Chen Dance Center: "newsteps choreographers series".

If you are in the mood for dance this weekend, make your way to the Chen Dance Center at 7.30pm (Fri-Sat) for a real treat. The center, formerly the Mulberry St. Theater, curates newsteps: "a semi-annual dance series dedicated to providing support and performance opportunities for choreographers who are creating innovative and risk-taking works". Tonight and tomorrow, among the six performances that share the evening, there is a little gem: a duet performed by Makiko Tamura and Ryoji Sasamoto (both members of Ellis Wood Dance) entitled Order Made. Tamura, who choreographed the piece, was inspired by her grandmother's struggle with Parkinson's disease, as well as by photographs of the same grandmother in her lively youth. The result is a mesmerizing, poetic dance, an abstract and expressive ten minutes of precise gestural movement, intimate physical (mis)communication, and overall beautiful dancing. Tamura's choreography begins slowly, mechanically, and soon builds to a faster pace, exploring the many possible relations between the dancers on stage. Throughout the piece both performers maintain a puppet like quality that keeps their dancing unemotional, their eyes looking distant like those of wax sculptures - this is particularly powerful, as their dance does not demand empathy or sympathy, and develops out of what appears to be a strict necessity to move. Tamura and Sasamoto are wonderful dancers, at once powerful and contained in their energy, totally committed and present in their performance: it is a delight to see their work in the intimate space of the Chen Dance Center.

While Order Made is definitely the highlight of this newsteps series, other pieces in the evening deserve attention. Young choreographer Catherine Galasso's The Passion of A Hillbilly Greaser, for instance, is a fun dance theater piece that plays with the contrasts between the two performers: Brandt Adams and Yoko Mitsuishi. In an unexpected turn of events, we are serenaded by Mitsuishi's questionable karaoke skills, while being magically transformed into the audience of some kind of Japanese show. Galasso is particluarly skillfull in establishing an ominous mood, only to subvert it and shake the audience with uneasy humor. Galasso's piece stands out in the evening, rejecting the claim to "serious dance" that some of the other works attempt (like the somewhat overly dramatic and repetitive last piece entitled Unibody).

Choreographers' series like newsteps give you a chance to sample many different styles of work. Of course, it is also the case that pieces showcased at events like this one are not always...ripe. Overall, however, it is exciting to see that there are still dance spaces willing to make room for new, non-commercial, dance. Stepping into Chen Dance Center felt like entering a place from New York before the 1980's economic boom and the general commercialization of the arts. If you miss this series, keep your ears and eyes out for Tamura - I wouldn't be surprised to see her work showcased somewhere else soon.

PS 122: "The Jester of Tonga"

At PS122 this weekend through November 23, Joseph Silovsky presents a wonderfully sweet and quirky one-man performance that tells the story of the mysterious jester of the Pacific island of Tonga. Beginning in 2001, inspired by a New York Times article entitled “The Money Is All Gone in Tonga and the Jester’s Role Was No Joke”, Silovsky set out on a mission to discover for himself the details of how $23 million dollars theoretically belonging to the people of Tonga were claimed by the island’s king (on the grounds that the people would spend it on silly things like “roads”), placed in an American savings account, made to profit and increase by $11 million dollars, and then completely lost in a bad investment.

While the events that took place in Tonga in themselves make for an interesting and unusual plot, what really works in Silovsky’s piece is his poetic and unusual approach to telling the story. On a stage crowded with suitcases of different sizes and colors, microphones, and functional technological sculpture, Silovsky walks about, turning on little cameras, opening screens, awkwardly displaying a 1:1 map of the island of Tonga, claiming that he wants to make the story as clear and accurate as possible for us. His narration is made up of a series of vignettes, memory bubbles that he presents to the audience with the aid of paper-cut puppets, video and audio recordings, and Stanley, Silovsky’s robotic invention through whom we first hear the perspective of the jester of Tonga himself.

The irony in Jester of Tonga lies in the juxtaposition of the potential for precision and accuracy offered by the technology on stage, and the softer and more overtly interpretative story telling strategies used by Silovsky to share his own subjective understanding of Tonga and the events that took place in the small Pacific island. Silovsky, throwing suitcases out of his way and stumbling over his own lines, exposes the narrator’s struggle in piecing together a story that begins as something foreign and surreal, but eventually turns into an intimate and personal interpretative exercise dealing with recollection and memory. Part comical detective, part compassionate self-conscious anthropologist, and part nerdy techy artist, Silovsky’s character gently offers his research work to his audience and leads us through a humorous evening and a story that painfully echoes the recent economic developments on this side of the Pacific.

PS122

Nov 13-23
Wed-Sat 8pm
Sun 6:30pm
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Dance New Amsterdam: "Carlisle"

This weekend, Katie Workum presented Carlisle at Dance New Amsterdam. The piece’s opening is promising: three open doors stage right flood the stage with light from the offstage rooms. A few leafless tree branches and some bark glued onto a column suggest a desolate outdoors landscape, making the unadorned columns in the space potential trees rather than obstructions to our gaze. The stage left mirror, usually concealed during performances, is left exposed and used to reflect glaring light from stage right, a trick that increases the volume of the space and creates the illusion of another dimension. Onto this bare stage, four dancers crawl like creatures from a different evolutionary stage, slithering onto the ground and testing the solidity of the floor.
Unfortunately, the clarity of the opening scene and of the mood suggested by the lighting and set, quickly dissipate into a piece with unclear structure and concept. In particular, the relationships among the performers on stage remain vague: there are a couple of more developed interactions (such as the arm and hand wordless duets that take place on two occasions), but the different scenes in the work do not connect, and it is not clear what the dancers are here to do.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the performance is the unresolved relationship between two distinct bodies of dancers: the initial quartet of young, white women (two blondes and two brunettes), and a group of six Asian women (all Korean, as we learn in the program) who on five separate occasions enter the stage and perform movement sequences reminiscent of traditional Indonesian dancing. The Korean women wear glittery tight dresses that differentiate them from the white dancers, who are dressed in short, loose fitting, cotton jumpsuits. While on several occasions the quartet directly addresses the audience with words and songs, the Korean performers only join the quartet for a final song and dance phrase. There is no clear relationship between the two groups of dancers, or between the movement phrases that they perform. The secondary role played by the Asian dancers is almost offensive, containing an implied passivity without any trace of commentary on the part of the choreographer. Why are these dancers in the same space?

Carlisle is an ambitious project that could benefit from some rigorous editing and refocusing of intention. It appears like the choreographer wants to tackle many different ideas, but in the process forgets the common thread that ties them all together. Workum is most successful when she deals directly with abstract movement, and focuses on a particular relationship—such as the performers’ relationship to the floor in the first part of the piece. Overall, however, Carlisle feels more like a composit of choreographic experiments than a coherent full-length performance, and Workum should consider a revision, particularly in consideration of her international cast.

La Mama: "Atomic City"

There is a visually stunning and not very well publicized production at La Mama that will be running through September 28. Atomic City is a clever composit of dance, theater and live music that takes spectators into the lives of two neighboring families whose troubled patres familias both work as physicists in the town’s laboratory. The plot of the performance unravels slowly, as we learn about the characters’ relationships to each other, and observe them interacting through dance, words and song. Indeed, one of the strongest aspects of the piece lies in the balance of different performance forms that take turns at telling the story. For example, just as a spoken introduction to the piece seems to point us in the direction of a wordy theatrical work, the nimble bodied orator (Karl Sørensen) ends his prologue and throws himself into an extremely physical dance phrase filled with suspensions and inversions, all emphasized by a spotlight that gives his dance a dramatic twist.

The cast for Atomic City is also a combination, a mix of artists with different backgrounds and nationalities: there are two musicians from Sweden, two Danish dancers, a physical theatre performer from Guatemala, and an acrobatic dancer and mover from the US. More generally, the work is a collaboration between the Danish company Terranova and US performer and producer Jon Morris (Fuerzabruta, Cirque du Soleil). They produced the piece in an intensive residency this summer at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, and this in New York is their premiere. Probably because the piece is so new, there is a raw quality to it that makes the work exciting: these artists are taking risks with their bodies and their voices, in a collaboration that has pushed each one of them to a new place in their artistic practice.

