this week in art

KENNETH TAM: THE CROSSING

The Crossing marks Kenneth Tam’s live, virtual debut at the Kitchen OnScreen (rehearsal photo courtesy Lumi Tan and Kenneth Tam)

Who: Kenneth Tam, Lumi Tan
What: Kenneth Tam’s first live performance
Where: The Kitchen OnScreen Zoom
When: December 5-6, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Kenneth Tam has been in residence at Queenslab in Ridgewood since October 30, preparing a new work for the Kitchen, following all Covid-19 protocols as he rehearses the piece and prepares for its livestream debut December 5-6. Performed by Martin Richard Borromeo, Paulina Meneses, James Lim, and Resa Mishina, The Crossing explores issues of race, gender, identity, ritual, and assimilation in relation to Asian Americans and Culturally Based Fraternal Organizations, centering on Taoist funeral rites, probate ceremonies, and the brutal hazing death of Baruch college freshman and pledge Michael Deng in 2013 while running through the gantlet known as the Glass Ceiling. Admission is free with RSVP; the December 6 performance will be followed by a Q&A with Tam (All of M, Breakfast in Bed) and Kitchen curator Lumi Tan. You can see previous Kitchen OnScreen projects here by Baseera Khan, Autumn Knight, and Ka Baird with Max Eilbacher.

EdgeCut: SANITY

Katelyn Halpern and Paul Pinto’s Living Room video is part of “EdgeCut: Sanity”

Who: Malena Dayen, Karen Lancel & Hermen Maat, Caitlin & Misha, Katelyn Halpern, Paul Pinto, divinebrick, Chris SooHoo
What: 3D live, interactive experience
Where: New York Live Arts
When: Saturday, December 5, $7-$15, 1:00 – 4:00
Why: On October 10, EdgeCut introduced us to the remarkable NowHere platform for the first part of its collaboration with New York Live Arts, “Captivity,” five hours of short performance works, discussions, and networking in which audience members navigated through different levels in order to watch livestreamed events in little pods and hang out with curators, creators, and other visitors in their pods. You could steer through fantastical landscapes, float in space, and pull up next to another pod and talk about where you’d been so far or where you were off to next, with cameras on so your face is visible on the front of your pod. I’ve tried just about every form of online entertainment while we’re all sheltering in place and arts venues are closed, and nothing else comes close to this one, even given various hiccups that require patience.

The second iteration, “Sanity,” takes place December 5 from 1:00 to 4:00, a more manageable three hours that will feature four unique rooms. In the Growth Room, you can catch director and singer Malena Dayen’s opera While You Are with Me and the bright and colorful Living Room music video of dancing television heads by multidisciplinary artists Katelyn Halpern and Paul Pinto; in the Worry Room, you can let out steam with Caitlin & Misha’s Infinite Worries Bash, a participatory installation of electroacoustic piñatas that inquires, “Can the destruction of these interactive worry vessels create space for clarity?”; in the Transformation Room, you can meditate to divinebrick and Chris Soohoo’s Performance Prayer; and in the Kissing Room, you can share private moments courtesy of intimacy agents Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat, who ask, “Can we measure a kiss and what kissers feel together?”

Intimacy agents Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat explore what online kissing is like at “EdgeCut: Sanity”

Curated by Heidi Boisvert and Kat Mustatea, the EdgeCut program, which originally convened at the New Museum’s NEW INC incubator for art, tech, and design for in-person presentations, is now seeking to expand and redefine the virtual 3D experience during the pandemic lockdown, exploring the question “How do we create collective experience and transformative gatherings in this moment of ‘a crisis within a crisis’ that speak to transition, change, healing, humanity?” The works were chosen through an open call; the finale of the trilogy, “Humanity,” is scheduled for February 13, 2021. Tickets range from $7 per room to $15 for the full experience, which has to be seen to be believed.

