This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Rich People Are Gone

The Museum of Moving Image hosts a show of new must-play video games. This includes an AFC favorite QWOP. There’s nothing like that game, so we know you’ll find a variety.

Spectacle’s programming appears fairly often in our art events. So when we saw that Spectacle will be running a month of its best programming from this year, we think everybody should know about it. The theater’s a collectively-run volunteer effort, and the love of movies comes through in it’s selections– often, critically-overlooked films, extreme camp, and contemporary artworks by underknown filmmakers. Screenings take place every night this week around 7:30 and 10. Check out the site for details.

No matter that David Shrigley didn’t take home this year’s Turner Prize; we still think he’s great. He’s one of the most prolific, quirkiest voices of our generation, and you can have your fill of Shrigley on Tuesday, with a full day devoted to his animated shorts.

Go watch the scholars and Citizens Defending Libraries fight the Central Library Plan. Unless they win the lawsuit, two major New York libraries will be sold to real estate developers and much of the 42nd street library’s inventory will be sent to storage in New Jersey.

Yes, you can still find shock-worthy art today. Listen to the artists of Guts spill their guts about all the guts it takes to make their gutty work. (Sorry, but with an exhibition title like that, I just couldn’t help it.) Speakers include William Powhida and Nate Hill, who’ll (we hope) tackle issues of how to translate that initial feeling of discomfort into a thoughtful response, and hopefully, action, from viewers. Also: Plan to shake it all out with a performance by artist Amanda Alfieri; she’s leading the audience through an aerobics session with her “Tupac 6pack Workout.”

Thirty-odd-years later, digital art is getting the Pictures-generation treatment. With PostPictures, we get a whole slew of artists manipulating familiar pop culture imagery; the premise being that digital artists working today are responding to what’s up on digital screens, like Jack Goldstein, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Prince did with print mags, TV, and cinema. ~History repeating itself?~

Big, human-sized paintings from the artist’s subconscious isn’t an all-too convincing reason to go see a show. But with Anke Weyer, there’s plenty of unpredictable swathes of paint that bounce, climb, squeeze—and just move—to keep the eyes alert, and at the ready.

In celebration of the longest night of the year, experimental composer Phil Niblock, 80, returns to Roulette for the third year in a row, giving a 6-hour-long concert of acoustic and electronic music, accompanied by video and film projections. Expect Minimalist hums, and swelling sounds, all describing with total reverence, the movements of the stars above us.