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Mar 05

Sunday Service: Sarah Zapata Presents….

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Better Pleasures

“The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalising rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.” Jose Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity.

For the opening event of the Spring 2019 season, Sarah Zapata brings together four artists who explore identity and geopolitical space, to present an imagined future through the understanding of one’s own position. It is through the examination of past and place that helps transport the ideals of the future to decay current tribulations. We strive for a better society, deeper intimacy, greater understanding, and ultimately a new world.

About the Curator
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.

About the Artists
Ignacio Torres was born in the US/Mexico border in El Paso, Texas and received a B.F.A. magna cum laude from the University of North Texas. Currently, Torres lives and works in New York City and is known for his cyanotype portraiture of Latinxs, which have a distinctly cyan blue color. Torres attributes his practice to his border upbringing and the Chicano culture he grew up in. His work involves the use of alternative photographic processes that require extensive manual work. The principal concern of his work investigates identity, othering, migration and the physical or invisible borders that we vacillate between. Torres’s use of botany serves as a symbol to the threat of plant life created by man made borders and references the historical use the cyanotype process. His work was recently exhibited as part of a group show held by JW Anderson in London.

Athena Torri is an Ecuadorian Italian artist. Born in Milan, Torri grew up in Quito, Ecuador before immigrating to the United States. Torri has a BFA from Ringling College of Art and Design, and a General Studies Certificate from the International Center of Photography. Her solo show, titled “Land of Opportunities”, was exhibited at Deli Gallery in New York. Conveyor Editions in New Jersey published Torri’s first monograph, The Outsider. Torri’s group shows include exhibitions at the International Center of Photography Triennial in New York, Material Art Fair in Mexico City, Re: Art Show 21 in Brooklyn, NY, Serpentine Galleries in London, and Stitching Electron in the Netherlands.

Leslie Martinez is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised between The Rio Grande Valley of the Texas-Mexican border and Dallas, Texas. They received an MFA from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut in 2018 and a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City in 2008. In the decade between, they worked as a full-time graphic designer in New York City’s apparel industry where computer-aided design and garment construction profoundly transformed their image/object construction methodology paving the way for a radically transformed approach to painting. Martinez is currently developing these emerging forms as an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. Recent group shows include Independence at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas, Heads/Tails at Next to Nothing Gallery in New York City, Way Out Now at Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, California, Kaleidoscope at Kravetz | Wehby Gallery in New York City, and Life and Living presented by Deli Gallery at Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center in Kingston, NY.

María Fernanda (Chamorro) is an early-career poet whose poems and translations appear in The Wide Shore, Kweli Journal, Pa’lante a la luz, and elsewhere. A recipient of Callaloo, CantoMundo, and VONA/Voices fellowships, María Fernanda featured her work at The Brooklyn Museum, MoMaPS1, The Ecuadorian American Cultural Center, The New York Aquarium, and more. She is also a founder of Candela Writers Workshop, a literary arts organization offering programming designed to support Black-Latinx poets through the preservation and the advancement of Black-Latinx literary work. Candela launches in Spring 2019. María Fernanda is a Black Ecuadorian American and Washington, D.C. native.

About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.

Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.

Mar 05

Colonized Dreams

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A night of celebrating diversity in the Muslim diaspora presented by Mipsterz, a non-profit initiative carving out positive creative spaces for Muslim Americans and other marginalized groups. Featuring performances from Zakarya Masmoudi, Fajjr + Ali, Zainab Mabizari, Sara Alfageeh, MIRUD, Chic Nunar, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Adam Maalouf, Humeysha, DJ AyesCold and visuals by Tingerine.

Schedule:
6:00 pm Doors
6:30 pm NYC Mipsterz Showcase, emceed by Abbas Rattani
7:45 pm Adam Maalouf
8:15 pm Humeysha
9:30 pm DJ AyesCold

Also featuring brand new original Mipsterz artwork and copies of Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us for sale, with refreshments from Kolkata Chai Co, Abu’s Homestyle Bakery, Taste of Lahore, and Allan’s Bakery.

