this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

JAPAN CUTS 2015: ASLEEP

Terako (Sakura Ando) hides from life in her bed in Shingo Wakagi’s ASLEEP

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: ASLEEP (SHIRAKAWAYOFUNE) (Shingo Wakagi, 2015)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 16, $13, 6:30
Series runs July 9-19
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Shingo Wakagi’s Asleep is a quiet gem of a film, a poignant drama about three women’s relationship with beds and sleep. Sakura Ando stars as Terako, a young woman who is sleeping most of her life away. The only time she wakes up and gets out of bed is when her married lover, the somewhat older Mr. Iwanaga (Arata Iura), calls her to make a date. Terako’s best friend and former roommate, Shiori (Mitsuki Tanimura), recently committed suicide shortly after complaining about the difficulties of her job as a soineya, providing companionship — but not sex — by lying in bed with strangers who do not want to sleep alone. And Terako soon discovers that Iwanaga’s wife is languishing in a hospital bed in a deep coma. As Terako cares more and more for Iwanaga, she finds it harder and harder to get out from under the covers, trying to hide from a life surrounded by loneliness and death.

Terako (Sakura Ando) and Mr. Iwanaga (Arata Iura) try to find love and romance in ASLEEP

Ando (Love Exposure) and Iura (After Life, Air Doll), who played rival siblings in Yang Yong-hi’s Our Homeland, have an offbeat yet sweet chemistry as lovers in Asleep, each in need of different forms of physical and psychological comfort. Wakagi (Waltz in Starlight, Totemu: Song for Home) cowrote, directed, and photographed the film, based on Banana Yoshimoto’s 1989 novella, and he gives it a literary quality with soft voice-over narration by Ando as the troubled Terako, who is first shown lying flat on her back on her futon, in black-and-white, as if she’s dead. “If someone could guarantee that this is really love, I’d be so relieved I’d kneel at her feet,” she says after receiving a phone call from Iwanaga, continuing, “And if it isn’t love, don’t let me hear when he calls,” hiding under the sheets and plowing her head deeper into her pillow. Asleep is an intimate tale, playing out almost like a confessional as a young woman deals with love and depression, nearly paralyzed by a fear of taking control of her life. Wakagi includes little dialogue and no musical score, only the natural sounds of the city and the deafening silence of the bedroom, broken only by the buzzing of the telephone offering her an opportunity that both excites and frightens her. Asleep is part of the Centerpiece Presentation of Japan Society’s annual Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film, screening July 16 at 6:30, with Ando on hand to introduce the film and participate in a Q&A afterward. The festival runs through July 19 with such other works as co-Centerpiece Presentation 100 Yen Love, also starring Ando; The Voice of Water, with an intro by and Q&A with director Masashi Yamamoto and special guests Yui Takagi and Shigetaka Komatsu; and This Country’s Sky, with director Haruhiko Arai and star Youki Kudoh at Japan Society to talk about the film.

PIERRE HUYGHE AT MoMA AND THE MET

Pierre Huyghe’s Met Garden Rooftop Commission melds magic and science, ecology and archaeology (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PIERRE HUYGHE: THE ROOF GARDEN COMMISSION
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Daily through November 1, recommended admission $12-$25
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org
rooftop slideshow

Native Parisian Pierre Huyghe is having quite a summer, with installations and films on view at both MoMA and the Met. Through November 1, his site-specific Roof Garden Commission at the latter will slowly devolve, affecting the surrounding cement slabs and dirt underneath it. A curious aquarium that seems to leak water, the piece resembles an architectural dig of sorts, an intervention on the popular Met roof that offers spectacular vistas and in past years has featured works by Jeff Koons, Ellsworth Kelly, Roxy Paine, and Dan Graham. Inside the aquarium, the 2002 Hugo Boss Prize winner has placed a large boulder of Manhattan schist that somehow is floating (perhaps referencing Koons’s basketballs?) along with some living lamprey and tadpole shrimp. Meanwhile, creatures are turning up in the mini-swamps that spring up amid the dirt and water around the central fixture as the paving stones are upended because of the evolving damage. (The water is not actually leaking from the fish tank but dripping separately.) Huyghe also works in some additional magic into his science-and-art environment; the aquarium occasionally clouds up so visitors can temporarily not see inside it. The ecological, archaeological work feels right at home amid the views of Central Park; as Huyghe notes in the small exhibition catalog, “Walking through Central Park, you realize that all events there — the stone, the frozen lake, the plane overhead, the maintenance worker — are equally necessary. The important thing is not necessarily the big event. There is an ecology in the broadest sense of the word; different states of life, each element playing a role — even sometimes antagonistically.”

