We all know about alligators in the New York City sewer system, as honored by Alexander Klingspor’s NYC Legend sculpture on Union Square Park’s Triangle Plaza.
But Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Attrition, a site-specific Public Art Fund project at the south end entrance to City Hall Park, is not only more real but arrives with an important message.
“I live because my ancestors survived a war of attrition carried out by extractive colonizers in order to subjugate tribal nations of the Great Plains for American progress,” Luger, who was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and is currently based in New Mexico, explains in his artist statement. “By the year 1895, across North America, bison herds had been systematically eradicated from numbers in the tens of millions to a mere 1500 — this was genocide. The public artwork Attrition is an effort to transform industrial processes and materials into a symbol of these buried histories reemerging in the twenty-first century.”
The ten-foot-long bison skeleton, made of steel with an ash black patina, peers out of a bed of wild grass that covers the park’s large historical medallion, which contains this 1855 quote from civil engineer and Confederate army officer Henry Brevard Davidson: “It must not be forgotten that the park is still the refuge of the people, the cradle of liberty.”
The mandible is hidden under the grass, but you can get an up-close view of the cranium, scapula, ribs, thoracic vertebrae, and horns. Just as if it were a living bison, gnats hover around it amid the sounds of chirping birds. The skeleton is covered with circular engraved star-shaped symbols that reference the interconnectedness of land, life, and the cosmos as well as the devastation wrought by human intervention in natural ecosystems.
In a statement, Luger, who descends from buffalo people and is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold from the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota cultures, talks about how men would build pyramids of bison skulls in the 1800s.
“These were testaments to settler force and monuments of conquest. They communicated a warning to Native Americans, asserting a haunting commitment to our destruction — and yet, we have survived,” he says. “My ongoing exploration of bison aims to bring awareness to the importance of their impact as an apex species in the environment. Over the course of my life, I’ve developed a personal relationship with this animal — one that is on the verge of survivor’s guilt — because I know their eradication was put in place to create dominance in the Central Plains. We’ve oversimplified our kinship with nature, and you can’t have a whole, complete relationship without complexity.”
Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Attrition will be celebrated with a special program on June 4 at 6:00 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
On June 4 at 6:00, there will be a public celebration, with remarks from the artist and American Indian Community House executive director Patricia Tarrant, along with readings as part of a brief program; the work officially opens on Wednesday, World Environment Day. On the horizon is a Bison Bead Making Workshop in City Hall Park and the Museum of Arts and Design in August and a Public Art Fund Talk with Luger at the Cooper Union in October.
In addition, Luger is represented in the Whitney Biennial with Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta (a Lakota phrase that translates as “the fat-taker’s world is upside down”) from the ongoing series “Future Ancestral Technologies.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The thirty-eighth annual Performance Mix Festival, hosted by New Dance Alliance at Abrons Arts Center, features live and recorded works from thirty-five experimental dance and film artists, including pieces from NDA’s Black Artists Space to Create residency and LiftOff residency. Running June 6-9, the festival features such creators as Mickey Davidson, Carole Arcega, Arantxa Araujo, j. bouey, Beatriz Castro Mauri, Jordan Deal, Tal Halevi, Yolette Yellow-Duke, and Aya Shabu, exploring such issues and subjects as ghost porn, climate change, queer platonic intimacy, Michael Jackson, masculinity, gun violence, gender markers, effeminacy and androgyny, and landscapes of memory. The 2024 event is curated by NDA founder and executive director Karen Bernard and an artist panel comprising Rafael Cañals, Maxi Hawkeye Canion, Jil Guyon, Rebecca Patek, and Stacy Lynn Smith, with films selected in collaboration with Ciné-Corps.
Tickets are $18.50; below is the complete schedule.
