Yearly Archives: 2011

THE INFLUENTIALS

Kate Gilmore, “Between a Hard Place,” video still, 2008 (courtesy of the artist)

SVA WOMEN ALUMNI INVITE ARTISTS WHO HAVE SHAPED THEIR WORK
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday, September 13, free, 7:00
Exhibition continues at the Visual Arts Gallery (601 West 26th St.) through September 21
212-592-2145
www.schoolofvisualarts.edu

For the School of Visual Arts exhibit “The Influentials,” cocurators Amy Smith-Stewart and Carrie Lincourt invited nineteen female SVA alums to participate — while also asking each to invite a guest contributor of their own, a person who has made an impact in their lives and/or careers. Among the exciting duos (with the SVA alum listed first and their guest second) supplying multimedia works are Kate Gilmore and Marilyn Minter, Lisa Kirk and David Hammons, Suzanne McClelland and Judy Pfaff, Mika Rottenberg and Minter, Yuko Shimizu and Thomas Woodruff, Marianne Vitale and Bela Tarr, and Phoebe Washburn and her grandmother, Phebe. The show runs through September 21 at the Visual Arts Gallery in Chelsea, but there will be a special panel discussion on September 13 at 7:00 at the nearby SVA Theatre, where Art in America editor in chief Lindsay Pollock will lead a public talk about art and mentoring with a stellar lineup that includes McClelland, Minter, Pfaff, and Rottenberg.

MORTON SUBOTNICK: 1963-1973

Electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick will kick off the North River Music series at Greenwich House Music School on September 15

Discussion and Short Performance of Silver Apples of the Moon
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow St. at Bedford St.
Thursday, September 15, $15, 8:00
www.greenwichhouse.org
www.mortonsubotnick.com

Earlier this year, American electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick revisited his seminal 1967 record, Silver Apples of the Moon, at the David Rubenstein Atrium as part of the annual Unsound Festival, followed by a lecture at the Greenwich House Music School. The seventy-eight-year-old L.A.-born maestro will be back at the school on Thursday night, discussing the convergence of technology and music in the 1960s and playing selections from Silver Apples. The lecture-performance will be followed by a reception with the public. The event kicks off the twenty-sixth season of North River Music, the experimental music series founded by Frank Wigglesworth. On May 3, Subotnick will be back to look at the state of electronic music and his career from 1973 to the present; other events include Deviant Septet on December 15, Ne(x)tworks: Music Without Dance on February 25-26, loadbang on March 8, Zentripetal on May 10, and Taka Kigawa on June 7.

THE LAPSBURGH LAYOVER

The Berserker Residents offer weary travelers a refreshing breath of wacky Eastern European air in THE LAPSBURGH LAYOVER at Ars Nova (photo by Ben Arons)

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through September 24, $30, 8:00
212-489-9800
www.arsnovanyc.com/lapsburghlayover

Layovers during airplane travel are usually tiring and boring if not downright frantic, but the lovely people of Lapsburgh are doing something about that. In the delightfully silly lo-fi The Lapsburgh Layover, running at Ars Nova through September 24, the Philadelphia-based Berserker Residents (The Giant Squid) have turned the West 54th St. arts space into the Shogoth Elder reception hall, where a quartet of semitalented Lapsburghians are presenting an evening of regional dinner theater while the audience’s plane is being refueled. After filling out a Customs form that includes such yes-or-no phrases as “I am under the influence of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, firearms, weapons, ammunition, explosives, pornographic material” and “Chicken or shrimp,” people are ushered into the exceedingly small and narrow hall, where they have the choice of sitting around the sides, in the back, or up front at the VIP table, where they very well might be asked to participate in the show. Going in and out of character on Lisi Stoessel’s playful set, Olaf / Mickey McElroy (Dave Johnson), Jeb / Carmen / Mark Able the Remarkable (Bradley K. Wrenn), Olaf / Fizzy / Big Fancy Mayor / Lilly (Justin Jain), and Zelda (Leah Walton) put on “Detective Mickey and the Case of the What Happened at the Club Regard,” a slapstick comic noir that cleverly twists standard genre clichés while tempting the audience to consider time-shares in the beautiful nation of Lapsburgh, which is still recovering from a legendary battle with killer frogs. “My city has a new diet,” says sexy chanteuse Zelda, Lapsburgh’s leading lady. “She will only eat hard-boiled justice and truth shakes. But who will feed them to her?” Cheap props, wild costumes (courtesy of Sydney Maresca), a not-quite-PowerPoint projection, and natural and unnatural disasters ensue as Mick tries to track down a murderer leaving victim after victim in his/her wake. Developed and directed by Oliver Butler, The Lapsburgh Layover is witty and fun, if a bit repetitive and a tad long, a jolly good way to spend your time in between flights. While you don’t actually get dinner with your theater (and VIPs would probably do best to avoid the salad they are served), you can purchase popcorn, the bourbon-based traditional Lapsburghian cocktail the Fancy Bicycle, and other snacks from the bar before the show takes off. At the very beginning, Zelda promises, “We shall make this time of waiting for your plane the most fancy for you.” And in their own quirky way, the Berserkers deliver.

