twi-ny recommended events

TIBET HOUSE BENEFIT CONCERT XXI

The Flaming Lips will be part of another outstanding lineup of special guests at the annual Tibet House benefit at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
881 Seventh Ave. at 57th St.
Thursday, March 3, $33-$95, 7:30
212-247-7800
www.tibethouse.org
www.carnegiehall.org

Founded at the request of the Dalai Lama, Tibet House US is “dedicated to preserving Tibet’s unique culture at a time when it is confronted with extinction on its own soil. By presenting Tibetan civilization and its profound wisdom, beauty, and special art of freedom to the people of the world, we hope to inspire others to join the effort to protect and save it.” Tibet House hosts many events year-round, and one of their biggest scheduled for Thursday night, when the twenty-first annual benefit concert will take place in Carnegie Hall. The show is always an eclectic gathering of kindred spirits giving unique performances in honor of Tibet and the Tibetan people, and this year’s lineup is another outstanding one, consisting of Philip Glass, Tenzin Choegyal, the Flaming Lips, Jesse Smith and Michael Campbell, Angelique Kidjo, Taj Mahal, James McCartney, the Roots, Patti Smith, and Michael Stipe. Good seats in the orchestra are still available, as are the cheap seats way in the back of the balcony. The Tibet House benefit concert is always an inspiring experience; if you’ve never been, now’s as good a time as any to “join the effort to protect and save” an unfairly oppressed nation and its people.

VOLTA NY 2011

Mark Jenkins’s “Family Room” is one of the early favorites at Volta

7 West 34th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
March 3-6, $10-$15 (combination pass with the Armory Show $40)
www.ny.voltashow.com

VOLTA NY, founded by Amanda Coulson as an invitational show of solo projects, focuses on the artists themselves instead of galleries or artistic themes. Held at 7W across the street from the Empire State Building, VOLTA, which works in partnership with the Armory Show (a free shuttle will run between each, and a $40 discounted ticket gets you into both), will feature installations by more than ninety international artists and collectives, including Judi Werthein, EVOL, [dNASAb], Ryan Schneider, Florian Heinke, Mark Jenkins, Homebase, George Kuchar, BGL, Daniel Rozin, and Artprojx, from twenty-three countries as Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Costa Rica, Mexico, Trinidad, Spain, Argentina, and the U.S. David Tully and Shiri Mordechay have been chosen for the entrance and lobby, while Michael Decker’s “Old Growth” ironing boards lead to the elevators. Culture Shock Marketing and Vimeo have curated cutting-edge projections for the elevator and shuttle bus from such artists as Paddy Jolley, Glenn Marshall, Hugh McGrory, Scott Pagano, and J. G. Zimmerman, and Jennifer and Kevin McKoy have put together actor-led guided tours that begin in the eleventh-floor foyer. Volta will also host Open Forum talks with such artists as Yevgeniy Fiks, Mauricio Miranda, and Deborah Grant and such curators and gallerists as Courtney Martin, Erin Sickler, Kate Kraczon, and Ed Halter.

GREAT MUSIC REIMAGINED

The Turtle Island Quartet will give a different spin to the music of Jimi Hendrix at Symphony Space (photo © Jay Blakesberg)

Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Wednesday, March 2, Turtle Island Quartet: The Hendrix Project, $15-$34, 7:30 & 9:30
Friday, March 11, Theo Bleckmann: The Music of Kate Bush, $15-$34, 7:30 & 9:30
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.turtleislandquartet.com
www.theobleckmann.com

Nominated for a 2011 Grammy, Turtle Island Quartet’s Have You Ever Been . . . ? (Telarc, August 2010) features the group’s jazz-classical versions of such Jimi Hendrix songs as “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” “Hey Joe,” “Little Wing,” and “All Along the Watchtower” as well as tunes inspired by the 1960s guitar god, such as their own new composition, “Tree of Life.” Violinists David Balakrishnan and Mads Tolling, cellist Mark Summer, and violist Jeremy Kittel will be at Symphony Space on March 2 as part of the “Great Music Reimagined” series, highlighting tracks from the album. The series continues March 11 with “Hello Earth! The Music of Kate Bush,” as vocalist Theo Bleckmann takes on the eclectic songbook of the British muse, including “Running Up That Hill” and “All the Love.” He’ll be accompanied by percussionist John Hollenbeck, bassist Skuli Sverrisson, keyboardist Henry Hey, and multi-instrumentalist Caleb Burhans.