Mipsterz is also proud to support the #SWABFORLINA Be The Match campaign, a nationwide effort to find the right stem cell donor for Liyna Anwar, currently battling leukemia. With 20 million potential donors, people of color are often underrepresented in potential matches.

About the Artists
Humeysha
Written and conceived in India by Zain Alam, Humeysha channels diverse influences, echoing sounds from New York to New Delhi. The multilingual self-titled debut evokes a wayfarer’s meditative travels through heritage and homeland. “Zain Alam is primarily a musician, but his work draws from a range of influences, from My Bloody Valentine, to the cinematic extravagance of Bollywood, to the gyrating percussions of Qawwali, a genre of devotional Sufi music known for its rhythm and lyricism. The result is a refined family of sounds that braids South Asian soundscapes into a distinctive flavor of spacious psych-pop, all built atop archival recordings that Alam collected on multiple trips he took to India and Pakistan.” – Pacific Standard

DJ AyesCold
Ayesha is a DJ, music producer, and former talent booker at U Street Music Hall, Washington DC. She recently relocated to New York to work with sample labels at Splice. Under the name ‘DJ Ayes Cold’ Ayesha has performed across the country, spinning at festivals like Bonnaroo and SXSW, and playing rooms featuring a wide range of talent like Blood Orange, Goldlink, Princess Nokia, Kingdom, Joekay, Shabazz Palaces, Gaslamp Killer, Tokimonsta, Venus X, Mike Q, Jayhood, Dave Nada, Madame Gandhi, and more. Ayesha is a vocal advocate for the representation of women and other musical minorities in the music industry, and more recently – in the world of sound design.

Adam Maalouf
Adam Maalouf’s music is found where the modern meets the ancient, where the Pantam (or handpan) meets ancient and traditional styles of music from around the globe brought together using both organic and electronic drums, beats and synthesizers. Pan-tam is the name of the “flying saucer” instrument invented in the year 2000, and the word stems from the combination of the Pan from Trinidad, and the Ghatam (clay pot drum) from South India. Adam’s unique musical style comes to life in genre-bending compositions for solo and ensembles incorporating global musicians.

About Mipsterz
Mipsterz is an arts and culture collective curating, enabling, and amplifying creators of marginalized backgrounds through illustration, film, and music.

On one hand, Mipsterz is a home for creators to build, collaborate, or experiment with diverse folks who share a common connection to a larger tradition. We actively provide mentorship, resources, and a platform to enable ideas and expression. On the other hand, Mipsterz content is for everyone. It is the collective representation and avenue through which our creativity is amplified in broader, diverse spaces. We have worked with everyone from the popular media, academia to museums and art spaces to bring our multi-dimensional third-culture inspired voices and stories to the forefront.

Mar 05

Pan-Pot / Martin Buttrich

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It can be the similarities between two people that draw them together, but it’s the differences between them that create something special. It would be nothing if those two polar opposites failed to meet in the middle. Such is the story of Pan-Pot.

Tassilo and Thomas met at Berlin’s renowned School of Audio Engineering, better known as the SAE Institute, and were drawn together as they were the only two in their studies who had their sights set on the sound of techno. Their initial musical efforts placed a primacy on integrating electronic experimentation with minimal stylings while simultaneously establishing the ominous, murky sounds that have since become synonymous with their name.

The defining moment of Pan-Pot’s career came in 2007 with the release of their debut artist album, Pan-O-Rama. The aptly named long player offered a 360-degree view of techno that was unique, uncompromised and most importantly, their own. The body of work perfectly balanced heavy, peak time club stormers to deeper, more intricate atmospherics and birthed the overground hit “Charly”. More recently “Confronted” and “Captain My Captain” have demonstrated their classic, bold and timeless production style, presenting them as the producers at the top of their game, both sonically and conceptually.

