twi-ny recommended events

FIRST SATURDAY: SHE KNOWS NO BOUNDS

Honeybird will be part of woman-centric lineup at Brooklyn Museums First Saturday program on March 6 (photo by Monique Mizrahi)

Honeybird will be part of woman-centric lineup at Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturday program on March 5 (photo by Monique Mizrahi)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, March 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Women are the headliners at the Brooklyn Museum’s free March First Saturday program. There will be live music by Honeybird, Denitia and Sene, Yahzarah, and drummers from Tom Tom magazine (with a talkback moderated by Mindy Abovitz); dance by the Erica Essner Performance Co-Op (“Reflex 2015,” followed by a Q&A); storytelling by Ashley “SAYWUT?!” Moyer and Queer Memoir; a screening of Faythe Levine and Sam Macon’s Sign Painters, followed by a talkback with Levine and sign painter Marcine Franckowiak; an art workshop; and pop-up gallery talks. In addition, the galleries are open late so you can check out such exhibitions as “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008,” “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull),’” “Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection,” “This Place,” and “Agitprop!”

DOWNTOWN URBAN ARTS FESTIVAL

Corey Glover will kick off Downtown Urban Arts Festival on March 4 at Joes Pub

Corey Glover will kick off Downtown Urban Arts Festival on March 4 at Joe’s Pub

DUAF
Joe’s Pub, Nuyorican Poets Café, HERE, Tribeca Film Center
March 4 – April 9, $10-$30
www.dutfnyc.com

The fourteenth annual Downtown Urban Arts Festival gets under way this week, kicking off with Corey Glover & Friends playing a one-time-only intimate show at Joe’s Pub on March 4 ($30, 7:30). The five-week extravaganza, dedicated to promoting diversity, features music, theater, poetry, and film over five weeks at several venues below Fourteenth St. Other highlights include Joe Gulla exploring growing up gay in an Italian family in The Bronx Queen (March 8, Joe’s Pub, $20, 7:30), the open poetry slam “Words Matter” with Miguel Algarin, Reg E. Gaines, and others at Nuyorican Poets Cafe (March 17, $12, 9:00), Anthony B. Knight Jr.’s No Cowards in Our Band, about Frederick Douglass (March 25, HERE, $18, 7:00), Dean Preston’s Canned Laughter, about a recluse who is asked to resurrect his children’s television show (March 30, HERE, $18, 7:00), and three days of short films at the Tribeca Film Center (April 7-9, $10, 8:00).

DOUG WHEELER: ENCASEMENTS

Doug Wheeler, Untitled,  vacuum-formed acrylic, sprayed lacquer on acrylic, electronic transformer, and daylight neon, 1969/2014 (© 2016 Doug Wheeler)

Doug Wheeler, “Untitled,” vacuum-formed acrylic, sprayed lacquer on acrylic, electronic transformer, and daylight neon, 1969/2014 (© 2016 Doug Wheeler)

David Zwirner
525 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 5, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-727-2070
www.davidzwirner.com

Two years ago, people lined up at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea to experience Doug Wheeler’s “LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW,” a mesmerizing, meditative “rotational horizon work” that altered visitors’ perception of physical reality and sense of equilibrium. Don’t be surprised if you have to wait on line again to see his latest show, the captivating “Encasements,” which closes this Saturday. Since the late 1960s, the Santa Fe–based Light and Space artist has been creating large-size square panels (90.5 x 90.5 inches, either three, five, or nine inches deep) out of vacuum-formed acrylic, sprayed lacquer, an electronic transformer, and white UV or daylight neon. The light seeps out from the sides and transforms the space — from which all ambient light and architectural detail have been removed — into a cosmic mystery. In each Encasement, the room and the light combine to envelop the viewers’ senses completely, and many wander around, happily unable to get a grasp on where the walls are, especially the corners, without visual or spatial cues. It’s an intoxicating, dizzying experience, and at Zwirner, Wheeler is displaying five of the works, the most ever shown together. Each of the five rooms offers slightly different effects, particularly the one with the panel in an aluminum frame in which the light/color emanates from the center, one of only two such encasements Wheeler has ever made, on view to the public here for the first time. You’ll have to put paper protectors over your shoes in order to enter the pristine space, but once inside, you should glory in the fab wonder of it all, taking it in slowly, making sure not to hurry. It’s more than just an immersive experience; it overwhelms senses you’re usually in more control of, but it’s worth letting yourself go to fully enjoy this, dare we say, luminous environment.

