Last summer, Rockefeller Center presented the first edition of “The Flag Project,” replacing the 193 flags that usually surround the ice rink, one for each member country in the United Nations, with flags designed by emerging and established artists (including Carmen Herrera, Hank Willis Thomas, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, KAWS, Laurie Anderson, Sanford Biggers, Sarah Sze, Shantell Martin, and Faith Ringgold), adults and children, to honor how New Yorkers have come together during the pandemic lockdown, celebrating essential workers, the uniqueness of the Big Apple, and/or hope for a promising future.
From March 27 to April 30, Rock Center will be hosting the second stage, featuring eighty-three eight-by-five-foot flags decorated by photographs taken by the general public along with commissioned artists, focusing on New York City’s diverse life and energy and one-of-a-kind spirit and imagination. Tishman Speyer has teamed up with Aperture Foundation for this follow-up, with the finalists chosen by Aperture executive director Chris Boot. As you walk around the area, you will see images of Katz’s Deli, a masked lion in front of the New York Public Library, yellow cabs, kids playing in a fountain, women getting their hair done, a dog with its tongue hanging out, a snowy day in the park, an old subway car, a street-cart coffee cup, two women touching hands, a red flower under a fire escape, skateboarders, and other comforting, familiar scenes of the city. Among the professionals with their own flags are Kwame Brathwaite, Renee Cox, Elliott Erwitt, Roe Ethridge, Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Susan Meiselas, Duane Michals, and Tyler Mitchell.
I first saw Yana Schnitzler perform with two members of her Human Kinetics company in a small storefront on Nassau St. in September 2007, the trio moving through a rapt audience crowded on the floor. Fourteen years later, Schnitzler is once again in a small storefront, this time all alone, in a tiny space on West Thirty-Seventh St. in the Garment District near Port Authority, operated by the nonprofit arts organization Chashama, Well, she might be physically by herself, but she is surrounded by the hopes and dreams, fears and anxieties of women from around the world.
Prepandemic, the Berlin-born dancer, choreographer, and installation artist began Tales of a Phoenix: The Letting Go Project by putting out an open call for women to send her pieces of fabric on which they were to write something about themselves. “Like a snake that sheds its skin when it is outgrown, what is it that you’re yearning to shed?” the invitation read. “What old habit, memory, fear, or belief that might be amplified in these challenging times are you ready to let go of because it does not allow growth? What is it that keeps you from building a renewed version of yourself?” Women sent their replies by the hundreds, and beginning February 20 and continuing through March 29, Schnitzler will be working in the Chashama space, stitching the pieces together into a huge skirt, evoking a southern storytelling quilt. She’ll be there Monday to Saturday from 1:00 to 6:00; passersby can watch from the sidewalk or come in and speak with her, as long as they are masked and remain socially distanced. They are also welcome to take a strip of fabric and a pen and share their own personal note. Before being added to the skirt, the fabric contributions and their messages hang on the walls, anonymous works of art that are powerful and emotional; be sure to have tissues at the ready.
Skirt features fabric with deeply personal messages from women around the world (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“I need to let go of trying to be perfect for others. I need to be perfect for me!” one woman proclaims. “I would like my toxic family to no longer have the power to cause me pain,” another says. “Patriarchy Overdose” is written in black marker over a painting of flowers and smiling, blond Barbie-like figures. The word “Depression” is stitched onto brown fabric under dark clouds, the threads dangling off the letters. The phrase “I’m not __ enough” (pretty, smart, brave, creative, myself . . .) is written over and over again in a circular pattern until, at the very center, it says, “I’m not enough.” Some are extravagantly designed, while others are more simple and basic, but each one communicates a feeling that connects, particularly at a time when misogyny, domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and other forms of violence against women are so prevalent, during a pandemic that has affected single and working mothers disproportionately. In the back is a headless, limbless mannequin dubbed Sally, which can be interpreted as something to keep Schnitzler company or a grim reminder of the status of women in contemporary society.