When something does not run so smoothly (some of the harmonizing could use a little more practice!) the visuals of the piece by and large make up for it. The set for Atomic City beautifully contrasts the darkness of the performance space with white panels of waxed paper and a green square of fake grass. Spectators sit on opposite sides of the square, a choice that is elegantly exploited several times during the performance by movable wall divisions and the different facings of the performers. Apart from one character, “the gatekeeper”, soberly dressed in grey shades, all the performers wear white costumes. The result is a bright and clean look, easily associated with snow or the stark light of an atomic explosion.

Atomic City is at once readable and abstract: “a recipe for pie and one for destruction”, as described in the flyers for the show. This young group of international artists from different disciplines has created a unique world within the La Mama Annex theatre, a white city in which, as one of the physicists claims, “we are suspended in language”, as well as in sound and movement. In this secret place, human relations unfold playfully and painfully through beautifully physical phrases of movement and broken fragments of language. With its light humor and poetic aesthetic, Atomic City is a promising collaboration, one that should not be overlooked.

The Annex

September 11 - 28, 2008
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm
Sunday at 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Tickets $25
purchase tickets online

French Institute Alliance Française: “While We Were Holding It Together”.

Ivana Müller’s While We Were Holding It Together is a very still dance piece currently showing at FIAF (French Institute Alliance Française). In this work, the Croatian born choreographer has brought together a cast of five performers whose central task for the piece is to remain immobile, living sculptures posing in a tableau in the middle of an empty, black stage. The minimalistic design for the stage, combined with the stark lighting and every day wear of the performers, is meant to free the imagination of the spectator, opening up interpretation as to what these characters are actually doing. As becomes clear very early in the piece, While We Were Holding It Together centers primarily on the experience of the spectator in the theater and the process of perception involved in participating in a theatrical event. The performers seem to tell us that we, the audience members, are responsible for “holding it together”: without our contribution, there could be no performance.

For over an hour, the five performers involve the audience in a process of constant re-imagination, as they describe alternative scenarios to explain their physical condition. Seemingly caught in the stillness of their bodies, the performers speak: “I imagine we are in a forest”, “I imagine I am sick”, “I imagine we are stored into a large container”, “I imagine a family weekend”, and so on. The vignettes that ensue are at times funny, at times touching, and at one point even attempt to be erotic. Müller and her performers successfully maintain a light touch throughout what, we imagine, might otherwise be a tedious experiment. Unfortunately the humor involved in the piece is often predictable: the whole performance plays off of the endless exploration and absurd creations of the imagination, leveraging on the inexplicable stillness of the performers for contrast. This direct juxtaposition does not take many risks and openly aims at seducing the audience into collaborating with the performers: each humorous moment seeks to keep spectators from drifting away from the piece.

In the post-performance talk following Wednesday’s performance, Müller mentioned that three main questions served as the focus for the improvisation exercises that gave rise to the piece. Each performer had to ask themselves: “Who am I? What am I doing? Why am I here?” At times, it seems like those questions have been exhausted in the process of making the piece. Indeed, there is a limitless number of stories that could be tailored around the conditions of the five performers, but what next? While the solutions created for the performance are satisfying, the piece does not succeed in pushing the boundaries of a well-designed improvisation exercise.

While We Were Holding It Together is a strongly cerebral piece, not surprisingly considering Müller’s background in literature and her interest in conceptual dance. The questions addressed in the work speak directly to contemporary critical theory in the field of audience reception, making Müller’s exploration echo existing academic writing on theatre and performance. Overall, however, Müller addresses these issues with clarity, and the empathetic experience of observing the performers’ impossible attempt at stillness remains with you even after you have left the theater.

While We Were Holding It Together

FIAF

Wednesday–Friday, September 24–26, 2008 at 8pm

The Kitchen: "Anger/Nation"

Photo by Paula Court.

On entering The Kitchen this Saturday, I was curious to see how Radiohole had dealt with Chelsea's sizable performance space for the staging of ANGER/NATION, their latest production. The company usually performs at the Collapsable Hole, a theater made from two neighboring garages in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and a space they share with fellow experimental theater company Collapsable Giraffe. The Collapsable Hole is cozy and a little claustrophobic. There are no chairs, just large steps with movable pillows, which do not seat more than fifty people. Watching Radiohole in their own performance space is raw and intimate, their ultra technological sets making it feel as though you just entered a post-apocalyptic underground world: red lights, monitors every where, exposed bricks, and familiar objects used for unfamiliar purposes. It was difficult to imagine their work in the clean and fashionable Chelsea space.

Yet for their performance at The Kitchen , Radiohole successfully recreated that sense of intimacy and technological overload by using only about a third of the stage’s depth, and building a fiberglass firework-like structure that bursts towards the audience, mini monitors attached to the end of each rod, physically breaking the imaginary fourth wall between audience and stage. In this production, a large, bluish-grey, cardboard moon hangs above stage right, and the set is dissected through the middle by a ramp that ascends to a darkened backstage. Horizontal, color-changing panels act as a back drop, while on the sides and the front of the stage are visible various light and sound switches: Radiohole members usually operate all the cues in their performances.

ANGER/NATION’s set alone is like a sculpture, and could survive as an installation even when not inhabited by its performers. It is a little like a space ship, filled with light switches and monitors, almost breathing, with its changing colors and tiny movements. Yet the performers are there, all the way from the beginning: pouring beer for the audience, talking to each other, attempting drunken speeches, some of them wearing adjusted German folk dresses complete with embroidered edelweiss. For this show, Radiohole has centered around the historical character of Mrs. Carrie A. Nation (Maggie Hoffman), the “Bar Room Smasher” born in “Garrard farm, Kentucky” in 1846. After loosing her husband to drinking and sailors, Mrs. Nation takes on the quest of cleansing America of "sin and degradation" by destroying every bar she sets foot in. Like in other Radiohole productions, narrative is non-linear, and Mrs. Nation’s story appears at intervals between songs, disturbing tableaux, and violent repetitive acts, as when two of the men on stage repeatedly shoot each other’s buttocks with air guns.

About half way through the performance, pink American flags make their appearance on the background monitors, and Mrs. Nation declares that all will participate in her crusade: more specifically “if they are women, they will join [her], and if they are boys, they will follow [her] unwillingly”. Mrs. Nation’s crusade, with its conservative thrust and Born-Again Christian overtones, brings to mind the real world, and at one time Miss Alaska runner-up, Governor Sarah Palin. In fact, Radiohole’s emphasis on questions of gender and sexuality, as well as their dissection of religious zealotism, could not come at a more salient time in the history of American politics.

Mrs. Nation's crusade eventually takes on an unexpected turn, and the pregnant actress finally appears to us in a radically different attire from the widow like costume in which she first descends onto the stage. The conclusion of the performance is at once surprising and thought-provoking: disclosing it would decrease its efficacy.

ANGER/NATION deals with sex, alcohol, queerness and decadence, with great irony and without sparing the macabre and the gruesome. Filled with chauvinistic jokes, beer smashing, and unexpected props, such as the prehensile penis on actor Eric Dyer, ANGER/NATION is a visceral experience, often overwhelming, sometimes digressive, and always provocative and challenging. Radiohole’s latest production proves once again their unique position as a company on the cutting edge of performance, one taking risks and, on this occasion, breathing fresh air into the now fashionable Chelsea district. There is no one like them in New York.

