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

NEW YORK ART FAIR WEEK 2015: FREE FAIRS

Héctor Zamora’s O ABUSO DA HISTÓRIA will be shown at Moving Image art fair (courtesy Luciana Brito Galeria)

This year’s March edition of New York Art Fair Week — the city will be overrun with fairs again in May — features no fewer than a dozen shows, including Volta, Scope, Art on Paper, the Independent, Pulse, Spring/Break, and the granddaddy of them all, the Armory Show. If you want to see each one of them, it’s gonna cost a pretty penny, upwards of two hundred bucks total. But there are five fairs that offer free admission and a respite from the craziness that goes on at the ticketed shows.

Who: Nearly three dozen video artists, including Charlie Ahearn, Peggy Ahwesh, Oliver Bevan, Raphael Couto, Tuomas A. Laitinen, Pink Twins, and Héctor Zamora
What: Moving Image
Where: Waterfront Tunnel, 269 Eleventh Ave. between 27th & 28th Sts.
When: March 5-8, free
Why: Moving Image is a video art fan’s dream, lining the passageway in the Waterfront Tunnel in Chelsea with a multitude of innovative short works. On Saturday at noon, Sean Elwood will moderate the panel discussion and networking session “How Do Artists Secure Funding for Film and Video Artwork?” with Chris Doyle, Guy Richards Smit, Patrik Söderlund, and Eve Sussman, followed at 2:00 by “Moving Image: Instant Upload” with Alex McQuilkin, Alice Gray Stites, Amy Taubin, Rachael Rakes, and Zoë Salditch, moderated by Andrea Monti and Elle Burchill.

Sabrina Barrios will be among the artists exhibiting at the (un)Scene

Who: More than eighty visual, tech, and performance artists, including Carlos Betancourt, Sabrina Barrios, Will Kurtz, Chris Ofili, Matt Lombard, Eunjin Kim, Carolee Schneeman, Frederico Uribe, Monika Weiss, Matthew Silver, and Kelly McLaughlin
What: The (un)Scene Art Show
Where: 549 West 52nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: March 4-8, free
Why: Renamed from last year’s (Un)Fair designation, the (un)Scene Art Show seeks to “celebrate passion rather than fashion.” This year’s edition features numerous “Happenings,” including such live performances as Moon Ribas’s Waiting for Earthquakes, Jade Fusco’s Talking Tapestry, TunanuT’s Group Love, Nicole Woolcott’s Paper Pieces, Kate Brehm’s The Proofs, and Danielle Russo Dance Company’s Since thou was precious in my sight. There will also be an art and dance party hosted by Brock Enright, such panel discussions as “The Radical Eye: Why Artists Must Curate” with Anne Harris, “The (un)TALK” with Raoul Middleman, and “The Art Pollution Crisis (Three-Step Detox Program)” with Alex Melamid, and other events.

Who: Artists who are not represented by a New York City gallery
What: Clio Art Fair: The Anti-Fair for Independent Artists
Where: 508 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: March 5-8, free
Why: The Clio Art Fair lets their artists run wild without worrying about art market constraints and rules; there was a charming freshness to last year’s inaugural edition that the others lack, caring about the art and the artists ahead of the sale and actually enjoying itself, which rubs off on visitors.

Takahiro Hirabayashi will be among the artists showing at New City (courtesy Gallery Kogure)

Who: Nearly three dozen artists from eight Japanese galleries
What: New City Art Fair
Where: hpgrp Gallery New York, 529 West 20th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: March 5-8, free
Why: Now in its fourth year, New City concentrates on Japanese contemporary art. Programs include studio visits with Spoon & Tamago and a presentation by Pola Museum Annex.

Who: Polly Apfelbaum, BTHY, Fransje Killaars, Pushpamala N., Dona Nelson, Diana Shpungin, and Sarah Tritz
What: Salon Zürcher
Where: Salon Zürcher New York, 33 Bleecker St. between Lafayette & Bowery
When: March 5-12, free
Why: In its third edition, Salon Zürcher will highlight work by seven women artists shown by seven international galleries, including India, the United States, France, and the Netherlands.

FIRST SATURDAY: WOMEN CHANGEMAKERS

Curator tour of “Judith Scott: Bound Unbound” is part of free First Saturday program at Brooklyn Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Curator tour of “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound” is part of free First Saturdays program at Brooklyn Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, March 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates women in the March edition of its free First Saturdays program. “Women Changemakers” will feature live performances by Alissia & the Funketeers, Princess Nokia, and the DJ duo JSMN and MeLo-X; a curator talk by Catherine Morris about the exhibition “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound”; a Colored Girls Hustle mix tape workshop; a sketch class in which participants will draw from a live woman model; a book club talk with Dao X Tran, author of 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed U.S. History; screenings of Julianna Brannum’s LaDonna Harris: Indian 101 and Rahwa Asmerom’s Didn’t I Ask for Tea?; a healing space with tarot readings, herbalism, acupressure, and more led by Harriet’s Apothecary; and a discussion with Tavi Gevinson about her online Rookie magazine and the print companion Rookie Yearbook Three. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

THE ADAM CAROLLA SHOW PODCAST AND FILM PREMIERE

Adam Carolla will be at Carolines this week for live podcasts and the NYC premiere of his new film, ROAD HARD

Who: Adam Carolla and special guests
What: Two-night stand in Times Square
Where: Carolines on Broadway, 1626 Broadway between 49th & 50th Sts., 212-757-4100
When: Live podcast March 4-5, $54.50 – $125.25, 7:00/7:30; film premiere March 5, $22, 9:00
Why: In his most recent book, President Me: The America That’s in My Head (It Books, May 2014, $26.99), podcast king and former Man Show cohost Adam Carolla writes, “Consider this book my official campaign platform. As you’ll see, I have an assload of opinions and a dump truck full of ideas on how to make this country better.” Carolla continues his presidential aspirations this week at Carolines, where on Wednesday and Thursday he’ll host live editions of his ferociously popular podcast, The Adam Carolla Show, joined by David Alan Grier on March 4 and Alec Baldwin on March 5. The March 5 podcast will be followed by the separately ticketed New York City premiere of his directorial feature debut, Road Hard, which Carolla wrote with Kevin Hench (The Hammer) and stars in alongside a bevy of actors and comedians, including Grier, Diane Farr, David Koechner, Illeana Douglas, Howie Mandel, Jay Mohr, Dana Gould, and Larry Miller.

COMMITTED: SHOCK CORRIDOR

Reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) gets into more trouble than he bargained for in Samuel Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR

ONE NITE ONLY: SHOCK CORRIDOR (Samuel Fuller, 1963)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Wednesday, March 4, $15, 7:30
Series runs March 4-29
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

On the surface, Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor is about a reporter’s unyielding determination to win a Pulitzer by playing a unique game of Clue: He gets his girlfriend and his publisher to help commit him to an insane asylum so he can get a big scoop by answering the question “Who killed Sloan with a knife in the kitchen?” But the tense psychological drama is actually about so much more, a treatise on the state of mid-twentieth-century America as well as the nature of storytelling itself. A former crime reporter, Fuller was inspired by Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House when making Shock Corridor, but his film is not so much an expose on the treatment of the mentally ill as an investigation into such prevalent societal ills as racism, war, communism, nuclear annihilation, and, er, nymphomania. Desperate for a big story, Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) gets a lesson in how to act insane from Dr. Fong (Philip Ahn); they’ve decided that Johnny’s “ailment” will be incest, and he must pretend that he is in love with his sister, a role that will be taken by his girlfriend, Cathy (Constance Towers), a burlesque performer who is uncomfortable with the whole plan. The only other person who knows of the scheme is Johnny’s editor, old-time newspaperman Swanee (Bill Zuckert). Once locked inside the mental hospital, Johnny seeks out the three witnesses to Sloan’s slaying: Stuart (James Best), who thinks he’s a Confederate general still fighting the Civil War; Trent (Hari Rhodes), a black man who believes he’s a white supremacist; and Boden (Gene Evans), a scientist who has reverted to being a child because of the misuse of nuclear power. Keeping a close watch on everything are two attendants, the amiable Wilkes (Chuck Roberson) and the mean-spirited Lloyd (John Craig), along with Dr. Cristo (John Matthews), who has a thing for electric shock therapy. As Johnny keeps getting closer to the truth, however, the cost might be his own sanity.

The multiple levels of the characterizations in Shock Corridor are best represented by a patient played by Larry Tucker who thinks he is Pagliacci, a fictional character in the Leoncavallo opera who is portrayed by a tenor named Canio. Like Pagliacci, Fuller’s Shock Corridor is built around stories within stories (within stories) and actors playing characters pretending to be someone else. The film, which evokes The Snake Pit while presaging Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, including an important use of gum, is shot by Stanley Cortez in noirish black-and-white, but Fuller adds several full-color dream sequences taken from footage he photographed for other projects, further blurring the lines between fiction and reality within the context of this original drama. As with so many of Fuller’s works, the film is highly influential, although more beloved and known by fellow filmmakers than mainstream audiences. And it does no favors for the treatment of the mentally ill, either on the doctor or patient side of things. But it’s all worth it for the amazing rain scene that will blow your mind. Shock Corridor is screening in a 35mm print on March 4 at 7:30, kicking off Nitehawk Cinema’s March Brunch “Committed” series, with a special guest to be announced. Yes, 7:30 pm is an odd time to have brunch, but maybe the programmer had temporarily lost his marbles. The series continues on March weekends — at the more normal brunch times of either 11:30 or 12 noon — with Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted.

THE STOOP SERIES — DIGITAL CITY: GOOGLE MAP HACKERS

Jennifer Maravillas, whose ongoing “71 Square Miles” project is part of “Mapping Brooklyn” exhibition, will be at BRIC for Stoop Series talk on March 3

Artist Jennifer Maravillas, whose ongoing “71 Square Miles” project is part of “Mapping Brooklyn” exhibition, will be at BRIC for Stoop Series discussion on March 3 (photo courtesy Jennifer Maravillas)

Who: Justin Blinder, Brian House, and Jennifer Maravillas
What: “The Stoop Series”
Where: BRIC House, 647 Fulton St., 718-683-5600
When: Tuesday, March 3, free, 7:00
Why: In conjunction with the new exhibition “Mapping Brooklyn,” a joint venture between BRIC and the Brooklyn Historical Society, exhibition artists Justin Blinder and Jennifer Maravillas and media artist Brian House will discuss the use of technology in their work, with a particular focus on Google Maps, as part of “The Stoop Series.” The exhibit, which also includes contributions from Aaron Beebe, Joyce Kozloff, Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin, and others, continues through May 3 at BRIC and September 6 at BHS. In addition, on March 14 and April 11, Chloë Bass will perform live as part of her “Mental Map” interactive installation; on March 28, Katarina Jerinic will lead “Visit to Erratic Monuments,” a walking tour between BRIC and BHS; and on April 2, BHS will host “Tales from the Vault! Wish You Were Here,” which looks at historical Brooklyn maps and tourism guides.

WIM WENDERS: PARIS, TEXAS

Harry Dean Stanton gives a staggering performance as a lost soul in PARIS, TEXAS

PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders, 1984)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, March 2, 3:45, and Wednesday, March 11, 6:15
Series runs March 2-17
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 beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Winner of both the Palme d’Or and the Critics Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas is a stirring and provocative road movie about the dissolution of the American family and the death of the American dream. Written by Sam Shepard and adapted by L. M. Kit Carson, the two-and-a-half-hour film opens with a haggard man (Harry Dean Stanton) wandering through a vast, deserted landscape. A close-up of him in his red hat, seen against blue skies and white clouds, evokes the American flag. (Later shots show him looking up at a flag flapping in the breeze, as well as a graffiti depiction of the Statue of Liberty.) After he collapses in a bar in the middle of nowhere, he is soon discovered to be Travis Henderson, a husband and father who has been missing for four years. His brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), a successful L.A. billboard designer, comes to take him home, but Travis, remaining silent, keeps walking away. He eventually reveals that he is trying to get to Paris, Texas, where he has purchased a plot of land in the desert, but he avoids discussing his past and why he walked out on his wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), and son, Hunter (Hunter Carson, the son of L. M. Kit Carson and Karen Black), who is being raised by Walt and his wife, Anne (Aurore Clément). An odd man who is afraid of flying, has a penchant for arranging shoes, and falls asleep at key moments, Travis sets out with Hunter to find Jane and make something out of his lost life.

Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) and Hunter (Hunter Carson) bond while searching for Jane in Wim Wenders road movie

Longtime character actor Stanton (Repo Man, Wise Blood) is brilliant as Travis, his long, craggy face and sad, puppy-dog eyes conveying his troubled soul and buried emotions, his slow, careful gait awash in loneliness and desperation. The scenes between Travis and Jane are a master class in acting and storytelling; Stanton and Kinski (Tess, Cat People) will break your heart over and over again as they face the hardest of truths. Wenders and regular cinematographer Robby Müller use a one-way mirror to absolutely stunning effect in these scenes about what is hidden and what is revealed in a relationship. Wenders had previously made the Road Movie Trilogy of Alice in the Cities, The Wrong Move, and Kings of the Road, which also dealt with difficult family issues, but Paris, Texas takes things to another level. Ry Cooder’s gorgeous slide-guitar soundtrack is like a requiem for the American dream, now a wasteland of emptiness. (Cooder would later make Buena Vista Social Club with Wenders. Another interesting connection is that Wenders’s assistant director was Allison Anders, who would go on to write and direct the indie hit Gas Food Lodging.) A uniquely told family drama, Paris, Texas is rich with deft touches and subtle details, all encapsulated in the final shot. (Don’t miss what it says on that highway billboard.) Paris, Texas is screening in a new digital restoration at MoMA on March 2 at 3:45 and March 11 at 6:15 as part of a two-plus-week Wenders retrospective in advance of the release of his latest film, the Oscar-nominated documentary The Salt of the Earth; the director will be on hand to introduce the March 2 screening. The series continues through March 17 with such other Wenders works as The American Friend, Wings of Desire, Until the End of the World, Tokyo-Ga, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, and other well-known gems and rare early shorts, with Wenders at the museum for Q&As and introductions at all screenings through March 7.

CULTUREMART 2015

Sara and Reid Farrington go behind the scenes of the making of a classic in CASABLANCABOX (photo by Sara and Reid Farrington)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 4-14, $15
212-352-3101
www.here.org

HERE’s annual winter performance festival, now in its fourteenth year, highlights cutting-edge works-in-progress from a wide-ranging group of artists who are either current or former participants in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), which commissions hybrid presentations in order “to not only grow innovative artistic work, but also [to] give artists the awareness and skills — in areas such as audience relations, budgeting, grantwriting, and touring — they need to continue to grow their careers.” This year features a dozen multidisciplinary workshop performances, beginning March 4-5 with sound designer Christina Campanella and composer Jim Dawson’s Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, a continuous geographic audio installation in which the audience listens in on headphones to a twenty-five-minute loop, and Sara and Reid Farrington’s CasablancaBox, in which the husband-and-wife duo combine live actors and film clips that go behind the scenes of the making of the 1942 movie; Farrington has previously reimagined such films as The Passion of Joan of Arc, Rope, and multiple versions of A Christmas Carol in his unique, mesmerizing style. On March 6-7 at 7:00, Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence explores the American patriot during the last days of his life and the start of his afterlife, with music performed by vocalist Joan La Barbara and the ensemble Ne(x)tworks. On March 7-8 at 8:30, Sean Donovan and Sebastián Calderón Bentin turn to Alain Renais’s Last Year at Marienbad and Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel for Abbadon, in which a social gathering delves into the nature of class structure; Abbadon is on a shared bill with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a piece of dance theater that takes its inspiration from the public access amateur talent television show of the same name.

Hai-Ting Chinn’s SCIENCE FAIR takes viewers on a multimedia operatic journey (photo by Benjamin Heller)

On March 9-10, you can see a double feature of Hai-Ting Chinn’s multimedia opera, Science Fair, with music by Matthew Schickele and live piano by Erika Switzer, and The Emperor and the Queen’s Parisian Weekend, with music by Kamala Sankaram and a libretto by Pete McCabe, directed by HERE cofounder Tim Maner. March 10-11 pairs Matt Marks and Paul Peers’s Mata Hari, an opera-theater piece about the last days of the renowned WWI spy, with Nick Brooke’s Psychic Driving, which immerses the audience in surveillance and CIA brainwashing. From March 12 to 14, Jessica Scott’s Ship of Fools uses music, puppets, and movement to examine particular women throughout history while looking at who is in control of the future; it’s on a shared bill with Robin Frohardt’s Fitzcardboardaldo, a cinematic cardboard tribute to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, along with The Corrugation of Dreams, an homage to Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams, about the making of the Herzog film. CULTUREMART concludes March 13-14 with HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and Robert Lyons’s Idiot, an exploration of Dostoevsky protagonist Prince Myshkin using text, video, and dance. The festival also includes a trio of post-performance talks, “Continue the Conversation,” with “Soundscapes” on March 6 after the 7:00 Lighthouse show, “Variants of Video Integration” on March 8 following the 8:30 show, and “Playing with Operatic Form” on March 10 after the 8:30 show. Tickets for all productions are $15 except for Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, for which admission is $5; a $60 OFF-OFFten Club membership allows you to see all shows for $5 each and also comes with four tickets to be used anytime during the season in addition to four glasses of wine from the café.