REBUILDING DEMOCRACY: A POSTELECTION CONVERSATION BETWEEN SUE COE AND STEPHEN F. EISENMAN

Sue Coe, It Can Happen Here, linocut on thin white Rives paper, 2016 (photo courtesy Galerie St. Etienne)

Who: Sue Coe, Stephen F. Eisenman
What: Live conversation and Q&A
Where: Galerie St. Etienne Zoom
When: Wednesday, December 2, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: On November 7, English-born American artist Sue Coe said, “I am beside myself with joy, but it’s not exactly a revolution. The reality is that four to five million more Americans voted for Biden/Harris than for Trump. Although capitalist democracy beat fascism by a razor thin margin, our electoral system still benefits cruel bullying overlords. The struggle continues. . . .” The vote differential is now more than six million, but the struggle continues, especially with an incumbent president who refuses to concede and keeps tweeting about voter fraud with zero evidence. On December 2 at 6:00, Coe, who lives in Upstate New York, will have more to say about the state of the country in a live Zoom discussion with art historian, activist, Anthropocene Alliance cofounder, and Northwestern University professor Stephen F. Eisenman, author of The Temptation of Saint Redon, Gauguin’s Skirt, and The Abu Ghraib Effect and who has collaborated with Coe on her book The Ghosts of Our Meat and the new pamphlet American Fascism Now.

The talk, “Rebuilding Democracy,” is being hosted by Galerie St. Etienne, the midtown gallery that is showing “Sue Coe: It Can Happen Here” through December 30. The exhibition consists of more than eighty paintings, drawings, lithographs, linocuts, and woodcuts that deal with such issues as anti-Semitism, AIDS, animal abuse, the pandemic, police brutality, greed, torture, government corruption, and the Trump administration, the president being a favorite target of vitriol. Be sure to read the exhibition essay, which begins, “People often ask Sue Coe, ‘Did you think it was going to be this bad?’ A proverbial canary in the coal mine, the artist has been ‘tweeting’ out warnings since the 1980s. In her view, the problems that plague us — zoonotic diseases, systemic racism, inadequate healthcare, rising income inequality, global warming, and countless other related ills — are the result of an undiluted form of capitalism that puts profits above individual lives. Forty years of such skewed priorities conditioned America’s grotesque bungling of the Covid crisis and have brought us to the brink of fascism. On the other hand, the Black Lives Matter protests — which are broadly supported by people of all colors — offer hope that it is not too late to take back our democracy. ‘The tectonic plates are shifting and colliding,’ Coe says, ‘allowing us to see the primordial depths below. The question is whether we can rise to the occasion.’”

NATKINS FUNHOUSE PRESENTS: THE LAST WALTZ AT HOME

Who: Nicole Atkins, Ray Jacildo, Ancient Cities, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Binky Griptite, Buffalo Hunt, Courtney Marie Andrews, Caleb Elliott, Dancey Jenkins, Davey Horne, Eric D. Johnson, Erin Rae, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jaime Wyatt, John Gallahger Jr., John McCauley, John Paul White, Justin & the Cosmics, Kashena Sampson, Langhorne Slim, Lilly Hiatt, Lola Kirke, the Lone Bellow, Midlake, Oliver Wood, Patrick Sweany, Phil Cook, the Pollies, Raul Malo, Shakey Graves, the Smoking Flowers, Suzanne Santo, the War and Treaty, Van Darien, more
What: Livestream concert re-creating The Last Waltz
Where: Natkins Funhouse online
When: Friday, November 27, $12, 8:00
Why: On Thanksgiving night, November 25, 1976, the Band played its farewell concert, The Last Waltz, at the Winterland in Sand Francisco, joined by an all-star lineup of luminaries that included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, and others. Recently, a wide range of musicians have been gathering every other year or so at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester to re-create the show; last November, Warren Haynes, Jamey Johnson, Lukas Nelson, Don Was, Cyril Neville, and John Medeski, among others, joined in the fun. With the pandemic lockdown closing all music venues, singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins has taken the reins and turned it into a virtual event. “I called a bunch of my musician buddies who are all homebound themselves and love the music of The Last Waltz and miss all being together to perform it in a theater, club, or dive bar for sweaty, singing, smiling humans and this, ‘The Last Waltz from Home,’ became our solution,” she posted on Facebook.