Radiohole: ANGER/NATION

The Kitchen

September 24-27, 8pm

Here Arts Center: "Arias With A Twist"

A red velvet curtain slowly opens…to reveal a dark hanging curtain. After a few moments, this layer peels off as well, onto a screen of faux leopard skin. The audience laughs. We are so close to the stage and the small theater makes me hungry for more space. Every time the curtain lifts, I hope it will open up to the stage. Yet even when the leopard skin unfolds, another layer of sheer material divides the performance space from the audience. The suspense created by the peeling of all these layers is repeated in the long wait before Joey Arias, the drag star of “Arias With a Twist“, actually appears on stage. The audience is teased, our gaze at once disappointed and pleased with the repeated delay of satisfaction. We are here to see Arias, we want her, want to hear and see her performance. After all, the reviews have been raving about the show, and Here Arts has decided to extend the performance (originally planned as a four week run between June and July) all the way to December 31.

Finally Arias appears, and what ensues is a series of acts, reminiscent of a cabaret/circus hybrid, full of sex, sensuality, humor and song. And although we might be here to see Arias, Arias is not alone. She has been surrounded by the playful creations of Basil Twist, a third generation puppeteer whose imaginative use of scale, style and color well complements Arias’ performance. Simultaneously loud and intimate, “Arias With a Twist” relies on the talent of Arias and Twist to create a series of scenes loosely tied together by an intricate plot. After being abducted by aliens, Arias is dropped back on earth, where she embarks on a search for a mythical prophet. Arias’ search begins when she takes a bite off of a magic mushroom, and from here on the performance exists on the edge of hallucination. So Arias floats across the stage, while large white hands caress her and eventually dive fingers first into her vagina; she goes to hell and dances with her “boys”, two devils (puppets) endowed with ridiculously large phalluses; and finally, she reaches New York City, where she walks across Manhattan from neighborhood to neighborhood like a human Godzilla in search for a cab.

The hallucinatory quality of the performance ends in the last part of the show, when Arias returns to us as a more classic drag diva in performance. In her closing acts, Arias sings, tap dances while flossing her teeth, and finally appears on a large rotating wedding cake decorated with legs in stockings. Twists’ puppets keep her company until the end, contrasting and complementing Arias’ human presence. These performing objects work both as extensions and amplifiers of Arias’ performance, and as reminders of Arias’ uniqueness (and loneliness, as suggested by Arias’ rendition of the pop classic “All By Myself”).

In a world of puppets and play, Arias is both the human exception and the driving force behind the performance, her audacity and flaunting of all matters sex related both provocative and exhilarating. Arias’ performance pushes the boundaries of the small theater at Here Arts Center, making the space feel too tight for her masterful singing and explosive sexuality. At the same time, there is something powerful about the containment of Arias’ performance, a reminder of the contemporary political and social circumstances, not as willing to play with Arias as the spectators in the audience. Hopefully, someday Arias won’t be “all by [her] self” on the stage, a strange specimen of the human species studied by aliens from another world, and work like “Arias With a Twist” will abound outside New York City’s performance scene.

PS122: "The Passion Project"

Photo by Paula Court.

A ten-by-ten-foot cube in the middle of a dark room acts as the stage for Reid Farrington’s The Passion Project, a half hour long installation which will run through September 20 at PS122. The cube is defined by hanging ropes (these are tied into loops along the perimeter and across the top of the space), several frames holding parchment screens (leaning on the perimeter of the space), and an intermittent square of white light projected onto the floor that appears at the beginning of the performance. The stage awaits dormant, its audience encouraged to walk around it before and during the performance by Mr. Farrington himself. It is reminiscent of a cage, of a room, of a place at once distant and intimate. At times, I felt compelled to enter the stage and experience being inside, rather than outside the cube. But that is the job of Shelley Kay, the live performer who eventually enters the cube, as she said in an interview with Gia Kourlas, “walking into the throngs like a boxer”.

What ensues is an extremely physical half hour, in which Kay lifts, hangs, moves and unhooks the parchment frames from and onto different locations all around the cube. Her challenge is to catch projected images from Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1928 “The Passion of Joan of Arc”, a classic black and white silent film on the story of Joan of Arc’s condemnation and eventual death as a martyr. The film has been cut and edited by Farrington, so that for the most part what appears on the screens are close ups of different characters: Joan of Arc, of course, as well as various representatives of the orthodox clergy that broke her with long interrogations and finally had her burned. Kay moves frantically around the cube, catching an image of Joan of Arc, and letting her hang onto a loop, then running in a diagonal for the close up of a clergy man—this only lasts a few moments, than Kay kneels, puts down the frame she’s holding, and grabs another to run onto the next projection. The effect is powerful: the frames become windows, shields, tools, all necessary to piece together Joan of Arc’s story. As the performance builds up, Kay begins to sweat, her effort contrasting her physical presence with the mediated presence of the actors all around her. While we watch Kay catching images and working hard on keeping up with her cues, Farrington also stands on the side, watching. Like the men in the film, and like us spectators, only witnesses Kay’s efforts and physical challenges. An interesting echo to the projections of the clergymen on the screen.

The powerful visuals of The Passion Project are enhanced by Farrington’s sound design, a multi-layered mixture of church chants, the sound of the film’s reel being projected, the voices of people editing the film, as well as some less recognizable voices and noises. The volume of the sound sometimes reaches almost unbearable loudness, creating a physical and emotional experience for the audience. The parchment screens themselves create loud snaps every time Kay reaches out to catch an image. Like the projections on the screens, the sound is not continuous, but has a repetitive quality to it. The overall effect is a three dimensional puzzle coming together, a puzzle with many layers and not definitive form.

Farrington’s piece successfully brings the audience into the nightmare of Joan of Arc, while taking a step back from film as a medium of representation. Through Kay’s performance, Farrington breaks down and exposes the different frames from the film: Kay is literally piecing the film together. By the end of the installation, the film has become at once more and less than itself, a combination of live performance, sound art, and clips of the original film. There were moments when I wished for more distance, more ambiguity towards the inevitably tragic nature of the story. My desire might have been encouraged by almost unidentifiable moments of humor in the installation (for instance, when Joan of Arc is being burned and on one of the screens there appears: “Jesus!”). Kay’s performance, although based on cues and tasks, sometimes overly amplified the evident suffering already on display in the projections of Joan of Arc. Yet overall the piece opened up the original film in unexpected ways, the installation offering a perfect medium through which to present the work. Anyone interested in video, dance, or installation performance should not miss Farrington's latest work.

My weekend.

Back from a summer away from New York and from the country, with often limited internet access and even more limited access to theater, dance and music events. This is a short blog to let you know what I will be doing this weekend, hoping my plans will interest you.

Tonight (Thursday, Sept. 11): I will head over to the Ontological Hysteric Theater to see The Brainum Bros. & Sons Theatrical Outfit’s The 2 Sisters; or Douglas Mery, Next to Nothing (8pm). From the website: “ridiculous humor and chilling horror ride roughshod over traditional apocalyptic storytelling. Two clairvoyant sisters have journeyed into the wilderness in search of their long lost mother; instead they find a man without a future, perform brain surgery, and reveal the contents of their underwear drawer”.

Friday, Sept. 12: Join me at The Stone to participate in “a night of music and madness” in support for this great venue. John Zorn will play the sax, joined by Ikue Mori (laptop) Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and “many special guests”. There’s a cover charge of $20 (2 sessions: 8,10pm).

Saturday, Sept. 13: come see Reid Farrington’s Passion Project at PS122 (9pm). This critically acclaimed installation has already shown at 3LD this summer, and promises to be an exciting combination of video and live performance.

That’s all for now. As a reminder, the World Music Institute has some great music events coming up. I am looking forward to seeing the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus with Sheikh Hamza Shakkur & Ensemble Al-Kindi, coming up on September 21. All of their events take place at the Skirball Center for Performing Arts. (If you are a NYU student, tickets are only $12.)

Also, Bill T. Jones will be at BAM with A Quarreling Pair (follow the link to see a extracts from the performance), Sept. 30 and Oct. 2-4. Bill T. Jones is one of the sexiest and most exciting American contemporary dance choreographers. He has put together a diverse company, with dancers from all over the world, and his work can be both moving and exhilarating. I highly recommend going to see his work, especially if you have not been exposed to contemporary dance before.

Ontological-Hysteric Incubator: “Vicious Dogs On Premises”.

