this week in art

MOVIE NIGHTS WITH MACHINE

Eyes of Laura Mars is part of fashionable Machine Dazzle film series at MAD

Who: Machine Dazzle
What: Movie Night with Machine
Where: The Theater at MAD, Museum of Arts & Design, 2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
When: October 25 & 27, December 20, January 10, $10, 7:00
Why: Walking around the Museum of Arts and Design exhibition “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle” is like wandering through a glorious movie set, with colorful costumes and artworks that tell one heckuva bizarre story; you fully expect the mannequins to suddenly come to life and enter this surreal world. The retrospective of the work of performance artist Machine Dazzle, on view through February 19, is supplemented with a film series hosted by the queer experimental theater genius, born Matthew Flower in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1972, consisting of movies that influenced him as a child of the 1970s and ’80s. It kicked off October 13 with the epic Clash of the Titans and continues October 25 with Robert Wise’s underrated Star Trek: The Motion Picture (can’t wait to hear what Machine will have to say about the Federation uniforms!) and October 27 with Irvin Kershner’s tense neo-noir thriller Eyes of Laura Mars, about a glamorous fashion photographer who is being stalked by a serial killer; the cast includes Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, René Auberjonois, and Raúl Juliá, and one scene takes place in Columbus Circle, where the museum moved in 2008.

Machine will be on hand to introduce the screening and participate in a discussion afterward; it should be too much fun listening to him talk about the costumes and scenery, and there will be giveaways, costume contests, custom-designed step-and-repeats, photoshoots, and other cool stuff. Be sure to come back December 20 for Robert Greenwald’s Xanadu, when we can all pay tribute to the late Olivia Newton-John and celebrate Machine’s fiftieth birthday, followed January 10 by Guy Hamilton’s Agatha Christie adaptation Evil Under the Sun, featuring Peter Ustinov as Detective Hercule Poirot and also starring Maggie Smith, Jane Birkin, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, and Diana Rigg. In addition, on November 8 from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, the museum will host “Teacher Workshop: Activism and the Art of Machine Dazzle,” comprising a curator-led tour, an art workshop, and refreshments.

FOR THE BIRDS

Chen Chen & Kai Williams’s Blue Heron Triangle floats on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Japanese pond (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

FOR THE BIRDS
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
900 Washington Ave. at Eastern Parkway
Through October 23, $25-$30 (children under twelve free), 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-623-7200
www.bbg.org/forthebirds
online slideshow

One of the most delightful outdoor exhibits of the year is “For the Birds,” concluding this weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The show consists of more than three dozen birdhouses created by artists, architects, and others, placed throughout the garden’s fifty-two-acre expanse. Even with a map, finding each creation can be a bit like a treasure hunt as you make your way through the Native Flora Garden, Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, Magnolia Plaza, Ginkgo Allée, Shakespeare Garden, Bluebell Wood, Herb Garden, Belle’s Brook, Rose Garden, Bamboo Grove, Cherry Esplanade, and other lovely locations.

Each birdhouse is accompanied by a sign identifying the title, artist, and materials and including a brief background on the work. A Palace for the Eastern Bluebird by SO – IL, Dalma Földesi, Jung In Seo, and Eventscape was “inspired by the intricate and haphazard way that birds weave their nests. We chose to make a birdhouse made of 3D-printed clay because it can produce textures evocative of woven structures. We are interested in seeing how birds, particularly the eastern bluebird, will interact with this kind of material. We hope that the earth tones of the clay will be highly attractive to them.”

Kevin Quiles Bonilla’s Pal’ campo honors his Puerto Rican heritage (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Nina Cooke John’s Oh Robin! “is an abstracted interpretation of the robin’s act of nest weaving. Robins have become invisible to us, like the grocery store cashier, Amazon delivery worker, bus driver, and other workers who are critical to the running of our city but have faded into the background of our lives. The robin shows us its scrappiness by making its nest almost anywhere.” Tom Sachs says about his contribution, Swiss, a red plywood version with a white Swiss cross, “To find home or shelter in Switzerland is the dream. If those damn birds are so above it all, why not let them share our burden? Let’s ground the birds in that reality.”

Andy Holden’s The Auguries, a kind of miniature avian sculpture park, was made by cast resin from 3D prints of waveforms created by recordings of rare bird songs. Shun Kinoshita + Charlap Hyman & Herrero’s simply named Birdhouse “is for all birds, including the spirits of birds long gone.” Kevin Quiles Bonilla’s dazzling Pal’ campo honors his family home in Puerto Rico and explores “the idea of both birds and humans as migrating beings, the memories we keep during our travels, and the notion of what home is to those who move from one place to another.”