Pierre Huyghe, video still, HUMAN MASK, 2014 (photo courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London, and Anna Lena Films, Paris)

UNTITLED (HUMAN MASK) (Pierre Huyghe, 2014)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 916
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Daily through August 9, recommended admission $12-$25
www.metmuseum.org

Inside the Met, in Gallery 916, Huyghe’s intriguing nineteen-minute Untitled (Human Mask) is screening through August 9. The 2014 film follows what appears to at first to be a young girl as she wanders through an abandoned restaurant in Japan. However, the star is in fact a macaque monkey in a wig and a smooth, expressionless Noh-like white mask, inspired by the YouTube clip “Fuku-chan Monkey in wig, mask, works Restaurant!” Huyghe, who has worked with animals in masks before, shot the film in Fukushima shortly after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The monkey, one of the actual waitresses from the Kayabuki sake house in the viral video, makes her way through the restaurant as if wandering in a postapocalyptic landscape, evoking evolution and what humanity hath wrought on the earth. Despite the mask covering her face, she appears filled with emotion as she looks out the window and dreams of a green forest. It’s an eerie, affecting film that serves as a fascinating companion piece to Huyghe’s rooftop installation. On July 24, MetFridays — Conversation with an Educator will delve deeper into the work in an interactive dialogue with museum education assistant Marianna Siciliano.

Pierre Huyghe. Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) [Reclining female nude]. 2012. Concrete with beehive structure, wax, and live bee colony; figure: 29 1/2 x 57 1/16 x 17 11/16" (75 x 145 x 45 cm), base: 11 13/16 x 57 1/16 x 21 5/8" (30 x 145 x 55 cm), beehive dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2015 Pierre Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe, “Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) [Reclining female nude],” concrete with beehive structure, wax, and live bee colony, 2012 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2015 Pierre Huyghe)

PIERRE HUYGHE: “UNTILLED (LIEGENDER FRAUENAKT)”
Museum of Modern Art
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through August 15, $25 (including admission to galleries and film screenings)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Meanwhile, over at MoMA, another outdoor sculpture incorporating living creatures and an indoor film by Huyghe are being highlighted. MoMA is unveiling its recent acquisition, Huyghe’s 2012 “Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt),” through August 15 in the Sculpture Garden, a reclining female nude whose head is a live bee colony. The work references classical Greek statuary (although it was actually cast from a bronze by Max Weber) as well as such concepts as the hive mentality and the controversy over the importance of the survival of the bees in relation to the future of the planet. The Italian honeybees have been overseen by Manhattan beekeeper Andrew Cote since April, and they’ve been getting busy under a shady tree in the garden. Cote and MoMA expect the colony to reach as many as 75,000 bees at its densest point, meaning they might provide a little extra buzz to the upcoming Summergarden: New Music for New York concerts in the Sculpture Garden on July 19 & 26.

The Host and The Cloud. 2009–10. France. Directed by Pierre Huyghe. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Pierre Huyghe’s 2009–10 THE HOST AND THE CLOUD will be shown at MoMA July 14 & 16 (photo courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York)

MOMA PRESENTS: PIERRE HUYGHE’S THE HOST AND THE CLOUD
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
4 West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, July 14, and Thursday, July 16, 7:00
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk and online beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

The very welcome Huyghe infestation continues with two screenings of his rather cerebral 2009–10 film, The Host and the Cloud, on July 14 and 16 at 7:00 in the research and education building. The two-hour depiction of a controlled experiment is set in the abandoned Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, focusing on the Day of the Dead, Valentine’s Day, and May Day, as different forms of entertainment, ritual, and political actions are performed over the course of one year by characters wearing LED masks. As always, Huyghe melds fiction and reality as he explores ethnographic representation. The official description notes, “Navigating through history within the museum, a group of people is exposed to influence, live situations that appear accidentally, simultaneously, or without any sense of order in the building. Nothing that takes place is staged. People can imitate, repeat, or transform these situations endlessly to variable intensity.” The July 14 show will be introduced by MoMA curators Stuart Comer (Department of Media and Performance Art) and Laura Hoptman (Department of Painting and Sculpture), while the July 16 screening will be introduced by Artist’s Institute director and curator Jenny Jaskey.

TWO EVENINGS OF FILMS WITH YOKO ONO

RAPE will be the focus of one of two special evenings in which Yoko Ono will screen and discuss her film work

MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
4 West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, July 13, and Wednesday, July 15, 7:30
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk and online beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

MoMA’s excellent “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971” sheds new light on the seminal period of the Tokyo-born multimedia artist’s career, comprising music, photographs, sculpture, interactive performances, memorabilia and ephemera, paintings, films, and instruction pieces. “Ono’s art from this period is run through with a complex interplay between her own absence and presence,” Klaus Biesenbach writes in the extensive exhibition catalog. “Over time, Ono was able to turn her complex handling of artistic presence and absence into a sophisticated treatment of a public image, which allowed her to reach a broad audience with her artistic and political messages.” The artist will be present at MoMA this week for a pair of special presentations of her films and videos. On Monday, July 13, “An Evening with Yoko Ono and Chrissie Iles” will explore Ono’s musical oeuvre through well-known conceptual films and rare footage, followed by a discussion between Ono and Whitney curator Chrissie Iles. On Wednesday, July 15, “An Evening with Yoko Ono and Alexandra Munroe” examines Ono’s 1969 feature-length collaboration with husband John Lennon, Rape, along with the shorts Film No. 4 (Bottoms) and Takahiko Iimura’s Ai (Love), followed by a conversation between Ono and Guggenheim senior curator Alexandra Munroe, who refers to Ono as “one of my dearest friends. Whether sitting around a kitchen table or in more canonized theatres, at this point in our relationship, the most valued time I spend with her are the conversations we have together.” In the catalog, Clive Phillpot explains, “Lennon biographer Ray Coleman claimed that [Rape] ‘parodied the story of the Beatles’ escalator to success,’ but it is much more likely that it reflected what curator Chrissie Iles described as ‘the tension and fear felt by Ono and Lennon as the intrusive press and public attention generated by their fame became increasingly harder to bear.’” The exhibition itself includes such marvelous Ono films as Fly, Cut Piece, Eyeblink, and Film No. 5 (Smile).

THE KNISH: IN SEARCH OF THE JEWISH SOUL FOOD

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Tuesday, July 14, $10, 7:00
212-219-0888
www.eldridgestreet.org
knish.me

I grew up on knishes. When I was a kid, my father would regularly bring home a big cardboard box of Gabila’s square delights, as their fleet of trucks was serviced by our family tire and auto repair shop on Utica Ave. in Brooklyn and Larry would always give a dozen to my father whenever they came in. So I’m particularly looking forward to July 14, when native New Yorker and food journalist Laura Silver will give a talk at the Eldridge St. Synagogue about her book Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food (Brandeis, May 2014, $24.95). “More than latkes, matzoh, or the apple-and-walnut charoset that crowned the seder plate, knishes were my family’s religion. For knishes, we went on pilgrimages,” Silver writes in the first chapter, “Au Revoir, Mrs. Stahl’s: Brighton Beach to the Lower East Side.” She continues her exploration of the “pillow of filling tucked into a skin of dough” in such chapters as “In Search of the First Knish: From the Holy Land to the Old Country,” “Mrs. Goldberg to Gangsta Rap: The Knish in Culture,” and, most important, “Where to Get a Good Knish,” Silver details the history of the doughy delicacy, which can be stuffed with potato, cheese, kasha, mushrooms, spinach, fruit, and rather unusual mixtures in this experimental gourmand time. Attendees will also get a sample from one of our favorite knisheries, Yonah Schimmel (or is it Yonah Shimmel?), where we often go for the delectable chocolate and cheese version.

DO I SOUND GAY?

David Thorpe examines how his voice affects his life in DO I SOUND GAY? (photo courtesy of ThinkThorpe)

DO I SOUND GAY? (David Thorpe, 2015)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, July 10
212-924-7771
www.doisoundgay.com
www.ifccenter.com

About ten minutes into journalist David Thorpe’s absolutely charming yet emotionally bittersweet Do I Sound Gay?, he is at dinner with his best friends, Alberto and Sam, and the three are discussing the title question. It’s a fascinating conversation that is worth detailing extensively here. “I have the impression that you think it sounds bad,” Alberto says about David’s voice. “I interpret David’s feelings about this, and the feelings around this whole project, as bad. He has negative feelings about his voice, about the perception that it creates.” “And you don’t feel that at all yourself?” Sam asks. Alberto responds, “I have sort of a generic self-loathing that is created around my gayness. . . . . But I don’t think I can say it’s the only thing, or the main thing.” Finally, David chimes in, explaining, “I think I feel out of sync with my voice, and, at least it seems to me, that it’s anxiety about sounding too gay, so, okay, let’s see what it’s like to not sound gay, and maybe I’ll feel more in sync and maybe I’ll have some idea what my voice should sound like.” Alberto then gets to the heart of the matter, inquiring, “But you could also argue, why don’t you just accept how you sound?” And Alberto sums it all up: “We have never talked about this idea until you brought it up. I don’t know anybody else that I’ve talked to about it either. So I think there is this thing, obviously, that we all are aware of that hasn’t been spoken of. Maybe this is the elephant in the room.” David spends the rest of the film exploring the elephant in the room, meeting with speech therapists who examine his voice and teach him how to change it; talking to such out-of-the-closet gay icons as Dan Savage, Tim Gunn, Margaret Cho, David Sedaris, Don Lemon, and George Takei, who delve into their own gayness and how their voice is part of that; introducing us to a boy who was beaten up at school at a very young age because of his voice; and interviewing gay people on the street, who share their thoughts on whether they, or he, do or don’t sound gay, and whether that matters. Sedaris, whose short story “Go Carolina” served as inspiration for Thorpe, tells him, “I’m embarrassed to say this, but sometimes somebody will say, ‘I didn’t know you were gay.’ It’s like, Why does that make me feel good. I hate myself for thinking that. It’s very disturbing. I thought I was beyond that. What’s the problem if somebody assumes that I’m gay when I open my mouth? Why do I have a problem with that?”

David Thorpe meets with such gay icons as Dan Savage as he explores how one’s voice affects perception (photo courtesy of ThinkThorpe)

Indeed, why does anyone have a problem with that? Do I Sound Gay? raises a host of important issues, both directly and indirectly, that deal with how we all judge ourselves, and others. We’ve all heard someone’s voice and assumed him or her to be gay, but Thorpe interviews one friend who “sounds gay” but isn’t. We all want to believe we don’t see race or ethnicity or religion, or see or hear “gay,” but of course we do; what’s key is how we respond to that, or even whether we respond at all. After breaking up with his boyfriend, Thorpe decided that his voice was part of the reason why he was forty and single; watching him practice changing his voice makes one think of kids who are sent to special camps to get rid of the gay. There are things we all would like to change about ourselves, but do we actually want or need to change ourselves in this way? Thorpe has an appealing personality, so it hurts to watch him try to alter his voice, even if it’s also funny. Interestingly, he doesn’t get into nature vs. nurture and biological issues, but it’s engrossing to follow this parade of men who sound a certain way and to see that some of them are proud of it, some are not, and others just accept it for what it is. “Some of the gayest people I know are straight, and some of the butchest men I’ve ever met are gay,” Gunn says. “So in some ways, never assume.” In a country mired in a fierce debate over same-sex marriage, Do I Sound Gay? feels like it’s just what the doctor ordered, a playful, fun, yet riveting look into a rarely examined issue that is more ubiquitous than anyone has been willing to admit before, a serious topic with critical ramifications that is handled with grace and humor by Thorpe in his feature-length debut. Do I Sound Gay? opens July 10 at the IFC Center, with Thorpe in person for Q&As following the 7:55 shows on Friday (hosted by Mo Rocca) and Saturday (hosted by Catie Lazarus).