The Incubator’s Summer Season began on May 29 with Witness Relocation’s Vicious Dogs on Premises, a playful, funny and extremely physical performance piece which will run until June 14th. On a pink set lined with fuchsia fake fur, 4 actors play a wild game of improvisations interspersed with carefully set and choreographed scenes. It’s a pleasure to watch the actors as they cover a wide range of performance styles: from intimate personal revelations (as people rather than as actors), to loud, expressive dancing, to more classical role playing, their bodies are constantly present and energized. (The performers are all alumni of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and their acting definitely reflects their strong training).

Vicious Dogs on Premises is something of a great improvisational act. Artistic director Dan Safer changes the order of the scenes every night, enjoying the spontaneity and excitement which this brings to the actors’ performances. Safer himself performs each night: in a little desk on the side of the pink stage, Witness Relocation’s artistic director dictates the beginning and end of each scene by using a bell. The actors frantically respond to him, running downstage every time he rings his bell in order to read what’s next on the evening’s play list. And the list encompasses all sorts of subjects: love, death, sex and violence, all make their appearance on the stage . As unexpected relationships develop among the characters, the scenes never last long enough to settle into them. And just when it looks like the evening will be a series of disconnected events and vignettes, a love story pops up, bringing the whole piece together into a (somewhat) more conventional narrative.

Vicious Dogs on Premises is a funny, playful and well directed piece, a meditation on the turmoil that comes about when faced with “too many choices”, a problem well reflected in the frantic energy of the performance. Don’t miss Witness Relocation’s wild and exciting physical theater, an auspicious beginning to the Incubator’s Summer Residencies.

Vicious Dogs on Premises

May 29–June 14
Tuesday, Thursday–Saturday, 8p.m.
Sunday, June 1, 8p.m.
Friday, June 13 and Saturday, June 14, additional 10p.m. performances
Tickets: General $17/Student $12
Purchase in advance here or by calling 212-352-3101. Cash only at the door.
For more info on Witness Relocation: www.witnessrelocation.org

Starr Street Projects: "Catch 30"

Yesterday's "Catch 30" comprised 10 different dance pieces performed over an hour and a half evening. The scene at Starr Street Projects was quite a performance in itself: the space is situated in the middle of Bushwick and before the show began, an island of hipster dance spectators gathered around the entrance of the space. The general whiteness of the audience struck me, particularly in contrast with the darker faces of the neighbourhood's residents.

I was similarly surprised by the homogeneity of the dance on show: although artists worked with different media and genres (from pure dance without sound, to mix-media puppetry and video, to more classical theatrical work) the pieces felt very close to each other in aesthetic choices. 80's white pop culture was referenced again and again, in the choice of movement, sound and costumes. There was a large and very supportive audience and, in general, the event felt like the casual gathering of a community of friends, coming together for beers and to support artists they knew.

Shitheads on Dynamite! presented one of the most interesting pieces in the evening. The work consisted of a musician on live drums and two dancers moving in response to an edited version of "A Date With Your Family", a 10 minute instructional film on family relations released in 1950. The piece built up slowly, the beats of the drum and the frenetic dancing of the performers eventually turning the experience of the video into a ritualistic family gathering.

Overall, "Catch 30" gave one a glimpse of a very specific scene in the contemporary dance world of NYC. In the future, it would be great to see more difference in a program that brings together so many artists.

PS122: "Oedipus Loves You".

Until June 1, 2008, the Dublin based Pan Pan Theatre company will perform Oedipus Loves You at PS122. According to Wikipedia, “a call of pan-pan means there is an emergency on board a boat, ship, aircraft or other vehicle but that, for the time being at least, there is no immediate danger to any one’s life or to the vessel itself. This is referred to as a state of urgency”. Whether or not Aedin Cosgrove and Gavin Quinn were thinking of this definition when they founded Pan Pan in 1991, Oedipus Loves You successfully breathes urgency and immediateness into the familiar story of Oedipus.

Pan Pan’s production follows the traditional form of Greek tragedy: events take place over the arc of a day, all violence happens off stage, characters sometimes wear masks and, most importantly, there is music and dancing. While the plot follows that of Oedipus (by Seneca) and Oedipus Rex (by Sophocles), there is nothing traditionally classical about the characters in Oedipus Loves You. Tiresias, the blind prophet played by Ned Dennehy (who also plays a naked sphinx on platforms for the opening scene of the play), is a retired rock star who wants to play percussion in Antigone’s and Creon’s indie-rock band called “Gordon Is A Mime”. Antigone, smartly played by Aoife Duffin, is a melancholic teenager divided between her love for her family and the deep desire to be left-the-fuck-alone. Uncle Creon (Dylan Tighe) sniffs coke and can hardly contain his own incestuous impulses towards Antigone. Jocasta (Gina Moxley) does not mind the plague at all- in fact, it makes her sleep better. And Oedipus…well, Oedipus can’t even cook meat right for the family barbecue. Played by Bush Moukarzel, Pan Pan’s Oedipus can hardly contain his own self-pity after he gushes his eyes out. In one of the highlights of the performance, his button down shirt completely drenched in blood, Oedipus remembers the lyrics of his own favorite childhood song: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird. He actually breaks down and cries after singing a few of the first verses.

Playing off of Freud’s writings as well as on contemporary notions of postdramatic theater, Pan Pan’s Oedipus Loves You brings wit and a healthy amount of distance to the theatrical Oedipal “super-plot”. The production is defined by a subtle dark humor that allows for the heavy tragic elements of the plot to exist in tandem with the lightness of irony and detachment. The production is also interesting in terms of set, light and sound design, all of which support the notion of a theater conscious of its theatricality yet fully entertaining, (a)live, and aware of its audience. If you have not seen it yet, don’t miss it!

Pan Pan Theatre’s
Oedipus Loves You

May 21 - June 1
Wednesdays - Sundays at 8
Saturdays at 8 and 11
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Movement Research Festival: "80's and 90's On Screen - Dance Relics".

On Tuesday, May 27th, Christine Elmo and Jmy Leary presented “80’s and 90’s on Screen - Dance Relics”, an evening of dance videos from the NYC dance scene in the 80’s and 90’s. Elmo and Leary put together about 4 hours (!!!) of rarely seen videos that included performances, films, rehearsal and interviews. Although I could not make it through the whole evening, I made it through enough of the night to enjoy Elmo’s and Leary’s curatorial endeavour. Some of the first films showed a very young Steve Paxton and a ridiculously sexy Bill T. Jones experimenting with their bodies before they became established pillars of the dance community. The videos documented works by Ishmael Houston-Jones and John Jasperse (both of whom where in the audience), as well as by Meredith Monk, Scott Heron, and other exciting artists from the NYC dance community. The evening took place in the gymnasium of the Judson Memorial Church and the energy felt electric- the gym was filled with artists, dancers, musicians and, in general, people curious and interested in the rare opportunity of seeing so many dance videos from such a recent period in history. It was great to be part of an event that paid tribute to artists who are still young and working, while recognizing the importance of two decades of modern dance still too often overshadowed by the 60’s and 70’s.

“80’s and 90’s on Screen” was part of the Movement Research Spring Festival 2008, with events/performances/classes running up to June 9, 2008.

Ontological Hysteric Theater: "Tiny Theater! Festival".

Thursday, May 22, I attended the first evening of the Incubator's Tiny Theater! Festival at the Ontological Hysteric Theater. Curated by Michael Gardner, of The Brick, and Shannon Sindelar and Brendan Regimbal of the Ontological, last night's show included a line up of 6 different performances all taking place in a 6'x6'x6' space in 10 minutes or less: a very focused emergent theater marathon!

By the end of the evening I felt elated: curators for Tiny Theater! have brought together an interesting and diverse group of performance artists. From puppetry to neo-futurism, the 6'x6'x6' metal cage on the stage was inhabited by very different performances: sometimes the cube looked spacious and empty, as in SPi Company's "They Are Bad People", where two actors simply sat on chairs for the entire performance. At other times, the cube felt crowded (see the very sexual "Five (Eduardinos)") or extremely constraining, as in 6-Speed, the New York Neo-Futurist piece in which actors toasted cookies and swayed on metal bars like children in a jungle gym. Each performance used the space more or less effectively, but overall the evening had a wonderful rhythm and energy.

