this week in art

HERSTORY OF THE UNIVERSE@GOVERNORS ISLAND

PeiJu Chien-Pott performs Amaterasu, part of site-specific dance presentation on Governors Island (photo by Slobodan Randjelović)

Who: Richard Move and MoveOpolis!
What: Site-specific dance performances
Where: Governors Island
When: Saturday, October 9 & 16, free with advance RSVP, 1:00 – 4:00
Why: Governors Island is an oasis in New York City, a historic area initially settled by the Lenape before being stolen by the Dutch and later taken over by the British and the United States. It was home to a fort and a castle that held Confederate prisoners during the Civil War and served as headquarters for the army and the coast guard prior to opening to the public in 2003 as a park. On October 9 and 16, the island will host its first-ever performance commission, the site-specific Herstory of the Universe@Governors Island by Richard Move and MoveOpolis! The three-hour show will move across the island, making six fifteen-minute stops, at Nolan Park, Hammock Grove, Outlook Hill, and Rachel Whiteread’s Cabin sculpture, among other locations. Robyn Cascio, Megumi Eda, Lisa Giobbi, Celeste Hastings, PeiJu Chien-Pott, Natasha M. Diamond-Walker, and Gabrielle Willis will perform such pieces as Demolition Angels, Ascent, and Amaterasu, making use of the trees, the buildings, the grass, the rocks, and other natural and manufactured elements of the beautiful island, celebrating its unique ecosystem, storied past, and outstanding views.

Gabrielle Wills and Natasha Diamond Walker rehearse Demolition Angels on Governors Island (photo by Slobodan Randjelović)

Commissioned by the Trust for Governors Island, Herstory invites the audience to follow along with a special keepsake map designed by Connie Fleming, which can be picked up at the Climate Museum in Nolan Park Building 18. A dancer, teacher, choreographer, and filmmaker, Move has previously created site-specific works for the European Capitol of Culture in France, the Guggenheim in New York, the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island, the Cannes Film Festival, the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore, and the LMCC Sitelines Festival as well as at a bus station in Sao Paulo. If you haven’t been to Governors Island in a while, Herstory provides an excellent opportunity to refamiliarize yourself with its majesty, which currently also includes installations by Duke Riley, Mark Handforth, Beam Camp City, NYC Audubon, Pratt Gaud, West Harlem Art Fund, the Endangered Language Alliance, American Indian Community House, Harvestworks, Flux Factory, the Swale Floating Food Forest, and others, all free.

MOVEMENT WITHOUT BORDERS: A DAY OF PERFORMANCE TO CELEBRATE NEW YORK IMMIGRATION COALITION, UNLOCAL, AND GENTE UNIDA

Wladimiro Politano, The Expression of the Soul XLIX, 2010

Who: Mariana Valencia, Jimena Paz, Shamel Pitts, Francesca Harper, Francisco Cordova, Ernesto Breton/Rudy Perez, Edivaldo Ernesto, Horacio Macuacua, Emilio Rojas, Claudia Rankine, Margo Jefferson, Antonio Sánchez Band, Jonathan Mendoza, Gina Belafonte, Xaviera Simmons, Enrique Morones, Roger H. Brown, Raoul Roach, Adelita-Husni-Bey, Reverend Micah Bucey
What: Dance, poetry, music, film, and activism at historic location
Where: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South between Thompson & Sullivan Sts.
When: Saturday, October 2, free with RSVP (suggested donation $20), 11:00 am – 6:30 pm; ninety-minute recorded version the next day at the Jersey City Theater Center
Why: An all-star lineup of artists and activists are coming together October 2 at Judson Memorial Church for “Movement without Borders: A Day of Performance to Celebrate New York Immigration Coalition, UnLocal, and Gente Unida,” honoring three organizations fighting for immigration rights. From 11:00 am to 6:30 pm, dancers and choreographers, musicians, poets, authors, visual artists, and more will honor the work being done by New York Immigration Coalition, UnLocal, and Gente Unida. Among the presenters are dancer/choreographers Mariana Valencia, Ernesto Breton/Rudy Perez, Jimena Paz, Francisco Cordova, Horacio Macuacua, Francesca Harper, Edivaldo Ernesto, and Shamel Pitts/TRIBE, multidisciplinary artist Emilio Rojas, the Antonio Sánchez Band (with Sánchez, Thana Alexa, Jordan Peters, Carmen Staaf, Noam Wiesenberg), Adelita Husni-Bey (who will screen her film Chiron), visual artist Xaviera Simmons, poets Jonathan Mendoza and Claudia Rankine, Gente Unida founder and director Enrique Morones, Sankofa executive director Gina Belafonte, music producer and activist Raoul Roach, and others. Conceived, directed, and produced by Richard Colton, “Movement without Borders” will also be available in a ninety-minute recorded version on October 3 at the Jersey City Theater Center as part of the third annual Voices International Theater Festival.

THE GREAT ARIA THROWDOWN #2 – LES EDITION

LUNGS HARVEST ARTS FESTIVAL
Multiple locations
Daily through October 3, free
“The Great Aria Throwdown #2 — LES Edition”
Campos Community Garden, 640-644 East Twelfth St. at Ave. C
Friday, October 1, 6:30
www.lungsnyc.org

In 2011, community gardens in Loisaida, the Lower East Side, and the East Village came together and formed LUNGS, the Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens; its mission is “to promote, protect, and preserve gardening and greening through cooperation, coordination, and communication.” The group is now hosting its tenth annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival, which runs through October 3 with free music and dance, knitting, activism, art exhibits, yoga, a dominos tournament, interactive workshops, classes, a treasure hunt, and more, in such locations as Green Oasis, Carmen’s Garden, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, Orchard Alley Community Garden, Creative Little Garden, La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez, 6BC Botanical Garden, and other lovely oases.

One of the highlights is “The Great Aria Throwdown #2 — LES Edition,” taking place October 1 at 6:30 in Campos Community Garden on Twelfth St. & Ave. C. Presented by dell’Arte Opera Ensemble (dAOE), the evening features sopranos Bahati Barton and Diana Charlop, mezzo-soprano Perri di Christina, countertenor Jeffrey Mandelbaum, and pianist Pablo Zinger performing works by Bellini, Donizetti, Mozart, Purcell, and others.

“Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble is a bridge for emerging opera singers to work with accomplished professionals in the field,” dAOE executive director Marianna Mott Newirth explains. “‘The Great Aria Throwdown’ is a fun and free event that gives ‘stage’ to three sopranos and an outstanding countertenor singing with widely acclaimed pianist Pablo Zinger, producing a growing garden of sound on East Twelfth St. From Bellini to Monteverdi, we’re bringing opera to the LES! Campos Garden even has a chandelier they plan to raise just as the show begins — a nod to the new season starting at the Met after a year of darkness.” Below is the full program.

Diana Charlop: “Quel guardo il cavaliere” from Don Pasquale (Bellini)
Perri di Christina: “Deh, non voler costringere” from Anna Bolena (Donizetti)
Bahati Barton: “Ruhe Sanft” from Zaide (Mozart)
Jeffrey Mandelbaum: “If Music Be the Food of Love” (Purcell, Third Version)

Diana Charlop: “Padre germani addio” from Idomeneo (Mozart)
Perri di Christina: “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart)
Jeffrey Mandelbaum: “Sprezzami quanto sai” from L’incoronazione di Poppea (Monteverdi)

Perri di Christina: “Faites-lui mes aveux” from Faust (Gounod)
Bahati Barton: “Think of Me” from The Phantom of the Opera (Lloyd Webber)
Diana Charlop: “Obéissons quand leur voix appelle” from Manon (Massenet)
Jeffrey Mandelbaum: “Fra tempeste” from Rodelinda (Handel)

WONG PING: YOUR SILENT NEIGHBOR / THE GREAT TANTALIZER

“Wong Ping: Your Silent Neighbor” continues at the New Museum through October 3 (photo by Dario Lasagni)

WONG PING: YOUR SILENT NEIGHBOR
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 3, $12-$18
www.newmuseum.org

WONG PING: THE GREAT TANTALIZER
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through October 23, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

Multimedia artist Wong Ping’s current shows at the New Museum in SoHo and Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea are filled with lovable animated pandas, colorful cartoons, a retelling of Pinocchio, and playful sculpture and installation. But you might want to think twice before bringing the kids, as Wong’s work tackles income inequality, sexual repression and expression, police corruption, dating and desire, climate change, and sociopolitical aspects of contemporary life, particularly in his native Hong Kong as its battles with Mainland China since the 1997 handover from the British grow ever-more dangerous, all told in a DIY style inspired by video games and narrated by Wong himself.