COUNTRY BRUNCHIN’: THERE WILL BE BLOOD

A desperate man (Daniel Day-Lewis) goes on a dark journey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic THERE WILL BE BLOOD

A desperate man (Daniel Day-Lewis) goes on a dark journey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic THERE WILL BE BLOOD

NITEHAWK BRUNCH SCREENINGS: THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, March 5, and Sunday, March 6, 11:00 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
www.miramax.com

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a spectacular, Oscar-winning performance as an independent oil man in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Day-Lewis, in remarkable voice, absolutely embodies Daniel Plainview, a determined, desperate man digging for black gold in turn-of-the-century California. His first strike comes at a heavy price as he loses one of his men in a tragic accident, so he adopts the worker’s infant son, raising H.W. (Dillon Freasier) as his own. The growth of his company leads him to Little Boston, a small town that has oil just seeping out of its pores. But after not allowing Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), the charismatic preacher who runs the local Church of the Third Revelation, to say a prayer over the community’s first derrick, Plainview begins his descent into hell. Using Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! as a starting point (and employing echoes of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons in addition to the obvious reference, George Stevens’s classic 1956 oil flick Giant), writer-director Anderson (Boogie Nights, The Master) has created a thrilling epic about greed, power, and corruption as well as jealousy, murder, and, above all, family, where oil gushes out of the ground with fire and brimstone. Robert Elswit’s beautiful, Oscar-winning cinematography is so gritty and realistic, audiences will be reaching for their faces to wipe the oil and blood off. The piercing, classically based score, composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, builds to a mind-blowing crescendo by the end of the film — which concludes with a controversial finale. Shot in the same location — Marfa, Texas — where Giant was set, There Will Be Blood is an unforgettable journey into the dark heart of one man’s soul. There Will Be Blood is being shown March 5 & 6 at the rather ungodly hour of eleven in the morning as part of the Nitehawk Cinema series “Country Brunchin’” and “Nitehawk Brunch Screenings” and will be preceded by a live performance by New York duo Dökk Vetur. We don’t know if milkshakes will be available on the menu, but if they are, beware: Plainview can get rather thirsty. “Nitehawk Brunch Screenings” also features Joe Wright’s Hanna this weekend, followed next weekend by Rod Daniel’s Teen Wolf and Pierre Morel’s Taken.

CULTUREMART 2016

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEBMLED IDENTITY is part of the 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEMBLED IDENTITY is part of 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 2-12, $15
212-647-0202
here.org

We nearly forgot about HERE’s annual CULTUREMART performance festival, which usually is held in January/February, but fortunately we were reminded of this forward-thinking series just in time as March began. A project of the HERE Artist Residency Program, or HARP, the multidisciplinary festival features eleven workshop productions from March 2 to 12, with all tickets only $15. Things get under way March 2-3 with one of New York’s most innovative teams, Reid Farrington and Sara Farrington, who repurpose footage of old films to create something new with live actors. This year they are presenting CasablancaBox, in which they go behind the scenes of the making of Casablanca. In Things Fall Apart (March 5-6), Kate Brehm uses folding chairs to examine her place in the world; it’s on a double bill with Rob Roth’s audiovisual Soundstage. RADY&BLOOM Collective Playmaking explores the ocean in O (March 5-6), which is being shown with Adam J. Thompson / the Deconstructive Theatre Project’s live-cinema Venice Double Feature, which examines social media and voyeurism. Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard delve into the science behind identity in Assembled Identity, part of a March 8-9 double bill with Lanie Fefferman’s math-centric chamber opera, Elements. Also on March 8-9, Paul Pinto goes inside the mind of the political activist and philosopher in Thomas Paine in Violence; also on the bill is Leah Coloff’s ThisTree, stories and songs about family and legacy. CULTUREMART concludes March 11-12 with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a dance-theater work dealing withtalent and fame, teamed with Chris M. Green’s American Weather, which looks at our very questionable future.

ARMORY ARTS WEEK 2016

Christian Jankowski directs CRYING FOR THE MARCH OF HUMANITY, which is being shown at Spring/Break Art Show

Christian Jankowski directs CRYING FOR THE MARCH OF HUMANITY, which is being shown at Spring/Break Art Show

It’s that time of year again, when the art world descends on New York City for the start of art fair season. There are no fewer than eleven fairs this week, with the next batch scheduled for May. Below is a brief look at March’s shows, highlighted by participating artists and/or galleries and special projects. The anchor is the Armory Show; prices range from free to a hefty forty-five bucks.

What: Spring/Break Art Show: ⌘COPY⌘PASTE
Where: Skylight at Moynihan Station, 421 Eighth Ave. at 34th St.
When: March 2-7, $10 in advance, $15 at the door
Why: Mira Dancy, Nick Darmstaedter, Sue de Beer, Vanessa Castro, Renee Dykeman, Brock Enright, Daniel Gordon, Christian Jankowski, Janus, Jim Jarmusch, Oliver Jeffers, Joan Jonas, Maripol, Coke Wisdom O’Neal, Walter Robinson, many more

What: The Art Show
Where: Park Avenue Armory, Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
When: March 2-6, $25
Why: Sherrie Levine, Alex Katz, Gillian Wearing, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Marcel Dzama, Edward Hopper & Company, Frank Stella, Carolee Schneemann, Beauford Delaney, Wolfgang Laib, Sigmar Polke, Milton Avery, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, Richard Diebenkorn, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Richard Artschwager, Daniel Buren, many more

Wednesday, March 2
“Tree Talk” by Maria Elena González, 2:00 & 6:00

What: VOLTA NY
Where: Pier 90, West Fiftieth St. at Twelfth Ave.
When: March 2-6, $25
Why: Ronald Cyrille, Tom Anholt / Günther Förg, Jessica Peters, Florian Heinke / Gavin Nolan, Toshiya Masuda, Paul Brainard, Philip Taaffe, Elad Kopler, Jorge Pineda, Becca Lowry, Anthony Goicolea, Dawit Abebe, Shoplifter, many more

Friday, March 4
Shaun Leonardo: “I Can’t Breathe Workshop and Performances,” 5:00

Mike and Doug Starn’s “Structure of Thought 30” will be on view at the Edwynn Houk Gallery booth at the Armory Show (photo courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery)

Mike and Doug Starn’s “Structure of Thought 30” will be on view at the Edwynn Houk Gallery booth at the Armory Show (photo courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery)

What: The Armory Show
Where: Piers 92 & 94, Twelfth Ave. at Fiftieth St.
When: March 3-6, $45
Why: Special projects by Kapwani Kiwanga, Emeka Ogboh, Lebohang Kganye, Karo Akpokiere, Ed Young, Athi-Patra Ruga, Jared Ginsburg, Mame-Diarra Niang, Stephen Burks, Sung Jang, Carlo and Mary-Lynn Massoud, Modern, Contemporary, African Perspectives, Armory Presents, Open Forum, more

Thursday, March 3
“Looking Back, Leading the Way,” with El Anatsui and Sam Nhlengethwa, moderated by Bisi Silva, part of the Armory Show 2016 Symposium: African Perspectives, Media Lounge, Pier 94, 5:30

Saturday, March 5
“A Spell That Flows Both Ways,” lecture-performance by Kapwani Kiwanga, Media Lounge, Pier 94, 1:00

