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May 01

The Truth About Pangaea II Release Party

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Social Malpractice Publishing invites you to celebrate the release of Ana Fabrega’s second book, The Truth About Pangaea II, at the Knockdown Center!
Performances by:
Ana Fabrega
Erin Schwartz
Max Wittert
Lorelei Ramirez
Sean J Patrick Carney
Elizaveta Shneyderman
Steve Girard 
 
We’ll have both of Ana’s books for sale at the event, plus some special, one-night-only giveaways. And for the first time in the history of the world, Ana presents an original Mix Your Own Chex Micks station. Yes, you read that correctly. Make sure to bring your Instagram account with you. 
 
To be guaranteed a copy of Ana’s book, please visit the Social Malpractice website for preorder: 
 
The Truth About Pangaea II is Social Malpractice’s 35th artist book publication and features contributions from Erin Schwartz, Elizaveta Shneyderman, Brandon Reese, Charlie Hankin, Emily Harrington, Lauren Molina, Lorelei Ramirez, Margalit Cutler, Mikey Heller, Max Wittert, Sean J Patrick Carney, Steve Girard, and Thomas John Gamble.
The Truth About Pangaea II continues comedian Ana Fabrega’s brutal quest to expose and articulate the hard truths about this damnable planet that we call home. No presumptive certainty is safe from her scathing critiques as she boldly shreds apart what we think we know about our oceans, the shrouded history of the Girl Scouts, the advent of the automobile, “Big Denim,” carbohydrates, and social media. Featuring intros, forwards, prefaces, and intros to the prefaces by notorious dissenters Erin Schwartz and Elizaveta Shneyderman, plus paradigm-shattering illustrations by a who’s-who of today’s most divisive political satirists, The Truth About Pangaea II will rattle your bones until you beg to have your Woke Card revoked permanently.
Illustrations by: Brandon Reese, Charlie Hankin, Emily Harrington, Lauren Molina, Lorelei Ramirez, Margalit Cutler, Mikey Heller, Max Wittert, Sean J Patrick Carney, Steve Girard, and Thomas John Gamble
SMP No. 35 | 60 pages, staple-bound | Original edition of 100, numbered and signed
Ana Fabrega is a comedian in New York City. She produces, hosts, and performs at comedy venues and art spaces around the city.  She hosts a monthly show on the first Sunday of every month at Starr Bar in Brooklyn at 8pm called Sundays with Ana. She was selected as a Comedy Central “Comics to Watch” for the 2016 New York Comedy Festival. The New York Times describes Ana as “an inventive performer with a knack for off-kilter characters.”
Ana has appeared on IFC’s Portlandia, Fusion’s The Chris Gethard Show, TV Land’s The Jim Gaffigan Show, Comedy Central’s “Sunset Peak” and “Alternatino,” Chestnut Walnut’s “Little Banks on Wall Street,” MNN’s The Special Without Brett Davis, IFC’s “Boy Band,” and various videos for Mas Mejor. She writes and stars in the web series “Jana & Shasta” (New York Television Festival), and wrote “The Truth About Pangaea,” and “The Truth About Pangaea II,” comedy zines published by Social Malpractice Publishing. She was a finalist in the 2015 Andy Kaufman Awards.  In January 2016, she was part of Ars Nova’s Showgasm Spotlight series with her show “Go, Baby, Go!” which featured a variety of her characters, stand-up, videos, and pictures.
Social Malpractice Publishing is an independent label in Brooklyn, NY curated and produced by Sean J Patrick Carney and Claire Mirocha. Since 2009, SMP has produced over 50 original books and editions for a variety of artist and comedians including Jayson Musson, Ana Fabrega, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Heather Guertin, Deanna Havas, Al Bedell, Bob Nickas, and MK Guth, amongst others. Learn more at socialmalpractice.com.
Apr 25

Lourdes Correa-Carlo: Intended Trajectories

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For her solo exhibition at Knockdown Center, Lourdes Correa-Carlo has produced seven new works in dialogue with urban embodiment and the visual politics of city space. Through sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and installation, Intended Trajectories reflects the artist’s ongoing engagement with her material surroundings, as well as her interest in the relationship between the body and the built environment.

While navigating public space in New York City, Correa-Carlo has been taking photographs of architectural facades, construction sites, objects discarded on the street. With these images, she employs a range of materials—often industrial or salvaged—in order to examine the more abstract aspects of physical structures, drawing out the social and psychological effects of architecture and urban planning.