XU BING: WHERE DOES THE DUST ITSELF COLLECT? ARTIST TALK

Xu Bing will discuss his 9/11-related installation on Tuesday night at the Museum of Chinese in America (photo by Jeff Morgan)

Exhibition: Spinning Wheel Building, 5 West 22nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., Tuesday – Sunday, September 8 – October 9, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
Artist Talk: Tuesday, September 13, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., free with RSVP, 6:30
www.insite.lmcc.net
www.mocanyc.org

Chinese-born artist Xu Bing, who is based in Beijing and Brooklyn, incorporates words and history into site-specific installations that examine language and politics in unique ways. In his current work at the Morgan Library, “The Living Word 3,” the characters depicting the Chinese word for “bird” lift off the ground and fly to the ceiling as they morph into birds themselves. In 2004, Xu installed “Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?” in Wales, consisting of dust that represented debris from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, accompanied by a Zen poem, examining the tragedy itself as well as its aftereffects on a shocked world. Xu has now reinstalled the poignant work in the lobby gallery of the Spinning Wheel Building in the Flatiron District in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, in conjunction with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s month-long “InSite: Art + Commemoration” series, which continues through October 11 with exhibitions, live performances, poetry readings, and other events that look at how artists have dealt with 9/11. On September 13, Xu will be at the Museum of Chinese in America to give a special artist talk with professor Lydia Liu about the project’s first installation in the United States; admission is free with advance RSVP.

US OPEN LIVE AT MADISON SQUARE PARK

The men’s U.S. Open finals will be broadcast live in Madison Square Park on September 12 at 4:00 (photo by twi-ny/ees)

Madison Square Park
26th St. between Fifth & Madison Aves.
Monday, September 12, free, 4:00
www.madisonsquarepark.org

With the rainouts at this year’s U.S. Open tennis championships in Flushing Meadows, the men’s final will be taking place this afternoon at 4:00 instead of yesterday. Tickets to the event at Arthur Ashe Stadium are mighty expensive, but you can watch it in the great outdoors for free in Madison Square Park as part of US Open Live, which has been extended one day as well. Number one seed Novak Djokovic will be taking the court against number two Rafael Nadal, with the Serb seeking revenge on the Spaniard, who beat him 6–4, 5–7, 6–4, 6–2 in last year’s championship match. Djokovic also lost in the finals to Roger Federer in 2007, so this might finally be his time, especially with a 63-2 overall record this year. The big screen is set up in the north side of the park, and just like at the Open, there are special food booths and dishes, including crispy heritage pork ribs, fried fish skewers, couscous salad, fried chickpeas, tiramisu, and vanilla gelato from Eataly, ruffle goat cheese crab pizza, braised pork buns, and cumin eggplant buns from Graffiti, and Cuban, meatball, tuna, and corned beef sandwiches and kale salad from Resto.

ELENA DEL RIVERO: [SWI:T] HOME: A CHANT

Elena del Rivero, “(Swi:t) Home: A CHANT,” 2001-2006 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 2 (Thursdays free 7:00 – 9:00)
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 15, $8, 7:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
[swi:t] home: a chant slideshow

On September 11, 2001, Valencia-born New York City artist Elena del Rivero was in her native country of Spain. When she eventually returned to her home on Cedar St., right by where the World Trade Center used to stand, she found her apartment/studio filled with debris, the windows having collapsed and all sorts of papers sucked in from the outside world. She set to work cataloging and cleaning the notes, forms, memos, letters, and other documents, deleting the names and addresses to protect the vital information of men and women who very well might have perished on that fateful day. She then stitched them onto long sheets of white cotton-mesh fabric to create the moving memorial “[Swi:t] Home: A CHANT,” which is currently installed in the back lobby gallery of the New Museum of Contemporary Art through October 2. The remnants of these anonymous people’s lives seem to once again float in the air as they rise over a center rod, only to tumble down to earth again on the other side. “[Swi:t] Home: A CHANT” includes some 3,136 documents, mostly white but some yellow, green, red, and other colors, spread out across more than five hundred feet, cluttered together on the ground and rising into the air, at its full height forming a kind of memorial tower. Del Rivero’s brown stitching can be seen throughout, as if a pathway detailing the journey taken by the unseen people behind the endless stream of paper. Del Rivero will be at the New Museum on September 15 to discuss the project with Andrea Blum in a special artist talk at 7:00 ($8). The entire museum is open for free on September 11, but the lobby gallery is always open for visitors without requiring paid admission.

WK INTERACT: PROJECT BRAVE

WK Interact’s block-long “Project Brave” mural pays tribute to the heroes of 9/11 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

149 Kent Ave. between North Fourth & Fifth Sts.
Through October 11
www.wkinteract.com
project brave slideshow

French-born New York City street artist WK Interact creates site-specific pieces around the world, employing his instantly recognizable striking black-and-white scenes immersed in fast-paced motion. In honor of the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, WK has installed “Project Brave,” a massive 328-foot-long mural along Kent Ave. in Williamsburg, paying tribute to the heroes of that fateful day. Focusing on New York’s Bravest, the firefighter, WK has included swirling portraits of NYPD firemen in action, their faces often blurred, depicted in the midst of daring rescues. He includes references to specific equipment as well as his familiar bar codes, implying such heroism is all in a day’s work for these heroes. (One bar code says, “rescue proof of FIRST RESPONDER 9/11.”) There are also images of splattered blood, birds flying to freedom, and even a stamp honoring the Statue of Liberty’s centennial, placed next to a skull. The mural, which was made with the support of the Yonkers Fire Department, is a vibrant, stirring, inspirational celebration of how New York came together ten years ago in the face of unspeakable tragedy.