LUCKYRICE 2011 FESTIVAL

Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto will host a special omakase dinner and sake and shochu tasting as part of the second annual LUCKYRICE Festival

Multiple locations
May 2-8, $59-$571
www.luckyricefestival.com

Despite the high prices, tickets are already going fast for the second annual LUCKYRICE festival, a week of special Asian culinary events held in venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The food fest begins May 2 with a kick-off dinner at annisa hosted by Anita Lo ($240) and continues May 3 with a cocktail party at the Bowery Hotel with Carol Lim and Humberto Leon ($59-$102), May 4 with the wildly popular Asian Night Market at the Archway Under the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo ($59-$102), May 5 with an Omakase Dinner and Sake + Shochu Soirée at Morimoto with Masaharu Morimoto ($288) and a Flavors of Macau four-course wine-pairing dinner at the James Beard House ($170), May 6 with a Grand Feast at the Mandarin Oriental ($174-$288), May 7 with La Fête Chinoise at Daniel with Daniel Boulud and Susur Lee ($571), and then concludes May 8 with a Talk + Taste hosted by the Cooking Channel’s Ching-He Huang at the Astor Center ($59). The festival’s culinary council includes most of the aforementioned participants in addition to Anthony Bourdain, Floyd Cardoz, David Chang, Pichet Ong, Tadashi Ono, Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and others, helping explain why it has become so successful so quickly. The $458 LUCKYRICE Passport includes VIP admission to the opening cocktail party, the Night Market, the Grand Feast, the Talk + Taste, and other perks. Proceeds benefit City Harvest.

INDEPENDENT 2011

Laura Aldridge, “Hand Extended,” detail, screen prints on Perspex, plaster, fabric, and paint (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
March 3-6, free
www.independentnewyork.com

Winner of the 2010 Rob Pruitt Award for Alternative Project of the Year, the Independent art fair is back in the old Dia space in Chelsea, with more than fifty galleries spread out over the second, third, and fourth floors. Founded by X Initiative’s Elizabeth Dee and Hotel’s Darren Flook, the Independent was a rousing success last year, and not just because it was free. It offered a wide range of multimedia, participatory installations in well-organized spaces, giving visitors the opportunity to play Ping-Pong on Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “The Future Will Be Chrome,” accept a torn page from Michael Dean’s “The Floor Is the Object,” take a seat in Ryan Trecartin’s caged-in “P.opular S.ky (section ish),” and create their own dialogue while investigating the artistic dialogues created by moss and Westreich-Wagner. The 2011 Independent is being developed with White Columns’ Matthew Higgs and codirectors Jayne Drost and Laura Mitterand and includes such artists and galleries as Dexter Sinister, Guyton/Walker, and Trisha Donnelly of Artists Space, Erica Baum of Bureau, Katinka Bock of Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Michel François of Bortolami, Josephine Meckseper of Elizabeth Dee, Walead Beshty of Wallspace, Reena Spaulings of Sutton Lane, Ryan Gander and Roman Ondák of gb agency, Michail Pirgelis of Sprüth Magers, Carol Bove of Hotel, Wolfgang Tillmans and Liam Gillick of Maureen Paley, Simon Fujiwara of Neue Alte Brücke and Gio Marconi, and Jonathan Monk of Meyer Riegger. Unfortunately, much of the work is not clearly labeled, so it is often difficult to know what you’re looking at. The fair is heavy on sculptural installation, with numerous floor pieces, so be careful where you walk, although you are encouraged to step on Eftihis Patsourakis’s “Skin,” composed of actual welcome mats from his native Athens, but stay away from Ryan Gander’s “Matthew Young falls from the 1985 into a white room (Maybe this is not that way it is supposed to happen)” [sic], made of broken stunt-safe sugar glass and wood. We got a kick out of Laura Aldridge’s “Hand Extended” screen prints on Perspex of cats holding on to a human’s arm, mixed in with her plaster, fabric, and paint wall pieces. With all the craziness and chaos going on, you’ll want to take a respite in front of Maureen Gallace’s small oil on panel “August, Beach Cottage (Pink Flowers),” another one of her gentle, memorable paintings. While there’s very little video, one of the better film installations is Rossella Biscotti’s “Yellow,” which uses an old-fashioned projector to relay a WWII-related psychiatric session. While not nearly as dazzling as last year’s inaugural fair, there’s still a lot to like about Independent, but you have to be willing to work for it.