Pan-Pot haven’t gotten to where they are on their previous accolades alone, the duo have lent their craft recently in the form of a second album „The Other“ and high profile remixes for the likes of the legendary Carl Cox, Slam, Paul Kalkbrenner and the renowned Stephan Bodzin, all while touting a ferocious touring schedule appearing regularly at the best clubs and largest festivals in the world like Time Warp, Awakenings, Glastonbury, Kappa Future and Tomorrowland to name a few. The relentless touring is how they have truly gotten to where they are: by touching the writhing, euphoric, dancing seas of bodies at countless gigs every year. Not only do they have an electric vibe to watch, but their grasp and keen understanding of each and every dance floor is unparalleled. Whether it’s an intimate club night or a massive festival, Pan-Pot know exactly what to do. Unconstrained by boundaries, they traverse Techno, House and everything in between with a masters touch.

Although their name comes from a basic element of studio equipment, they have rewritten notions of form and function through their own idiosyncratic language and are now stepping completely into a new world since the launch of their own imprint, Second State in 2014. Over the last years, Second State has not only become a platform for Pan-Pot to release their own music, but a creative outlet derived from a family of like minded artists around them to inspire, imagine and travel the world with, spreading the Second State vision and catapulting new names into the spotlight like Amelie Lens, Stephan Hinz and Micheal Klein. It’s a place where all ideas can flow seamlessly, from music and events to art and fashion.

With no letting up in sight Tassilo Ippenberger and Thomas Benedix have proven that there are no limits to what can be achieved or dreamed. Now is the time Pan- Pot are truly coming into their own. Not only as world class artists and performers, but as tastemakers and masters of their own destiny.

pan-pot.net

Mar 05

FiftyTwo Ft: Morgan Blair

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Knockdown Center is pleased to present “27 Undoctored Photos of Betsy DeVos’ Radioactive Gingerbread Learnin’ Supercenter That Prove Camera Angle Is Everything. You Might Also Like: Transforming That Pesky White Guilt Into The Perfect Paleo Deviled Eggs, If You’re Into That Kind of Thing (Extruded Detail),” a new large-scale work by artist Morgan Blair as a part of our FiftyTwo Ft. series of long-term wall-based artworks in the East Corridor.

Blair’s painting process begins online, where she collects and collages together stills from children’s claymation projects on Youtube. Seeking crudely assembled approximations of reality, she further manipulates this visual material towards and away from abstraction, making new iterations from morphed and flattened blobs of colored clay. Ultimately these compositions are transferred onto wall and canvas where the shapes are filled with hard-edged airbrushed gradients and three-dimensional texture that further obscure the subject matter. Clashing, saturated colors root the paintings in an alternate reality while rambling, stream-of-consciousness titles combine personal, political, and pop culture references suggest new contexts for the final images.

Morgan Blair is an artist based in Ridgewood, Queens. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008. She has shown her work at The Hole (New York), Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York), Shane Campbell Gallery (Chicago), Andrew Rafacz (Chicago), Left Field (San Luis Obispo), Eighteen (Copenhagen), and the Newcomb Art Museum (New Orleans) and others. Blair has also painted large-scale murals at venues such as the Facebook offices in New York, Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Ma, Swanson Road Intermediate School in Auburn, MA, and Rudy’s Barbershop in Los Angeles. She also started Puzzle Time, an ongoing series of limited edition, hand-cut wooden jigsaw puzzles featuring the work of select contemporary artists.

Mar 05

A Continuous Stream of Occurrence

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Exhibition Events
Sunday April 28, 6pm
Closing reception and performance by Roarke Menzies

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 will create new 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.

Luba Drozd is a site specific video and sound installation artist. Working across media, the components of her installations continuously interconnect with architecture and each other. Her synthetic spaces examine tangible and intangible structures of authority and its manifestations in a built environment. The final pieces gesture to how intangible spaces within us – such as memory, knowledge and perception of time – are controlled and regimented. Luba earned a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Bard College. Her work was exhibited at the Bronx Museum, UIMA Chicago, Apexart, LUBOV Gallery, Smack Mellon, Ukrainian Museum, Carver Center for Art and Technology and many others. She is the recipient of a MASS MoCA Artist Residency, BRIC Media Arts Fellowship, Bronx Museum AIM program, Eastern State Historic Site Grant for New Work, VCCA Artist Residency Fellowship, Millay Colony residency and MacDowell Fellowship.