Julie Peppito’s United Birds of America (E Pluribus Unum) is a condo of curiosities (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Others pay tribute to the downy woodpecker, the Carolina wren, little bluestem grass, Olivier Messiaen’s use of birdsong in his compositions, scarecrows, the blue heron, the barn owl, and others while taking on climate change and extinction, envisioning birdhouses as safe havens and sanctuaries.

Many of the birdhouses are beautiful works of art all by themselves. Chen Chen & Kai Williams’s Blue Heron Triangle floats on a raft constructed of bamboo reeds tied to empty plastic containers. Sourabh Gupta’s woven offers multiple birds a place to gather. Jessica Maffia’s A Home for Flickers features a trompe l’oeil blue sky with clouds and surreal hands emerging as if holding out protection. Also look out for Pat McCarthy’s Batloft, Joey’s Coop, Babylon Coop, Niknak’s City Cart, funkmaster George Clinton’s Come Fly, Flock Together, Barry McGee’s Untitled, Luam Melake’s Descendants, Suchi Reddy’s The Nest Egg, Amy Ritter’s Safe Space, and Julie Peppito’s wildly engaging United Birds of America (E Pluribus Unum), “one big bird condo [that is] a metaphor for the United States, because we must learn to live together or divided we fall,” a robotlike form filled with tiny delights.

Sourabh Gupta’s woven hides out in BBG’s Overlook (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In addition, most of the birdhouses are accompanied by a tune as part of the Birdsong Project, curated by Randall Poster, with specially selected songs by Michael Penn, Balmorhea, Kurt Vile, Dan Deacon, Uwade, Terry Riley, Suzzy Roche, Loudon Wainwright III, Laurie Anderson, Beck, and others. “So while in quarantine, I became much more aware of the birds and the birdsong around me,” Poster explains on the website. “I spent a lot of time listening to the birds singing. I was not alone. It was something that we began to talk about. The beauty of birds, the joy and mysteries of birdsong. Given that the situation in the fall of 2020 was sad, strange, and frightening, as plagues tend to be, this fascination with the birds was a magical distraction. Thank God for the birds. . . . And so we are building a community, joined to celebrate and protect the birds. We are birds.”

Finally, as They Might Be Giants advised once upon a time, “Make a little birdhouse in your soul.”

K2 FRIDAY NIGHT FREE EXHIBITION TOUR: MANDALA LAB ANNIVERSARY

The Rubin’s Mandala Lab is an immersive experience that explores anger, attachment, envy, ignorance, and pride (photo courtesy Rubin Museum of Art)

FREE EXHIBITION TOUR: MANDALA LAB ANNIVERSARY
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, October 21, free, 7:15
212-620-5000
rubinmuseum.org

The Rubin Museum is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its interactive Mandala Lab with a guided tour on October 21 at 7:15 as part of its weekly free K2 Friday Night, which also includes tabla player DJ Roshni Samlal, access to all galleries, and a special cocktail menu.

In Buddhism, the mandala is a symbolic image of the universe, a painting, scroll, or sand sculpture that offers the ability to contemplate transformation and enlightenment. The Mandala Lab, subtitled “Where Emotions Can Turn to Wisdom,” consists of four quadrants of experiences that explore five afflictive emotions, or kleshas — anger, envy, pride, ignorance, and attachment — through multiple senses, each associated with a color and an element, either earth, air, fire, water, or space. The project design was inspired by the Rubin’s seventeenth-century Tibetan Sarvavid Vairochana Mandala, which contains circles and squares, the Five Wisdom Buddhas, and representations of earthly elements. “All great art helps us see each other from the inside out. But Buddhist art goes a step further,” Rubin head of programs Dawn Eshelman explains in a promotional video. “It provides a kind of visual to help us survive in uncertain times.”

In “Check Your Pride,” you place a token in a slot with such statements as “I think I am better than others” or “I feel proud of achievements I haven’t earned” while standing in front of a mirror. Palden Weinreb’s Untitled (Coalescence) gives you the chance to let go of envy by sitting on a cushion and breathing in time with a circular light sculpture that dims and glows. A touch screen allows you to share your thoughts on ignorance.

