Soca fete with a hint of new flavor plus music by top Soca DJs and a performance from Edwin Yearwood + more to be added!

Tickets On Sale!

***

For Event Info & More Follow On Facebook & Instagram @IAmSocaEvent

Or Visit www.IAmSocaEvent.com

Feb 28

Ben Klock / Anthony Parasole / Newa

By

Knockdown Center presents Ben Klock (Ostgut Ton, Klockworks)

with support from Anthony Parasole (Ostgut Ton, Output), Newa (Klockworks, Semantica, Bassiani)

Knockdown Center is thrilled to welcome Klockworks label-founder Ben Klock to its main space on November 23rd, 2018 along with Output resident Anthony Parasole, and Klockworks labelmate Newa in support. A fixture in Resident Advisor’s top-10 DJs for the better part of a decade, Ben Klock needs little introduction. Having become a Berghain resident in 2005, he has since established himself at the forefront of Berlin’s modern Techno movement, an ever-present symbol of the city’s vast musical landscape. His long-standing relationship with the notorious Techno institution has formed the backdrop to his success, providing an invaluable platform that has allowed him to become one of the most in-demand DJ/producers of the current generation.

Those who have witnessed him perform will note not only the diversity in his track selection, but also his ability to create a room rather than just play to it. Though intense and powerful, his DJ output reflects a certain kind of fervour, capturing an artistry and emotion that can often appear absent from the Techno genre. He also possesses a wonderful understanding of how to adapt his music to the circumstances, a competence that means he can be found at both large-scale festivals and small intimate club settings around the world.

Klockworks, a label Ben founded in 2006 as a home for his more raw and minimal productions, has shifted its focus over recent years to become a medium for him to present his more diverse personal tastes and support developing talents. The growth of the label has been aided by a series of showcases at various international locations, including London’s Village Underground, New York, Barcelona, Detroit and Berlin, with more on the horizon.

Anthony Parasole should also need no introduction to newer or longer-standing dancers of the New York Deep House and Techno scenes. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Anthony Parasole has had a lifelong love affair with electronic music. Listening to radio shows playing the early dance tracks from New York, Chicago, Detroit, and beyond, really perked up his ears. His earliest experiences at the New York clubs and Storm Raves blew his mind wide open. His engulfment in this gritty New York street music and culture is an influence on his style to this day, not only in his music but in the entire artistic aesthetic of his labels.

Anthony has productions out on his own labels, The Corner & Deconstruct, as well as for Marcel Dettmann’s mighty Techno imprint MDR. Parasole has since made the progression to resident at Berghain and through this platform he began shaping his sound and technique, pushing his deep, raw, driving, rhythmic, percussive, and mesmerizing sound that club-goers have come to know and love. Soon after, Anthony became resident at Output in his home town Brooklyn, NY and he continues to consistently challenge dancefloors worldwide.

Newa (real name Ana Kublashvili) hails from Tbilisi, Georgia, and has grown into one of the most talented and recognized producers from the region. Being the first female DJ/producer to have releases on Ben Klock’s label Klockworks, with additional releases on Bassiani and Semantica, Newa has played alongside Klockworks artists at Photon showcases at Berghain, Bassiani and others across the world.

LINKS

Ben Klock
Resident Advisor
Soundcloud
Facebook
Spotify
Beatport

Anthony Parasole
Resident Advisor
Facebook
Spotify
Beatport

Newa
Resident Advisor
Soundcloud
Facebook
Spotify
Beatport

Feb 28

The Read Live!

By

Join Kid Fury and Crissle for a live taping of their weekly podcast covering hip-hop and pop culture’s most trying stars. Throwing shade and spilling tea with a flippant and humorous attitude, no star is safe from Fury and Crissle unless their name is Beyoncé. (Or Blue Ivy.)

As transplants to NYC, The Read also serves as an on-air therapy session for two friends trying to adjust to life and rats in the big city.