William Lamson is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice involves working with elemental forces to create durational performative actions. Set in landscapes as varied as New York’s East River and Chile’s Atacama Desert, his projects reveal the invisible systems and forces at play within these sites. In all of his projects, Lamson’s work represents a performative gesture, a collaboration with forces outside of his control to explore systems of knowledge and belief. Lamson’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including the Brooklyn Musuem, The Moscow Biennial, P.S.1. MOMA, Kunsthalle Erfurt, the Musuem of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles. In addition, he has produced site specific installations for the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and Storm King Art Center. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and a number of private collections. He has been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation, the Experimental Television Center, and is a Guggenheim Fellow. His work has appeared in ArtForum, Frieze, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Harpers, and the Village Voice. William Lamson was born Arlington, Virginia and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his MFA from Bard College, and he teaches in the Parsons MFA photography program and at the School of Visual Arts.

XP is the curatorial signature of Xavier Acarín and Park C. Myers.

Xavier Acarín works at the intersection of performance, architecture, object, and exhibition-making while considering art history, social issues, and the effects of globalization. His projects and programs have been presented at Chez Bushwick, Elastic City, The New School for Social Research, CCS-Hessel Museum, Peekskill Project 6, Java Projects, ESTE, Abrons Arts Center in New York, La Ira de Dios in Buenos Aires, MUU Kaapeli in Helsinki and LOOP Festival in Barcelona. His writings have been published at A-Desk, Culturas-La Vanguardia, Terremoto and BRAC (University of Barcelona). He has participated as author of the books Designing Experience (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Dear Helen (CCS Bard, 2014). Acarín holds an M.A. from the Center of Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

Park C. Myers is a curator and writer from Houston, TX, formerly based in New York City and Brussels. Myers is currently The Royall Family Curator at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA. He studied Film and Video at the Maryland Institute College of Art and holds an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. He has curated exhibitions and projects at Actual Size LA, Komplot, Brussels, the Steamboat Springs Arts Council in Steamboat, CO, the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and the Copenhagen Art Festival, among many other institutions. Publications include The Cure, published by Komplot, and Dear Helen published by CCS Bard. He is a co-founder and contributing editor of aCCeSsions an online journal for exploration in interdisciplinary curatorial praxis. Myers current research directions involve cognitive science, psychology, exhibition design, and the interaction of these fields of study with contemporary 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.

 

 

Mar 05

Kollektiv Turmstrasse / Öona Dahl / Daniel Cowel

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Kollektiv Turmstrasse (Diynamic Music / Musik Gewinnt Freunde / Germany)

Öona Dahl (All Day I Dream / Hallucienda / New York / Germany)

Daniel Cowel (Zero / New York)

*** TICKETS ON SALE NOW: https://ktkdc.eventbrite.com/ ***

 

About the Artists

There are few artists operating in the house/techno milieu who offer much beyond functionality in their music. Those who bring more than this to the table always stand out from the crowd. Hamburg/Berlin duo Kollektiv Turmstrasse (Christian Hilscher and Nico Plagemann) are one of those rare acts whose music caters for both body and soul.

Their cinematic take on 4/4 electronica has won praise from all quarters via releases on Diynamic, Connaisseur and their own Musik Gewinnt Freunde imprint. Debut album Rebellion der Träumer (‘The Dreamer’s Rebellion’) demonstrated a prowess beyond the realms of the dancefloor, laden with frosty electronic melody, downtempo rhythm and classy vocals. A busy remix schedule has seen them grace the likes of Cocoon, Get Physical, Soma, Poker Flat, Defected, Systematic and Traum, reworking multifarious acts including Trentemøller, Hot Chip and Terry Lee Brown Jnr. along the way.

Their sense of emotion – informed by their upbringing on Germany’s visually arresting Baltic Sea coast – lends their productions a human warmth, allowing them to slot effortlessly into both club and home listening scenarios. “Wide; open; top-heavy; all-consuming; shifted; simple; these are the words we use to describe our sound. We use both digital and analog. First and foremost we produce music for ourselves. We don‘t predetermine whether it’s suited for home or club environment.” This lack of contrition serves them well. Electronic music is an art for them; not a science.

Watching their live show reveals how their music connects with crowds on an emotional level, and how its melodic and textural depth works in such synergy with its rhythmic backbone. “We play live with two MacBooks running Ableton Live with over a thousand clips, which gives us a lot of space to improvise. The whole thing is controlled with one iPad each which allows us to work very fast and intuitively.”

Their show has been finding them in high demand across the globe, and has helped them to strengthen their relationship with Solomun’s Diynamic label – playing at their international parties while releasing music with them on a regular basis. “They have been friends of ours for over ten years” says Solomun. “It was a mere matter of time for them to join in. Mutual friends, interests and in general a similar perception of music and life brought us together.” While the label’s sound has evolved in recent years, there has always been a place for Kollektiv Turmstrasse within their fabric. “One thing that we all have in common is a certain melancholy and harmony in our productions.” For a duo who don’t like to be pigeonholed, it’s a perfect fit.

“The journey has alway been more important to us than the reward” Christian and Nico say on their future with music. “There is a lot to discover along the way and it might just be that the detour is the more scenic route to the next goal.” With such an organic pulse running through their productions, it should come as no surprise that they hope their career progresses in similarly unforced fashion.

Öona Dahl’s home is found beyond the conscious state, transforming dance floors into spaces wreathed in sound. With an open mind and a vast range of music knowledge, she knows how to connect on another level when playing her music to the crowd. Testing traditional musical limits with extended mixes, isochronic tones and melodies, Öona’s breadth of skill behind the decks is hard to match. A graduate of The International Academy of Design and Technology for Digital Media and Recording Arts. Her original production spans broad dance floor territory, from Techno, Deep House to Experimental Electronica. Finding the balance between light and dark with both her solo work and as Slumber has kept her inspired and able to express both arrays of emotions through her sound.

A true perfectionist, Daniel Cowel has traveled the world in search of the deepest roots of music and matched his geographical education with a deep study of the nature of the art, which is reflected in the breadth and integrity of his sets. An extremely humble and gracious human being, Daniel Cowel has built an international name for himself with his ZERO residency opening sets, carefully warming rooms and crafting slow boiling vibes, each set individually handled with delicate care and respect for whoever comes next. Yet, when his moments to shine arrive, Daniel Cowel delivers, giving us some incredible memories.

Mar 05

YJC Queer Lunar New Year Party

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Knockdown Center hosts the Yellow Jackets Collective’s 3rd Queer Lunar New Year Party, PIG: Year of Abundance, a party to celebrate joy and community for queer diasporic people of color.

In 2017, the year of the Rooster, YJC threw our very first queer lunar new year party. We were forged in fire, giving shape to our chosen family in the making and unmaking of things. This last year, 2018, was the year of the earth dog; when what remained from the devastation was nurtured. It was a year of grounding and healing, where people built anew and rooted in what had survived. Now it’s the year of the pig, and for Yellow Jackets, it will be a year of abundance. For us this year is about warm, generous love. It is about believing in the strength of our collective dreams, and scheming with our communities to manifest prosperity and joy. It is a year of reaping what you sow.

The party is meant to center queer people of color. There will be a slew of QTPOC DJs and performers as well as a night market with vendors selling zines, art, and other treats. Most of these performers and vendors are community that we’ve built in the last 3 years collaborating in NYC, and this party is meant as a celebration of our love, commitment and gratitude we have for our chosen families.

There will be NO TOLERANCE for anti-blackness, appropriative garb, harassment, anything nonconsensual. We are asking everyone to be financially transparent, as no POC folks will be turned away. We will have clear community guidelines in the space that we ask everyone to follow.

For context, the Lunar New Year is the first day of a calendar year that cycles with the moon. Hindu, Bengali, Buddhist, Islamic and traditional East Asian calendars are based on this system, and many of us in the U.S. who have ancestors from these ‘othered’ spaces still live and celebrate by it. The new year is a time of family reunion and we want to reinterpret this tradition by celebrating with our chosen families and our queer diasporic families.