Schnitzler is a site-specific specialist who has previously brought Human Kinetics to the glassed-in Urban Garden Room in midtown, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Hudson River pier, the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, and the fountain outside the Met. “Letting Go” has quickly become part of the community; people pass by and say hello, write on a piece of fabric and slip it under the door, and come inside to chat. When it got very cold, a man who worked in the building across the street lent Schnitzler a better space heater. Once she leaves the storefront, she will take the skirt and the individual pieces of fabric yet to be stitched on the road; the plan was to hold exhibitions in galleries in Detroit, DC, and Bonn, Germany, but Covid-19 still has something to say about that.
Although several of the pieces are difficult to read, filled with so much pain and anguish, the project emits a positive, heartwarming, spirit-lifting energy that is embodied by Schnitzler, who is hopeful for the future of these women and the planet. Tales of a Phoenix developed organically, heading off in unexpected directions that surprised and delighted Schnitzler; it will come to a close next year with the ritualistic public destruction of the skirt, worn by the artist. She’ll be getting rid of the collective fears and anxieties, worries and heartache of the past year-plus in one large, participatory primal release of mass healing, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, from which the phoenix will rise again.
David Wojnarowicz tells his own story in Chris McKim documentary (Andreas Sterzing, David Wojnarowicz (Silence = Death), photograph, 1989 [courtesy of the artist, the estate of David Wojnarowicz, and P·P·O·W, New York])
WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER (Chris McKim, 2020)
Film Forum Virtual Cinema
Opens Friday, March 19; live Q&A on Tuesday, March 30, free with RSVP, 7:00 filmforum.org kinomarquee.com
David Wojnarowicz packed a whole lot of living into his too-brief thirty-seven years, and the frenetic pace of his life and death is copiously captured in Chris McKim’s dynamic documentary, Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker. Born in New Jersey in September 1954, Wojnarowicz — pronounced VOY-nah-ROH-vich — experienced a difficult childhood riddled with physical abuse from his father, became a teen street hustler in Times Square, and later dabbled in heroin. He gained fame as an avant-garde artist and anti-AIDS activist in the 1980s, when several of his pieces earned notoriety, condemned by right-wing politicians who wanted to censor the works and defund the National Endowment for the Arts, which had supported the shows of art they found objectionable or morally corrupt. (The controversy continued decades past his death, into December 2010, when the National Portrait Gallery edited his short film Fire in My Belly in a group show.)
McKim lets Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS-related complications in July 1992, tell his own story, using the multimedia artist’s extensive archive of journals, cassette tapes, phone messages, photographs, and super 8 films; Wojnarowicz lived his life as if it was an ongoing radical performance installation itself, obsessively recording himself. “All the paintings are diaries that I always thought as proof of my own existence,” he says. “Whatever work I’ve done, it’s always been informed by what I experience as an American in this country, as a homosexual in this country, as a person who’s legislated into silence in this country.”
Editor Dave Stanke does a masterful job of putting it all together, primarily chronologically, seamlessly melding Wojnarowicz’s paintings, photographs, and videos into a compelling narrative that is as experimental, and successful, as the artist’s oeuvre, placing the audience firmly within its milieu. He intercuts news reports and other archival footage as Wojnarowicz’s life unfolds; among those whose voices we hear, either in new interviews or old recordings, are cultural critics Fran Lebowitz and Carlo McCormick, gallerist Gracie Mansion, curator Wendy Olsoff, his longtime partner Tom Rauffenbart, photographer and close friend/onetime lover Peter Hujar, artists Kiki Smith and Nan Goldin, artist and activist Sur Rodney Sur, Fire in the Belly author Cynthia Carr, Wojnarowicz’s siblings, and photographer and filmmaker Marion Scemama, who collaborated with Wojnarowicz on the haunting Untitled (Face in Dirt), pictures of the artist partially buried in the southwest desert. In addition, McKim includes such conservative mouthpieces as Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association and Senator Jesse Helms, who both sought to shut down Wojnarowicz and the NEA.