On November 27 at 8:00, Atkins and jazz pianist Ray Jacildo will be hosting “The Last Waltz at Home,” an online concert featuring more than two dozen performers going song by song through the remarkable Last Waltz setlist, from Ancient Cities, Binky Griptite, Courtney Marie Andrews, Eric D. Johnson, and Jaime Wyatt to John McCauley, Justin & the Cosmics, Langhorne Slim, Lilly Hiatt, Lola Kirke, Raul Malo, and more. Atkins and Jacildo will share stories and give out prizes, and everyone can take part in the live chat as the bands make their way from “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Shape I’m In” to “I Shall Be Released” and “Baby Don’t You Do It.” Virtual admission is $12; Atkins also noted on Facebook, “All of the money raised from tickets, tipping, and poster sales will go directly to the artists performing. Our industry has taken quite the beating in this pandemic and many of our tours and work has been cancelled. The silver lining in all this has been you, our fans, and your support throughout this time is beyond appreciated.” Last Waltz devotees will also want to check out the online photography exhibit “The Last Waltz: A Commemorative Retrospective” at the Morrison Hotel Gallery here.

BOSCO SODI: PERFECT BODIES

Bosco Sodi’s “Perfect Bodies” offers alternate universes in Red Hook (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pioneer Works at Perfect Bodies Auto Collision
184-186 Conover St., Red Hook
Saturdays & Sundays through December 20, free, noon – 7:00 pm
pioneerworks.org
www.boscosodi.com
perfect bodies slideshow

Mexico City-born, Brooklyn-based artist Bosco Sodi returns to Pioneer Works with another site-specific installation featuring organic materials facing deterioration and impermanence. Six years after the fifty-seven-foot-long polyptych The Last Day, a textured painting that cracked naturally, Sodi is back in Red Hook with “Perfect Bodies,” an outdoor exhibition consisting of dozens of clay spheres and cubes socially distanced in a fenced-in asphalt yard that would make a fine location for a Rudy Giuliani press conference. A few blocks from Pioneer Works’ home base at 159 Pioneer St., “Perfect Bodies” is situated in the vacant lot of the former home of Perfect Bodies Auto Collision and A. P. Fleet Service automotive repairs on Conover St. The more than two dozen imperfect spheres and three cubes were hand-formed from Oaxacan clay and fired in a DIY kiln on the beach; in the lot, they resemble a strange urban pumpkin patch, a field of dinosaur eggs, parents with small children, or a flat map of the universe, misshapen moons and planets degrading before our very eyes.

Bosco Sodi’s “Perfect Bodies” consists of clay spheres and cubes that degrade over time (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Like his cracking paintings, the objects crack over time, as does the ground they are on, while they discolor from exposure to the elements, time and nature pecking away at them. Their fate is tactile; feel free to touch them, but don’t think too much about how they relate to our own aging process, and that of the earth itself. “I try to find in my work as much as possible things that I cannot control,” Sodi told Time magazine in a 2013 interview. “What I ask of the viewer is to come with a completely empty mind. I try to avoid any kind of guidance to the viewer or hints.” The show is curated by Dakin Hart of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, who sees “Perfect Bodies” as “the past seeding itself into the present, a starting point for nature’s revenge.” Noguchi himself would be proud.

