This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Stereotypical Zinesters

by Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball on April 21, 2014 Events

Photo for the Brooklyn Zine Fest

Photo for the Brooklyn Zine Fest

Is art getting too boring? We’ve found some exceptions this week, as always, but fuck: MoMA’s showing film festival movies, galleries are shovelling the same old modernist narratives, and panels pose questions with no answers. And reality grinds on.

We have found some good stuff on the alternative scene: Recess is having a crazy benefit party/performance bonanza; Anthology Film Archives screens the bloody psychohorror “POSSESSION”; and Brooklyn’s having festivals for both found footage and zines.

  1. M
  2. T
  3. W
  4. T
  5. F
  6. S

Mon

ISSUE Project Room

22 Boerum Pl
Brooklyn
8 PMWebsite

WSB100: Elliott Sharp & Steve Buscemi

In collusion with composer Elliott Sharp’s “soundworlds”, Steve Buscemi will read from a variety of texts by William S. Burroughs. According to the PR, Buscemi and Burroughs were friends, and Buscemi has written a screenplay for Burroughs’ novel “Queer”.

Tue

17 W 17th Street, 8th floor

New York
6-8 PMWebsite

Aesthetics of Doing: Is Socially Engaged Art Always Progressive?

Panelists will tackle a major question concerning social-practice art: Must it have the goal of making society a better place, or should it just show the wires that create conflict within communities?

***RSVP Only: Space is limited***rsvp@abladeofgrass.org

With Panelists: Maureen Connor, Artist and Professor, Social Practice Queens (SPQ); Joshua Decter, Curator and Author of Art is a Problem; Marc James Léger, Artist and Author of The Neoliberal Undead; Moderated by Deborah Fisher, Executive Director, A Blade of Grass

Wed

Pioneer Works

159 Pioneer Street
Brooklyn
Performance at 7 PMWebsite

Family Dinner & Party of Five: Recess Benefit 2014

Tickets are selling out fast to Recess’ benefit, so get em quick! You’ll support ambitious 24 hour performances, its six month long residencies, and its storefront installations, and its track record of truly innovative artists like Liz Magic Laser and My Barbarian, helping to launch such projects as the Bruce High Quality Foundation University since its very inception in 2009. The benefit is going to be awesome: in their marathon spirit, the party kicks off at 7 PM with a 4-course catered dinner, which turns into a party with DJs and performance. Plus, you get $25 off your taxi if you take your first Uber to the benefit!

BUY TICKETS: http://bit.ly/Qq7Z92

 

Paper Tiger Television

339 Lafayette Street
7:00pm - 10:00pmWebsite

Annual Spring Open House

You’re invited to come eat and drink with Paper Tiger Television, a scholarly, artistic, activist collective media group on public access. Paper Tiger has created over 300 productions productions which examine community stories as an answer to mainstream media– documenting groups from urban environmentalists to Second Life identities. Current projects look at community-level innovation in Detroit and the ongoing fast food strikes. RSVP here.

Thu

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

1071 5th Ave
1 PMWebsite

Satellite Museums

The Guggenheim has come under fire from art- and labor-advocacy groups for its involvement in Abu Dhabi, where the museum is currently constructing a new branch. Rather than hosting a discussion about those concerns, the museum will present a roundtable between “three distinguished museum directors” who will discuss “opening international satellite museums including the development of new audiences, the formation of collections, and engagement with contemporary artists.”

***Free. Seating is limited. Send RSVP to arts@frenchculture.org.***

Dominique Levy

909 Madison Avenue
6-8 PMWebsite

Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages is one of France’s better-known Abstract Expressionists, who in his heyday, showed with the likes of Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. It looks like it’ll be an all-black show, so if you like monochrome paintings, this show’s for you! Soulages is showing new paintings at this show, so you might get to meet the man himself.

205 Hudson Street

6-8 PMWebsite

Hunter MFA Thesis Show

We always enjoying coming out to see each year’s graduating class as they bring out the best of from their studios. You’ll likely see these guys pop up in a bunch of exhibitions around the city after they graduate; here’s the time to see what they’re up to before they eagerly strike out into the art world.

DANSPACE PROJECT

131 East 10th Street
Thursday and Friday 8 PMWebsite

Laure Provost: From the Sky (Thursday and Friday)

Laure Provost might be well-known to European audiences (she just won the Turner Prize), but over on this side of the Atlantic, we haven’t been privy to seeing much of her work in the galleries and museums. With this performance mixing video, music, and actors, maybe we’ll be able to find out what makes her, in Holland Cotter’s words, “an artist-poet, the real thing.”

$10 suggested donation at the door. RSVP recommended.