What: Art on Paper
Where: Pier 36, 299 South St.
When: March 3-6, $25
Why: Special projects by Suzanne Goldenberg, Libby Black, Laurence Vallières, Alex Paik, Lower Eastside Girls Club, Bob Gill, Javier Calleja, Glenn Goldberg, Federico Uribe, Takaaki Tanaka, Li Hongbo

What: New City Art Fair
Where: hpgrp Gallery, 434 Greenwich St.
When: March 3-6, free with pass
Why: Fumi Ishino, Keigo Nishikiori, Harumi Shimizu, Shuji Terayama, Daisuke Takahashi, snAwk, So Sekiyama, Meguru Yamaguchi

What: Scope
Where: 639 West Forty-Sixth St. at Twelfth Ave
When: March 3-6, $35
Why: Breeder Program (Haven Gallery, Kallenbach Gallery, One Mile Gallery, Jenn Singer Gallery, Barbara Edwards Contemporary, Cordesa Fine Art), Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series winner Aron Belka

What: Pulse
Where: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West Eighteenth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
When: March 3-6, $25
Why: Special projects by Erin D. Garcia, Armando Marino, Melissa Pokorny, Anna Paola Protasio, Macon Reed, Yumi Janairo Roth, Mia Taylor, Richard Vivenzio, Jason Willaford

Thursday, March 3
through
Sunday, March 6
Macon Reed, “Eulogy for the Dyke Bar” events, including Last Call podcast broadcast, DJ Happy Hour, Rocky and Rhoda Trivia Night, Stashes and Lashes Drag Show, and Eulogy Ritual, multiple times

What: Clio Art Fair
Where: 508 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: March 3-6, free
Why: Detlef Ewald Aderhold, Thierry Alet, KO-HEY Arikawa, Manss Aval, Sarah Hai Edwards, Sunil Garg, Andrea Goldsmith, Seunghwui Koo, Emily Madrigal, Jamie Martinez, Roberto Perotti, Kerstin Roolfs, Daniel Rosenbaum, Raimonda Sanna, Gisella Sorrentino, Zoya Taylor, Anthea Zito, others

Maija Blåfield’s GOLDEN AGE will be screening at the Moving Image art fair (photo courtesy AV-arkki)

Maija Blåfield’s GOLDEN AGE will be screening at the Moving Image art fair (photo courtesy AV-arkki)

What: Moving Image
Where: 269 Eleventh Ave. between Twenty-Seventh & Twenty-Eighth Sts.
When: March 3-6, free
Why: Amalie Atkins, Perry Bard, Maija Blåfield, Marcos Bonisson and Khalil Charif, boredomresearch, Jeremy Chandler, Sarah Choo Jing, Clément Cogitore, Jennifer Dalton, Rico Gatson, Sofia Hultén, Anthony Iacono, Erdal İnci, George Jenne, Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev, Kalliopi Lemos, Pablo Lobato, LoVid, Alexandre Mazza, Olivia McGilchrist, Lorna Mills, Tameka Norris, Anne Spalter, Mika Taanila, Sergio Vega, Saya Woolfalk, Gil Yefman

What: alt_break art fair
Where: Multiple locations
When: March 3-6, free
Why: alt_break 2016: SHIFT_ consists of site-activated exhibits at Creative Art Works, Fountain House Gallery, and the Center for Social Innovation as well as at the Armory Show, Scope, and Spring/Break, with such artists as Anne-Marie Lavigne, Jee Hee Kang, Lizz Brady, Reba Hasko, Geraldo Mercado, and Sean Naftel

Friday, March 4
Launch event with artists, curators, raffle prizes, and a live performance by Ryan Krause, Fountain House Gallery, 702 Ninth Ave. near Forty-Ninth St., 6:00

Sunday, March 6
Closing panel discussion and reception with curators Audra Lambert, Kimi Kitada, Victoria Manganiello, and Adam Zucker and special guests, moderated by Andrew Kaminski, Center for Social Innovation, Starrett-Lehigh Building, 601 West Twenty-Sixth St. west of Eleventh Ave., third floor, 2:00