DAVID GODLIS PRESENTS GODLIS STREETS

Who: David Godlis, Luc Sante, Chris Stein, Dave Brolan
What: Virtual book launch
Where: Rizzoli Zoom
When: Thursday, November 19, free with RSVP, 5:00
Why: “As Garry Winogrand said, ‘I photograph to see what things look like photographed.’ This book is what I photographed,” David Godlis explains in his new book, Godlis Streets (Reel Art Press, $39.95, November 2020). I’m used to seeing the ever-cool Godlis and his impressive curly hair every year at the New York Film Festival, snapping away from his seat at front and center, but this year’s event, of course, was virtual, so I will have to settle for catching up with Godlis on Zoom when Rizzoli hosts his book launch on November 19 at 5:00, when Godlis will speak with Reel Art Press music editor Dave Brolan. Godlis is known for his black-and-white documentation of the punk scene, cinema luminaries, and street photos from the 1970s to 1990s, ever since he purchased his first 35mm camera in 1970; his motto is “Better Living Through Photography.” Look out for his photo of an outdoor stand selling “Black Art,” a drawing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., next to “American Art,” a painting of a clown; a shot of a nun walking past a bus with an ad featuring a naked man and woman on it; and a picture of two women looking askance at him as they pass a peep show. The book includes a foreword by Luc Sante and an afterword by Chris Stein; both Sante and Stein will be part of the launch as well, which is free with RSVP.

PERFORMA TELETHON

Laurie Anderson will revisit Nam June Paik’s 1984 Good Morning, Mr. Orwell for Performa telethon (photo courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York)

Who: Jason Moran, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lang Lang, Yvonne Rainer, Jennifer Rubell, Laurie Anderson, Omer Fast, Maria Hassabi, Jesper Just, William Kentridge, Liz Magic Laser, Rashid Johnson, Shirin Neshat, more
What: Virtual benefit gala for Performa
Where: Pace Gallery
When: Wednesday, November 18, free with RSVP, 2:00 to 10:00 pm
Why: Performa is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary with an eight-hour gala fundraiser featuring live performances, specially commissioned artist editions, and testimonials, an online mashup of Nam June Paik’s 1984 Good Morning, Mr. Orwell and Barbara Kruger’s 1989 critique of Jerry Lewis and his annual MDA Labor Day Telethon, aired live from the seventh floor of Pace Gallery in Chelsea. “Nam June Paik’s innovations in broadcast and large-scale architectural installations of television monitors changed the way we think about the screen as an art form,” Performa founder and director RoseLee Goldberg said in a statement. “Half a century after Paik’s legendary interventions in television, we find ourselves in a unique situation: We must now rely on the screen in new ways in the midst of a pandemic that has cost over one million lives. Like Paik, we approach the screen as an exciting platform for artists to communicate their work and ideas.”

Produced in collaboration with E.S.P. TV, the fundraiser honors founding patron Toby Devan Lewis and will include a giant tally board, confetti, giant checks, balloons, a bank of people on telephones, and other telethon staples while acknowledging the Covid-19 crisis, election unrest, the BLM movement, and other critical contemporary social issues. The show will be highlighted by performances from Derrick Adams & Dave Guy, Jérôme Bel, Torkwase Dyson (reading an excerpt from Myself a Distance), David Hallberg, Glenn Kaino, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lang Lang, Marching Cobras, Jason Moran, Oyinda, Yvonne Rainer, Jennifer Rubell, Jacolby Satterwhite, Rufus Wainwright, Hank Willis Thomas & Ebony Brown, Samson Young, and Laurie Anderson, who will pay tribute to Paik; there will also be screenings of Lynda Benglis’s On Screen, The Grunions Are Running, and Document and testimonials from Tamy Ben-Tor, Elmgreen & Dragset, Omer Fast, Maria Hassabi, Jesper Just, William Kentridge, Liz Magic Laser, Kelly Nipper, Rashid Johnson, Shirin Neshat, and others, along with archival footage and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes outtakes. Six artist editions will make their debut and will be available only during the broadcast, by Korakrit Arunanondchai, Barbara Kruger, Kia LaBeija, Michèle Lamy, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons. The twentieth Performa Biennial, curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, is scheduled for 2021, but it might look very different from previous ones depending on the state of the pandemic.