this week in art

THE JOSHUA LIGHT SHOW

The Joshua Light Show will team up with a diverse series of experimental musicians for six groovy shows at the Skirball Center

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
60 Washington Sq. South
September 13-16, $20-$68
212-998-4941
www.nyuskirball.org
www.joshualightshow.com

A key figure in the psychedelic movement of the late 1960s, the Joshua Light Show created dizzying, kaleidoscopic, all-too-groovy projections at the Fillmore East, Woodstock, Carnegie Hall, and other venues, where their liquid lights exploded in a vast array of colors behind Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, and other legendary musicians. Over the last several years, JLS has returned with a vengeance, performing at Lincoln Center, the Hayden Planetarium, the Hirshorn Museum, Art Basel in Miami, and the recent Transmediale festival in Berlin. This week founder Joshua White and his talented crew, which still primarily uses analog techniques to mix their creations live, will be at the NYU Skirball Center for six performances over four nights, beginning Thursday, when they are joined by Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and master harpist Zeena Parkins. Friday night features the minimalist father-and-son duo of Terry Riley and Gyan Riley at 7:30, followed by the inspired quartet of John Zorn, Lou Reed, Bill Laswell, and Milford Graves at 10:00. On Saturday night, MGMT cofounders Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden will play two shows, with GlobalFest closing things out on Sunday with the Boston-based Ethiopian-American Debo Band and the New York-based Brazilian-American Forro in the Dark. Each performance will last approximately one hour, with JLS onstage improvising alongside the musicians; the JLS team includes White, photographer and installation artist Alyson Denny, experimental composer and vocalist Nick Hallett, filmmaker and musician Seth Kirby, Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters, live cinema artist and designer Brock Monroe, painter and comic-book artist Gary Panter, production manager Doug Pope, performance artist and director Bec Stupak, and sound designer Jeff Cook.

BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION: ART HISTORY WITH LABOR / OPEN HOUSE

Bronze rat watches over Bruce High Quality Foundation installation in Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through October 1
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com

When we were photographing the latest display in the Lever House lobby a few days before the official opening, a young man in a suit, seemingly on his way to lunch, stopped us and asked, “What is this?” When we told him it was an art installation by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, he just looked blankly around and said, “Is it finished?” We said that we thought it was probably pretty close to completion, if not done yet, and he sneered. “What the hell! I gotta walk through this every day?” And he stormed off, shaking his head. An arts collaborative formed eight years ago and named for a fictional character, Bruce High Quality, who supposedly died in the September 11 terrorist attacks, BHQF creates multimedia installations and performances that comment on the state of art, politics, and the world. Indeed, “Art History with Labor” at first appears unfinished, with working materials all around the lobby, including a bucket with a mop, a wheelbarrow with a bag of soil, a floor polisher, a ladder, a trash can, and other elements that make it look like a construction site. Meanwhile, outside in the plaza, a giant rat faces the gallery, growling, but instead of his being another blow-up Scabby the Rat seen at so many city construction sites that employ nonunion workers, this twelve-foot-high bronze casting is called “The New Colossus,” directly evoking the 1883 Emma Lazarus poem that is on a plaque within the Statue of Liberty (“‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’”).

The Bruce High Quality Foundation reimagines Martin Luther’s 95 Theses for the modern age (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

But everything is part of the exhibition, along with a lone briefcase, an old watercooler, and a knocked-over filing cabinet spilling out printouts of “Art History with Labor: 95 Theses.” Free for the taking, the stapled-together four pages mimic Martin Luther’s 1517 document, a major force in the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, with quotes from Luther as well as Jean-Luc Godard, Roland Barthes, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Oscar Wilde, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jamie Dimon, Thomas Edison, and Sun Tzu in addition to facts about Ayn Rand, the Art Workers Guild, Auschwitz, Nikola Tesla, Paul Robeson, Iwo Jima, and the Lever Brothers, who built the company town Port Sunlight in 1888 for the men and women working in their soap factory. Each object in the lobby is equipped with a speaker pronouncing the theses, accompanied by a video, examining the nature of art and labor and how they have intertwined through the ages. The exhibit also includes “Double Iwo Jima,” a two-panel painting that raises questions about art, truth, propaganda, and labor by re-creating multiple images of Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. So, is the installation actually finished? One could argue that it’s only a start to further investigation on the part of the visitor. You can find out more about the Bruce High Quality Foundation and their unaccredited art university (a self-described “‘fuck you’ to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair”) on Sunday, September 9, when they host an open house at their headquarters at 34 Ave. A, and there will be a closing reception for “Art History with Labor” at Lever House on October 1.