Set List: Ushamami, DJ Ushka, Landline Sanrio Service, Br0nze_G0dd3ss, and Oscar Nñ [JUST ADDED]

Hosts: Discwoman, BUFU, BARS Collective, Shama Rahman, Alice Sparkly Kat, Ada Wrong, Yung Nihilist, Poppy and Yin of Mercy Mistress, Neon Christina (RAGGA NYC), China Residencies, Papi Juice, KT + Emilio [JUST ADDED], and Wing on Wo & Co [JUST ADDED]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

YELLOW JACKETS COLLECTIVE YJC is chosen family of yellow queers collaborating towards radical futures.

Mar 05

Ballroom Throwbacks X

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Come and celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Ballroom Throwbacks. What started as an idea progressed into a Youtube Channel, then a brand and a business. With well over 100 million views and counting BrtbTV is one of the fundamental windows into the underground culture.

Feb 28

Refiguring the Future Conference

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Knockdown Center hosts the final day of the Refiguring the Future Conference, organized by Eyebeam and REFRESH, and presented in collaboration with Hunter College Art Galleries.

 

About the Refiguring the Future Conference
Following a public reception on February 8, Refiguring the Futurewill open with a two-day conference highlighting over 20 speakers and workshop leaders, including special keynotes by Simone Browne, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Paul B. Preciado in conversation with Zach Blas. Providing space to unpack the key themes in the exhibition through keynotes, panel discussions, and community engaged programs, the conference will grapple with marginalizing states of technology by propelling us to a future in becoming.

With conditions of ecologies, humanities, and sciences being implicated by technological biases, what possibilities arise when this accelerated force is paused and worldbuilding is privileged anew? As technical powers have perpetuated systemic cultural and economic oppression, the ways in which we exist, navigate, and project are seemingly dictated and undermined.

The Refiguring the Future conference convenes artists, educators, writers, and cultural strategists to envision a shared liberatory future by providing us with collective imaginings that move beyond and critique oppressive systems to offer alternative possibilities. Additional participants include: Taeyoon Choi, Sofía Córdova, Kadija Ferryman, Shannon Finnegan, Anneli Goeller, Kathy High, Yo-Yo Lin, Maandeeq Mohamed, Rasheedah Phillips, Sofía Unanue, and Alexander Weheliye (list in formation).

The Refiguring the Future conference is curated by Eyebeam/REFRESH Curatorial and Engagement Fellow Lola Martinez and REFRESH member Maandeeq Mohamed.

FEBRUARY 10  CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM | Event Check in 

12:00 PM – 01:45 PM | Session 1: Workshops, Talks, and Screenings

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Workshop | Mxtressclass: Lexi Had a Little Alembic

Location: Ready Room Bar

In a co-constitutive process of exchange, this semi-structure workshop will engage participants on collaborative writing for performance, online synchronous writing, and collaborative writing processes using enabling constraints and sympoietic systems.

In Her Interior (Virginia Barratt and Francesca da Rimini), Artists

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body

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Talks | Refiguring Planetary Health, Building Black Futures

Location: Annex

We cannot have a healthy planet that sustains all human beings as long as the systemic oppression of Black and Indigenous peoples continues. And yet, prominent environmental science institutions concerned with conservation and climate change often fail to address this oppression or their role in perpetuating it. In this talk, we will explore how histories of scientific racism and eugenics inform current scientific policies and practice. Cynthia Malone will work with various forms of freedom practice, from hip hop to science fiction to scholarship in the Black Radical Tradition, to consider alternative visions for planetary health that advance both environmental stewardship and liberation from oppressive ideologies and systems.

Cynthia Malone, Activist, Scholar, and Scientist

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The Spirit of the Water Bear

In this talk, Claire Pentecost will give an introduction and reading of Spirit of the Water Bear, a young adult novel set in a coastal town in the Carolinas. The novel’s protagonist, Juni Poole, is a 15-year-old girl who spends much of her time exploring the natural world. Inevitably, she finds herself confronting the urgency of a crisis that has no end, namely climate change and the sixth great extinction. Through experiences of activism, she finds comrades who feel environmental and political urgency much as she does, and learns that she has a place in the ongoing struggle for environmental justice. The book is a work of “Cli-Fi” or climate fiction, featuring Juni’s adventures, but it is also a work of “Cli-Phi” or climate philosophy, featuring conversations and musings on the nature of our existential predicament.