In conjunction with Werk It – the Women’s Podcast Festival. The annual Werk It festival from WNYC Studios is the podcasting industry’s only gathering dedicated to elevating women’s voices on both sides of the microphone. For registration to Werk It! (November 13-14, 2018) visit https://www.werkitfestival.com/

[Tickets to The Read Live! and Werk It! Festival are sold separately and do not gain access to the other]

Feb 28

Werk It! A Women’s Podcast Festival

By

Join Werk It: A Women’s Podcast Festival, the inimitable annual gathering for women shaping the future of podcasting! Two full days of conversations, workshops, live tapings, networking events, and one-on-one mentoring sessions, plus our Podcast Accelerator: your chance to pitch a show, incubate a pilot, and score a development deal with WNYC Studios.

Register now to become a part of our growing community of female and non-binary producers, hosts, writers, reporters, editors, engineers, social media managers, marketers, sound designers, video producers, entrepreneurs, and executives, from across the United States and around the world, in all stages of our careers.

We’ll be updating the schedule and list of presenters, posting information and ticketing for evening Werk It events happening at venues across NYC, and sharing FAQs about the festival at www.werkitfestival.com.

Werk It is produced by WNYC Studios, the home of Radiolab, Death, Sex & Money, 2 Dope Queens, Note to Self, Snap Judgment, Sooo Many White Guys, Here’s the Thing, The New Yorker Radio Hour, On the Media, Nancy and other great podcasts.

Feb 28

Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin: Universal Skin Salvation

By

Knockdown Center is pleased to present Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin: Universal Skin Salvation, the artist’s first large-scale solo exhibition, featuring a custom line of K-beauty products and a fully immersive sauna alongside new video, photo, and collage works.

Lactic acid is a bacterial compound found in sour milk, in muscles, and in fermented foods like Kimchi. Recent studies show that lactic acid can fortify the composition of the microbes in the gut, improving the metabolization of bodily injuries and building immunity to post-traumatic stress disorder. The bacterium can also lighten the flesh by exfoliating dead skin and rejuvenating new skin cells, and is popularly used in K-beauty products as a whitening agent (K-beauty refers to the multi-billion dollar Korean cosmetic industry). Shin engages with the concept of “lactification,” a term coined by philosopher Frantz Fanon that refers to the whitening of a race or to make one “milky.”

Visitors are invited to apply Shin’s custom K-beauty products such as lotions, mist sprays, and serums, and enter the sauna, absorbing small amounts of home-brewed lactic acid. For Shin, the active bacterial agent acts as stand-in for bodily rehabilitation from the Korean War and as an extension of the Korean “flesh” enlivened by biological matter. Through this immersive exhibition Shin asks: how does K-beauty’s emphasis on achieving a “glassy” and “transparent” complexion render Korean skin exoticized and impermeable, or plasticized, following the trauma and migration of the Korean War? How does Korean subjectivity emerge through flesh that has undergone extreme processes of cultural possession?

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/311874269610873/

Programs
Thursday, November 29
7:30pm: Universal Skin Salvation: A Conversation
Conversation with artists Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, Valery Jung Estabrook and scholar So-Rim Lee 
Presented with BOMB Magazine

Thursday, December 13
7:30pm: Fleshing Out the Ghost: the Fetish, Desire, and Master in K-beauty
Performance lecture

Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin explores the porousness of bodily boundaries and the ceaseless movement of living processes, like fermentation that echo the history of colonialism. Shin is interested in entangling the history of conquest and the literal digestion of material – herbs, medicine, and food – into a new system of relations that emerge from a complicated history of entanglement. Shin has exhibited at SPRING/BREAK, New York, NY (2018), Disclaimer Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2018), AC Institute, New York, NY (2017), Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY (2017), Miranda Kuo Gallery, New York, NY (2017), and many others. Forthcoming shows include Phantom Limb at Cody Dock, London, England and Ghost in the Ghost at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY. Shin lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

***

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.

Skip to content