this week in art

SUMMER STREETS 2015

Slide the City will be coming to Park Ave. as part of Summer Streets celebration

Park Ave. & 72nd St. to Foley Square
Saturday, August 1, 8, 15, free, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
www.nyc.gov

Now in its sixth year, Summer Streets takes place the next three Saturday mornings, as Park Ave. will be closed to vehicular traffic from 72nd St. to Foley Square and the Brooklyn Bridge from 7:00 am to 1:00 pm, encouraging people to walk, run, jog, blade, skate, slide, and bike down the famous thoroughfare, getting exercise and enjoying the great outdoors without car exhaust, speeding taxis, and slow-moving buses. There are five rest stops along the route (Uptown at 52nd St., Midtown at 25th, Astor Pl. at Lafayette St., SoHo at Spring & Lafayette, and Foley Square at Duane & Centre), where people can stop for some food and drink, live performances, fitness classes, site-specific art installations, dog walks, bicycle workshops, and other activities, all of which are free. Below are some of the highlights.

Foley Square Rest Stop
Slide the City (advance preregistration required,) “ICY SIGNS” by Steve ESPO Powers, Free Style Soccer with NYC Flo, Historical Reenactors with Ben Franklin, and The Mantises Are Flipping W.3 by Bodystories: Teresa Fellion Dance + John Yannelli with members of the SLC Experimental Music Ensemble, 10:00 – 10:35, 10:55 – 11:35, 12 noon – 1:00 (August 15 only, 26 Federal Plaza)

SoHo Rest Stop
Fitness Classes, Free Bike Repair by Bicycle Habitat, Bike & Roll Bike Rental, Honest Tea, Waterfront Alliance Table

Astor Place Rest Stop
American Kennel Club Dog Park, Department of Design and Construction Arts & Crafts Workshop, Therapeutic Arts by Wheeling Forward, Guided and Self-Guided Walking Tours

Midtown Rest Stop
Whole Foods Market Summer Camp, CitiBike Information & Education, live music and dance performances, juggling, and tai chi demonstrations

Uptown Rest Stop
DOT Safety Zone, “The Postcard Project” by Connie Perry, Parkour Fitness Demonstrations, Serious Fun Children’s Network Workshop, Central Park Sightseeing Bike Rental, Bronx Museum of the Arts: Arts & Crafts with Artist Educators, live music, dance, and comedy performances

GROVE ALLEY SILENT DISCO PARTY

Grove Alley
Grove Pl. & Hanover Pl., parallel to Fulton & Livingston Sts.
Friday, July 31, free with advance RSVP ($5 for headphones), 5:00 – 11:00
downtownbrooklyn.com

Following in the tradition of Grove Alley Makers Nite, Grove Alley Paint Nite, and Grove Alley Game Nite, Grove Alley Silent Disco promises one wild and crazy evening in downtown Brooklyn. Admission is free with advance RSVP; once you’re in, you lay down five bucks for a pair of headphones and get to choose among three channels with which to get your groove on, with live spinning by Talib Kweli, DJ Beto, DJ Chela, and DJ Joro Boro. The four interactive DJ booths will feature multimedia installations by Taezoo Park and animation from Sticky Monger. Brooklyn Brewery will be supplying some tasty beverages, while such food trucks as Kimchi Taco, Sweet Chili, Morris Grilled Cheese, and Coolhaus will be on hand as well.

FIRST SATURDAY: CARIBBEAN HERITAGE

The Braata Folk Singers will help celebrate Caribbean Heritage at Brooklyn Museum on August 1 (photo © copyright Braata Productions)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, August 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

After taking last month off because of the July 4 holiday, the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program is back August 1 with a celebration of Caribbean Heritage in preparation for the annual New York Caribbean Carnival Parade on Labor Day. There will be live performances by BombaYo, the Braata Folk Singers, Cuban jazz pianist Elio Villafranca, and Klash City Sound System and Supa Frendz; a printmaking workshop; a pop-up carnival with poet Arielle John; a book club talk with Naomi Jackson about her new novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill; and screenings of Black Radical Imagination shorts, clips from Taboo Yardies hosted by director Selena Blake, Jonathan David Kane’s Papa Machete, followed by a Q&A with Kane, and Cecile Emeke’s webseries Ackee & Saltfish, followed by a talkback with Emeke. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” “The Rise of Sneaker Culture,” “Kara Walker: ‘African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas),’” “KAWS: ALONG THE WAY,” “Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence,” and “FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds.”