Claire Pentecost, Artist

Speaker Introductions by Lola Martinez, Eyebeam and REFRESH Curatorial and Engagement Fellow

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Workshop | Bioplastics for Ritual Healing from Petrochemical Landscapes 

Location: Arizona

In this bioplastics and biomaterials workshop, participants will refigure methodologies to radically re-make petro-chemically derived plastic materials that we use in our everyday lives. We will envision tactics for reclaiming, rebuilding, nurturing and healing – via renewable biological raw materials – the extractive and destructive processes of techno-capitalism and the inherent waste, cultural and environmental degradation of these now dominant processes.

Tiare Ribeaux, Artist—

Screening | Incense, Sweaters, and Ice

Location: Gallery 2

(1 hour, 9 minutes. Closed Captioned)

Incense Sweaters & Ice follows the movements of Girl, Mrs. Queen Esther Bernetta White, and WB (“whiteboy”) through different phases of watching, being watched, and remaining unseen. Using Hollywood film tropes and the visual languages of social media video platforms like Vine and Instagram, the film follows the long cinematic history of using camera motion to create the illusion of subjectivity. Intertwining technique and narrative, the film drives at the tension between surveillance and self­ promotion that pervades our many avenues of self­ documentation and broadcast.

Martine Syms, Artist

Film Introductions by Maandeeq Mohamed, Writer

01:45 PM – 02:45 PM | Lunch 

03:00 PM – 04:45 PM |   Session 2: Workshops, Talks, and Programs

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Workshop | Abstract Data Portraits

Location: Wood Jamb

Note: Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops.

In this community data justice workshop, participants will explore the data they constantly create by generating and abstracting their data via creative code. Through an informative yet playful process, we aim to demystify concepts around “big data” by allowing agency and providing information.

Ladan Siad, Designer and Creative Technologist

Aljumaine Gayle, Designer

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Roundtables and Talks | Visible networks: Community Building in the Digital Arena

Location: Annex

As notions of accessibility are being rendered visible on networks and digital medias, disability and chronic illness communities are utilizing networks to provide resources and representations. Yet what does it mean to build community within these platforms? This roundtable discussion offers reflections by artists working to provide new insights into biomedical discourses which reinforce apparent and unapparent representations of disabled bodies.

Hayley Cranberry, Artist

Anneli Goeller, Artist

Yo-Yo Lin, Artist

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#GLITCHFEMINISM

Legacy Russell is the founding theorist behind Glitch Feminism as a cultural manifesto and movement. #GLITCHFEMINISM aims to use the digital as a means of resisting the hegemony of the corporeal. Glitch Feminism embraces the causality of ‘error’ and turns the gloomy implication of ‘glitch’ on its ear by acknowledging that an error in a social system disturbed by economic, racial, social, sexual, cultural stratification, and the imperialist wrecking-ball of globalization—processes that continue to enact violence on all bodies—may not be ‘error’ at all, but rather a much-needed erratum. The digital is a vessel through which our glitch ‘becoming’ realises itself, and through which we can reprogramme binary gender coding. Our ‘glitch’ is a correction to the machine—f**k hegemonic coding! USURP THE BODY—BECOME YOUR AVATAR!

Legacy Russell, Curator and Writer

Speaker Introductions by Lola Martinez, Eyebeam and REFRESH Curatorial and Engagement Fellow

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Workshop |  Alt-text as Poetry 

Location: Ready Room Bar

Alt-text is a key building block of web accessibility, allowing blind people and people with low vision to access visual content. Often it is seen through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden that needs to be met with minimum effort. How can we instead approach alt-text lavishly and creatively? In this workshop, we will reframe alt-text as a type of poetry and practice writing it together.

Shannon Finnegan, Artist

Bojana Coklyat, Artist

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Workshop |  Distributed Web of Care

Location: Arizona

What kind of network do we want for the future? How does it feel to be programmed into centralized, decentralized, and distributed networks? Distributed Web of Care imagines a more equitable, caring internet for the future. Through lecture and performance, we will address timely issues of the internet including surveillance, censorship, corporate data ownership, and explore alternative methods of communicating via peer to peer protocols for collective agency.