 

Station Independent Projects

6 - 9 PMWebsite

Irish Art Does Not Exist

According to the title of this group show, “Irish Art Does Not Exist”. Or does it?

Yes. The press release tells us that “with the onset of the recession, an exciting overlap of industrious, artist led communities have merged with professional institutions to create a highly progressive and boundary pushing arts movement.” The show comes with twelve Irish artists George Bolster, Carla Bruns, Gary Dempsey, Sarah Feehily, Beth Fox, Gemma Gore, Luke Howlin, Steve Maher, Megs Morely & Tom Flanagan, Mike O’Brien and Liam O’Callahan.  We don’t know much about contemporary Irish art, so we’ll at least get a small glimpse here. Curated by Shane Harrington.

Bleecker Street Arts Club

305 Bleecker Street
6PM-8PM

The 80's: Past and Present

A show seen through the eyes of collector Keith Miller. Expect to see work by CRASH, Tom Slaughter, Ronnie Cutrone, Scott Kilgour, and Michael De Feo. This show gets a listing because we’ve seen Kilgour’s smooth abstract line drawings inspired by trash. We like them, and he’s an artist who hasn’t gotten enough love over the years.

Fri

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Talk on Friday April 25, 2014, 11:00 AMWebsite

Carrie Mae Weems LIVE

The Guggenheim didn’t give the Carrie Mae Weems retrospective nearly enough space, so they can kinda make up for it with a three day performance marathon. Weems hosts a “performance salon” for activists, artists, musicians, and “renowned guests”: Elizabeth Alexander, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Todd Gray, Aja Monet, and Sarah Lewis. There will be manifestos.

Program entries cost the same as museum admission, $22 general admission, $18 for students, and free for members.

Maccarone

630 Greenwich Street
Opening: 6:00 - 8:00 PMWebsite

Sarah Charlesworth: Objects of Desire: 1983-1988

VVORK artists are indebted to Sarah Charlesworth. Decades ago, she began making series of photo-collages on monochromatic backgrounds that mix seemingly disparate images from past and present. This’ll be the first retrospective of her work since she passed away last year.

 

Anthology Film Archives

32 Second Avenue
8 PMWebsite

“Possession”

Who wants to spend Friday night watching a nihilistic portrait of a degrading marriage, by Andrzej Zulawski? It’s also a supernatural horror-filled psychodrama described as “one of the few genuinely iconoclastic works in modern cinema” which was highly edited for its initial US release. It’s a little known fact that the film was co-written with Frederic Tuten, who will be at the screening for a Q&A. Watch the trailer here. Prepare to squirm

BAM Rose Cinemas, Peter Jay Sharp Building

30 Lafayette Ave
7:30 PMWebsite

Found Footage Festival

Before there was YouTube, there was the garbage dumpster. Found Footage Festival curators Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher will screen their VHS finds from yard sales, thrift stores, and yes, garbage dumpsters. Videos will include exercise programs, including a Christmas-themed workout and a 1997 instructional video on “How to Have Cybersex on the Internet.” This screening’s bound to bring out the giggles.

 GENERAL ADMISSION: $15

Sat

128 Pierrepont Street

Brooklyn
11 AM - 6 PMWebsite

Brooklyn Zine Fest 2014 (Saturday and Sunday)

Woo! Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of New York’s finest zine-makers and self-published writers and illustrators will bring their wares out to the Brooklyn Historical Society. Imagine the NY Art Book fair, but smaller, weirder, and with more drawing. Like the NY Art Book fair, there’s a personal touch to fairs like this; you can ’ll be able to leaf through the latest titles and fill up your tote for just a few paper dollars, all the while chatting with the people who make these zines happen. Just make sure you know that the booths change over from Saturday to Sunday; there’s an entirely different cast of zine-makers each day.

Panels are happening, too. Here’s some of what you might wanna see (with descriptions straight from the festival organizers):

Saturday, 4:30 PM – Queer & Trans* Zinesters – How queer and trans* identities appear (or don’t appear) in their zines and how zine culture figures into the rest of their lives.

Sunday, 1:00 PM – Collecting Zines (Libraries, Archives, & Collectives) Zines are often thought of as impermanent; most have a very limited distribution and are not expected to be distributed forever. However, there are many large and growing zine libraries, archives, and public collections that are making zines more permanent and lengthening their “shelf life.” On this panel, we will be discussing the ethics of zine collecting and how collectors go about their work.

Postmasters

54 Franklin Street
5:30 - 8:00 PMWebsite

John Powers: +time

What makes John Powers tick? You’ll be able to find out at this very not-traditional gallery show, where throughout the month, he’ll be using the gallery as a studio. Each day, he’ll make a new work, then vanish the next to make room for a new one.

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: