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Feb 02

UNSEEN HAND

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UNSEEN HAND is a group exhibition that brings together fifteen artists who employ various mediums and processes to question technology and expand upon its conventional definition. The artists exhibited assert their practice as an encounter with a technological event, whether by disrupting the technical order, poetizing methods of industrial production, or inciting sensuality by means of devices typically associated with disconnection. By presenting these instances, the exhibition warns us of the danger in comprehending technology merely through scientific merits.

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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.

 

Feb 02

No Workers Paradise Release Show

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Chthonic Streams presents the release show for NO WORKERS PARADISE, an 8-hour cassette box set compilation criticizing work as the chief focus of life, through noise and words. Knockdown Center being a former glass and door factory makes it a perfect location for an event concerned with the prevalent role of work in society, particularly in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Five of the eight artists from the box set will perform live:

WORK/DEATH [Providence, RI] (Type, Three Songs Of Lenin, Chondritic Sound, Monorail Trespassing)
https://soundcloud.com/_type/sets/work-death-phone-about-to-ring
Operated by Scott Reber, W/D is unapologetic harmonic/melodic moves surfacing through and being submerged by waves of white noise. Reber has integrated a number of approaches (harsh noise, musique concrete, electro-acoustic improv, drone, and the pop song). Reber is something of the noise musician’s noise musician, and his deeply knowledgable and surprisingly technical take on the sound has left those able to source one of his rare tapes or manage to catch a show slack jawed.

THE VOMIT ARSONIST [Providence, RI] (Malignant Records, Danvers State Recordings)
https://thevomitarsonist.bandcamp.com/
When one looks at US death industrial, one of the top acts is that of Andrew Grant. Since 2004, his project has evolved into a major force, channeling aggression, negativity, and spite, and molding it into a focused, pinpoint display of barely restrained power and purely dark emotion.

GNAWED [Minneapolis, MN] (Malignant Records, Maniacal Hatred)
Grant Richardson creates thick layers of synths and harsh noise, topped off by screaming livid, disorienting vocals, creating a terryfying mixture of death industrial and power electronics. Several strong releases since 2009.
https://gnawed.bandcamp.com/

COMPACTOR [NYC] (Cryptic Carousel, Out-Of-Body Records, Annihilvs Power Electronix)
Compactor is an interconnected set of mostly obsolete machinery that is manipulated by an anonymous everyman figure known as The Worker. Fragments of Industrial, Noise, Hardcore Techno, Glitch, and others are crushed into soundtracks to the daily grind and the landscape of waste we live and work in.
http://www.wastemgt.info/

EXISTENCE IN DECLINE [Nyack, NY] (RSM, Factotum Tapes, Hospital Productions)
Anthony Saunders’ EID acronym has shifted meanings (previously known as Exercise In Disgust and Explosive Improvised Device), but the overall content remains: raw junk metal harsh noise and minimal electronics for maximum effect.
https://anthonysaunders.bandcamp.com/

DJ LE BOURREAU
(Theologian)

:: MORE INFO TO COME ::

 

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Jan 31

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Deradoorian

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

“EARS, the rich and rewarding new album from composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, is hard-to-pin-down music for the spaces in-between. In her hands, acoustic instruments sound like electronic ones, synthetic sounds reference nature, and human voices sound like the creation of machines.” – Pitchfork, April 2016

 

Deradoorian

 

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Jan 27

Sunday Service: MAMI presents…

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Sunday Service is a curated series of short-form live performances across mediums. Taking place the first Sunday of each month in the Ready Room, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of in-progress works, performances, and presentations, anchored by a framing principle such as a question, proposition, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service encourages works in progress and interdisciplinary endeavors showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster experimentation and critical discourse amongst peers.

For the premier of Sunday Service, Knockdown Center invited MAMI’s Ali Rosa-Salas and Dyani Douze who in turn invited Alexandra Bell, NIC Kay, Isabel Flower, Marcel Rosa-Salas, and YATTA to share projects in development across movement, writing, visual art, and sonic practices. With an insistence on collective care, we’ll process what we’ve witnessed together in dialogue over drinks.

You can watch footage from the evening on our MEDIA page here.

Alexandra Bell
Alexandra Bell is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the complexities of narrative, information consumption, and perception. Utilizing various media, she deconstructs dominant histories to highlight patterns in news reportage and society at large. Bell holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and an M.S. in Print Journalism from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York.

NIC Kay
NIC Kay is from the Bronx. Currently occupying several liminal spaces. They are a person who makes performances and creates/organizes performative spaces. They are obsessed with the act and process of moving the change of place, production of space, position, and the clarity/meaning gleaned from shifting of perspective. NIC’s current transdisciplinary projects explore movement as a place of reclamation of the body, history and spirituality. NIC Kay is currently a 2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Van Lier Fellow in New York City.

Isabel Flower + Marcel Rosa-Salas
Isabel Flower and Marcel Rosa-Salas are friends living in New York City. Marcel is a PhD student in Anthropology at New York University who researches race and the American advertising industry. Isabel studied Art History and Studio Art at Princeton, and is an assistant editor at Artforum. Together they host Top Rank Magazine’s podcast and share a love for critical theory, ’90s R&B and Air Jordans.

YATTA
YATTA is a sierra-leonean american digipoet & performer who remixes shamanic sounds with her jazz vocals to create music to lie down in. a former Flux Factory resident, she currently works as the Operations Coordinator of the Silent Barn DIY Collective. Her work has been featured in Rookie Magazine, Dazed, Mask Magazine, and more.

About the curator:
MAMI is the collaborative curatorial initiative of Ali Rosa-Salas and Dyani Douze. Together, they organized MAMI, an exhibition and programming series at Knockdown Center in August of 2016. They’ve partnered with BALTI GURLS, BBZ London, Browntourage, POWRPLNT, Fake Accent, Holyrad Studio, Smart Girl Club, SISTER NYC, Top Rank Magazine and other womxn of color centered collectives to organize community gatherings that support our need to care for one another.

Cover image by Luis Nieto Dickens

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