What: The Independent
Where: Spring Studios, 50 Varick St.
When: March 4-6, price TBD ($20 in 2015)
Why: The Approach, London; Artists Space, New York; The Box, Los Angeles; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome; Elizabeth Dee, New York; Delmes & Zander, Cologne/Berlin; gb agency, Paris; Herald St, London; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo; the Modern Institute, Glasgow; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne/Berlin; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt; Office Baroque, Brussels; others

BAMcinématek FAVORITES — GALLIC 60s: A MAN AND A WOMAN / PIERROT LE FOU

Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant play characters trying to escape their pasts in Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN

A MAN AND A WOMAN (UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME) (Claude Lelouch, 1966)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Wednesday, March 2, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Winner of both the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman is one of the most popular, and most unusual, romantic love stories ever put on film. Oscar-nominated Anouk Aimée stars as Anne Gauthier and Jean-Louis Trintignant as Jean-Louis Duroc, two people who each has a child in a boarding school in Deauville. Anne, a former actress, and Jean-Louis, a successful racecar driver, seem to hit it off immediately, but they both have pasts that haunt them and threaten any kind of relationship. Shot in three weeks with a handheld camera by Lelouch, who earned nods for Best Director and Best Screenplay (with Pierre Uytterhoeven), A Man and a Woman is a tour-de-force of filmmaking, going from the modern day to the past via a series of flashbacks that at first alternate between color and black-and-white, then shift hues in curious, indeterminate ways. Much of the film takes place in cars, either as Jean-Louis races around a track or the protagonists sit in his red Mustang convertible and talk about their lives, their hopes, their fears. The heat they generate is palpable, making their reluctance to just fall madly, deeply in love that much more heart-wrenching, all set to a memorable soundtrack by Francis Lai. Lelouch, Trintignant, and Aimée revisited the story in 1986 with A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later, without the same impact and success. A recently restored print of the original will be shown on March 2 at 7:30 as part of the BAMcinématek series “BAMcinématek: Gallic 60s,” in honor of the film’s fiftieth anniversary. The two-day treat continues March 3 with Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina should be more excited about recent restoration of Jean-Luc Godard classic

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina should be more excited about recent restoration of Jean-Luc Godard classic

PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, March 3, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Art, American consumerism, the Vietnam and Algerian wars, Hollywood, and cinema itself get skewered in Jean-Luc Godard’s fab faux gangster flick / road comedy / romance epic / musical Pierrot Le Fou. Based on Lionel White’s novel Obsession, the film follows the chaotic exploits of Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina, Godard’s then-wife), former lovers who meet up again quite by accident. The bored Ferdinand immediately decides to leave his wife and family for the flirtatious, unpredictable Marianne, who insists on calling him Pierrot despite his protestations. Soon Ferdinand is caught in the middle of a freewheeling journey involving gun running, stolen cars, dead bodies, and half-truths, all the while not quite sure how much he can trust Marianne.

Filmed in reverse-scene order without much of a script, the mostly improvised Pierrot Le Fou was shot in stunning color by Raoul Coutard. Many of Godard’s recurring themes and styles appear in the movie, including jump cuts, confusing dialogue, written protests on walls, and characters speaking directly at the audience, who are more or less along for the same ride as Ferdinand. And as with many Godard films, the ending is a doozy. A few years ago, when the film was shown at Anthology Film Archives as part of a series selected by John Zorn, the avant-garde musician explained, “Pierrot holds a special place in my heart — I am really a Romantic, not a Postmodern — and this film’s music never ceases to reduce me to tears.” You can see and hear for yourself when last year’s fiftieth-anniversary restoration of this Nouvelle Vague favorite screens on March 3 in the two-day BAMcinématek series “BAMcinématek: Gallic 60s,” which begins March 2 with Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman.