The relationship between the body and the act of viewing is explored in interactive Kitchen installation by Katherine Hubbard (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Installation open Tuesday – Saturday through October 22, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Performances Friday, October 14 & 21, free, 7:00
212-255-5793 ext11
thekitchen.org
katherinehubbard.com
Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist Katherine Hubbard will be at the upstairs Kitchen gallery on October 14 and 21 at 7:00, engaging with her immersive, interactive installation “Bring your own lights.” The thirty-five-year-old artist, who is currently in residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa and Baxter St. at the Camera Club of New York, has been exploring the presence and absence, both physically and psychologically, of the body, and specifically the female body in performance, since 2009, in such exhibitions as “cyclops & slashes,” “Untitled (shaving performance),” “Small Town Sex Shop,” and “A thing and its thing-ness. It’s all just nouns and adjectives baby.” Curated by Matthew Lyons, the multipart “Bring your own lights” begins with “Fifty percent distance,” a small room with a handful of movable, low-to-the-ground birch plywood stools where visitors can sit as the lights dim almost imperceptibly over a period of six minutes, and then brighten again, setting a calm, reflective mood. In the main gallery, there are dozens more stools, collectively called “Clear to the legs. Clear for thighs. Your body matter.,” which can be placed together to form larger chairs and reclining benches where people can relax as they check out several series of photographs while experiencing the relationship of the body to the act of viewing. Paying homage to the Kitchen building’s previous existence as an ice storage facility, “Bend the rays more sharply (Photographic print made from a negative embedded in ice at increments between zero and ninety.)” consists of ten silver gelatin prints made precisely as the parenthetical text of the title describes, resulting in intriguing abstract black-and-white images.
The seven photographs that make up “The state and the cause” were taken in the Kitchen’s main-floor black-box space, home to experimental dance, music, and theater, as spotlights shine on an empty stage devoid of performer or performance. And a trio of “Shoring and sheeting” shots reveal New York City construction sites, although it’s not clear if things are being torn down or built up. “It is the autonomous being that deflates the gaze by not acting with the intention of being gazed upon,” Hubbard wrote about her 2012 work, “floss the barbed subject,” continuing, “I recognize the physical body as the mediator between personal desires and socially constructed desires and insist on a self-defining ownership over pleasure.” The same statement can be applied to her Kitchen exhibit, which will remain on view through October 22; admission to the performances, which are first-come, first-served, and the installation are free.
João Pedro Rodrigues reimagines the story of Fernando Martins de Bulhões, also known as Anthony of Lisbon and Saint Anthony of Padua, in the utterly bizarre and infectiously weird adventure drama The Ornithologist. Rodrigues, who also dealt with the thirteenth-century priest’s legacy in the 2013 zombie short Morning of Saint Anthony’s Day, puts ornithologist Fernando (Paul Hamy) through a series of tests after his canoe capsizes while he’s on a bird-watching expedition. He is found near death on the shore by a pair of Chinese pilgrims (Han Wen and Chan Suan), walking Camino de Santiago, who decide to do something very odd with him. His Stations of the Cross journey continues as he meets a deaf and mute goatherd (Xelo Cagiao), a group of colorful, masked caretos, and a trio of topless women on horseback (Juliane Elting, Isabelle Puntel, and Flora Bulcao), who in different ways challenge his sexuality and spirituality. Rodrigues (The Last Time I Saw Macao, To Die Like a Man) infuses the wild tale with references to Christianity, paganism, ritual, superstition, and Greek mythology as Fernando’s physical and psychological strength is tested in oddball events that get stranger and stranger until the director, who was already dubbing in Hamy’s Portuguese lines with his own, starts switching places with the actor.
Eugène Green returns to the New York Film Festival with the glorious French satire / black comedy / biblical parable Son of Joseph, a masterful blending of sound, image, and story that is as stunning to listen to as it is to watch. Newcomer Victor Ezenfis stars as Vincent, an intractable young teen who is desperate to discover who his father is, no matter how hard his single mother (Natacha Regnier), a nurse, tries to keep that information from him. “I don’t want to help people,” he says. “I love no one.” His sneaky ways finally reveal the man’s name, and Vincent tracks him down only to discover that the man, Oscar Pormenor (Mathieu Amalric), is a boorish, self-obsessed publisher who is cheating on his wife with his sexy secretary, Bernadette (Julia de Gasquet). At a party for his company’s latest book, The Predatory Mother, ever-so-chic critic Violette Tréfouille (Maria de Medeiros) mistakes Vincent for an up-and-coming novelist, with Oscar cluelessly declaring him the next Céline before finding out who the boy really is. Soon a disappointed Vincent is befriended by Oscar’s brother, Joseph (Fabrizio Rongione), but neither is aware of the connection. As Vincent is introduced to art and literature, he attempts to manipulate everyone around him in order to form the family he’s always wanted.
André Téchiné’s Being 17 is a touching and sensitive coming-of-age drama set in and around the beautiful Pyrenees in France. Written by Téchiné and Céline Sciamma, who has made such poignant films about teens as 
“Don’t try to know everything,” Min-jung (Lee Yoo-young) says in Hong Sang-soo’s latest unusual and brilliant romantic drama, Yourself and Yours. It’s impossible to know everything that happens in Hong’s films, which set fiction against reality, laying bare cinematic narrative techniques. With a propensity to use protagonists who are directors, it is often difficult to tell what is happening in the film vs. the film-within-the-film. He also repeats scenes with slight differences, calling into question the storytelling nature of cinema as well as real life, in which there are no do-overs. In the marvelous Yourself and Yours, scenes don’t repeat, although the existence of a main character might. Min-jung is in a relationship with painter Young-soo (Kim Joo-hyuk), who is dealing with the failing health of his mother when he is told by a friend (Kim Eui-sung) that Min-jung was seen in a bar drunk and arguing with another man. Young-soo refuses to believe it, since he and Min-jung are facing her drinking problem by very carefully limiting the number of drinks she has when she goes out with him. But when the friend insists that numerous people have seen her in bars with other men and imbibing heavily, Young-soo confronts her, and she virulently defends herself, claiming that they are lies and that he should have more faith in her. She leaves him, and over the next several days she has encounters with various men, but she appears to be either a pathological liar or have a memory problem as she tells the older Jaeyoung (Kwon Hae-hyo), a friend of Min-jung’s, that she is a twin who does not know the painter; later, with filmmaker Sangwon (Yu Jun-sang), she maintains that they have never met despite his assertion that they have. Through it all, Young-soo is determined to win her back. “I want to love each day with my loved one, and then die,” he explains with romantic fervor. He also acknowledges Min-jung’s uniqueness: “Her mind itself is extraordinary,” he says.