LINCOLN CENTER OUT OF DOORS: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF GEOFFREY HOLDER

The life of Geoffrey Holder will be celebrated at special free program at Lincoln Center

CARMEN & GEOFFREY (Linda Atkinson & Nick Doob, 2006)
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Amsterdam & Columbus Aves.
Saturday, August 1, free, 1:00
firstrunfeatures.com
lcoutofdoors.org

Carmen & Geoffrey is an endearing look at Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder’s lifelong love affair with dance — and each other. The New Orleans-born de Lavallade studied with Lester Horton and went to high school with Alvin Ailey, whom she brought to his first dance class. Best known as a pitchman for 7UP (the “uncola”) and playing the intriguing Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die, Trinidadian Holder was a larger-than-life gentle giant who was a dancer, choreographer, composer, costume designer, actor, stage director, writer, photographer, painter, and just about anything else he wanted to be. The two met when they both were cast in Truman Capote and Harold Arlen’s Broadway show House of Flowers in 1954, with Holder instantly falling in love with de Lavallade; they remained together until Holder’s death this past October at the age of eighty-four. Directors Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob combine amazing archival footage — of Eartha Kitt, Josephine Baker, Ulysses Dove, de Lavallade dancing with Ailey, and other splendid moments — with contemporary rehearsal scenes, dance performances, and interviews with such stalwarts as dance critic Jennifer Dunning, former Alvin Ailey artistic director Judith Jamison, and choreographer Joe Layton (watch out for his eyebrows), along with family members and Gus Solomons jr, who still works with de Lavallade, and Dudley Williams, who just died last month. The film was made on an extremely low budget, and it shows, but it is filled with such glorious footage that you’ll get over that quickly. Carmen & Geoffrey, along with additional rare archival footage, is screening August 1 as part of the free Lincoln Center Out of Doors program “A Celebration of the Life of Geoffrey Holder” and will be preceded by the panel discussion “The Life and Work of Geoffrey Holder” with Doob and Atkinson, moderated by Leo Holder, Geoffrey and de Lavallade’s son. Fans should also check out the new exhibition “The Genius of Geoffrey Holder,” on view through August 29 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

MET MUSEUM PRESENTS: THE RETURN

Avatar Adam offers insight into the reconstruction of Tullio Lombardo’s Renaissance Adam in interactive performance installation at the Met (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Venetian Sculpture of the Renaissance (Gallery 504)
Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Daily through August 2, free with recommended admission $12-$25
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org
the return slideshow

A museum disaster, a literal “fall of Adam,” has led to one of the Met’s most intriguing new pieces and a surprising venture into both digital and performance art. In October 2002, Tullio Lombardo’s late-fifteenth-century marble statue of Adam collapsed to the ground and shattered into more than two hundred fragments, its pedestal giving way to its half-ton weight. In reconstructing what Met assistant curator calls “the most important sculpture from Renaissance Venice to be found outside that city today,” the museum employed digital technology that new media artist Reid Farrington has transformed into an educational and very entertaining interactive two-part installation. Farrington has previously used multiple screens and live performers in such presentations as Tyson vs. Ali (a fictional bout between the two champions), The Passion Project (reimagining Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film, The Passion of Joan of Arc), and Gin & “It” (a complex behind-the-scenes staging of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope). Now he brings the restoration of “Adam” back to life with the interactive performance installation “The Return.” In the specially designed Gallery 504, “Adam,” which was commissioned for the tomb of Venice doge Andrea Vendramin, stands atop a new base, an apple in his left hand, his right hand clutching a bare branch of the Tree of Knowledge. Also in the room is a large-scale two-sided monitor that is like a supersized iPhone in which an animated Biblical Adam and a digital avatar of the sculpture discuss free will, determinism, God, compression and shearing, and other lofty subjects with an actor-docent (Cara Francis, Catherine Gowl, or Stephanie Regina), who navigates the performance by focusing on the museum’s groundbreaking reconstruction of the sculpture in brief, ever-changing explanations of specific parts of the sculpture, including the elbow, the torso, and the upper tree trunk. Visitors are encouraged to interact with the digital performer and the docent, so every performance is slightly different.

Biblical Adam examines his marble representation in Reid Farrington’s innovative “The Return” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Adams are sometimes wandering a van Gogh-like field and at other times immersed in a digital realm inhabited by falling 0s and 1s. The movement of the Adams is performed by an actor (Roger Casey, Jack Frederick, or Gavin Price) in a motion-capture suit in the nearby Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, where everyone is invited to watch him in action, surrounded by numerous monitors, including one showing what is being seen on the screen in the gallery, controlled by a pair of technicians. The Adams and the docent also delve into the nature of sin and the meaning behind the fig leaf while relating Adam’s physical fall from its podium to his metaphorical fall from grace in the Bible and comparing God’s creation to that of the artist. (The script was written by Farrington’s wife, playwright Sara Farrington.) Make sure to check out both sides of the monitor, which reveal the two Adams’ front and back. “The Return” is a fascinating way to explore a work of art; in this case, it came about because of an accident, but it could very well be the next wave of how we look at and think about art. An appendage to the recent exhibit “Tullio Lombardo’s Adam: A Masterpiece Restored,” which closed on June 14, the performance, which playfully evokes the 1982 sci-fi classic Tron, takes place daily from 12:45 to 2:15, as well as from 4:30 to 6:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. Admission is free; you can also follow all the fascinating action online via the Met’s live stream.