BASTILLE DAY ON 60th STREET 2015

Can-Can dancers are part of the fun at annual Bastille Day festivities on 60th St. (photo copyright Sasha Arutyunova, 2014)

60th St. between Fifth & Lexington Aves.
Sunday, July 12, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
www.bastilledaynyc.com

On July 14, 1789, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, a symbolic victory that kicked off the French Revolution and the establishment of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Ever since, July 14 has been a national holiday celebrating liberté, égalité, and fraternité. In New York City, the Bastille Day festivities are set for Sunday, July 12, along Sixtieth St., where the French Institute Alliance Française hosts its annual daylong party of food, music, dance, and other special activities. There will be a Wine, Cheese, Cocktails, and Beer Tasting in FIAF’s Tinker Auditorium from 12 noon to 4:30 ($25), as well as luxurious ninety-minute Champagne & Chocolate Tastings in Le Skyroom at 12:30 and 3:00 ($65) featuring delights from Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart, La Caravelle, Piper-Heidsieck, Pommery, Chocolat Moderne, Neuhaus, Valrhona, and Le Cirque. The annual raffle ($5 per ticket) can win you such prizes as trips to France and New Orleans, concert tickets, beauty treatments and gift baskets, and more. Food and drink will be available from Bar Bordeaux, Financier, Barraca, Rotisserie Georgette, the Crepe Café, François Payard, Épicerie Boulud, Mille-feuille, Ponty Bistro, Maison de l’Éclair, Macaron Parlour, le Souk, and others. Among those taking the stage will be DJ Ol’ Stark (12 noon), Can-Can dancers (12:45 & 1:30), Benjamin Swax (1:00), Ginkgoa (2:00), the Hungry March Band (3:15), and the Arpège Choir of the Saint-Joseph de Cluny School in Martinique (4:00). The festivities also include a fencing demonstration by the Sheridan Fencing Academy, free half-hour French language workshops for beginners as well as advanced experts, the annual Citroën Car Show, and family-friendly film screenings in Florence Gould Hall, with shorts by Michel Ocelot and studios in Poitou-Charentes and the 2013 feature film Minuscule, Valley of the Lost Ants by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo. So there will be plenty of opportunities to immerse yourself in French culture at this always entertaining block party.

JULIE TAYMOR: REMOVING THE MASK

Julie Taymor will talk masks at the Rubin with Morgan Stebbins on July 9 (photo by Brigitte Lacombe, 2010)

TALK WITH JUNGIAN ANALYST MORGAN STEBBINS
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Thursday, July 9, $30, 7:00
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

The Rubin Museum exhibition “Becoming Another: The Power of Masks” is a splendid collection of religious, cultural, and theatrical faces that people throughout the centuries have worn, from Japan, India, Bhutan, Alaska, British Columbia, Russia, Nepal, and other locales. Not part of the collection are the classic Greek comedy and tragedy masks, so essential to Western drama, depicting Thalia and Melpomene, but on July 9, they will all come together for “Julie Taymor: Removing the Mask,” when award-winning theater veteran Julie Taymor sits down with Jungian Analyst and archetypal symbols specialist Morgan Stebbins for an illustrated talk. Taymor has directed many a Shakespeare adaptation for stage and screen in addition to The Lion King on Broadway and the films Frida and Across the Universe; the New York-based Stebbins has previously been at the Rubin for talks with Meredith Monk and Billy Corgan. Also in conjunction with the exhibition, the Rubin’s Cabaret Cinema series “Movie Masks” will screen such films as The Princess Bride, Phantom of the Paradise, The Face of Another, and Witness for the Prosecution on Friday nights, with an all-day art workshop and tour on July 11.