At the New Museum, An Emo Nose (2015) reimagines Pinocchio’s proboscis, resembling both a heart and a penis, as its own sentient being, reacting to the protagonist’s negative thoughts by stretching out and going off on its own, depicting humanity’s vulnerability of both mind and body. In the two-channel The Other Side (2015), projected onto a screen and a small television monitor in front of it, the narrator journeys across treacherous terrain, has soup with Granny Meng (forgetfulness goddess Meng Po), and ponders his future, a parable of emigration from Hong Kong filtered through the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. A 3-D printed text panel relates self-affirmations in tiny letters, including “I am the last drop of period blood before menopause” and “I am the last rebellious punk.”

The retrospective is centered by four videos projected onto four screens on all sides of one large room; visitors sit on comfy beanbag chairs or a round couch as they rotate to watch the short films, which total forty-three minutes. In Jungle of Desire (2015), an impotent man is powerless when his wife becomes a prostitute to satisfy her sexual desire and is exploited by a cop. In Who’s the Daddy? (2017), a man considers himself an outcast because his penis is straight, not bending to the left or right, and confuses politics and sex as things go wrong with a woman he hooked up with on a dating app. “People even deny its existence,” he opines about his member.

Wong Ping’s Fables 2 (2019) follows the trials and tribulations of a special cow and three conjoined rabbit siblings attempting to make their own way in life. And in Sorry for the Late Reply (2021), commissioned for this show, a fisherman becomes obsessed with an elderly saleswoman’s varicose veins. “If you’ve ever stepped into the supernatural world during a hike, or have gotten lost in the parking lot and couldn’t find the exit, or have stared into the eyes of a black chicken standing outside your door through the peephole late at night, then you would know how I feel,” he says.

Wong Ping is a curator researching the Great Tantalizer in show at Tanya Bonakdar

Over at Tanya Bonakdar, Wong’s “The Great Tantalizer” is a multimedia installation structured around a mockumentary about a scientist who had been determined to increase sexual desire in pandas and bring that information on their mating techniques to humans, particularly in China, given its former one-child policy and overall preference for boys. The relentless drive to tantalize may be commenting as well on the current tangping movement, or “lying flat,” in which many younger Chinese have opted out of the pressures of modern life by declining to engage in the endless competition for personal and professional success, a high-quality education, a good job, a happy marriage, a beautiful home, and lovely children.

The gallery has been reimagined as the Great Tantalizer’s abandoned laboratory, with a stack of white plastic chairs and a labcoat, an exhibition poster and bamboo pole that declare, “EAT.SLEEP.POOOOOP.DIE,” and The Tender Rider, a cute old kiddie vehicle with a panda head that now serves as a projector, beaming highly sexualized images onto the walls in a back room. It’s all organized around a screen showing a Zoom-like panel discussion featuring Wong in a panda outfit, hosting the virtual talk with the GT’s former laboratory staff, one-night stand, and main competitor, whose identities are disguised. Visitors can sit on rolls of bound bamboo sticks as Wong explores who the GT was and what his legacy is.

The thirty-seven-year-old Wong is quickly building up an impressive legacy of his own with these presentations at the New Museum and Tanya Bonakdar, expanding his breadth with his distinctive approach to exposing society’s ills.

GREGG BORDOWITZ: I WANNA BE WELL / BENYAMIN ZEV’S SUCCOS SPECTACULAR!

Gregg Bordowitz, Pestsäule (after Erwin Thorn), mixed media, 2021 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

GREGG BORDOWITZ: I WANNA BE WELL
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens
Virtual performance lectures September 17-19, free with advance RSVP
Exhibition continues Thursday – Monday through October 11, $5-$10 (free for NYC residents)
www.moma.org
www.greggbordowitz.com

At the heart of the MoMA PS1 exhibition “Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well” are two disparate images. On your way into the building itself and in the gallery, you will see a large banner declaring, “The AIDS Crisis Is Still Beginning.” Meanwhile, at the top of Bordowitz’s 2021 mixed-media sculpture Pestsäule (after Erwin Thorn), inspired by a seventeenth-century plague monument in Vienna as well as the murder of George Floyd, the AIDS epidemic, and the Covid-19 pandemic, is a blank protest sign, raised up by a man in a medical mask surrounded by a maelstrom of bodies, a murderous cherub, and sandbags on the floor, like a warped scene from Les Miz. “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Mildred (Peggy Maley) asks Johnny (Marlon Brando) in the 1954 film The Wild One. “Whadda you got?” Johnny replies.