Thursday, June 6
j. bouey: A Message from Mx. Black Copper, Shua Group: Over, Frédéric Nauczyciel: A Baroque Ball (Shade), Bob Eisen, 7:00
Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud: Mourn, O Nature!, Flamenco Rosado, ankita sharma: jagaana/Awaken/, Isa Spector: A Larger Body, 8:30
Friday, June 7
Breakfast Mix: virtual dance experience organized by Agora de la danse/Koros, New Dance Alliance Studio, 182 Duane St., free with advance RSVP, 10:00
Panel discussion with Karen Bernard, L’Annexe-A, Virginie Combet, and Vanessa Bousquet of Koros, including two VR dance pieces by Hélène Blackburn and Andrea Peña, 10:30
Thomas Choinacky: Home Is the Body, Smaïl Kanouté: Never Twenty One, Company [REDACTED]: My Apocalypse, Shua Group: Over, 7:00
Saturday, June 8
Audrée Juteau, Zoey Gauld, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, and Ellen Furey | Mystic-Informatic, followed by a reception, 7:00
Sunday, June 9
Carole Arcega: Hymen, Beatriz Castro Mauri: girl crush, Chloë Engel: Rubber, Johanna Meyer: Suit Hang, noon
Mickey D. & Friends: Visiting the Past to See the Future, Jordan Deal: capeforce, Lo Fi Dance Theory: Move Freely, Aya Shabu: LandED (excerpt), 1:30
Tal Halevi: Hidden in a Closet My Mother Imagined Being Wrapped in Her Father’s Shawl, Mohamad Moe Sabbah and Khansa: Khayef, Yolette Yellow-Duke, 3:00
Arantxa Araujo in collaboration with Mariana Uribe: Breathsculpt: Transformations Unveiled, Lena Engelstein: Stage Direction, Viktor Horváth, 4:30
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 30, $105-$125 www.nytw.org
When you enter New York Theatre Workshop to see Here There Are Blueberries, there’s a projection of the Leica logo on a translucent curtain behind an actual camera on a stand on the stage. “In the 1930s, the development of compact, portable cameras like this one changed everything,” an actor says in a prologue, explaining that as Germany emerged from a national depression, citizens started taking photos as an affordable hobby in the pursuit of happiness. “Each pose, each press of a button, each frozen moment tells the world: This is our shared history, and this is what it means to us. Viewed in this way, the apparent ordinariness of these images does not detract from their political relevance. On the contrary: Asserting ordinariness in the face of the extraordinary is, in itself, an immensely political act.”
According to the September 2020 U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, the first national poll ever taken of millennials and Gen Z about the Holocaust, sixty-three percent of respondents did not know that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, forty-eight percent could not name a single concentration camp or European ghetto, and twenty percent believed that the Jews caused the Holocaust. As more survivors and witnesses pass away and antisemitism grows around the world, those numbers are only likely to increase, which is why a play such as the exquisitely rendered Here There Are Blueberries is so timely and necessary.
Running at New York Theatre Workshop through June 30, the gripping hundred-minute drama from the Tectonic Theater Project pores over the contents of a book of photos delivered to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007 by an eighty-seven-year-old retired U.S. lieutenant colonel (Grant James Varjas); he had been holding on to them since he discovered them in an abandoned Frankfurt apartment in 1946. There was something unique and unexpected — and terrifying — about the pictures: They did not contain a single image of a victim or prisoner.
With limited information, the archival team, led by Dr. Rebecca Erbelding (Elizabeth Stahlmann) and Judy Cohen (Kathleen Chalfant), begin a detailed forensic investigation that yields a surprising result: The photos are of Nazi officers and Helferinnen, a communication corps of young women, enjoying themselves at Auschwitz, exploring the facilities, laughing and singing, and relaxing at the previously unknown chalet known as Solahütte, where weekends were awarded to hard workers, a bonus for a job well done — asserting ordinariness in the face of the extraordinary, examples of what Jewish historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany with her family in 1933, referred to as “the banality of evil.”
As the museum archive team starts identifying the men in the photos — among those seen in large projections on the back wall are Dr. Josef Mengele, Commandant SS Major Richard Baer, chief SS doctor Eduard Wirths, Auschwitz builder Rudolph Höss, and his right-hand man, former bank clerk SS Obersturmführer Karl Höcker (Scott Barrow), who owned the album — it reaches out to descendants of the subjects, some of whom are shocked to find out what their fathers and grandfathers were up to. One, Tilman Taube (Jonathan Raviv), decides to help the museum track down more relatives in order to gather further information. “Those who say nothing . . . they transfer this trauma to the next generation,” he bravely argues.