OSCAR WATCH: BLUE VALENTINE

Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) try to save a dissolving relationship in BLUE VALENTINE

BLUE VALENTINE (Derek Cianfrance, 2010)
www.bluevalentinemovie.com

Michelle Williams was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as a disgruntled wife in Blue Valentine, but the movie really belongs to Ryan Gosling, who is heartbreaking as a husband trying to repair a dissolving relationship. Derek Cianfrance’s second film took a long time to get made — his feature debut, Brother Tied, came out in 1998 — but that extended gestation period allowed it to develop into a unique, original examination of a marriage in trouble. Set in Brooklyn and Scranton, Blue Valentine bounces back and forth between Dean (Gosling) and Cindy’s (Williams) courtship and a modern-day weekend in which they try to recapture that magic that got it all started. Much of the dialogue is improvised and scenes were often shot in just one take, giving the film an organic, realistic feel. Cianfrance occasionally uses nonprofessional actors to heighten believability; for example, the movers and their boss actually do work for the Brooklyn moving company where Dean is temporarily employed. Cianfrance cleverly manipulates the past with the present to develop the characters; interestingly, after introducing viewers to the growing relationship between Dean and Cindy, he shows her making love to her high school boyfriend, Bobby (Mike Vogel), as if she is cheating on her future husband, creating an uncomfortable feeling that directly impacts the way we interpret their contemporary struggle. The sex scenes, both between Dean and Cindy and Bobby and Cindy, are extremely graphic, initially threatening to burden the film with an NC-17 rating that the Weinstein Company successfully appealed just prior to release. Featuring a score by popular indie band Grizzly Bear, Blue Valentine is one of the best films of 2010, a powerful, very adult romantic drama that will leave you clutching tightly to your loved ones.

MOVING IMAGE: AN ART FAIR OF CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ART

Janet Biggs’s “Airs Above the Ground” is one of the many highlights of the free inaugural Moving Image art fair (image courtesy Janet Biggs)

Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11th Ave. between 27th & 28th Sts.
March 3-6, free
212-643-3152
www.moving-image.info

We consider ourselves “vide-hos” — we rarely meet an experimental video that doesn’t intrigue us in one way or another. So we’re excited about the inaugural Moving Image art fair, an invitational show consisting of single-channel videos, video sculptures, and video installations. Held in the Waterfront Tunnel on the far northwest side of Chelsea during Armory Arts Week, the four-day fair is the brainchild of Winkleman Gallery’s Edward Winkleman and Murat Orozobekov and has been organized by P·P·O·W Gallery’s Penny Pilkington and Wendy Olsoff, with an advisory committee made up of Zoe Butt of Ho Chi Minh City’s SanArt, John Connelly of New York’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Elizabeth Dee of Chelsea’s Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Raphael Gygax of Zurich’s Migros Museum, and Kevin McGarry of LA’s Migrating Forms. Video-based works from approximately three dozen international artists are being shown, including Shana Moulton, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Glenn Fogel, Miguel Angel Rios, Amparo Sard, Carolee Schneeman, Martin Solo Climent, and Leslie Thornton, ranging from one minute (Johanna Unzuta’s hypnotic “Natural Movements”) to thirty-three (Simon Gush’s soccer-as-political-metaphor “In the Company Of”). The majority of the works are shown on individual flat-screen monitors suspended from above and lined up along each side of the vertical passageway, some with chairs and headphones. When you first enter the Waterfront New York Tunnel, on your left will be Kasmalieva and Djumaliev’s “Trans Siberian Amazons,” featuring three video sets embedded within plaid Chinese bags filled with clothing. It’s okay to step on Cal Thompson’s floor video, “The Orb,” on your way to such wonderful special installations as Michal Rovner’s brilliant “June,” Jim Campbell’s light sculpture “Exploded View,” and Corban Walker’s “TV Man,” in which the diminutive artist (actual size) looks out calmly while seemingly trapped in a video booth.

Flat-screen video monitors line both sides of the Waterfront New York Tunnel in Chelsea at the Moving Image art fair (twi-ny/mdr)

There are a number of other outstanding works, and not only from such late legends as David Wojnarowicz (“Heroin”) and Hannah Wilke (“Intercourse with . . .”). In “Alive — An Essential Guide to Survival,” Cecilia Stenbom spends nearly fifteen minutes sitting at a table reading a playful modern-day guide on how to defeat such constant threats as germs, terrorist attacks, and eating out in restaurants. Made in 2002 when he was a graduate student in London, Hiraki Sawa’s “Dwelling” turns his dorm room into airspace for plane activity, with flights taking off from tables and carpeting and flying through hallways and bathrooms. Janet Biggs’s “Airs Above the Ground” follows a synchronized swimmer as she first prepares to get in the water, then delves into her aquatic training. In “Danse Serpentine (Doubled and Refracted),” Miranda Lichtenstein transforms the Lumières’ classic 1896 film of Loie Fuller into an intoxicating endless loop. On Saturday at 2:00, a spotlight panel will examine “Current Takes on Video,” with artists Leslie Thornton and Lucy Raven and curators Chrissie Iles, Barbara London, and Glenn Phillips, moderated by McGarry. As an added bonus, admission to the fair and the panel is free. Moving Image has made an impressive debut that we hope keeps it coming back year after year after year.