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

BIG APPLE BARBECUE BLOCK PARTY

Jon Langford will kick off the musical festivities at the tenth annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Madison Square Park
23rd to 26th Sts. between Fifth & Madison Aves.
Saturday, June 9, and Sunday, June 10, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Admission: free; $8 per plate of barbecue, $4 per dessert
www.bigapplebbq.org
www.madisonsquarepark.org

The weather is not looking great for the first day of the tenth annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, but maybe that will help cut down on the ridiculously long lines that surround Madison Square Park. This year’s menu features baby back ribs from Mike Mills (Las Vegas), western Tennessee-style whole hog from Patrick Martin (Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint in Nashville), pulled pork shoulder from Garry Roark (Ubon’s Barbecue in Yazoo City), St. Louis-style ribs and fried pies from Joe Duncan (Baker’s Ribs in Dallas), beef brisket and sausage from Scott Roberts (Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas), whole hog from Ed Mitchell (Raleigh), smoked sausage from Drew Robinson (Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q in Birmingham), pulled pork shoulder from Chris Lilly (Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama), beef brisket from Myron Mixon (Jack’s Old South in Unadilla, Georgia), whole hog from Rodney Scott (Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, South Carolina), St. Louis-style ribs from Tommy Houston (Checkered Pig in Danville, Virginia), pulled pork shoulder from Jimmy Hagood (BlackJack Barbecue in Charleston), baby back ribs from Mike Emerson (Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis), and ’cue from New York City joints Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Blue Smoke, Hill Country, and Rack & Soul. The excellent music lineup begins with the Mekons’ Jon Langford on Saturday at 1:00, followed by JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound at 2:45 and Southern Culture on the Skids at 4:30 (check out our interview with SCOTS here); on Sunday, Roadside Graves takes the stage at 1:00, the Revelations featuring Tre Williams at 2:45, and Alejandro Escovedo and the Sensitive Boys at 4:30. Among the seminars, workshops, demonstrations, and film screenings are “Easy Ideas for Summer Staples” with Allie Lewis Clapp and Dawn Perry, “Signature Southern Dishes” with Norman King, “Ready, Set, Grill” with Billy Strynkowski, and “The Oyster Is Our World” with Chris Hastings. As always, our advice is to go with a large group of people, split up and wait on various different lines to get a wide range of food, then meet up at the music tent and enjoy.

STAUNCH: A GREY GARDENS CELEBRATION IV

Fourth annual Grey Gardens festival takes place this weekend at the Maysles Institute

GREY GARDENS (David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde & Muffie Meyer, 1976)
Maysles Institute
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
June 8-10, suggested donation $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org

One of the most influential documentaries ever made, Grey Gardens looks at the bizarre lives of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie, in their dilapidated home in East Hampton. The elder Edie was the sister of Jackie Onassis’s father, so it was hard for the American public to believe that in the mid-1970s, relatives of Jackie O’s were living in such squalor. Little Edie bandies about in odd clothing, singing and dancing, believing that she can still resurrect her once-promising career as an entertainer. Meanwhile, her elderly mother cracks wise at her daughter while also remembering her own long-gone days as a singer. The women seem to be caught up in a world all their own, far from reality, but filmmakers Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, and Ellen Hovde don’t judge them in any way; they just let them be as the women greet guests and grumble about whatever they can. Selected for the New York and Cannes Film Festivals, Grey Gardens, which has also been turned into a fiction film and a Broadway musical, will be screening June 9 at 7:30 at the Maysles Institute as part of STAUNCH! A Grey Gardens Celebration IV, which runs June 8-10 and focuses this year on Jerry Torre, the Marble Faun from the original film. The weekend festival includes the world-premiere screening of Steve Pelizza and Jason Hay’s new documentary, The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens, on Friday at 7:30, followed by Q&A and reception with Torre, Albert Maysles, Pelizza, and Hay. The Maysles brothers’ 2006 sequel, The Beales of Grey Gardens, will be shown on Sunday at 7:30.

NEIL YOUNG AND JONATHAN DEMME IN CONVERSATION

Neil Young and Jonathan Demme take viewers on quite a ride in latest collaboration

92nd St. Y
Kaufmann Concert Hall
Lexington Avenue at 92nd St.
Thursday, June 7, $29-$44, 7:30
www.92y.org

For thirty years, Canadian rocker Neil Young has been making movies tied to his music, often combining live concert footage with behind-the-scenes glimpses, fictional stories, and documentary interviews. He’s worked with such directors as Bernard Shakey, his cinematic alter ego, on such films as Journey Through the Past, Human Highway, Rust Never Sleeps, and Greendale as well as such well-known names as Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Neil Young in Berlin) and Jim Jarmusch (Year of the Horse). But it’s his continuing collaboration with Oscar-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme that has proved most revelatory, in such fascinating and probing movies as 2006’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold, 2009’s Neil Young: Trunk Show, and the upcoming Neil Young Journeys, which follows Young on the final night of his recent solo tour and driving around his Ontario hometown in his 1956 Ford Crown Victoria. On June 7, Young and Demme will be at the 92nd St. Y to talk about what makes them work so well together.

SPACE PROGRAM: MARS

Tom Sachs takes visitors on a trip to Mars in the Park Avenue Armory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 17, $12, 12 noon – 7:00 pm (open till 9:00 on Fridays)
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
tomsachsmars.com
space program: mars slideshow

You don’t have to have grown up dreaming of becoming an astronaut to get a huge kick out of Tom Sachs’s immersive “Space Program: Mars” experience at the Park Avenue Armory. In September 2007, the New York native and his well-trained team traveled to the moon at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, but this time around he sets his sights much bigger, as Sachs and crew have filled the armory’s expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall with all the elements needed to journey to and explore the Red Planet. Curated by Creative Time’s Anne Pasternak and the armory’s Kristy Edmunds, “Space Program: Mars” begins with “Working to Code,” a series of short films (10 Bullets, Color, Love Letter to Plywood, Space Camp, How to Sweep, several made with Van Neistat) that detail Sachs’s bricolage DIY artistic process and hysterically precise rules (“When in doubt, leave it out! Or Die!”) that must be followed while toiling in the studio. You need to pay close attention to the very droll and funny movies if you want to pass the indoctrination test that is the only way to gain entrance to the life-size Lunar Excursion Module. (If you want a head start, you can check out all of the films in advance here.) And you’re going to want to get into the LEM, which is loaded with fascinating pieces that playfully evoke the real thing.

The Mission Control station makes sure everything is up and running in immersive space experience (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Working with NASA, Sachs and his crew of thirteen men and women painstakingly, and with a fabulous dose of tongue-in-cheek humor, re-created a multimedia Mission Control station, surveillance cameras, refrigeration units (including the Vader Fridge in the shape of the evil Death Lord), a miniature launch pad and docking target, a Mars Excursion Roving Vehicle, helmets and space suits, an ID station, an Incinolet, a Mobile Quarantine Facility inside a 1972 Winnebago, a cooking area, a clean air room, and other items necessary for achieving and surviving intergalactic travel, all put together with wood, metal, foam core, glue, nails, and other found materials ― resulting in a number of essential parts that actually work. NASA might have canceled the space shuttle program, but Sachs is reaffirming the continuing need for manned missions ― while also displaying his unique and endearing artistic sensibilities. And don’t miss the Museum of the Moon in the Veterans Room out in the hallway, where you can delve into the previous moon mission. The installation is up through June 17 and features several special activities. On June 7, Sachs and his team will conduct live demonstrations of the program’s flight plan. From June 9 through 16, Sachs and his Grummans will be holding mini-demonstrations, including a rescue mission, daily at 1:00 and 3:00, along with a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bicycle race scheduled for 6:00 every evening. On June 9-10 at 10:00 am, children ages five to twelve and their parents or guardians can take part in the interactive workshop “Life on Mars: Imagining the Incredible” with members of the Armory Artists Corps. On June 16, you can have “Breakfast with Mars Scientists,” as Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists Gregg Vane, Kevin Hand, and Tommaso Rivellini will join Sachs and moderator Lawrence Weschler for an in-depth conversation. The grand finale takes off immediately following, as Sachs and company will lead a real-time flight-plan endurance demonstration that runs until around midnight, with visitors allowed to come and go as they please, although you’ll have to get back in line for reentry.

BUSHWICK OPEN STUDIOS 2012

Bushwick Open Studios will include such interactive installations as Michelle Jaffe’s “Wappen Field”

Throughout Bushwick
June 2-3, free
artsinbushwick.org

The sixth annual Bushwick Open Studios is under way throughout the Brooklyn neighborhood, with hundreds of local artists opening their doors to visitors and participating in special projects all weekend. This year’s multimedia indoor/outdoor festival will include a Street Art Pop-Up Store hosted by Robin Grearson, record release parties, live art battles, concerts at Lone Wolf, XPO, and Pine Box Rock Shop, site-specific installation performances by jill sigman/thinkdance, Valentina Loseva, and Sophia Cleary, bike tours and safety programming, the “Spread Art Outdoors” Parade of Art, such group shows as “Surreal Estate,” “Figure Fragments,” “Usual Suspects,” “Conceptual Death,” and “True Nature,” panel discussions, interactive participatory exhibits by MG Stillwaggon, Running Rebel Studios, Bushwick Dimensions, Michelle Jaffe, Salon des Fous, Will Bates, the Desert Forest, Jack Aldrich, Roarke Menzies, and Pass Kontrol, and plenty of live music, dance, performance art, and general weirdness.

HOWL! FESTIVAL 2012

Street artists will surround Tompkins Square Park with colorful murals during the Howl! Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tompkins Square Park
Ave. A to Ave. B between Seventh & Tenth Sts.
June 2-3, free
www.howlfestival.com

The Howl! Festival returned last night to Tompkins Square Park, where it continues this weekend with a flurry of music, poetry, dance, theater, art, and “madness.” Today, as 140 artists create murals on canvases that surround the park, such groups as the Disco Monkeys and the Bowery Tones will play on the south stag. On the north stage, Honeybee House, the TriBattery Pops, Tap City, and Lydon will perform for children. Also for little ones, the Great Howl! Out Loud Kids’ Carnival will feature carnival games, arts and crafts, storytelling, and other activities. At the basketball court area, Bandera Fever! celebrates Puerto Rican heritage with Dao Y El Grupo Cemi, BombaYo, Elani Rodriguez, John Acevedo AKA Chance, J. F. Seary, Dinamicas, Senior Bomba & Plena Dancers from Grand Street Settlement, and a domino tournament. Super DJ Johnny Dynell will lead the Hot Howl! Disco Tea Dance near the General Slocum Memorial from 2:00 to 5:00, the Vangeline Theatre will perform The Raft of the Medusa, and Derrick Pendavis Xtravaganza will lead the unpredictable “Men in Skirts” dance presentation at 5:30. On Sunday, Hip Hop Howl, the Deans of Discipline, the Sic Fucks, and Bear 54, will be on the main stage, Rosie’s Theater Kids, Danny Hartig, Honeybee House, and Jack Skuller will be on the kids’ north stage, Bandera Fever! will continue with a Cultural Rumba Jam, and the festival will conclude with “Low Life 6: East Village Others,” paying tribute to the Fugs song “Nova Slum Goddess (from the Lower East Side),” Jack Smith, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the Fillmore East, Allen Ginsberg, and other old standards from the East Village circa 1966-72.

BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL: DECOY

James Yaegashi’s LEFTY LOOSEY RIGHTY TIGHTY, which will be shown at the Brooklyn Film Festival, is set in Park Slope

indieScreen, 285 Kent Ave.
Brooklyn Heights Cinema, 70 Henry St.
June 1-10, individual tickets $12, 4-pack pass $30, full festival pass $150
www.brooklynfilmfestival.org

Despite its theme, “Decoy,” the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival is the real thing, ten days of film screenings and special events taking place at the powerHouse Arena, IndieScreen, and the Brooklyn Heights Cinema. More than one hundred shorts, features, and documentaries from around the world will be shown, including Chel White’s Bucksville, about a young man who belongs to a secret militia group known as the Lodge; Lisa Duva’s Cat Scratch Fever, about two women who can look into a parallel universe; Pema Tseden’s Old Dog, in which a father tries to get back the family dog after his son sells it; Wojtek Smarzowski’s Rose, a Polish tale set just after the end of WWII; and Tolga Ornek’s Labyrinth, centered around a deadly terrorist attack in Istanbul. The opening-night party takes place June 1 at the powerHouse Arena, with a DJ set by SVN’s Nature; other special events include the KidsFilmFest on June 2, the BFF Exchange on June 9, and the awards ceremony on June 10. In addition, many of the filmmakers will be on hand to participate in Q&A sessions following screenings of their work.