SHARON HAYES: THERE’S SO MUCH I WANT TO SAY TO YOU

Sharon Hayes, still from “Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds #13, 16, 20 & 29,” four screen video projection, color, sound 2003 (courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through September 9, $18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
www.shaze.info

New York-based multidisciplinary performance artist Sharon Hayes has occupied the third floor of the Whitney with the powerful and engaging “There’s So Much I Want to Say to You.” Comprising older projects with newly commissioned works, all arranged in an invitingly makeshift set designed by Hayes and Andrea Geyer that integrates the private with the public, the installation uses text, video, sound, photography, signage, and spoken-word LPs to expand on Hayes’s idea of “speech acts,” examining the state of political discourse in America since the 1960s. The first thing people see as they enter the space is a long banner that announces, “Now a chasm has opened between us that holds us together and keeps us apart,” but all the words are not visible because of the way the banner is unfurled, setting the stage for a unique journey through the many challenges that accompany free speech. Curated by Chrissis Iles, “There’s So Much I Want to Say to You” includes numerous stations where visitors stop for very different experiences. “Join Us” is a wall of hundreds of political-action flyers dating back more than fifty years and going all the way up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the four-channel video “Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds #13, 16, 20, & 29,” Hayes recites audiotapes Patty Hearst made, with Hayes speaking them from memory, an unseen audience correcting every tiny mistake. In “Voice Portraits,” Hayes shows various women on video monitors but has eliminated the sound, taking their voices away, in stark contrast to a nearly hidden piece that projects onto a narrow wall the media’s text-based responses to speeches given by women, concentrating on the quality of the voices instead of the substance of what they said. In “Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love,” Hayes uses speakers and posters to present five lunchtime love letters she performed in front of the UBS building in Midtown Manhattan in September 2007. In “Gay Power,” Hayes and feminist author and activist Kate Millet discuss footage of one of the first gay pride marches through the city. And in “Yard (Sign),” Hayes has reimagined Allan Kaprow’s 1961 “Yard” with political signs ranging from mass-produced declarations of support of political candidates to handwritten cries of help from New Orleans. Intriguingly, Hayes focuses on old-fashioned methods in “There’s So Much I Want to Say to You,” eschewing digital technology in favor of ancient slide projectors and records playing on turntables, with much of the sound crashing together, as if there are many voices trying to speak at once, their messages becoming garbled. The installation closes September 9, right after both conventions have concluded and the race for president heats up, when political discourse reaches massive proportions and the people’s vote, and voice, is, at least in theory, supposed to matter.

CROSSING THE LINE 2012

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 14 – October 14, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Tickets are now on sale for the sixth annual Crossing the Line festival, a month-long program of interdisciplinary performances and art sponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française at venues across the city. Running September 14 through October 14, the 2012 edition of CTL, curated by Gideon Lester, Lili Chopra, and Simon Dove, features a host of free events, with most ticketed shows twenty dollars and under. The festival opens on September 14 with the first of three concerts by innovative guitarist Bill Frisell, playing with two of his groups, the 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers, in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall; he’ll then be at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn the next morning at 8:00 for the world premiere of his solo piece “Early (Not Too Late),” followed that night by the world premiere of the multimedia “Close Your Eyes” at the Invisible Dog, a collaboration with musician Eyvind Kang and visual artist Jim Woodring. Brian Rogers, cofounder and artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, will present Hot Box at the Long Island City institution, a chaotic look at mayhem, stillness, and disorder using a live video feed. Festival vet Gérald Kurdian returns with The Magic of Spectacular Theater at Abrons Arts Center, combining music and magic. DD Dorvillier / Human Future Dance Corps brings Danza Permanente to the Kitchen, reimagining a Beethoven score for four dancers, with acoustic design by Zeena Parkins. Choreographer Sarah Michelson will deliver Not a Lecture / Performance, while Jack Ferver will blend psychoanalysis with dance in the very personal Mon Ma Mes, both one-time-only presentations at FIAF. Joris Lacoste’s 4 Prepared Dreams uses hypnosis on April March, Annie Dorsen, Tony Conrad, and Jonathan Caouette. Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula, who dazzled CTL audiences last year with more more more . . . future, will participate in a discussion on September 17 with director Peter Sellars, followed by his solo work Le Cargo on September 18. Pascal Rambert’s Love’s End examines the disintegration of a relationship, with Kate Moran and Jim Fletcher at Abrons, while Raimund Hoghe teams up with Takashi Ueno at the Baryshnikov Arts Center for Pas de Deux, a playful look at the history of the classical duet. For Diário (através de um Olho Baiano), one of numerous free events, Bel Borba, collaborating with Burt Sun and André Costantini, will create a new piece of art every day somewhere in the city throughout the festival, with all coming together for a grand finale. Also free is David Levine’s Habit, a live ninety-minute-drama that loops for eight hours in the Essex Street Market, and OMSK / Lotte van den Berg’s Pleinvrees / Agoraphobia, in which the audience (advance RSVP required) wanders around Times Square listening on their cell phones to a man making his way through the area as well. In addition, Steven and William Ladd’s Shaboygen installation will be up at the Invisible Dog, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s audiovisual portraits will be on view at the FIAF Gallery. Once again, CTL has included a little something for everyone, from performance art and dance to video and photography, from theater and concerts to the unusual and the indefinable.

JANET CARDIFF: THE FORTY PART MOTET

Janet Cardiff’s “The Forty Part Motet” features beautiful music at MoMA PS1 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Thursday – Monday through September 4, suggested admission $10
718-784-2084
www.momaps1.org
www.cardiffmiller.com

It might not quite be Carnegie Hall, but beautiful music is continuously emanating from a rather sparse white room at MoMA PS1 in Queens. For “The Forty Part Motet,” Canadian-born sound artist Janet Cardiff individually recorded forty members of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir performing Thomas Tallis’s sixteenth-century choral composition “Spem in Alium Nunquam habui” (“In no other is my hope”). Then, working with her husband and partner, George Bures Miller, who served as editor, Cardiff created an installation of forty speakers on stands, eight groups of five apiece organized in an enveloping circle, with each singer’s voice coming out of a different speaker. Beginning with coughs and whispers that kick off the fourteen-minute piece, “The Forty Part Motet” is a thrilling experience, even for those who might not generally have an ear for classical music. As visitors walk around the large room, which has natural light pouring in on two sides, they can sit in the center and let the glorious sounds wash over them, then approach each speaker to hear that singer’s unique contribution to the overall piece, resulting in a very personal, intimate connection. Cardiff, whose “Her Long Black Hair” led people on a mysterious journey through Central Park in the summer of 2004, is a master at using sound as her primary element in telling unusual and complex stories; her magnificent 2008 collaboration with Miller, “The Murder of Crows,” is currently wowing audiences through September 9 at the Park Ave. Armory. “The Forty Part Motet” is on view through September 4 at MoMA PS1, which is also showing “Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out,” “Jack Smith: Normal Love,” “Zackary Drucker: At Least You Know You Exist,” “Esther Kläs – Better Energy,” “Max Brand: no solid footing – (trained) duck fighting a crow,” “Wendy” by HWKN, and solo projects by Rey Akdogan, Edgardo Aragón, Ilja Karilampi, and Caitlin Keogh.

AFRO-PUNK FESTIVAL

TV on the Radio headlines the second day of the free Afro-Punk Festival in Brooklyn (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Commodore Barry Park
Park Ave., Navy St., Flushing Ave. & North Eliot Pl., Brooklyn
Saturday, August 25, and Sunday, August 26, free, 11:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.afropunkfest.com
www.nycgovparks.org

After the disappointment of last year’s Afro-Punk Festival being canceled at the last minute because of Hurricane Irene, we can’t wait for this year’s free celebration in Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn. Taking place August 25 & 26, the eighth annual fest features another stellar lineup of rap, hip-hop, R&B, indie, alternative, and hot DJs, with Saturday’s roster including Radkey, the Skins, the Joe Jordan Experiment, Sinkane, Toshi Reagon, Alice Smith, Purple Ferdinand, the Memorials, and Erykah Badu with the Cannabinoids on the Green Stage and Ninjasonik, Oxymorrons, Cerebral Ballzy, Spank Rock, and Das Racist on the Red Stage. On Sunday, the Green Stage will host Inky Jack, Tess, Phony Ppl, Gordon Voidwell, Body Language, Reggie Watts, Toro y Moi, and TV on the Radio, with Flatbush Zombies, Bad Rabbits, Straight Line Stitch, Gym Class Heroes, and Janelle Monae on the Red Stage. Fifteen food trucks will fill out Bites & Beats, with such favorite mobile eateries as Mexicue, Jamaican Dutchy, Bian Dang, Fishing Shrimp, Korilla BBQ, Kelvin Natural Slush, and Van Leeuwen Ice Cream. More than eighty local artisans will be selling their goods at the Spin Thrift Market, while BaJa Ukweli, RIP Josama, Nelson Cekis Rivas, Coby Kennedy, Rob Fokused, See One, and David RIMX Sepulveda will show their stuff on the Art Wall. Amateur skaters from all over the country will participate in the Nike Battle for the Streets, hosted by Alex Corporan and Billy Rohan and judged by Shawn Powers, Danny Supa, Ray Mate, and others, while a dozen custom bikes will fight it out for best in show in Brooklyn Rhapsody. There’s nothing quite like the Afro-Punk Festival, which is doing all it can to make up for last year with one helluva program this weekend.

TWI-NY TALK: PHIL HARTMAN OF TWO BOOTS

Phil Hartman and his son, Leon, will be celebrating the silver anniversary of Two Boots on August 23 in East River Park

TWO BOOTS 25th ANNIVERSARY CONCERT: AN EVENING OF FREE LIVE MUSIC, PERFORMANCE ART, POETRY, AERIALIST, AND FOOD
East River Park Amphitheater
FDR Drive between Grand & Jackson Sts.
Thursday, August 23, free, 5:00 – 9:00
www.twoboots.com
www.summerstage.org

Twenty-five years ago, New York native Phil Hartman and Doris Kornish opened Two Boots in the East Village, a pizzeria with a distinct Cajun flavor. In the ’90s they began expanding, adding a movie theater that screened alternative and foreign films while introducing pizzas named after fictional and real pop-culture figures. Today there are more than a dozen Two Boots restaurants, across Manhattan as well as in Brooklyn, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, selling specialty pies named for such favorite characters as Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs,, Andy Kaufman alter ego Tony Clifton, Newman from Seinfeld, Larry Tate from Bewitched, No. 6 from The Prisoner, Dr. John, Bella Abzug, Bette Midler, and Charlie Parker as well as the Village Vanguard. On August 23, Hartman and his son, Leon, who also works in the business, will host a free concert in East River Park in honor of Two Boots’ silver anniversary, featuring performances by Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Mamarazzi, Odetta Hartman, Himalayas, the Whiskeyhickon Boys, Lady Circus, and the Magic Beans; the event will also include poetry from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Caroline Rothstein, Mahogany Browne, and Marshall “Soulful” Jones ) and the City Lore/Bowery Poetry Club’s POEMmobile, live art and painting by Lizzy Grandsaert and Kat Carrot Flower, the Homespun Mini-Merry-Go-Round, and informational booths from the Lower Eastside Girls Club, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and Time’s Up. The festivities will be emceed by actor Luis Guzmán, for whom the Luisaida pie is named after, and there will be free samples of the Newman and the Larry Tate. Phil discussed Two Boots, the revitalization of the Lower East Side, and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: What were the initial expectations when you opened your first pizza place twenty-five years ago?

Phil Hartman: Doris Kornish (my original partner) and I had two principal motivations: we badly needed funds to finish postproduction on our first film, No Picnic, which would go on to receive an award at Sundance in 1988, and we’ve always operated under this premise at our restaurants — don’t try to cater to an imaginary audience, just do something that we really love and hope that other people agree with us.

twi-ny: How did the idea for naming pies after famous fictional characters get started? Do you need to get permission to use the names? If so, has anyone ever turned you down?

Phil Hartman: The character names didn’t start until eight years in — beginning with Larry Tate, Mr. Pink, and Newman. I’ve always loved second bananas, oddballs, and the overlooked and underappreciated. And we’ve never been turned down — we just figure we’re honoring these characters and they would be proud of it.

twi-ny: What is your personal favorite slice?

Phil Hartman: The Bayou Beast (andouille, crawfish, jalapeños, mozzarella, and sauce), which combines the best of both worlds (Italy and Louisiana) is my fave — though as their parent, you know I love all the slices.

twi-ny: Is there a specific combination that you really wanted to work but it just couldn’t come out quite right?

Phil Hartman: My biggest disappointment is that we never really made our Pizza Piazza work — Mike, being one of our all-time idols (we’re enormous Mets fans); the pie was too soupy but will be resuscitated when he enters the Hall of Fame next year!

twi-ny: On August 23, you’ll be celebrating your twenty-fifth anniversary with a free concert in East River Park. How did the lineup come together?

Phil Hartman: We’ve always loved African pop music, and given that Fela Kuti is no longer with us, we had the chance to reach out to the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars and grabbed it. Mamarazzi is an amazing local Afro-funk band, with lots of our friends in it; Odetta, our daughter, just recorded her first album, and is bringing together her band and lots of special guests; Himalayas is an awesome Brooklyn marching band, which will rock the crowd, from within the crowd; Whiskeyhickon Boys are one of our house acts — gangsta folk at its best; plus Lady Circus from House of Yes, Nuyorican Poets Cafe all-star poets, live art by 4heads Art Collective, a mini-merry-go-round, and lots more.

twi-ny: When the first Two Boots opened back in 1987, the Lower East Side was a very different place. Since then, you’ve been at the center of the neighborhood’s transformation, adding such events as the Howl! Festival and leading an influx of new restaurants, music venues, and other institutions in addition to a revitalized Tompkins Square Park. How would you compare the Lower East Side of the 1970s and ’80s to the way it is now?

Phil Hartman: We’ve lost a lot of the color and complexity, but there still are a lot of great folks and great organizations carrying on the countercultural tradition here. It’s a lot less scary, which is good if you’re raising three kids here (like I have), but also a lot more tame (which is a shame!).