Meanwhile, Dr. Erbelding, Cohen, and museum director Sara Bloomfield (Erika Rose) debate whether the photographs should be put on display. “Here we find our first obstacle. There’s a sense at our museum that we should focus on the victims, not on the perpetrators,” Cohen says. Bloomfield replies, “In the creation of the permanent exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, special effort has been made to avoid undue attention to the perpetrators and to humanize and honor the victims.” Shortly after a survivor declares that the museum should let the public see the pictures for themselves, Bloomfield says, “We don’t want to elevate Nazis, to give them any kind of platform.”
The photographs that give the play its name are a series of shots of Höcker with a group of Helferinnen in skirts sitting on a fence on the Solahütte deck, eating blueberries, all smiles as they pose for the camera; one of the young women pretends to cry because her bowl is empty. “People called us and said — these people look normal, the girls look like teenage girls. Because they were. And that was surprising, that they look like us!” Dr. Erbelding explains. The caller continued, “‘I know I never could’ve been a Mengele. I know I never could’ve been a Höcker. But could I have been a Helferin?’”
And therein lies the dilemma at the heart of the play: What would any of us have done in that situation — and what would we do today?
Using their Moment Work method of collaboration, Tectonic Theater Project and founding artistic director Moisés Kaufman have created such fact-based narrative plays as The Laramie Project,33 Variations,I Am My Own Wife, and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. Conceived and directed by Tony and Emmy nominee Kaufman — inspired by the 2007 New York Times article “In the Shadow of Horror, SS Guardians Frolic” — and cowritten by Kaufman and Emmy nominee Amanda Gronich, Here There Are Blueberries takes the audience inside the tense research and analysis as the museum realizes how important the evidence is.
The album served as visual reference for the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, a fictionalized version of the everyday life of Höss and his family, who lived next door to Auschwitz. It also has much in common with Bianca Stigter’s astounding 2021 documentary, Three Minutes — A Lengthening, which follows the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as it tries to uncover the details about a mysterious 180-second home-movie clip from Poland in 1938, searching for the exact location, who is in the footage, and what happened to the citizens of this community.
Derek McLane’s set is a research room containing several standing desks where characters in Dede Ayite’s everyday costumes conduct their analyses; David Lander’s clear-cut lighting includes overhead industrial fluorescents and illuminates individual speakers, while Bobby McElver’s sound ranges from the accordion and a storm to chirping birds, a flowing river, and marching feet. David Bengali’s bold projections of the photos, news reports, related documents, and maps makes the audience feel like they are part of the research team, especially with close-ups and when a particular figure in a photo is lit up or silhouetted. A few instances of live video are distracting and unnecessary, but they are kept to a minimum.
Stahlmann (Slave Play,Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” in our own words) and Tony nominee Chalfant (Angels in America,Novenas for a Lost Hospital) lead a strong ensemble cast (which also includes Noah Keyishian, Anna Shafer, and Charlie Thurston) that smoothly handles multiple roles. The material is treated with a gentle sensitivity that makes the various revelations all the more powerful.
Early on, Dr. Erbelding concludes, “This album is something [Höcker] treasured. There are no ink blots, he doesn’t misspell anything, he made sure the lettering was right. Everything is glued perfectly. This was meant to last.” After the show, as the audience exits, facsimiles of many of the photos are on display in the lobby, a potent reminder that the story that has just been told is true and that the snapshots are real.
I know that for me, one thing that is going to last from this play: I will never be able to look at blueberries the same way again.
[The June 4 and 12 performances will be followed by discussions with the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics. Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
“Because we used to be cattle ranchers, we are the bridge, and we have to be able to have our feet in both worlds to be able to be a funnel and channel for the light to save not just cows, which I adore and love, but the planet, all species,” Renee King-Sonnen says in Rowdy Girl. “If we are not here to do that, then what are we doing?”
Jason Goldman’s debut feature-length documentary introduces audiences to King-Sonnen and her husband, Tommy Sonnen, who run Rowdy Girl Veganic Farm and Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, a nonprofit charity that rescues farm animals that had been raised for meat and incorporates them into their vegan lifestyle. Through their Rancher Advocacy Program, they help others convert their farms to grow crops veganically.
Goldman and cinematographers Bridget McQuillan, Dmitri Borysevicz, and Caleb Kuntz follow King-Sonnen as she speaks to and nurtures Sealy the turkey, Lulu and Penny the pigs, Tom Tom the goat, Trixie and Dixie the donkeys, Lemuria the horse, and Rowdy Girl the cow. A Texas rancher nearly breaks down in tears when he watches King-Sonnen welcome newborn calf Buster, who he helped deliver and then witnessed the animal’s mother reject and leave him to die.
King-Sonnen is a fierce activist for humane treatment of all animals; every shirt and hat she wears boasts anti-factory-farming and pro-vegan slogans, much like the farm’s social media presence. “There’s a door inside our consciousness that we dare not go through, because if we do, we will see that all these animals are just like us,” she tells the Texas rancher.
She meets with Valerie Peña and Jose Bustos about their pig, sixth-generation cattle ranchers Cindy and Richard Traylor about converting their farm, and Jennifer and Rodney Barrett about transforming their chicken ranch into “the first exotic automated mushroom farm in America.” In addition, King-Sonnen hosts a small gathering where she talks about how she is a product of rape, that her father horribly abused her mother, and that she is in recovery; her sobriety happened around the same time she went vegan, fighting against violence and the mistreatment of animals.
Just as King-Sonnen does, the film itself has a clear message. “I was originally drawn to Renee’s story when I learned that she was not only rescuing animals but rescuing ranchers,” Goldman notes in his director’s statement. “That idea crystalized in my mind, that her method of activism was disarming, displayed vulnerability, and was authentically holistic. I could see how she embodies the core philosophy of animal liberation: that animals are sentient beings who have their own interests, desires, and complex emotional lives. My intent with this film was to showcase the deep compassion, understanding, and unusual methods that are required of activists to help people open their hearts and minds to the cruel nature of animal agriculture.”
Rowdy Girl, which was executive produced by New York City native and longtime vegan Moby, opens May 31 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema; Goldman and King-Sonnen will be on hand for Q&As following the 7:00 show on Friday, the 7:30 screening ons Saturday, and the 4:30 show on Sunday.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
“Our goal is dialogue, not divisiveness,” Art at a Time Like This (ATLT) cofounders Anne Verhallen and Barbara Pollack say about their latest event, a two-day summit featuring panel discussions, live performances, illustrated lectures, and more.
“Dangerous Art/Endangered Artists” takes place June 7–8 at BRIC in Brooklyn, hosted by ATLT and Artists at Risk Connection (ARC). ATLT started on March 17, 2020, as an online community focusing on art as a direct response to what was happening in the world, from the pandemic lockdown to racial injustice. ARC began in 2017, helping international artists and cultural professionals of all disciplines connect to such resources as emergency funds, legal assistance, temporary relocation programs, and fellowships.
Among the summit participants are Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, American journalist and author Nikole Hannah-Jones, Cuban American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator Coco Fusco, Kenyan rapper Henry Ohanga aka Octopizzo, Native American artist and activist Demian DinéYazhi’, Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander, and Vietnamese singer and sound artist Mai Khôi. “I was born in Vietnam, where freedom of expression and artistic freedom have always been suppressed,” Mai Khôi, who recently performed her autobiographical show Bad Activist at Joe’s Pub, said in a statement. “I have had to become an activist to protect my right to be an artist because the artist inside me doesn’t want to be killed by the censorship system.”
TICKET GIVEAWAY: “Dangerous Art / Endangered Artists” takes place June 7-8 at BRIC in Brooklyn; tickets are $30 for one day and $50 for both, but twi-ny has two pairs to give away for free. Just send your name and favorite sociopolitical artist to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, June 3, at 3:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older, and all information will be kept confidential; two winners will be selected at random.