Curators of Tiny Theater! have also successfully brought together different kinds of performances. For the most part, the tiny performances were entertaining: filled with humorous characters (such as the she-Kermit-the-Frog in "The Barber of Saskatoon") and ironic props (as The Angel of Repose's spinning halo in "The Alternative Lifestyle Fair"). Yet there were also more sobering pieces. In Portrait of JB, for instance, a woman dressed in white walked around the stage carrying the bleeding severed head of a pig, while a man smoked a cigarette in the back of the theater. Overall the evening was gracefully crafted and the differences among the pieces worked well within the rhythm of the festival.

I highly recommend seeing one of the three remaining performances. Here's more information:

TINY THEATER 8p.m. Thursday--Saturday, May 22--24. Additional 11p.m. performance Saturday May 24. $15 cash at the door, or reserve in advance here or by calling 212-352-3101.

Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue)

In case you can't make any of these shows, look out for upcoming Summer Residencies at the Incubator.

Skirball Center of Performing Arts: "Ancient Songs of South Africa. Ngqoko Cultural Group".

If you have never been to the Skirball Center for Performing Arts, keep an eye out for anything presented there by the World Music Institute! Last night, an ensemble of 6 women and 1 man offered an exciting and rare experience of traditional music and singing from the rural Xhosa communities of South Africa.

The only man on stage, Tsolwana B. Mpayipheli, acted as presenter as well as translator, associating each of the songs with a particular story or social ritual. The music of the Xhosa is deeply rooted in social customs and communal living. At night, the same bows which during the day are used for hunting, turn into mouth bows (a mix between a string instrument and a flute) or percussion bows with calabash resonators. During the Aparthaid, Tsolwana explained, men from rural areas left their villages to go work in urban centers such as Johannesburg and Cape Town. The men’s emigration left women in charge of passing down culture within their own villages, a phenomenon which might account for the majority of women musicians on stage!

Overall, Ngqoko’s performance offered spectators a wide range of the sounds and styles indigenous to the Xhosa tribe. From lullabies, to initiation songs, to performances of overtone singing, (which these women are well known for), the harmonies and rhythms of the Ngqoko were both soothing and energizing. The songs began and ended very organically, as voices joined or faded according to the mood of the performers. Some songs never went beyond humming and quiet strumming, while others exploded in dance, clapping, and heavy stomping on the stage. For the entire performance, the bodies of the musicians swayed and stomped, elbows close to the waist with arms bent at 90 degrees, their whole body keeping to the rhythm and creating a subtle dance that made you want to get up from your chair and participate on the stage!

At the end of the performance, as the women and the man left the stage clapping and waving, I was somewhat saddened that this special event had not received more attention and a larger audience. But the World Music Institute continues to organize special musical events of excellent quality, so there will hopefully be another chance in the future! For more information on their programming, follow this link.

Skirball Center of Performing Arts
http://www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu/

World Music Institute
http://www.worldmusicinstitute.org/

Mitchell Algus Gallery: “Martha Wilson. Photo/Text Works, 1971-1974.”

The receptionist at the Mitchell Algus gallery informed me that before doing performances “for people sitting in chairs,” Martha Wilson’s performances used to focus on one spectator only: her Pentax camera. Wilson’s show at the gallery, her first solo show ever, focuses on exactly this pre-live performance period, when she began to explore gender, identity, expression and perception while studying at the Nove Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. From 1971 to 1974, Wilson created a series of photo/text works that have never been exhibited before this time. Wilson’s show at Mitchell Algus feels like an intimate exposure of archival material, with images always accompanied by text, almost like an ethnographic study of the artist.

Overall, the show is rather small: between the anteroom and the main room, a total of 16 works hang on the walls of the gallery. While small, the exhibition also offers a wide range of Wilson’s work. A large part of the text-photo pieces focuses on Wilson playing different roles. Whether as a lesbian woman who fails to pass in a men’s bathroom (Posturing: Mae Impersonator (Butch), 1973), or as each of the models offered her by society as a woman (A Portfolio of Models, 1974), Wilson’s impersonations are among the first performances that overtly dealt with social expectations of gender and sexuality. Wilson also explores these issues in the studies of her own body/self, such as in I Make Up the Image of My Perfection/I Make Up the Image of My Deformity (1974), where she focuses on her face to explore the extremes of beauty and ugliness. Some of the works, however, deal more generally with the female body, as in Breast Forms Permutated (1972), or with overtly political issues, such as in Chauvinistic Pieces (1971), moving in a different direction from Wilson’s impersonations.

In these solo performances for her Pentax, Wilson gets naked, both metaphorically and literally, using the camera as a tool to break down traditional notions of objectivity and to explore how the self is created in performance. But the exhibition is not made of images alone. In the 16 works on exhibit, Wilson skillfully brings together images and text to complicate the meaning of her performances. The text serves as a commentary on each piece as well as a tool to communicate directly with the audience. As viewers, through the text we are introduced to the artist’s thought process as well as to her personal perspective. By creating a window into the inner processes of Wilson’s creative mind, the text establishes an intimate relationship between the works and the spectator. Simultaneously, the text makes up for the extent to which Wilson exposes her self in some of the images, reminding us that what might appear as vulnerability is, in fact, a very deliberate gesture on the part of the artist (see, for instance, the piece where she plays an older woman trying to look like a younger woman, or the one in which she stages a perfect suicide).

Wilson’s exhibit at the Mitchell Algus offers an unexpected glimpse into the early photographic work of an artist who is mainly known for her live performances. The result is a precious collection of artistic works that show the early experimentation of a woman before she arrived in New York and joined the ranks with other feminist artists. Wilson’s solo reminds us that before Cindy Sherman, and before the great boom of feminist art in the mid and late 1970’s, individual artists were already asking important questions about the politics of gender, sex, sexuality and identity. In light of the present presidential campaign, so enmeshed with identity politics and questions of identity performance, Wilson’s show seems most appropriate, asking us to think again about representation and self-creation in the present social context.

Mitchell Algus Gallery
http://www.mitchellalgus.com/

Marian Goodman Gallery. Eija-Liisa Ahtila: “Where is Where?”, (2007) and “Fishermen (Etudes, No 1)”, 2007.

On screen, a military squad shoots and kills Algerian civilians in an attack during the middle of the night. In the next scene, a Nordic looking woman goes to visit her preacher. She says she feels guilty because someone has died. The preacher tells her she should accept God’s forgiveness, and the woman replies: “I don’t understand how I can be forgiven for what happens to other people.” And not just to other people, but in other places and historical periods. The woman’s perplexity about human suffering and guilt, well represents some of the issues confronted by Where is Where? (2007), Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s latest video installation.

In this four screen dramatic film, the Finnish artist brings together the story of three boys living in Algeria during French colonial times, and the story of a European poet in her forties. In the film, Ahtila juxtaposes the violence that took place in Algeria in the early 1950’s, with the attempts to make sense of history of a European outsider. The film begins at the present moment, but the story of the three children becomes increasingly important, culminating in the murder of the French child by the two Algerian children. While the story of the three children is based in a real event, Ahtila’s frame places the incident in a greater context than the Algerian-French conflict. The tragic and violent events, experienced and filtered through the perspective of the poet, become starting points for an understanding of current conflicts between the Arab worlds and the West, as well as metaphors for exploring the ideas of violence, death and war.

In addition to contrasting two stories from different worlds, Ahtila places the viewer at the center of the installation, symbolically involving the spectator in the narrative. During the film, the European poet is not alone in asking questions and looking for meaning. As the screens around the viewer switch imagery and move from one narrative to the next, the viewer finds herself constantly looking around, wondering, asking: “Where is that voice coming from? Where are we now? Where will this go?” Like the poet, and mirroring the title of the work, the viewer of Ahtila’s work is provoked to look for answers by the design of the installation as well as by its narrative.