Born in Brooklyn in 1964 and raised in Queens — home base for the Ramones, whose 1977 song “I Wanna Be Well” from the Rocket to Russia album gives the exhibit its name — Bordowitz, who has been living with HIV/AIDS for more than three decades, was an early member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which was founded in 1987. He has been documenting his own life and the global AIDS crisis through film and video, poetry, sculpture, lectures, and poetry, much of which is on view at MoMA PS1 through October 11. His 2014 twenty-four-part poem Debris Fields lines the walls of the galleries, amid such works as self-portraits in mirror, Tom McKitterick’s black-and-white photographs of Bordowitz and others at AIDS protests in the late 1980s, the corner wall drawing and sculpture installation Kaisergruft (centered by the word Sympathy), and Drive, a repurposed vintage derby car stickered with Big Pharma logos.

The show also features several of Bordowitz’s films, including the 1993 autobiographical documentary Fast Trip, Long Drop, which deals with his contracting HIV, coming out to his parents, a friend getting breast cancer, and the tragic deaths of his grandparents; the 2001 documentary Habit, about the AIDS epidemic in South Africa; the five-minute The Fast That I Want video he made last year with Morgan Bassichis for his family’s virtual Yom Kippur; and the vastly entertaining Only Idiots Smile, a 2017 lecture commissioned for the New Museum presentation “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” and that, at only twenty-two minutes, is far too short as Bordowitz discusses his relationship with his father, Judaism, Eastern European men kissing on the lips, and homophobia.

You can see much more of Bordowitz this week when MoMA hosts several special events held in conjunction with “I Wanna Be Well.” On September 13 (and available on demand through September 27, for members only), “Modern Mondays: An Evening with Gregg Bordowitz and Jean Carlomusto” consists of a live discussion between the longtime friends, artists, collaborators, and activists, along with videos they made in the late 1980s for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City. From September 14 to 28, MoMA Film will stream Bordowitz’s 1996 reimagination of Nicolai Erdman’s 1932 long-banned play The Suicide, also for members only.

From September 17 to 19, Benyamin Zev’s Succos Spectacular! comprises a trio of livestreamed performances, free with advance RSVP, specifically taking place after Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), the ten Days of Awe (meditation and reflection), and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and before Sukkot (the Harvest Festival and the Feast of Tabernacles). The three shows — “The Rock Star” on Friday at 7:00, “The Rabbi” on Saturday at 7:00, and “The Comedian” on Sunday at 4:00 — feature Bordowitz as his alter ego, Benyamin Zev (his Hebrew name), a Jewish entertainer, stand-up comic, and tummler, hanging out in a Sukkah, joined by special guests and the klezmer ensemble Isle of Klezbos. “Any laughter is purely accidental,” Bordowitz says on the MoMA website. “My performances disturb, upset, and resist the pressures to conform and align genders and ethnicities within a fascist phantasy of American nationalism.” And finally, on October 2 at 5:00, in person and online, Bordowitz will launch his new book from Triple Canopy, Some Styles of Masculinity, at the Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore, where he will speak with poet, professor, and cultural theorist Fred Moten.

A SNAIL’S TALE: A PERFORMANCE BY KRIS LEMSALU AND KYP MALONE ON THE HIGH LINE

Kris Lemsalu Malone and Kyp Malone Lemsalu will perform on the High Line this week (photo by Eric Martin)

Who: Kris Lemsalu, Kyp Malone, others
What: Live performance in seven parts
Where: The High Line, between Fourteenth & Thirtieth Sts.
When: September 13-15, free, 6:30
Why: For the 2017 Performa Biennial, Estonian multidisciplinary artist Kris Lemsalu and New York–based musician and artist Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio, Rain Machine) collaborated on Going, Going, which took place on a kinetic bed. In February 2020, they collaborated on the exhibition “Love Song Sing-Along” at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. The two are teaming up again for A Snail’s Tale, a seven-part site-specific performance installation that runs the length of the High Line, from Fourteenth St. to the Thirtieth St. Spur.

Admission is free and no advance RSVP is necessary; the audience will walk across the gorgeous park, making seven stops, each offering a chapter in the story, featuring musicians Lara Allen, Kate Farstad, Forrest Gillespie, Andi Maghenheimer, and Katy Pinke as well as Lemsalu and Malone, in celestial costumes designed by Malone, and joined by a mobile snail shell fabricated by Tarvo Porroson. “A Snail’s Tale is a never-before-heard fairy tale,” High Line Art associate curator Melanie Kress said in a statement. “Kris Lemsalu and Kyp Malone’s phantasmagorical performance is an invitation to slow down and connect to the natural world during this moment of global instability and transition.” Along the way, you will also encounter the current High Line exhibition “The Musical Brain,” consisting of pieces by Rebecca Belmore and Osvaldo Yero, Vivian Caccuri, Raúl de Nieves, Guillermo Galindo, David Horvitz, Mai-Thu Perret, Naama Tsabar, and Antonio Vega Macotela, in addition to commissions by Ibrahim Mahama, Hannah Levy, and Sam Durant.

5 INDICES ON A TORTURED BODY

5 Indices on a Tortured Body: The Quarantine Body will conclude performance series on October 24 (photo by Bones)

5 INDICES ON A TORTURED BODY
Bronx Museum
1040 Grand Concourse
September 8 – October 24, free with advance RSVP
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org

Since July, the Bronx Museum of the Arts has been hosting “5 Indices on a Tortured Body,” a series of five live performances held in conjunction with the excellent exhibition “Wardell Milan: Amerika. God Bless You If It’s Good to You.” The small but powerful show by Harlem-based artist Wardell Milan, continuing through October 24, is part of the institution’s special fiftieth anniversary programming, focusing on social justice. “Amerika. God Bless You If It’s Good to You” consists of collages, photographs, and works on paper that address white supremacy and ask the question “What do terrorists do when they’re not terrorizing?” One end of the exhibit contains a ritual room inspired by the Rothko Chapel in Houston; for “5 Indices on a Tortured Body,” Milan is collaborating with Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Zachary Tye Richardson and sculptor and designer Billy Ray Morgan to present the live events, which explore the disenfranchised and marginalized in search of a place of refuge. “The Chapel of Five Indices serves as a ‘Safe Space’ for these tortured bodies — interlinked through histories of violence, to be affirmed and celebrated,” Milan explains in a museum brochure. “Within this chapel, these irrepressible bodies cannot be flattened but must be reckoned with.” Below is the remaining schedule (“The Black Male Body” had its last performance September 4, with Richardson and Milan, written by Casey Gerald); admission is free with advance RSVP.

Wednesday, September 8
5 Indices on a Tortured Body: The Female Body, with Zachary Tye Richardson, Catherine Fisher, and Trinity Dawn Bobo, written by Fisher, 6:00

Saturday, September 25
5 Indices on a Tortured Body: The Trans Body, with Zachary Tye Richardson, B. Hawk Snipes, and Mae Eskenazi, written by Snipes and Richardson, 2:00

Wednesday, October 13
5 Indices on a Tortured Body: The Migrant Body, with Zachary Tye Richardson, DJ Chappel, and Brittany Bringuez, written by Jabu Ndlovu, 6:00

Sunday, October 24
5 Indices on a Tortured Body: The Quarantine Body, with Zachary Tye Richardson, written by Noah Wertheimer, 2:00

“Born in Flames: Feminist Futures,” features dazzling work by Chitra Ganesh, Saya Woolfalk, Huma Bhabha, and others (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Also on view at the Bronx Museum, through September 26, is the phenomenal “Born in Flames: Feminist Futures,” inspired by Lizzie Borden’s seminal 1983 underground classic film, Born in Flames, which is shown on a loop along with recent works by Caitlin Cherry, Chitra Ganesh, Clarissa Tossin, Firelei Baez, Huma Bhabha, Maria Berrio, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Rose B. Simpson, Saya Woolfalk, Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin), Shoshanna Weinberger, Tourmaline, and Wangechi Mutu.