Within the exhibition, a series of site-specific installations engage the architectural specificities of Knockdown Center, referencing the building’s former use as a glass factory, and later as the site of a frame and door company. These works—creeping across walls and embedding themselves in doorways—mimic, augment, or conceal the gallery’s vestigial industrial features, unsettling the exhibition’s frame. Other sculptural and drawing-based works introduce outside architectural elements into the gallery, yielding a constellation of cityscapes that alter the viewer’s sense of location and scale. The remaining works, a series of vinyl prints on glass and a two-channel video, embrace the familiar sights of the city’s public transportation systems, the interstitial and subterranean spaces of waiting and watching.

Together, the works in the exhibition look inward and outward at once, mapping a psychogeography of encounter between artist and city, body and building.

Exhibition Events

Saturday June 10, 6 – 9pm
Opening Reception with artist-led tour
Thursday July 13, 7:30pm
Lourdes Correa-Carlo and Alan Ruiz in Conversation

Lourdes Correa-Carlo (b. 1970, San Juan) is an artist who works across drawing, photography, collage, video, sculpture, and installation. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University and a BFA in Sculpture from Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, NY (2015-2017) and has previously held residencies at Artist in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (2013); Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX (2010-2012); and Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY (2011). Her work has been exhibited with institutions that include the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, NY; School of Visual Arts, New York, NY; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL; Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY; and Art Center South Florida, Miami, FL.

Christian Camacho-Light is a curator and writer based in New York. Recent exhibitions include Stage 6: Lourdes Correa-Carlo, Down-Below, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, NY (2016) and Standard Forms, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2016). They are currently at work on an exhibition to be shown at the Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts, Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ (November 2017). They hold an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and a BA in Art History from Vassar College.

Lourdes Correa-Carlo: Intended Trajectories is presented with the generous support of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Special thanks to Ece Gürleyik, Drew Lichtenstein, Kristine Servia, and Elena Yelamos.

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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.

Apr 24

The Arts Hub

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Creative Tech Week presents the Arts Hub. In the main hall, 50 digital, VR and electronic artworks are on display for Stronger Together, an exhibit of work by computer art department faculty of 10 area universities. Join us for two evenings of art; pioneering electronic and experimental music; hands-on 3D printing workshops; and food and drink at the Ready Room onsite at the Knockdown Center.

Plan 23 with live visuals by Zarah Cabanas, Chris Jorden & Sofy Yuditskaya
Plan 23 creates extended audio-visual experiences that bend one’s perception of time and space. Encompassing a sonic spectrum from dark-ambient soundscapes via subliminal pulses to electronic sounds the group delivers sonic explorations into uncharted spaces; combining music and visuals into an engaging sensory journey – redefining psychedelic sound for the 21st century.

SMOMID
Compositions with algorithmic and AI processes that bring in the computer as an additional creative participant.

Raphaele Shirley & Algis Kizys
12.6 Lyrae/le chiffre is an immersive site-specific installation and live performance by the artist Raphaele Shirley in collaboration with musician and composer Algis Kizys, with musicians Vinnie Signorelli, Laura Ortman and Eric Hubel. A visual and auditory landscape that creates a journey through time space, a poetic exploration of states of being through layered abstract combinations.

Curated by Carol Parkinson, Harvestworks, and Wolfgang R. von Stuermer (aka WvS), Ab Uno Pluribus.

Two night tickets available here:
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1469604-creative-tech-week-arts-hub-maspeth/

Details about the exhibition and workshops here:
https://knockdown.center/event/stronger-together/

Apr 24

The Arts Hub

By

Creative Tech Week presents the Arts Hub. In the main hall, 50 digital, VR and electronic artworks are on display for Stronger Together, an exhibit of work by computer art department faculty of 10 area universities. Join us for two evenings of art; pioneering electronic and experimental music; hands-on 3D printing workshops; and food and drink at the Ready Room onsite at the Knockdown Center.

Pamela Z
Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and media artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she creates solo works combining experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures.

Jimmy Joe Roche & Layne Garrett
Modular synthesizer and voice with found objects, augmented guitars and self-built instruments.

Long Distance Poison
Music and live video made with analog & modular synthesizers that creates a temporary relation to the mystery, searching for the sacred in the sound of sound.

Ed Bear
The premiere of a new 64-voice composition realized on the radioOrgan, a hand-crafted modular FM transmission system built from obsolete electronics.

Curated by Carol Parkinson, Harvestworks, and Wolfgang R. von Stuermer (aka WvS), Ab Uno Pluribus.

Two night tickets available here:
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1469604-creative-tech-week-arts-hub-maspeth/

Apr 21

Baby, Said Alice B. Toklas: Artist Talk

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Please join us on Sunday, April 30th, as artist Hanne Tierney speaks about her current exhibition Baby, Said Alice B. Toklas, currently on view at Knockdown Center.