In Where is Where?, Ahtila makes of a 2 dimensional film, a three dimensional experience. Caught in the middle of the action on the screens, viewers are simultaneously given the possibility to look elsewhere and choose a new angle from which to view the events unraveling. In contrast with her multi screen installation, Ahtila’s other piece on show at the Marian Goodman Gallery, Fishermen (Etudes, No 1) (2007), offers a simple, one screen documentation of fishermen attempting to defy stormy weather to go out fishing on their boat. Fishermen displays the first in a number of studies on fishermen Ahtila plans to develop in the future.

Together, Ahtila’s new works create visual and aural environments that absorb the viewer, while raising painful questions about human relations and the violence and struggle that define history. Although the two pieces vary greatly in subject and form, Ahtila’s poetic sensibility comes across in both of them, providing a welcome perspective that resonates with Scandinavian rhythms and aesthetics.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Marian Goodman Gallery
http://www.mariangoodman.com/
Through April 30, 2008

The Project. Coco Fosco: “Buried Pigs with Moros”.

Coco Fusco.

In line with her ongoing questioning of war and torture methods, Coco Fusco’s latest exhibit at The Project focuses on the Moro Insurrection against the US occupation of the Philippines. The first American war against Islamic people, the insurrection was also the first time American military confronted suicidal warriors, juramentados, who were ready to give their lives in the battle against Christian infidels. Faced with opponents who were not afraid of death, U.S. officials had to devise a different tactic to
prevent the juramentados’ attacks. Legend has it that under the leadership of General “Blackjack” Pershing, the army devised a method of killing that proved intolerable for the juramentados’ religious beliefs. Not only were gun bullets dipped in pig’s blood, but the juramentados were buried facing away from Mecca and covered with pig entrails. Apparently, the pig blood method was very effective, and has circulated as truth among post 9/11 military and intelligence experts, as well as among U.S. senators.

In Buried Pigs with Moros, Fusco explores American military tactics that deal with extremist opponents. Born during the Vietnam War and having lost a brother in a 1980’s Special Forces covert mission, Fusco has been questioning war and war politics in a lot of her recent work. Her video, Operation Atropos, and her performance A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America, have been selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Both works deal with the new role of women in the military. Her focus on war and war strategies in Buried Pigs with Moros, then, is nothing new. Yet the way she has chosen to present Buried Pigs with Moros places the viewer in a rather different role from her work in performance and video.

The exhibition is divided into two. The first room displays a collection of historical artifacts and memorabilia relating to the Moro Insurrection. There are a five minute clip from The Real Glory (1936), a letter written and signed by General Pershing regarding the pig blood method, and various articles and annals from the time. In this first room, we are exposed to the literary and visual language used by Americans to deal with the question of the Moro insurrection in the early 1900’s. Next door, a disembodied audio installation dramatizes a university lecture by a former Special Forces member and security expert. The lecture focuses on interrogation methods and the use of torture. It was given in 2005 and was posted on Wikileaks in 2007. As the lecturer gives his talk, words that reiterate or clarify his language are projected onto a dark wall. The words function both as echoes and as subtly differently repetitions of the concepts the voice is dealing with. The effect is haunting, as the voice relentlessly advocates the use of torture and we are offered visual reminders of what the lecturer is talking about.

With the display and the audio installation, Fusco creates a juxtaposition of two historical archives that places the viewer in the position of researcher rather than spectator. While the organization and choice of the artifacts on display depends on Fusco, viewers are given the possibility to discover history at their own pace. Fusco’s critical perspective is clear, yet the exhibition does not have the feel of a patronizing political statement. By accosting the two war tactics and letting the viewer engage personally with the material, Fusco leaves a lot of space for personal discovery and reflection.

Coco Fusco: Buried Pigs with Moros
The Project
http://www.elproyecto.com/
Through May 2, 2008

Mary Boone Gallery: “Liu Xiaodong”.

Liu Xiaodong, Sky Burial (2007)

“China's hot young artists well schooled in market savvy”, reads a recent article by David Barboza on the Herald Tribune. The article, published on April 1, 2008, discusses the pros and cons of the highly market oriented and very prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Barboza tells us that the school’s faculty boasts of several millionaires, and that its alumni consist of some of the most successful contemporary artists from China, including Liu Wei, Fang Lijun and Zhang Huan. Given the strong link between art and market established by the Academy, it might not be surprising, to discover that artist Liu Xiaodong has chosen Tibet, the latest tourist destination for Han Chinese, as the subject for his most recent paintings. Both an alumni and a member of the faculty at the Academy, Liu’s work is currently on exhibit at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York, where his two large, multi-panel paintings, proudly take up gallery space.

The first work, entitled Qinghai-Tibet Railway (2007), is composed of five panels, each 98” by 394”. The painting represents two Tibetan nomads walking their horses across the Tibetan plateau, as blue skies fade behind them, and they are met by the looming grey skies of industrialization. Behind the nomads, the new train that connects Beijing to Lhasa advances, unstoppable. While the painting suggests the tragic results of China’s influence and development plans in Tibet, there is something else at play in Liu’s work. The fluid style of his painting suggests a kind of romance with the Tibetan culture, an objectification that resigns itself to the disappearance of a people while glorifying their past existence and environment. Similarly to the attitude of American colonizers towards Native American tribes, Liu’s painting at once glorifies and denies the complexity of Tibetan culture and history. In the painting, the two men with their horses are at once beautiful and defeated. Although they are on the forefront of the painting, they are passive, and all the action takes place in the background. And what to make of the rainbow in the midst of the grey skies? How quickly are these Nomads to expect better times and better weather?

The second painting on exhibit, Sky Burial (2007), romanticizes Tibetan landscapes and rituals, without giving them much power or complexity. As some Tibetans look over their shoulders at a group of vultures dismembering a carcass, the viewer is allowed to contemplate the beauty of the fertile valley beyond the violence taking place among the birds. In other words, Liu creates a seductive vantage point for the viewer (and potential buyer) of the work. In contrast with the first work, in Sky Burial all the action takes place in the front, but the spectator is allowed to look away from the deadly scene and be reminded of the beauty and harmony of nature around it.

The work of Liu Xiaodong might offer great satisfaction to a country eager to turn Tibet into museum material. Through his subject and style of painting, Liu manages to create attractive scenarios that only superficially allude to the violence of history, providing relief for a public interested in forgetting and romanticizing the history of Tibet and China. While Liu’s art will no doubt prove very marketable back in China, one hopes that the West has experienced enough cultural objectification in its own history not to be easily fooled by Liu's pleasant lines and landscapes.

Mary Boone Gallery
http://www.maryboonegallery.com
Through April 26

Zach Feuer Gallery: “Tamy Ben-Tor”

Born in 1975 in Jerusalem, Israeli artist Tamy Ben-Tor moved to New York City for her MFA at Columbia University (2006), and has lived and worked there since. Ben-Tor’s latest works are currently on show at the Zach Feuer Gallery in Chelsea, where her provocative videos are projected on one gallery wall and on three separate TV screens. Ben-Tor’s performances are known for being “fiercely funny” (Artnet Magazine), yet during my visit to the gallery, the only other person laughing apart from myself was my friend Kathryn Shearman, a performance and sculpture artist based in Ithaca, New York. Within the gallery, her laughter became a constant reminder of the silence of the other spectators. Why such silence?

One reason might be that while Ben-Tor deals with very sensitive issues by using humor and irony, she is also always reminding us of the tragic and dark elements that inform her characters. In her most recent videos, the Holocaust comes up again and again in different stories and in her performances. In a section of the film projected on the gallery’s wall, Ben-Tor transforms herself in an older Hassidic woman with very ugly teeth who talks somewhat nonsensically about not leaving Egypt and the contribution of Jews to the greatness of America. The character is hilarious: partially annoying and partially wise, a caricature of someone familiar and yet completely absurd. The woman, reminiscent of a witch from a children’s fairy tale, performs with a bleak, post-apocalyptic forest in the background, a setting which gives a sober tone to the whole piece: a reminder of the tragic historical landscape that has given rise to the American Hassidic community.

