Artists: Sepo Seecharan Prins and Marlene Mulele Seecharan, NIC Kay, Justin Allen, Rena Anakwe
October 1, 2017
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628) documents William Harvey’s watershed findings on the two-way circulatory system; one way pumping blood to the extremities and another back to the heart to be reinvigorated with oxygen. During this dissection, Harvey also encountered an ominous black fluid like ’thick earth’ termed colloquially as ‘black bile’ in the arteries. As one of the four body humors, coleric/black bile was said to hold the properties of mysticism, hysteria, and evil – but as Harvey’s findings revealed…the black stuff in the body was blood all along.
For this Sunday Service, five artists are invited to commune with the Ready Room as a living site for a circulatory exchange.
About the Artists
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.
Rena Anakwe is an interdisciplinary artist and performer, working primarily with sound, visuals, scent and space. A member of the artistic collective NON Worldwide, she is based in Brooklyn, New York by way of Nigeria and Canada. Using storytelling as a medium, her work focuses on sensory-based, experiential interactions through art and technology. Rena is a graduate of: the Interactive Telecommunications Program (iTP) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (MPS), The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University (MFA) and New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business (BS.) aspaceforsound.com
Justin Allen is a writer and performer from Northern Virginia. He has written for Mosaic Literary Magazine, Lambda Literary, ARTS.BLACK, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s journal The Archive, among others. He has read his work at the Whitney, The Poetry Project, and Artists Space, and recently completed a residency at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies in Iowa City, IA.
I was named Marlene Mulele Seecharan. I do not know how many times I have lived as a human. I know I have been a house in a past life. My goal with art as expression is to live in truth and to live in complete harmony with the rest of nature. I wish you the courage to live in pure consciousness.
Sepo Seecharan Prins is MAGIC
About the Curator
Jonathan Gonzalez is a choreographer and Bessie-nominated performer based in his native New York City. He has been a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist in collaboration with EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, BAX/Dancing While Black Fellow under the direction of Paloma McGregor, Diebold Award recipient for Distinction in Choreography & Performance, Rema Hort Mann Foundation nominee, as well as a POSSE Leadership and Bessie Schonberg Scholar; he is currently a BAX/SUBMERGE! artist. He has performed in the works of Ligia Lewis, Cynthia Oliver, Isabel Lewis, Alex Baczyinski-Jenkins, Phillip Howe, Ni’Ja Whitson, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Grisha Coleman, among others. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
About Sunday Service
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.
Video by James Tate
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Knockdown Center’s MEDIA page is an ongoing collection of audio, video, writing, and ephemera produced by our arts programming. It serves not only as an aural and visual index of the diverse artistic activities that occur within the space, but also as a resource for artists, writers, curators, and researchers who may be interested in learning more about the practitioners that come through our doors. As a primary source, documents housed within the MEDIA page have been minimally edited and largely unmodified. Audio files link to our Soundcloud channel, where curator conversations, exhibition walkthroughs, panels, and poetry readings can be heard individually, or as select playlists.