About Baby, Said Alice B. Toklas
Baby, Said Alice B. Toklas is a self-performing object theater produced by artist Hanne Tierney. Installed across the expanse of Knockdown Center’s Annex, a series of vignettes come to life as cloth figures, hula hoops, and satin configurations gesture, twirl, and sway, manipulated by a system of motors and robotic electronics, designed by engineer Oskar Strautmanis. A soundtrack further animates each semi-abstract character, composed of a drifting narrative that stages imagined arguments between Gertrude Stein and her life partner Alice B. Toklas, woven with excerpts from Stein’s early plays, and with music by Erik Satie. Baby, Said Alice B. Toklas will be played on a fifteen-minute loop during gallery hours, offering viewers the possibility of an ongoing encounter with the immersive, ambulatory experience of Tierney’s enchanting work.

Hanne Tierney has performed her puppetry and object theater at The Kitchen, Franklin Furnace, the Queen’s Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA/PS1, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Espace Kiron, Paris, the Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin, and at the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater. Tierney received an OBIE in 2000. Tierney is the founder and director of Five Myles, an exhibition and performance space in Crown Heights that focuses on engaging directly with the community and presenting work by under-represented artists.

Apr 21

Stronger Together

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Stronger Together is an exhibition featuring software and electronic art by faculty and alumni of computer art departments of nine area universities, and includes a selection of electronic music performances and free Maker workshops teaching 3D printing and modeling as well as DIY electronics assembly and programming.   Produced by Leaders in Software and Art (LISA) for Creative Tech Week in conjunction with Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, the exhibit celebrates the explosion of technology onto the global art and music scene and highlights the leaders at our educational epicenters for technological innovation in the arts.

Experience the work of artists and educators who are driving forces in guiding and facilitating the next generation of innovators in technological arts, and explore the intersections in aesthetic and conceptual inquiries across academic programs at nine area universities. The exhibition includes art installations incorporating a wide range of technologies and media including Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; 3D printing; CNC router milling; custom or recycled electronics; custom software; the Internet; custom video game consoles and joysticks; photo manipulation; data visualizations; drone video; algorithms; speech synthesis; and tablets, smartphones, flat screens, projectors, computers, microphones, sensors and speakers.

In addition to university partners and LISA, Creative Tech Week is also partnering with Harvestworks, Plan 23, Columbia University, CUNY and the Lady Tech Guild to feature exciting performances and hands-on workshops over the two-day period. Organizers include Isabel Draves, President of Creative Tech Week and Founder of LISA; Carol Parkinson, Director of Harvestworks; Wolfgang von Stuermer (aka WvS), Representative of Plan 23; Michael Merck, Co-Director of the Knockdown Center; and Akaash Mehta, Creative Tech Week Arts Hub Exhibition Director.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Richard Jochum from Art and Education, Teachers College at Columbia University; Daniel Tempkin, Joe Diebes, Ed Bear, Margaret Schedel and Melissa F. Clark, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center; Annie Berman, Andrew Demirjian, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga from Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College CUNY; Terry Nauheim, Yuko Oda and Robert Michael Smith from the Department of Digital Art & Design at NYIT; Katherine Bennett, Chun-Fang Huang, Javier Molina, Tatiana Pilon, Kate Sicchio and Mark Skwarek from Integrated Digital Media at NYU; Harry Chiuhao Chen, Gene Kogan, Zhenzhen Qi, Hellyn Teng, Yang Wang, and Jingwen Zhu from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU; Amelia Marzec and Yuchen Zhang from Design and Technology at Parsons; Allison Berkoy, Blake Carrington, Ursula Endlicher, Carla Gannis, Claudia Herbst-Tait, and Linda Lauro-Lazin from the Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute; Seth Cluett, Christopher Manzione, and Nicholas O’Brien from Visual Arts & Technology at Stevens Institute of Technology; Benton C Bainbridge and Eric Corriel, respectively from MFA Computer Art and BFA Design at School of Visual Arts; and Michael Rees at William Paterson University.

Free admission and creative technology workshops Saturday, May 13 12-7pm
On Saturday May 13th, the exhibition is free and open to the public from noon to 7 pm. Visitors can receive free advice and instruction on 3D scanning and modeling and 3D printing. Visitors can also participate in Maker workshops on Raspberry Pi, Arduino, generative art, and building radios from recycled electronics (a materials fee and advance registration is required for the workshops, see ctw.nyc for details).

Performances – Friday, May 12 (Exhibition Preview) 5-11pm and Saturday, May 13, 7-11pm
Tickets $15 advance, $20 at the door / $25 two-night tickets available
The evening programs features performances by Pamela Z, Jimmy Joe Roche and Layne Garrett and Long Distance Poison on Friday and SMOMID, Raphaele Shirley and Plan 23 with live visuals by Zarah Cabanas, Chris Jorden & Sofy Yuditskaya on Saturday.

Friday Night Tickets: http://ticketf.ly/2pmhbkB
Saturday Night Tickets: http://ticketf.ly/2oRVo2s
2-Night Tickets: http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1469604

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Creative Tech Week
From VR, 3D printing and hackathons to fashion tech, data visualization, digital art, interactive installations and STEAM, Creative Technology is front and center in innovation success stories across the corporate and non-profit landscape. Creative Tech Week, held from May 12 to 21, 2017 in New York City, is a crowdsourced festival created to showcase the cutting-edge research, art, media, and community initiatives being generated in the field of creative technology.  ctw.nyc 

LISA
Leaders in Software and Art (LISA), founded in 2009, brings together cutting-edge software and electronic artists, curators, collectors, and coders to share their work. LISA holds exclusive monthly salons across NYC featuring presentations by artists who work with technology; curates digital art for interested parties; and partners with museums and art fairs to showcase the work of past speakers. Over 200 past LISA speakers are featured in the artist portfolio.

Harvestworks
Founded in 1977, Harvestworks’ mission is to support contemporary artists in the creation of art works achieved through new and evolving technologies. Innovative use of new technology helps acclimate people to change, allows for the absorption of new ideas, and enriches the space of imagination in our culture. Our programs record the artists’ impact on the ways technology can be integrated into artistic practice through residencies and presentations of the highest quality work across the arts and technology spectrum to the public. 1977-2017 – 40 Years!
www.harvestworks.org

Plan 23
Emerged out of Bushwick, Brooklyn, Plan 23 creates site-specific, extended, immersive, audio-visual experiences that bend one’s perception of time and space. Encompassing a sonic spectrum from dark-ambient soundscapes via subliminal pulses to electronic sounds the group delivers sonic explorations into uncharted spaces; combining live music, lasers and live visuals into an engaging sensory journey – redefining psychedelic sound for the 21st century. plan23.net  

 

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Image Credit: ‘Cubist Mirror’ by Gene Kogan (http://genekogan.com/) via School For Poetic Computation

Apr 20

A DEEP BOOMING LAUGH

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A DEEP BOOMING LAUGH is an evening of atmospheric music by Brooklyn-based bands B0DYH1GH, Boiled Wool, and Sister Pact. Largely inspired by Riot Grrrl culture, the three acts revel in the Sad Girl aesthetic, producing pensive, intensifying music that features gorgeous sound reverberations that resonate within the acoustics of the Knockdown Center, providing an opportunity to collectively explore what diligent and thoughtful music can mean in the present.

About the artists:

Since 2010, Brooklyn-based art duo B0DYH1GH have developed a cult following for their epic, psychedelic, synaesthetic music; dark and weird art interventions; intricate, tautological grooves; and entrancing, mysterious style. They’ve performed at myriad events in New York City; including Birdsong, Spank, Pussy Faggot, Clump, Super Bisexuals, Everybooty Gay Pride, Jason & Jill, Apocalypse Wow, and F.:.NCY; earning a rabid fan base among the proto- Bushwick queer scene. They’ve also graced the stages of more ‘highbrow’ New York cultural institutions, performing at the Public Theater and Joe’s Pub; and the American Realness, Coil, Prelude, and Under the Radar festivals. They performed at the finale of 2013’s Queer New York International Arts Festival at La MaMa, debuting an evening-length performance called ALIEN AFTERLIFE, and organized and starred in the April 20th gala, DEEP-FRIED CANDYFLOWERS, at LES art gallery CultureFix. They’ve created site-specific work for galleries such as Strange Loop and the Impossible Project Space, where they presented their instrumental art-rock EP, BUTTERBAWL. They’ve served as models and muses for internationally-acclaimed artists such as Amos Mac, whose image of the band went viral after being featured in Out Magazine.

BOILED WOOL is the performance and installation project of artist Cynthia Chang. Cynthia Chang started making sculptures in college at the Rhode Island School of Design, often as ornaments for their performance work. After graduating, Chang shifted their focus to wearable items, using their knowledge of sculptural objects and material manipulation. They launched their label Something Happening in 2014, with a couple of signature pieces and club-inspired one-offs and they showed their first full collection Big Babies during New York Fashion Week. https://soundcloud.com/boiledwool
SISTER PACT is Logan Sibrel & Omar Afzaal. Sister Pact’s sophomore effort is a concept album wherein the protagonist journeys with a resurrected lover, and is later devoured when his companion is overtaken by his zombie urges. The album explores themes of love, ambition, and shortsightedness, and was inspired by a long meditation over a photo of Nancy Kerrigan, post 1994 attack.

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