In the same film, Ben-Tor takes on an Eichmann-like character with hexagonal glasses, a man who can only speak unintelligible words. This black and white section of the film brings us back to Eichmann’s post WWII trials, in which he repeatedly attempted to deny responsibility for sending Jews to concentration camps. Simultaneously, however, Ben-Tor’s facial expressions and the overall performance of the character are reminiscent of a minor character in a slapstick comedy, making the section more confusing than funny. Throughout this exhibition, Ben-Tor uses forms that are light and familiar: comedic caricatures, fairy tale characters and story lines, children’s music, etc. The subjects of her work and her approach to each piece, however, create a contrast that inhibits pure laughter in the viewers.

Video might also create a sense of detachment that is somewhat counter productive to emotional investment. While, for instance, a live performance plays off of the spectators’ energies, Ben-Tor’s films are looped and keep going independently of the reactions of the viewers. The two TV screens have headphones for listening, so that people become aurally isolated from the rest of the gallery every time they engage with one of the TV films. In addition, in the large room where one film is projected onto the wall, sound is not so good, and many of Ben-Tor’s words are lost. Maybe as a result of this, it is harder for viewers to become completely involved in the artist’s playful performance and in her subtle use of language and sound.

At the same time, Ben-Tor’s performances and visual compositions are so overwhelming that it might be a lot to ask of an audience to remain light hearted. Even in the lightest piece of the show, in which Ben-Tor impersonates a very busy character from the contemporary art world, the tone and rhythm of the piece is quite aggressive. In the piece, Ben-Tor heavily references not only the vocabulary of the contemporary art world (“this panel,” “it’s a local project,” “it’s a community project”, “it’s political”, “let’s close the deal,” etc.) but also the attitude and manner of an overly busy, overly dramatic, and email addicted contemporary art persona. Ben-Tor’s Warholian character, (white wig, pink shirt, light blue background), cannot seem to stop emailing and leaving voice messages. In what is basically a soliloquy that lasts about ten minutes, Ben-Tor confronts the viewer with a nightmare of modern communication that finally leaves the character exhausted and slows down the video as well.

In her work, Ben-Tor brings to the forefront racial, ethnic and historic stereotypes, creating characters and stories that are abstract and specific at the same time. Unfortunately, the exhibition currently taking place at the Feuer Gallery cannot recreate the same energy and dynamism present in Ben-Tor’s live performances, yet her video work is still successful in confronting the viewer with powerfully nonsensical performances. Ben-Tor’s experimentation with video is promising and has the potential to open up new questions about performance art on film.

Zach Feuer Gallery
http://www.zachfeuer.com/
Through May 3, 2008

Andrew Kreps Gallery: “Peter Coffin: You Are Me”

Peter Coffin’s third solo exhibition at the Andrew Kreps Gallery welcomes you in with a suite of prints, Untitled (Designs for Colby Poster Co.), each one defined by three bright colors merging into each other. Traditionally the prints serve as the background for posters such as those promoting rock concerts and revivals, but Coffin has chosen to highlight the color combinations as a design in and of themselves. As a result, the office of Andrew Preps is festively surrounded in color, setting the mood for the playful exhibit that follows. Color, in fact, defines the other two pieces on show at the gallery. In the main room, an industrial conveyor reminiscent of a miniature rollercoaster carries a bunch of colorful balloons through space. The noisy and heavy metal conveyor contrasts the light and brightly colored balloons. Apparently, at the end of each day the balloons are carried to the street and released, as though freed after a day of work. Although visually the piece is powerful, it is somewhat saddening that an artist as interested in nature as Coffin should commit the faux pas of releasing helium and plastic into the atmosphere for the duration of his exhibit.

The balloons are not the only part of the exhibit to leave the interior of the gallery. Coffin has created a sound installation that plays Incidental Music each time office staff hits a key on a computer keyboard. The sound is then played outside the gallery through a speaker on top of the entrance. (Unfortunately the installation was not working when I was there.) Another part of the installation involves small sounds played in the background of a conversation when someone calls the gallery (you can give it a try: 212 741 8849). Both these installations are interesting as they reflect the artists’ involvement in the space in which he is exhibiting as well as in the interaction of the gallery with its viewers and neighbors.

The most mesmerizing work on exhibit, however, can be found in the back room of the gallery. There, thirty monitors piled on top of each other in five rows of six, display video clips of animals at play in both domestic and wild settings. The monitor wall is extremely colorful and constantly changing, as each clip appears and disappears at different time intervals. Some of the images are incredible: dolphins playing with their own air bubbles, monkeys cartwheeling their way down the side of a hill, a turtle chasing a cat over and over again. The piece is seductive and critical at once. On one hand, the animals look beautiful and playful, enjoying themselves both in the wild and in captivity. Yet the monitors are reminiscent of the cages in which we contain these animals, as well as of the anthropomorphic mental frame of mind through which we are used to looking at them. The rhythm of the clips showing in different monitors and the variety of the animals and movement on display, capture the viewer into a frenzy of scopophilic pleasure, and the artist cleverly overwhelms us with images so that the pleasure is never comfortable.

In his exhibit, Coffin creates different worlds of contemplation that are at once formally satisfying and critically engaged. The space at Andrew Kreps gives the viewer a chance to become immersed in each world and take the time necessary to engage with the rhythm and length of each piece. Coffin’s use of color and movement is captivating, make sure to set aside some time to just sit down and contemplate.

Andrew Kreps Gallery
http://www.andrewkreps.com/
Through April 26, 2008

Whitney Biennial 2008

On Wednesday, March 25th, I went to my first ever Whitney Biennial. I arrived at the museum five minutes before opening time, to find that people were already waiting in a line that wrapped around the northwest corner of the museum. To find so many people eagerly awaiting the Biennial’s opening on a Wednesday morning was somewhat surprising, especially as the Biennial had already been open for more than a week. For a while, then, I hoped that the large number of visitors might be due to the great quality of the show within the Whitney. (Later I realized that the Contemporary Art Armory Show opened on the same day, an important factor for the many aficionados coming into town for a week of contemporary art.)

While waiting in line, I recognized many foreign languages spoken in the crowd around me. I was reminded of my visit to the New Museum a couple of weeks ago, where the museum itself felt like a great tourist attraction. In fact, the Biennial shares more than an audience with the New Museum’s Unmonumental show. Similarly to Unmonumental, the Biennial’s three floors felt overcrowded with works. On one and, this is understandable: the Biennial seeks to cover new work over the past two years in a relatively small space. On the other hand, however, the pieces are distributed in a chaotic and overlapping way. Maybe that is part of the design: an attempt to represent in the art, as well as on the museum’s floors, the pervading experience of over stimulation and multi tasking, an experience the defines part of 21st century existence.

Overall, the Biennial presents a wide range of artists working with different media. Next to a window on the fourth floor, Phoebe Washburn’s While Enhancing a diminishing Deep Down Thirst, the Juice Broke Loose (the Birth of Soda Shop) (2008) recreates a surreal greenhouse/soda shop, in which bunches of daisies are fed Gatorade, while flower bulbs grow among golf balls. Next door to Washburn’s piece, Natalia Almeda’s Al Otro Lado (To The Other Side) (2005) is projected in a dark room, taking turns with films by other artists. The 66 minute documentary about drug dealers in Mexican culture offers an interesting perspective on the way dealers are glorified as heroes and martyrs within their communities. On the same floor, Heather Rowe’s Something crossed the mind (unembellished three times) (2008) creates a hypnotizing experience for the viewer. Using mirrors facing different angles and alternating wooden planks with empty space, Rowe creates a game of light, perception and reflection that is at once playful and disorienting. James Welling’s Torsos (2008) series reminds us of the important question of the unique for photography in an age of digital art. Welling uses photograms to create imperfect images that document the single event of the photograph. His Torsos focus on the bodily forms suggested by netting to create images that defy definition of form, but that simultaneously feel familiar and recognizable.