Taeyoon Choi, Artist and co-founder of School for Poetic Computation

Stud1nt, Sound Artist

Cori Kresge, Dancer

04:45 PM – 05:00 PM | Session Break 

05:00 PM – 05:30 PM | Performance: Breaching Toward Other Futures

Location: Main

For their performance, Morehshin Allahyari and Shirin Fahimi will channel the revelation of the jinn figures Aisha Qandisha and Ilm al-raml as their method for telling and opening doors towards other futures. Aisha Qandisha is one of the most honored and fearsome jinn in Islam, known as “the opener”. When she possesses humans, she does not take over the host but rather opens them to an outside–to a storm of incoming jinn and demons, making them a traffic zone of cosmodromic data. Ilm al-raml refers to the foresight that the Earth holds within itself. Through its practice, this foresight is revealed and the future is seen, known, and breached.

Morehshin Allahyari, Artist

Shirin Fahimi, Artist

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The Knockdown Center is an accessible venue. The conference entrance is located on 52-19 Flushing Ave at 54th St through a parking lot. The accessible entrance is available by ramp in front of the building. Restrooms are located on the ground floor lobby area and are wheelchair accessible.

(For accessible transportation inquiries from the Flushing Ave JM MTA Station to the Knockdown Center please contact j.soto@eyebeam.org or +1 347 378 9163 (voice only) by Thursday, February 7)

Day 1: American Sign Language interpretation and CART captioning will be provided

Day 2: American Sign Language interpretation will be provided

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About the Refiguring the Future Exhibition 
Curated by REFRESH collective members Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Dorothy R. Santos, the exhibition title is inspired by artist Morehshin Allahyari’s work defining a concept of “refiguring” as a feminist, de-colonial, and activist practice. Informed by the punk ethos of do-it-yourself (DIY), the 18 artists featured in Refiguring the Future deeply mine the historical and cultural roots of our time, pull apart the artifice of contemporary technology, and sift through the pieces to forge new visions of what could become.

The exhibition will present 11 new works alongside re-presented immersive works by feminist, queer, decolonial, anti-racist, and anti-ableist artists concerned with our technological and political moment including: Morehshin Allahyari, Lee Blalock, Zach Blas*, micha cárdenas* and Abraham Avnisan, In Her Interior (Virginia Barratt and Francesca da Rimini)*, Mary Maggic, Lauren McCarthy, shawné michaelain holloway*, Claire and Martha Pentecost, Sonya Rapoport, Barak adé Soleil,Sputniko! and Tomomi Nishizawa, Stephanie Syjuco, and Pinar Yoldas*.

Names with asterik denotes participation in conference.

Refiguring the Future Schedule
Exhibition: February 8, 2019—March 31, 2019
205 Hudson Gallery, Hunter College Art Galleries
New York, NY 10013

Conference: February 9-10, 2019
February 9th, 2018
10am – 6pm
Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College
695 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065

February 10th, 2018
12pm – 6pm
Knockdown Center
52-19 Flushing Ave, Maspeth, NY 11378

*Full detailed schedule coming soon

ABOUT
Technology’s effect on our future is always changing and difficult to understand. Through exploratory process and emotionally compelling output, Eyebeam believes that artists can help us visualize and realize a more just future. Eyebeam provides both space and support for a community of diverse, justice-driven artists. Our annual residency program, highly engaged community of alumni, advanced tools and resources, and shows and events help our artists bring their work to life and out into the world. Eyebeam enables people to think creatively and critically about technology’s effect on society, with the mission of revealing new paths toward a more just future for all.

REFRESH is a collaborative and politically engaged platform established in 2016. As a collective, they begin with inclusion as a starting point for pursuing sustainable artistic and curatorial practices across the fields of art, science, and technology.

Hunter College Art Galleries provide a space for critical engagement with art and pedagogy, bringing together historical scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and experimental methodology.

Kaye Playhouse hosts internationally-acclaimed artists and music, dance and theatre companies for New York audiences, as well as serving as the centerpiece for the performing arts at Hunter College.

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