Attachment is tied to smell in an installation comprising six stations featuring videos by a half dozen visual artists accompanied by a corresponding scent. Each short video about personal memories, made by Laurie Anderson (Uncle Allen), Sanford Biggers (Joanin Temple for Mandala Lab), Tenzin Tsetan Choklay (1994), Amit Dutta (The Scent of Earth), Wang Yahui (The Smell of a Rice Field), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Waterfall), features a related scent created by master perfumer Christophe Laudamiel that you get to guess at the end of the two-minute film.

You can bang away your anger in a gong orchestra, for which composers and musicians Billy Cobham, Sheila E., Peter Gabriel, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Sarah Hennies, Huang Ruo, Shivamani, and Bora Yoon have chosen eight unique gongs and mallets, manufactured by Ryan Shelledy or Matt Nolan and made of brass, bronze, or silver nickel, that visitors are invited to activate, following these instructions: “1. Imagine your anger. 2. Gently strike the gong in front of you one time using the mallet to the right. 3. Raise the handle to the left to partially submerge the gong in the water. 4. Listen to the sound of your anger transform. 5. Let the sound fade, and for an added challenge, watch the water return to stillness. 6. When finished, lower the handle to return the gong back to its starting position.”

While at the Rubin, be sure to see the other exhibitions as well: “Gateway to Himalayan Art,” “The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room,” “Tales of Muted Spirits — Dispersed Threads — Twisted Shangri-La,” “Healing Practices: Stories from Himalayan Americans,” “Shrine Room Projects: Rohini Devasher/Palden Weinreb,” and “Masterworks: A Journey Through Himalayan Art.”

LMCC TAKE CARE SERIES: SUN SEEKERS INDUCTION CEREMONY

“Sun Seekers Induction Ceremony” will take place in the Oculus on October 15 (photo courtesy LMCC)

Who: Amy Khoshbin, Jennifer Khoshbin, Merced Searer, Ching-I Chang, Malcom McMichael, Alex Koi, Jon Panikkar
What: LMCC Take Care Series
Where: The Oculus, Westfield World Trade Center, 185 Greenwich St.
When: Saturday, October 15, free with RSVP, 3:00
Why: Continuing through October 30 on Governors Island, Iranian-American sisters Amy and Jennifer Khoshbin’s “Sun Seekers” is an interactive sci-fi installation in which visitors are encouraged to remove their shoes and put away their cellphones, leaving behind the Wreck-tangle, and immerse themselves in the healing aspects of the natural world. The exhibition consists of four portals that incorporate sound, movement, touch, and smell. “Enter the sun portal, the source of all life,” one portal offers. “Close your eyes, breathe, and listen. Be reborn as a Sun Seeker.” As you walk among the works, encountering spinning seats, a musical chair, futuristic clothing, and a central portal you can enter, you discover “The Great Forgetting” and “The Great Remembering. ”

On October 15 at 3:00, Amy Khoshbin will host an hourlong “Sun Seekers Induction Ceremony” at the Oculus at the Westfield World Trade Center; part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Take Care Series, the event, cowritten with Yuliya Tsukerman, features performers Merced Searer, Ching-I Chang, and Malcom McMichael and musicians Alex Koi and Jon Panikkar and gives the audience the opportunity to connect with the sun, the environment, and their bodies in a group healing ritual. Admission is free with advance RSVP.

2022 OHNY WEEKEND LOTTERY

2022 OHNY WEEKEND LOTTERY
Multiple venues in all five boroughs
Lottery begins Thursday, October 13, noon
Sites open October 21-23, free
ohny.org/weekend

For its twentieth anniversary, Open House New York (OHNY) is changing its ticketing system, given the rising demand each year. Beginning at noon on October 13, there will be a twenty-four-hour lottery in which you can sign up for ticketed events. On October 14 and 16, winners will be notified, after which they will have to respond with a confirmation within a given amount of time. Gone are the $5 reservation fees; everything is now free. However, in a major bummer, you can only get one ticket per entry, so in order to go with other people, they will have to win the exact same lottery, which is patently absurd. For example, four of us have been attending OHNY together for years, but in 2022, if we want to go to a specific ticketed location, all four of us will have to be random winners. In addition, there will be no waitlist at the sites if people don’t show for ticketed events.