Throughout the exhibit, the Whitney offers an audio tour with commentary by the artists themselves. I found this an interesting and sometimes funny addition to the experience of the exhibit. In part, turning the artist’s commentary on, helps turn the visitors’ voices off. Furthermore, each artist approaches theur work differently. While some merely describe the process and concept behind their work, others use the audio commentary as an additional tool to contextualize their piece. Daniel Joseph Martinez, for instance, performs something like a manifesto for his Divine Violence (2007). The work, which has been smartly placed in a room of its own, consists of about 50 golden canvases about 1’x 2’, each one defined by the name of a guerilla movement written in black font reminiscent of comic books. Entering Martinez’s room while listening to his aural manifesto temporarily isolates one from the over stimulation of the other rooms and effectively narrows one’s focus to Martinez’s critical perspective.

Overall, the 2008 Whitney Biennial brings together artists of different sensibilities and political views in a very ambitious exhibition. Admirably, the Whitney has commissioned a lot of the works on show, giving artists as well as viewers a chance to see something new. With its expansion to the Armory for more performance based works, the Whitney is calling out for more room for its biennial exhibition. Could it be that, in the future, we will witness a Biennial that spreads all over New York? Something more similar to the way Performa organizes its biennial? The crowded floors of the Whitney demand a better space for the art work, let’s hope 2010 will bring more breathing room for art and visitors!

Whitney Museum of American Art
www.whitney.org
Through June 1

International Center of Photography: "The Collections of Barbara Bloom."

Humorous and playful, Barbara Bloom’s retrospective at the International Center of photography combines the light irony of Bloom’s work with a lively commentary by the exhibition’s organizers. The exhibition is refreshing from different perspectives. First of all, as a woman’s retrospective, it is a welcome exhibit in contrast with the many shows that focus on male artists. Furthermore, Bloom’s multi-media installations contrast the International Center of Photography’s traditional focus on the media of photography and film. In addition, The Collections of Barbara Bloom well complements ICP’s downstairs exhibition, Archive Fever- Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, by bringing to the forefront the artist’s own “collection” as an archive, hence approaching questions regarding the relationship of history, documentation and art from the perspective of the artist herself.

Collections covers a wide range of work by the American artist, who was born in Los Angeles in 1951 and lives and works in New York. There are many three dimensional objects, such as the broken Japanese ceramics restored with golden lacquer, or the carpet fashioned to look like the cover of the first edition of Nabokov’s Lolita, or the special edition of a breil Playboy. The mid life retrospective also shows some of Bloom’s photography, hidden behind semi-transparent curtains, as well as some of her installation work. To different degrees, all of the pieces hint to Bloom’s provocative approach to art, her work demanding that the visitor engage with it critically and with a sense of humor. Take, for instance, the V. Nabokov Butterfly Box (Blues), in which mirrored bluish images of Nabokov and other figures relevant to Nabokov’s writing are pinned to a wooden box mimicking a collection of dead butterflies. Bloom’s work speaks directly to the spectator, raising issues about the nature of collecting and the role of an artist in the curatorial process.

Unfortunately, while the material on exhibit is provocative and exciting, the spatial organization of the retrospective is itself somewhat startling. Walking into the exhibit initially causes a sense of disorientation: where does the exhibition begin? Are we supposed to feel like we have entered another space, a world made of Bloom’s imaginative sculpture and installations? Are we in a gallery? Texts by the art pieces speak to us intimately and in a casual tone, like characters within the exhibition itself, explaining the different themes used to group Bloom’s work. Yet the space never feels intimate or completely dedicated to Bloom’s work. In part, this is due to the fact that most of the exhibition takes place on the path to the lower floor. As a result, the experience of the show is repeatedly interrupted by those who cross the floors to go down stairs.

On one hand, then, Bloom’s collection is not displayed so as to do justice to her sense of humor and provocative perspective on the role of the artist in society, the spatial organization of the exhibit itself creating a fragmented experience of her work. Much of Bloom’s work has an interactive, theatrical aspect to it, which is somewhat lost in the way her works are displayed along long and tall walls, too dispersive to let the pieces interact properly with each other. Compared to Bloom’s exhibitions in the past, for example when the artist had transformed a whole room into an installation itself, Collections feels more fragmentary and the objectification of the art as collection partially detracts from the experience of engaging with the works. On the other hand, however, one could argue that the display of Bloom’s work at ICP is itself an ironic comment on the way an artist’s collection is dissected and re-organized by an institution such as the museum, or in the context of an auction gallery in which the works are presented to be sold (the show, we are told in the catalogue, was inspired by the auction catalog estate of Jackie Onassis.) In any case, Bloom’s interventions on and contributions to contemporary art retain a lot of their energy and it is a pleasure to visit an exhibition that jokes, flirts, and plays with the spectator.

International Center of Photography
January 18 - May 4
http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.732135/

New Museum: "Unmonumental."

The New Museum in Manhattan’s Lower East Side is still hot from its opening on December 1, 2007. You can feel the energy buzzing through the whole building, as large numbers of tourists walk from floor to floor, lovin’ it. Yes, loving the incredibly cluttered space, and the confusing and often disappointing arrangement of art that gives one the impression of a shopping mall rather than of a museum. As in a shopping mall, we are surrounded with objects, colors and textures, while sound plays overhead from hidden speakers. Unlike a shopping mall, however, the exhibit is not designed for the enjoyment and pleasure of the visitors, creating a claustrophobic and visually unappealing space. And yet, five out of the seven people I interviewed during my visit of Unmonumental, the current exhibit, really enjoyed the show. They loved the variety of the work on display, the fact that video, sculpture, and collage were all in the same room. One woman thought the arrangement of the art worked particularly well. And some found the sound installations, which fill the whole museum at set intervals of time, to be “really cool.”

Why? Personally, I found Unmonumental to be a depressing experience. For one thing, most of the work felt fashionable but not substantial. A mix of Dada aesthetics, such as in Rachel Harrison’s Huffy Howler (2004), and work that I had already seen, such as Martha Rosler’s revisited 70’s work in Gladiators (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” series, 2004.) Sometimes a piece would catch my eye, such as Henrik Olsen’s Anthologie de l’Amour Sublime (2007), a series of 82 computer printouts with 19th century images manipulated to highlight homoerotic moods or tensions. Abraham Cruzvillegas’ Matière Brute (2006), a hanging cluster of boes, and Marc André Robinson’s sculpture of couches and chairs, entitled Myth Mondith (Liberation Movement) (2007), similarly caught my attention for the beauty of the sculptural forms. Yet without more context for their work, and with so much stimulation from the neighboring pieces, it was hard to engage fully with the art.

Furthermore, there is little attractively new at the New Museum. The most promising section, entitled “Montage: Unmonumental Online”, exhibited works that were not as conceptually innovative as could have been expected. Oliver Laric’s 50 50 (2007), for instance, brings together fifty clips from amateur performances of songs by 50 Cent, a famous rapper. Yet how does his work with the medium of YouTube (from where he took the clips) differ from thousand of other collages already available through the same website? What kind of questions are artists asking themselves in the context of Unmonumental?

As for the popularity of the show amongst its visitors this past Saturday, then, we might conclude that in an over stimulating culture of television, internet, and continuous advertisting, people might find the New Museum a familiar experience of the senses. Yet in regards to art, Unmonumental presents a show about clichés: abstract work that does not make much sense to the viewer, work that shocks and confuses, without the depth of strong concepts behind it or the support of an intelligent design to make the work more accessible. The reasons for the arrangement of the pieces in the space are vague, though apparently intentional, as the exhibit seeks to exemplify the 21st century language of “fragments and of debased, precarious, and trembling forms, sounds, and pictures.” Ultimately, while Unmonumental attempts to address issues of fear and fragmentation in contemporary society, it lacks the clarity in vision necessary for a show that illuminates, rather than recreates and echoes, the complexity of contemporary art and society.

New Museum
December 1, 2007 - March 23, 2008
http://www.newmuseum.org/