Influenced by such writers and artists as Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, and Arthur Rimbaud, Wojnarowicz’s art is as bold and in your face as it can get, relentlessly depicting a hypocritical world inundated with lies, violence, and perpetual inequality. Among the works that are examined in the film are Untitled (Buffalo),Untitled (Peter Hujar),Gagging Cow at Pier,Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Times Square),Burning House,Untitled (One Day This Kid . . . ,David Wojnarowicz (Silence = Death, New York),Untitled (Genet After Brassai), and his Fire,Water,Earth, and Air four elements series. McKim also focuses on Wojnarowicz’s incendiary East Village punk band, 3 Teens Kill 4, with snippets of such songs as “Hold Up,” “Hunger,” and “Stay & Fight.” Wojnarowicz spoke in a relatively calm, straightforward tone, especially when compared with the constant whirlwind surrounding him, but his work, from art to music, revealed the fiery emotions bubbling inside, a roiling mix of rage, rebellion, and resistance.
Self-Portrait of David Wojnarowicz, acrylic and collaged paper on gelatin silver print, 1983–84 (photo by Ron Amstutz/Whitney Museum of American Art)
McKim (RuPaul’s Drag Race, Out of Iraq) adds a curious, overly sentimental modern-day ending that might elicit a tear or two but is completely out of place; otherwise, Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker, named after one of the artist’s works from 1984, is an intense journey into the mind of a deeply troubled soul who shared his endless dilemmas in very public ways that made so many people uneasy. “Last night I was standing around here, looking at my photographs. They’re my life, and I don’t owe it to anybody to distort that just for their comfort,” he says.
Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker opens virtually at Film Forum through Kino Marquee on March 19 and includes a prerecorded Q&A with McKim, Mansion, McCormick, and producer Fenton Bailey, moderated by journalist Jerry Portwood. There will also be a live Q&A on March 30 at 7:00 with McKim and Stanke, moderated by artist and activist Leo Herrera, that is free and open to all.
yoshitomo nara, no war, acrylic on wood, 2019 (courtesy of the artist, blum & poe, and pace gallery)
Who: Yoshitomo Nara, Pedro Alonzo What: Live discussion Where:Dallas Contemporary online When: Saturday, March 20, free with RSVP, 9:00 Why: In celebration of the opening of the Yoshitomo Nara career survey “i forgot their names and often can’t remember their faces but remember their voices well,” running at Dallas Contemporary from March 20 to August 22, the Japanese artist will speak with adjunct curator Pedro Alonzo about the show, which features paintings, drawings, and sculptures from 2006 to the current day, including many works that have never been on view before. Nara will discuss his artistic process, continuing sociopolitical themes, and new, more introspective pieces he made specifically for this exhibition. Admission is free with advance RSVP.
The american vicarious and the Invisible Dog Arts Center follow up their socially distanced Static Apnea with Negative Liberty / Positive Liberty, an immersive performance installation for one audience member at a time. The piece explores Latvian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s Oxford lecture delivered on Halloween 1958, “Two Concepts of Liberty: Negative & Positive.” while also incorporating Anthony Barboza’s 1966 photograph, Pensacola, Florida, of a neon sign depicting the word Liberty with a broken “E” and dangling “R,” revealing the fragility of freedom, as they both relate to current events. Berlin writes:
“To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom – freedom from what? Almost every moralist in human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the meaning of this term is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist. I do not propose to discuss either the history or the more than two hundred senses of this protean word, recorded by historians of ideas. I propose to examine no more than two of these senses – but those central ones, with a great deal of human history, behind them, and, I dare say, still to come. The first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which (following much precedent) I shall call the ‘negative’ sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What is the area within which the subject – a person or group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?’ The second, which I shall call the positive sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What, or who, is the source of control or interference, that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?’ The two questions are clearly different, even though the answers to them may overlap.”
Conceived and directed by Christopher McElroen (Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley,Static Apnea), the installation features performers Sarah Ellen Stephens and Olivia Gilliatt, with scenography by Troy Hourie, video design by Adam J. Thompson, sound by Andy Evan Cohen, and lighting by Lucrecia Briceno. Admission is free to each eight-minute session but must be reserved in advance; slots are already filling up, so you’d best sign up fast. In addition, Barboza is included in the Whitney exhibition “Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop,” which continues through March 28.
