PS1 will celebrate summer with an open house today (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, June 19, suggested admission $10 (free for LIC residents and MoMA admission ticket holders), 12 noon – 5:00 pm
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org
summer open house sneak peek
MoMA PS1 opens its summer season with an open house today, featuring art, music, drinks, and more. They will officially unveil the new courtyard installation, a fun and fancy-free design by Interboro Partners & WHATAMI by start called “Holding Pattern” that includes Ping-Pong, foosball, kiddie pools, a sandbox, oak and plum trees, white ribbons, and a cool mirror area, nearly all of which will be donated to the local community at the end of the summer. Today is also the opening of “Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever,” a series of wild rooms displaying Trecartin’s unique films that take an unusual look at contemporary culture. Among the other exhibitions on view is Laurel Nakadate’s “Only the Lonely,” in which the New York-based photographer and filmmaker comments on femininity, loneliness, sexuality, and desire, centering on human contact that is disappearing in this age of social media; her “365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears,” comprising large-scale photographs she took of herself crying every day for a year, is simply overwhelming. If you’ve never seen Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 highly spiritual freak-out, The Holy Mountain, PS1 is screening it daily at 12 noon, 2:00, and 4:00 through June 30, accompanied by the cult filmmaker’s wacky annotated screenplay. PS1 pays tribute to early female video pioneers in “Modern Women: Single Channel,” comprising seminal work by such cutting-edge artists as Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, VALIE EXPORT, Joan Jonas, Pipilotti Rist, and Carolee Schneeman, many of whom frequently turned the cameras on themselves well before there was any such thing as American Idol, Survivor, or The Amazing Race. It’ll be hard not to think of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction as you make your way around “Nancy Grossman: Heads,” comprising Grossman’s black-leather-wrapped bondage-like life-size head sculptures from the late 1960s and early 1970s. And the second half of the dual MoMA/PS1 exhibition “Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception” is highlighted by the magnificent film Guards and a collection of camera guns in the café that you are allowed to pick up. Music will be provided by DJ Total Freedom, and artist Clifford Owens will give a special musical performance held all around PS1.
Iranian-American documentarian Tanaz Eshaghian (I Call Myself Persian, Be Like Others) and cinematographer Kat Patterson gained remarkable access to Afghanistan’s Badam Bagh women’s prison for their fascinating HBO film, Love Crimes of Kabul. Having its U.S. premiere at the twenty-second Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Love Crimes focuses on the intriguing stories of three imprisoned women. Eighteen-year-old Sabereh was arrested after her father turned her in for allegedly having sex with her seventeen-year-old neighbor, Abbas, even though lab reports show she is still a virgin. The twenty-year-old and pregnant Kareema turned in herself and her fiancé, Firuz, in the hopes of forcing him to marry her. And twenty-three-year-old Aleema is in jail because she ran away from her abusive husband and took shelter with Zia and her son, both of whom were arrested as well for attempting to sell her; meanwhile, Zia is trying to convince Aleema to marry her son in order to save them all from shame. Approximately half of the 125 female inmates at Badam Bagh have been incarcerated for either having premarital sex, running away from home, or committing adultery, many of them facing upwards of fifteen to twenty years for their actions. The women are remarkably open and honest, making their own cases to the camera while condemning those of their fellow inmates. Eshaghian captures Kareema speaking to her mother through the prison gates as they discuss the possibility of her father making a financial deal with Firuz and his family. Forty-five-year-old Naseema, the elder spokesperson of the group, proudly talks about having killer her husband, whom she claims deserved it because of his penchant for adultery, including with a seven-year-old girl. And the prison guards regularly defend the laws that essentially make certain kinds of love a crime in Afghanistan. Although she is not allowed into a wedding ceremony or two of the trials, Eshaghian does film one of the trials; she also photographs Firuz’s parents talking to her very directly while in bed, and Aleema holds nothing back when discussing her divorce and her unwillingness to marry Zia’s son, primarily because she claims he couldn’t afford to keep her in the lifestyle she wants. Eshaghian presents the facts and the myriad opinions without embellishment, letting these deeply personal and inherently infuriating stories speak for themselves, revealing a frighteningly old-fashioned society that is doing everything it can to prevent the freedom of women to make their own choices. Part of the “Migrants’ and Women’s Rights” section of the Human Rights Watch Festival, which also includes “Times of Conflict and Responses to Terrorism,” “Human Dignity, Discrimination, and Resources,” and “Truth, Justice, and Accountability,” Love Crimes of Kabul will be shown June 20-22, with all three screenings followed by a discussion with Eshaghian. The festival, which runs through June 30, features nineteen films from twelve countries that deal with human rights issues around the world.