So why all the fuss? Because for two decades, OHNY has been offering architecture lovers the opportunity to visit unique, lesser-known, famous, and rarely accessible locations over one October weekend. Not all events are ticketed, but the hottest ones are, and often include a guided tour. Over the years, I’ve been to the Highbridge Water Tower, Masonic Hall, the Actors’ Temple, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Central Synagogue, the African Burial Ground National Monument, the Federal Hall National Memorial, Roosevelt Island, the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, Church of the Transfiguration, the south side of Ellis Island, the Jefferson Market Library, Westbeth, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York, the Old Stone House, the New York Marble Cemetery, the New York City Marble Cemetery, Estonian House, Judson Memorial Church, the Chrysler Building, Hindu Temple Society, and many architectural and design firms and green spaces usually not open to the general public. Even the more familiar places, such as museums, theaters, parks, piers, ships, libraries, universities, private clubs, breweries, and historic sites, offer free tours and lectures not usually available.

The Highbridge Water Tower is always a highlight of OHNY (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Not all the places mentioned above are on this year’s list, which is why you have to grab them while you can. The 2022 roster features a wide range of spots across the five boroughs, and not all require ticketing; there are dozens and dozens of self-guided tours and exhibitions that are first-come, first-served. You might have to wait in a line, but it’s always worth it. It’s also best to select a number of locations in the same area so you can see the most you can in whatever time you have.

LUNDAHL & SEITL: SYMPHONY OF A MISSING ROOM PERFORMANCE AND DISCUSSION

Lundahl & Seitl, Symphony — Tunnel Vision, performed in 2015 at Momentum 8 (photo courtesy of the artists)

Who: Lundahl & Seitl, Barbara London
What: Performance and discussion
Where: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
When: Sunday, October 2, free with advance RSVP, performances 11:30 am – 1:30 pm and 4:00 – 5:30, discussion at 1:30
Why: “In times of challenge, how to find a good balance between resilience and resistance when adapting to a changing environment? How can we stay sensible for subtle yet powerful shifts in our being together? What is an acceptable level of reality, and for who/what do we make the sacrifice?” So ask immersive art duo Lundahl & Seitl in regard to their 2009 piece, Symphony of a Missing Room, which they reimagined as an app during the pandemic. On Sunday, October 2, Christer Lundahl and Martina Seitl will be at Scandinavia House to perform the work, in half-hour increments between 11:30 and 1:30 and 4:00 to 5:30; in addition, there will be a discussion at 1:30 moderated by curator and writer Barbara London, host of the Barbara London Calling podcast.

The free event is being held in partnership with the Consulate General of Sweden in New York; Lundahl & Seitl have previously performed Symphony of a Missing Room at the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm, the Akropolis Museum in Greece, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, and the Temple of Alternative Histories at Staatstheater Kassel in Germany, among other venues. The ever-evolving work involves white goggles as participants must reconsider their inner and outer relationships with the environment and the space they are in. Admission is free with advance RSVP.

MONOCHROMATIC LIGHT (AFTERLIFE)

Who: Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Sellars, Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, Julie Mehretu, Kim Kashkashian, Sarah Rothenberg, Steven Schick, Davóne Tines, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street
What: Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)
Where: Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall, 643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
When: September 27 – October 8, $40-$95
Why: During the pandemic lockdown, the Rothko Chapel in Houston celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a livestreamed meditation and discussion from the ecumenical space in May 2021. “The Rothko Chapel is oriented towards the sacred, and yet it imposes no traditional environment. It offers a place where a common orientation could be found – an orientation towards God, named or unnamed, an orientation towards the highest aspirations of Man and the most intimate calls of the conscience,” said Dominique de Menil, who commissioned the chapel with her husband, John, in 1964. Rothko had previously written to his benefactors, “The magnitude, on every level of experience and meaning, of the task in which you have involved me, exceeds all of my preconceptions. And it is teaching me to extend myself beyond what I thought was possible for me.”

Continuing the golden celebration, Newark-born American composer Tyshawn Sorey will be presenting a new multidisciplinary piece, Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), at the Park Avenue Armory September 27 through October 8. The work is inspired by the Rothko Chapel and Morton Feldman’s 1971 masterpiece, “Rothko Chapel,” created for the opening dedication. Sorey’s score for percussion, viola, celesta, piano, bass-baritone, and choir premiered at the chapel in February and has now been reimagined for the armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, featuring new and existing immersive art by Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu, choreography by Brooklyn-born Flex dance pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, and direction by Pittsburgh-born theater legend Peter Sellars. Mehretu and Gray were both involved in Carrie Mae Weems’s “The Shape of Things: Land of Broken Dreams” at the armory last December, multi-instrumentalist Sorey performed with pianist and composer Conrad Tao in the armory’s Veterans Room in May 2016, and Sellars staged St. Matthew Passion in the Drill Hall in October 2014 and collaborated with Gray on FLEXN and FLEXN Evolution at the armory in 2015 and 2017, respectively. The music will be performed by Kim Kashkashian on viola, Sarah Rothenberg on piano and celesta, and Steven Schick on percussion, with vocalist Davóne Tines and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

Art, music, and dance come together in Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)

“When asked to write this piece, I made the conscious decision to not compose a single note of music until I experienced the visual and spiritual transformation of [Rothko’s fourteen] paintings for myself inside the Chapel, where I’ve spent several hours during different times of each day I went,” Sorey said in a statement. “This piece reflects these experiences as well as the influence of both Rothko’s artistic output and that of Morton Feldman, one of my biggest musical inspirations. As with all my works, my hope for this composition is for audiences to have an active, dynamic experience with it, not simply just to listen, which the nontraditional space of the armory’s Drill Hall helps to realize.”

Sellars added, “Tyshawn Sorey has created a spare, intimate, enveloping world of sound calling forth the piercing memories, unfinished and unburied histories, yearning, and resolve that live inside every step forward and each moment of stillness; Julie Mehretu’s paintings frame, focus, color, and intensify a thirst for justice and spiritual renewal that moves across layers of generations and geographies; Regg Roc Gray and the courageous movers of FLEXN wear the grief, the loss, the endurance, the grace, and the unbroken life-force itself in every bone and sinew as they break, glide, pause, and get low. It is a privilege for me to enter and share the charged, contemplative, cleansing space opened, activated, and sustained by these artists. For these evenings, the Park Avenue Armory will become a communal site of remembrance and deep introspection.”

On September 29 at 6:00 ($15), Sorey, Mehretu, Gray, Tines, and Sellars will come together for a preshow panel discussion about Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), which was originally co-commissioned by Park Avenue Armory, DaCamera, and Rothko Chapel. In the above promotional video of the four creators at the armory, Sellars, explaining how the work is really a ceremony, a way for people to gather peacefully, says, “For me, one of the deepest things about this not being a show is I also think that we’re at a period in history where we don’t need more shows.” Sorey adds, “Yeah, there’s not a show at all.”

Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) offers a multimedia meditation at armory (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)

Update: At the end of the performance, I approached Sellars to tell him how moved I was by the stunning show. His eyes tearing up, he gave me a warm embrace and said, “We’re all so moved. It really was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

I had never met Sellars before and he didn’t know who I was, but Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) provides that kind of atmosphere, bringing everyone together across ninety minutes of art, music, and dance.

The piece is presented in the round, with violist Kim Kashkashian, pianist Sarah Rothenberg, percussionist Steven Schick, and composer-conductor Sorey in the center, surrounded on all sides by the audience. Eight abstract works by Mehretu circle the space, hanging above a platform on which eight dancers are positioned, each in front of one painting. The Choir of Trinity Wall Street is seated in a back row; vocalist Tines walks throughout the space, entering through the audience and later slowly moving across the platform.

Banks Artiste, Deidra “Dayntee” Braz, Rafael “Droid” Burgos, Quamaine “Virtuoso” Daniels, Calvin “Cal” Hunt, Infinite “Ivvy” Johnson, Derick “Spectacular Slicc” Murreld, and Jeremy “Opt” Perez, most of whom are veterans of FLEXN and/or the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, perform unique dances in front of their assigned painting, their Black and brown bodies, particularly their arms and legs, interacting with the swirls and shapes of Mehretu’s canvases, which have such titles as torch, sphinx, about the space of half an hour, and A Mercy (four of which were created for this collaboration). James F. Ingalls’s superb lighting creates shadows of all sizes as well as haunting silhouettes when the dancers roll under the paintings and dance on the other side; shifts in the color of the lights, from blue, red, and pink to green, yellow, and white, breathe life into the paintings as their palettes change.

The music is slow and deliberate, at times almost too much so, but it is also meditative and, perhaps surprisingly, comforting, as it harkens to memory and grieving in addition to healing and rebirth . Tines mostly sings guttural sounds, but he repeats occasional words, such as “Sometime I feel” and “Child,” evoking the Negro spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” The dramatic sound design is by Marc Urselli.

For ninety minutes, there is always something going on, something to be seen or heard, wrapping the audience, including the creators, in a warm and loving embrace.