In conjunction with the exhibition You can tell I’m alive and well because I weep continuously., poet Steven Zultanski curates a poetry reading featuring texts that share affinities with his own poem, Agony (2012). The evening includes readings by poets Alejandro Crawford, Mónica de la Torre, Shiv Kotecha, and Stacy Szymaszek and a sound installation by Fernando Diaz.
About You can tell I’m alive and well because I weep continuously.
You can tell I’m alive and well because I weep continuously is a group exhibition curated by Alison Burstein with artwork by David Court, Erin Diebboll, David Horvitz, Anouk Kruithof, Amanda Turner Pohan, and Steven Zultanski. The show brings together artworks whose techniques resonate with Agony’s provocative alchemical idiom: these pieces quantify bodily and affective features, apply logical and scientific reasoning to absurd ends, and manipulate the linkages between language and things.
Artist Bios
Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford is a poet, video artist, and game designer living in Brooklyn, NY. http://amjc.tv
Fernando Diaz is the author of “Autocorrelation and Regularization of Query-Based Retrieval Scores” (University of Massachusetts, 2008). His work has been screened at the Melbourne International Animation Festival.
Mónica de la Torre is the author of five books of poetry, including The Happy End/All Welcome (forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in the spring of 2017). Recent and forthcoming publications include Triple Canopy, Harper’s, and Poetry. She is a contributing editor of BOMB Magazine and teaches poetry at Brown University.
Shiv Kotecha is the author of the Unlovable (Troll Thread, 2016), and EXTRIGUE (Make Now, 2015). Other stuff can be found @ shivkotecha.com
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of Emptied of All Ships (2005), Hyperglossia (2009), hart island (2015), Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals (2016), and A Year From Today, forthcoming from Nightboat in 2017. She is also executive director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church.
Giegling returns to Knockdown with a special daytime appearance and DJ sets by Konstantin & Dustin.
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.
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/
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://
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://
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://
DJ LE BOURREAU
(Theologian)
:: MORE INFO TO COME ::
The Ready Room pops off every weekend with live DJs! Free!
The Ready Room pops off every weekend with live DJs! Free!