NEW YORK CITY POETRY FESTIVAL

You can relax with a wide range of poetry at fifth annual festival on Governors Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Governors Island
Colonels Row
July 25-26, free (donation suggested), 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
newyorkcitypoetryfestival.com
new york city poetry festival slideshow

The fifth annual New York City Poetry Festival, which continues Sunday on Governors Island, honors Gotham’s literary heritage with three stages named after a trio of iconic landmarks, the Algonquin, the White Horse, and Chumley’s. Poets from dozens of publishing houses, university presses, and nonprofit organizations read their works, in addition to the open mic Ring of Daisies and other places where poetry just pops up. There are lots of booths, a food truck, and a beer garden that declares that “the psychiatrist is in.” Walking across the big field, you can listen as one poem from one location morphs into one from another and then one from another in a kind of audio rainbow of words and expression. You can make visible poetry with Rachel Ossip’s interactive “to touch” installation, add your own epitaph to Christine Stoddard’s “Word Graveyard,” get a word as part of Maya Stein and Amy Tingle’s Tandem Poetry Project, and hang out with Karl C. Leone’s “Dionysia: A Bacchic Ode” (featuring art by Alexis Myre, music by Larkin Grimm, and live performances by Daniel Benhamu, Aron Canter, Nettie Chickering, Jochem le Cointre, Eli Condon, Mateo d’Amato, Hailey Kemp, Rafeh Mahmud, Siever O’Connor-Aoki, Olivia Porter, Vanessa Rose, and Michelle Rosen). Be sure to also check out building 407b for the Children’s Poetry Festival, Amy Bassin and Mark Blickley’s “Dream Streams,” the analog participatory “Typewriter Project: The Subconscious of the City,” and the Poetry Brothel, where you can get an extremely private one-on-one reading for a small fee. As an added bonus, stop by LMCC’s “(Counter) Public Art, Intervention & Performance in Lower Manhattan from 1978-1993” exhibition at the Arts Center at Governors Island to see video of John Kelly’s Love of a Poet piece from 1990.

LAURIE FRICK: WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DAY IS IT?

Laurie Frick, “Daily Time Slices Aug 25,” laser-etched wood blocks, pigment and aluminum on alumalite, 2014 (© Laurie Frick)

Pavel Zoubok Gallery
531 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through July 25, free
212-675-8672
pavelzoubok.com
www.lauriefrick.com

Earlier this year, the Guggenheim’s “On Kawara — Silence” retrospective highlighted the fascinating oeuvre of the Japanese Conceptual artist who detailed nearly every aspect of his life, keeping track of what time he woke up, who he saw, where he went, and what he did via notebooks, postcards, newspaper articles, telegrams, and date paintings. Former tech executive and engineer Laurie Frick takes that decidedly analog view of existence into the social-media-dominated twenty-first century with “Who are you? What day is it?,” an involving series of works that use data mining to create colorful depictions of time and personal experience by using rectilinear units of different color and size to indicate various activities and lengths of time spent on them. In “Time-slices,” the Austin- and New York City-based artist adapts data compiled by microbiologist Ben Lipkowitz, who exists on a twenty-six-hour sleep cycle, into wall sculptures of grids of small blocks of multiple sizes and hues arranged on shelves that suggest a kind of library. Another series, “7 Days,” follows the lives of a man and a woman in strictly linear fashion, forming a collection of narrow, vertical totems that evoke measuring sticks, taking stock of what these two people do on a daily basis for one week. And in “Leather Blocks,” Frick maps her own use of technology through Manictime, visualizing it as hundreds of tiny blocks winding across a wall. Using physically measurable objects that evoke such antique information technologies as children’s blocks and books on a shelf or even yardsticks, she simultaneously calls to mind the immaterial square pixels and blocks of digital information that our various apps use to analyze and show us our data. “Your job as an artist is to really pay attention to yourself, and sometimes those observations get eventually explained by science,” Frick said in a 2013 TEDx Talk in Austin. Frick, whose free FRICKbits app, “the ultimate data-selfie,” gives people the opportunity to “take back your data and turn it into art,” has done just that with “Who are you? What day is it?” First and foremost, it grabs your attention with its three-dimensional patterns and eye-catching color schemes, but upon further examination, it shares data that, although about other people, will make you consider your own use of time and technology. “I’m not naive about data privacy,” she says in the TEDx Talk, referencing various ways companies gather information about you. “My sense right now is, they measure me, now I measure me. You have data; I have data. Fight back!” Frick does just that, and makes it a whole lot of fun in the process.