This Week’s Must See Events: All Goth Timelines Lead to Brunch

The description for this lecture is dense as hell, but this particular sentence seems to be a great entry point: “How is the content of scientific knowledge prefigured by the social, particularly gendered, contexts in which it is produced?”

Haraway is known for over 40 years of research into so-called ‘cyborg theory’ and the questions that this event intends to investigate should leave attendees with an experience that goes beyond the standard “intersection of art and technology” talk.

It’s Lydia Lunch, so you probably know what you’re going to get. If not, attendees are promised, “scandalous storytelling from NYC’s torrid underworld.” Sounds good. Lunch, Bibbe Hansen, Zoe Hansen and Jerry Stahl will all be reading.

Chinatown Soup’s community-focused programming is intriguing to us. You can read about it here, but in short the organizers are attempting to maintain a democratic arts space that’s part workshop, part exhibition space and part organizational center.

On Tuesday, the space will host a night devoted to collage and beer tasting. Artists like Morgan Lappin and Lizzie Gill will be participating but visitors are invited to join in the live collaging process. If you don’t wanna jump into the cut part, there’s always the taste.

The Center for Book Arts will be exhibiting artwork by women from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Egypt and Bangladesh who reside in the US. Using the character of Sheherzade, the queen from “A Thousand and One Nights,” this show is actually using the content of books to present an assortment of work in widely-varied mediums. The basic concept is to investigate individual narratives and worlds that relate to or are influenced by the original tale and controversial character. It’s good to see the TCBA go out on a limb with a fairly adventurous concept and feel free to not limit themselves to just art from books.

Andi Harriman, a music anthropologist who focuses on the 80’s, will take you on a visual tour of what makes goth, goth. From Bowie to Bauhaus (the other Bauhaus), the Morbid Anatomy Museum’s lecture should catch you up to speed on the deep historical roots of wearing too much eyeliner and a sullen disposition. Bring your own bats.

Everyone’s favorite indie arcade presents a night with four artists who work with materials that are extracted from the internet. I’m not familiar with the other artists but I liked the video/poetry I saw from Steve Roggenbuck at the New Museum’s triennial. Very earnest stuff and the YouTube medium was fitting.

Above all, you can trust in Babycastles and the described emphasis on humor is reassuring.

The Drawing Center just tends to put on some damn fine shows. Following its excellent presentation of selections from the Sol Lewitt collection, the TDC is presenting an installation of fifty-five pairs of found speaker screens by de la Mora. I just love how open the organizers are to the various definitions of what a drawing can be. This one sounds similar to the show of Xenakis scores that the center put on back in 2010. If its even half as good it’ll be well worth the time.

I would love to see more of these deep dives into big, multi-artist exhibitions. The Bronx Museum is presenting, Art AIDS America, a touring retrospective of art from the history of AIDs activism which features over 100 artists. The Leslie-Lohman Museum has chosen eight artists from that program and will be giving them a more thorough look. It’s a solid roster that includes Karen Finley, Deborah Kass and Glenn Ligon, this one should be solid.

We like the sound of this event. Unit 11 is a mobile residency for geeky gear-heads to work on projects that revolve around the theme of transmission. Ed Bear will show off the fruits of his residency which involves “a new iteration of the radioOrgan, a hand-crafted modular FM transmission system built from obsolete electronics.” Three other acts will join in the celebration through an evening of performances and live video mixing. The inclusion of Ben Greenberg is a really good sign, his band Uniform is one of the best in New York.

Starting on Saturday and going through Sunday, Signal will present the fourth annual Bushwick Art Book & Zine Fair. It may not be as glitzy or enormous as PS1’s book fair but it should make up for it in scrappiness and more of a focus on zines. Both days will also feature a lineup of talks and workshops, including a conversation with Nayland Blake that will be moderated by Hyperallergic’s Hrag Vartanian.

Finish off your weekend and nurse that hangover with a surprise horror film at Spectacle. If the volunteer-based curators at Williamsburg’s best hole-in-the-wall cinema know anything, they know good obscure horror. And seriously, who wants to have to make decisions on Sunday morning, just leave yourself in Spectacle’s able hands.