One of the most innovative online platforms to emerge during the pandemic is Nowhere, a three-dimensional fantastical world where users’ images appear on the front of seedlike pods that can move around the location and interact with one another face-to-face. I’ve experienced it three times so far, twice for multimedia presentations from EdgeCut and New York Live Arts (NYLA), allowing participants to navigate through different virtual spaces to watch live and prerecorded dance, music, and high-tech art, and once when NYLA rolled out its upcoming season, previewing works and giving people the opportunity to speak with the artists. What feels unique is the agency each pod has, able to meet others and interact, settle in front of a virtual screen or proscenium within the virtual area, or wander off with magical flourishes. The platform, which can be pronounced “No Where” or “Now Here,” will be hosting a virtual festival March 11-13, featuring performances, panel discussions, and more in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration that Covid-19 was a global pandemic. Admission is $5 to $100, based on what you can afford, with proceeds benefiting Helping Hearts NYC, which “was created to provide aid to those affected the most during this time, and to those on the front line saving lives.”
Nowhere digital platform offers new way to experience live events with other people (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)
Nowhere Fest celebrates the technological advances made over the last twelve months to connect people when they couldn’t physically be together in the same space. Jen Lyon, Liz Tallent, Patrick Wilson, Stephen Chilton, and Becca Higgins of the National Independent Venue Association will talk about their industry and the Save Our Stages Act. Columbia University Rabbi Irwin Kula, the president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, will meet with Kristina Libby, the CEO and founder of SoCu and the Social Works Co., and chair professor Robert Wolcott, cofounder of the World Innovation Network. Athena Demos, Michael “Danger Ranger” Mikel, and Damian Madray will look at the future of Burning Man. Tony winner Christine Jones, director Tamilla Woodard, and actor-writer Shyla Lefner will discuss the success of the Theatre for One program “Here We Are,” in which one actor at a time performed for one audience member, with microphones and cameras on for both. Heidi Boisvert and Kat Mustatea of EdgeCut will lead a conversation with artists about the development of hybrid live performances. Group.BR will delve into its use of the Gather.town digital platform in its reimagining of its immersive, site-specific Inside the Wild Heart. EMBC Studio goes behind the scenes of its recharge rooms.
People can meet face-to-face and watch live performances and talks at Nowhere Fest
There will also be appearances, performances, demonstrations, and talks by comedian Chris Gethard, mentalist and mind reader Vinny Deponto, Shasta Geaux Pop, world champion whistler Lauren Elder, singer-songwriter Andrew McMahon, QuarMega, House of Yes & Elsewhere, Macy Schmidt of Broadway Sinfonietta, Deep End NYC, the Feast + Art Plus People, wellness innovator Leah Siegel, Hoovie cofounder Vallejo Gantner, Pete Vigeant of Completely Surrounded Games, poet Mason Granger, filmmaker Storm Saulter, MICRO DIY MUSEUMS founder Charles Philipp, Robert Siegel and Scott Simon of NPR, magician Greg Dubin, DJ Passionfruit, DJ MSG, Globally Curated founder Megs Rutigliano, photographer Will O’Hare, and strategy and design consultant and musician Alain Sylvain. Attending Nowhere Fest might just be the best five-dollar entertainment purchase you make during the pandemic (of course, give more if you can), introducing you to the future of live, online performance once we’re on the other side of this crisis.
Elmgreen & Dragset’s The Hive welcomes busy bees to Moynihan Train Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who: Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset), Nicholas Baume What:Public Art Fundlive discussion Where:The Cooper Union on Zoom When: Thursday, March 11, free with RSVP, 1:00 Why: On January 1, Moynihan Train Hall opened to the public with much fanfare, highlighted by site-specific commissions from Stan Douglas (Penn Station’s Half Century), Kehinde Wiley (Go), and Elmgreen & Dragset. The Hive, E&D’s inverted cityscape on the ceiling of the Thirty-First St. midblock entrance, has dazzled visitors, who stare up at ninety-one miniature buildings that contain seventy-two thousand LEDs and weigh more than thirty thousand pounds, part mysterious metropolis, part cave stalactites. The duo of Denmark-born Michael Elmgreen and Norway-born Ingar Dragset, who have been combining art, architecture, performance, and installation for more than a quarter of a century, will discuss the construction and meaning of The Hive in a free Public Art Fund conversation hosted by the Cooper Union on Zoom, straight from their Berlin studio. The event will be moderated by PAF director and chief curator Nicholas Baume. To catch Baume’s January 28 talk with Douglas, go here.
