This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Everything But the Art World

by Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball on November 11, 2013 Events

Good news for those of you who couldn’t get tickets to Performa’s blockbusters! There are still free and open Performa events (a 24-hour group performance, a screening by the Gay Cable Network archive) and non-Performa exhibitions of puppets, comics, animation, and a queer experimental film festival. We’ll also talk about how to sell digital art and an event for Packet Biweekly.

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Mon

Queens Museum

New York Avenue, Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY ‎11368
7 – 9 PMWebsite

Bread and Puppet: The Shatterer

Who’s ready for some political activism in the form of humongous puppets? We are. Bread and Puppet’s huge puppets have appeared protests since the Vietnam War, but their latest collaboration with founder Peter Schumann is described as “the endpoint, enactment, and dissemination mechanism of a deeply personal practice.” That means new installations, murals, and performances to fill the Queens Museum’s newly expanded space. We’re excited.

Sunshine Cinemas

143 East Houston Street
New York, NY 10002
See theater page for showtimes.Website

Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises

If the world were to end this week, I’d make sure to see the latest and last film by one of cinema’s finest and most fantastical animators, Hayao Miyazaki. Lucky for me, if the world does end I’ll be okay because The Wind Rises is showing in New York this week, but only through Sunday. Miyazaki’s known for tearjerker kid stuff, possibly most well-known for Princess Mononoke (1997), released through Disney in the States, but this film tackles mostly adult characters. The Wind Rises looks to post-WWII Japan for its setting and characters, and Miyazaki in a pre-release description, makes the film sound like a psycho-emotional horror flick:

I wanted to portray a devoted individual who pursued his dream head on … Dreams possess an element of madness, and such poison must not be concealed. Yearning for something too beautiful can ruin you. Swaying toward beauty may come at a price.

And for those of you who might not be convinced of Miyazaki’s magic, there’s no one else who can orchestrate a balance between gorgeous landscapes full of flying castles and magical monsters like a giant cat-shaped bus. So, really, he’s the best person to ever pull off making you feel for the world around you through fantasy. (Corinna)

Tue

13 Crosby Street

New York, NY 10013
1 – 2 PMWebsite

Performa: “Documenting Free Speech”

If performance and public access programming can affect political change, then there’s probably no better example than the Gay Cable Network (a public access channel which ran from around 1982-2000). Tomorrow, we’ll see footage from the archives at the Performa Hub, as well as a 1970 performance of Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A performed by the avant-garde company Judson Dance Theater.

521 Third Avenue (between 12th & 13th Streets)

Brooklyn, NY 11215
Take F or G trains to 4th Ave / 9th St.
Open November 12th – 17thWebsite

MixNYC Festival: ARESnic and O’Lace

If Performa’s getting too canonical for its own good, then the queer experimental film festival MIX NYC should make you feel better; unlike Performa, the festival also comes with a series of installations around the city. I’m particularly looking forward to visiting an installation by neighborhood activist, choreographer, filmmaker, and Allied Productions co-founder Peter Cramer. The collective’s recent intimate projects, often around AIDS activism and community documentation, usually serves a reminder that the underground is still alive and well.

This one sounds lighter. Cramer’s title ARSEnic and O’Lace pokes fun at the murder mystery film Arsenic and Old Lace, through the lens of Cary Grant-as-gay-icon.

And MIX NYC promises plenty more in the trippy, bizarre, and erotic horror departments. For the full schedule, click here.

 

Fashion Institute of Technology

Seventh Avenue at 27 Street
New York City 10001
5 – 10 PMWebsite

Terms of Use: The Creation and Experience of Digital Art (Panelists: Paul Galloway, Daniel Leyva, Kelani Nichole, Chris Romero, and Mark Tribe)

Selling digital art is still hard, but there’s plenty of smart dealers, artists, and curators out there who’re making inroads. We’re excited to hear the discussion of how to get new media out in the art world-in-general from a younger set like dealer Kelani Nichole of Transfer and from those who’ve been selling digital work for decades, like Bitforms. On the heels of the first auction of digital art at Phillips, there should be some real fodder for debate among all these people playing for Team Digital Art.

Wed

601 Artspace

601 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
Website

PARA-REAL

Postmistress Magdalena Sawon has assembled a group of artists who all make us think twice about reality, in different ways. The show itself destabilizes the usual format, since the artists are all working in pairings. These include Maurizio Cattelan and Sally Smart; Greg Allen and Vik Muniz; and Thomas Demand and the McCoys. We have no idea what to expect, so that’s already good.

Thu

Lyons Weir

542 West 24th Street
6-8:30 PMWebsite

Stephanie Hirsch: I’d Rather Die On My Feet Than Live on My Knees

If Stephanie Hirsch can make us think twice about hollow pop portraiture, while making hay out of sparkle painting and inspirational phrases, that’s no small feat.

Paula Cooper Gallery

197 Tenth Ave
November 14th and November 16th, 7 PM Website

Liz Magic Laser: Absolute Event

Liz Magic Laser was dubbed the queen of Performa 11 for her political play in a movie theatre. This year, she’s not affiliated with any of Performa’s events; not to worry, she will be performing on Thursday and Saturday night at Paula Cooper Gallery. She’s transforming the gallery into a situation room-disco night club with two former political staffers who’ll recite mixed-up lines from Cyrano de Bergerac and interviews with political and public relations strategists.

Printed Matter

195 10th Ave
6-8 PMWebsite

Packet Biweekly Roundtable Discussion

Packet Biweekly is a stapled and collated journal published every other week by artist and Bloomberg Businessweek graphic designer Chris Nosenzo. His Klein-Fünke comparison was recently featured in our color wheel series. Its sterile, officey aesthetic balances content that may seem haphazard. Packet is intended to be a space for experimentation, and it embraces ideas that are still in progress. Thursday night, in conjunction with the launch of Packet’s 22nd issue, Printed Matter will host a roundtable discussion between Nosenzo and fellow Pratt grads Anthony Cudahy, Bridget Collins and Nicole Reber, all of whom have done “residencies” where they created multiple covers for the journal over stretches of time.  A collected volume of these covers will be available for free at the event.

Studio Museum

144 West 125th Street
Harlem
7-9 PMWebsite

Takema Norris, Senga Nengudi: Three Duets, Seven Variations

Can the bodily interventionism of the sixties and seventies go any further than it already has? That question is suggested by the Studio Museum’s pairing of recent graduate Takema Norris and Senga Nengudi, who rose to prominence in the 1970s. Norris will cut her tongue and run it across the wall; Nengudi will continue her “RSVP” series from the seventies, a performance created with pantyhose.

Fri

Jewish Museum

1109 5th Ave at 92nd Street
New York, NY 10128
10:00 AM to 12:30 PMWebsite

Art Spiegelman

The Art Spiegelman retrospective is supposed to be awesome. If nothing else, it’s a break from the art world we’re used to seeing in museum shows. On Friday, the New Yorker’s art editor (and Spiegelman’s wife) Francoise Mouly speaks with TOON Books’ senior editor Alexa Rosselli about comics, as part of the show.

Recess

41 Grand Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
From Friday at 12 PM to Saturday 12 PMWebsite

24 Hour Ballad

My Barbarian members Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade made our list of must-see Performa events mainly because we like their pragmatic, Availabistic style of their work as collective My Barbarian with Jade Gordon. Their upcoming “24 Hour Ballad” at Recess seems to continue in a collaborative, resourceful vein; it’s a big collaboration between artists and musicians, organized around the theme of folk music. It’s also one Performa event you don’t have to pay for.

Auxiliary Projects

2 St. Nicholas Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237
7 – 10 PMWebsite

MTAA: Desk Mod #4. Station IOI or Some Thoughts on Isolation, Observation and Ice

Jennifer Dalton and Jennifer McCoy’s mini gallery Auxiliary Projects reopens, and will be transformed into a bunker by net art duo MTAA. In response to invasive government control, they’ll “reimagin[e] the gallery as a camouflaged quasi-military outpost in an isolated environment.” It also sounds like a more serious version of this summer’s END TIMES GIRLS CLUB, except performances will run through the coldest months of the year. On Saturday, November 24th, they’ll have a live dramatic reading called “Disconnection of HAL 9000’s Higher Functions.” For the full performance schedule, click here.

 

Sat

Fig. 19

131 ½ Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002
Performance at 9:30 PMWebsite

Korakrit Arunanondchai

Korakrit Arunanondchai rolls into Performa fresh off his Station by Station performance, show at Suzanne Geiss, and performance at the SculptureCenter gala. Arunanondchai is a master of high-impact spectacle and party hosting (not to mention people love these). It’s free, the St-Germain cocktails are complimentary, and plus, we’re excited to see what a nightclub version of Performa is like.

 

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