Here is the full schedule (times and participants subject to change):
Summit Day 1: Challenges Facing Artists in Authoritarian Regimes
Opening Remarks, with Anne Verhallen, cofounder and codirector, ATLT, 5:00
Keynote Speaker: Shirin Neshat in conversation with ARC artistic director Julie Trebault, 5:05
Performance: Henry Ohanga aka Octopizzo, 6:00
Artists at the Forefront of Social Movements, with Dread Scott and Samia Halaby, moderated by ATLT cofounder and codirector Barbara Pollack, 6:15
Resiliency in Exile: Rania Mamoun and Mai Khôi, moderated by Ethiopian American writer Dinaw Mengestu, 7:15
Closing Remarks: ARC artistic director Julie Trebault, 7:50
Reception, 8:15
Summit Day 2
Registration + Coffee, 10:30
Here and Now: Censorship as a Political Tool in the United States, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Aruna D’Souza, 11:00
Global Censorship: What It Looks Like, Who Does It, How to Combat It, with Coco Fusco, Omaid Sharifi, Khaled Jarrar, and Henry Ohanga AKA Octopizzio, moderated by Mari Spirito, 12:15
Is Censorship Discriminatory?, with Lorena Wolffer, Demian Diné Yazhi, and Shahzia Sikander, moderated by Jasmine Wahi, 3:30
Who: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, DJ YB, more What:DanceAfrica Festival 2024 Where:BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. When: May 24-27, many events free, Gilman dances $22-$95, film screenings $16 Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-seventh annual iteration focuses on Cameroon, with four companies performing “The Origin of Communities / A Calabash of Cultures” in BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, and Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, highlighting movement and music from the Central African nation. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, Salifou Lindou’s art installation La course 2,the Council of Elders Roundtable: Legacy & Preservation, and a late night dance party with DJ YB.
This year’s FilmAfrica screenings and cinema conversations range from Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa’s 1975 Muna Moto and Mohamed Challouf’s The Many Moods of Muna Moto to Jean-Marie Téno’s Colonial Misunderstanding, Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s 2005 Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes), and Gordon Main’s 2023 London Recruits, all followed by Q&As with the directors.
“This year’s DanceAfrica is a journey into the heart of Cameroon, driven by a quest to explore the ancient roots of African culture and answer profound questions about humanity’s earliest origins,” Salaam said in his mission statement. “How timeless is Africa, and was it the land of the most ancient beings? What were the origins of humanity, thought, consciousness, art, culture, creativity, and civilization?”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Taking Venice examines 1964 biennale art scandal involving Robert Rauschenberg and the State Department
Who: Amei Wallach, Robert Storr What: Postscreening Q&As for Taking Venice Where:IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St. When: Friday, May 17, 7:15, and Saturday, May 18, 7:15 Why: “I grew up during the Cold War when the world seemed as dangerous as it does today. But it also seemed to be filled with possibility, with the actions of people who dreamed big and took big chances,” Amei Wallach says in the director’s statement for her latest documentary, Taking Venice. “This was especially true of artists, always looking to build something new. I became an art critic, then an author, and now a filmmaker. My goal is to make films about art that leap out of the art world and into a reckoning with what’s relevant in our lives through the stories that they tell. . . . Taking Venice builds on a tradition of telling the story of America then through the eyes of now because I want it to reflect how much the world and art have changed. I want there to be moments that sting with what we have lost, and moments that encapsulate what we have gained.”
Wallach is now back with her third film, Taking Venice, which invites viewers inside the controversy surrounding the 1964 Venice Biennale, where several forces might have teamed up in order to ensure that American artist Robert Rauschenberg would win the Golden Lion. The scandal involved art curators Alice Denney and Alan Solomon, art dealer Leo Castelli, and, perhaps, the US government, which saw Rauschenberg’s uniquely American pop art as a way to help fight communism. Among the people Wallach speaks with are artists Christo, Simone Leigh, Mark Bradford, Shirin Neshat, and Carolee Schneeman; authors Louis Menand and Calvin Tompkins; museum directors Valerie Hillings and Philip Rylands; 2007 Venice Biennale director Robert Storr; and Denney, who died this past November at the age of 101. Even Rauschenberg chimes in: “I had moments where I thought everything would be much better if I hadn’t been so lucky,” he says in an archival clip.
Taking Venice opens May 17 at IFC Center; Wallach will be on hand for Q&As following the 7:15 screenings on May 17 and 18, the latter joined by Storr.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
