NOT FOR SALE in this week’s Flavorpill

NOT FOR SALE: Forever Radical? is a pick in this week’s Flavorpill!

Posted by PERFORMA | Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 | 0 comments

NOT FOR SALE: Forever Radical?

Come to our next NOT FOR SALE event this Thursday, April 12 from 6:30-8 pm at NYU. The panel will feature New Museum curator Laura Hoptman, legendary rock critic Greil Marcus, artist Adam Pendleton, and artist / co-director of Reena Spauldings Fine Arts Emily Sundblad, and will be moderated by PERFORMA Director RoseLee Goldberg.

Click here for more information.

Image: Vito Acconci, Three Adaptation Studies–Part 1, Blindfolded Catching, 1970

Posted by PERFORMA | Monday, April 9th, 2007 | 0 comments

Fassbinder’s JAIL BAIT!

Next Monday, April 16, at 8:30, don’t miss this rare film by that brilliant German maniac Rainer Werner Fassbinder, based on the true story of a 14-year-old girl convincing her 19-year-old lover to kill her father (later to be ripped off by BADLANDS). Part of MoMA’s continuing series, Fassbinder in the Collection.

“A melodrama that mixes the tacky with the sublime”–Vincent Canby, 1977 (from the original New York Times review)

Posted by Lana | Monday, April 9th, 2007 | 1 comments

Miranda July

Guest Blogger: TOM KRUEGER, filmworks

From the moment I laid eyes on Miranda July, I knew I would do just about anything to become her lover. And being the hopeless romantic that I am, once an idea like this enters my heart, I will go to great lengths to make it come to pass, concocting the most elaborate schemes, and orchestrating the most complex set of circumstances so that a chance encounter might seem just that. But just as my mother would constantly remind me, ‘chance favors the prepared mind’, so I did my homework, searching for things we might have in common, interests, friends, anything that might further my mission. And as much as I’d like to think that I am relatively adept in strategic planning, in all my wildest dreams I never could have imagined that I would become her lover on our very first encounter.

Perhaps it was just my brown hair, as she stated that this was her only prerequisite, but I’d like to think there was something more. Something about me that caught her eye and she was equally overcome. As it turns out, we do have a fair amount in common, both raised in Berkeley, California, both filmmakers, and we do have a few friends in common. In fact, it was one of these friends that set up this serendipitous occasion on a cold night in early March. Miranda was in town to perform her most recent work, Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely are Not Going To Talk About, and I was sure to get to the performance early, hoping to secure a good seat so that I might study this enchanting woman more closely, and maybe, if I was lucky, she would even notice me and think to herself, ‘Who is that interesting man’?

Well I couldn’t have hoped for a better seat, only two rows back and dead center, and sure enough, just as I had hoped, Miranda came out on stage and during her seemingly informal prologue she asked the audience if there was anybody who was willing to come on stage and play the part of Kevin. ‘Oh, and they had to have brown hair. Well, it was like a surge of high voltage electricity which jumped straight from my heart and into my right arm causing it to instantly shoot up in the air. I did everything I could not to look too eager, as I certainly didn’t want to scare her, but there was no way in hell I was going to let anybody else play that part. And so, to my delight, she picked me, and the next thing I knew I was on stage for nearly an hour and a half, playing the part of Kevin, her lover.

I gave myself over completely to that part, and was stunned at how well Miranda had written it, how precisely she had captured the endless machinations that we hopeless romantics will devise and endure in the name of finding true love. How badly we yearn to make that sublime connection that will somehow elevate us from our daily tedium, perhaps even liberate us from our current relationship that by now has lost all mystery. In fact, it wasn’t Kevin at all who was being indicted for his hopeless romanticism, it was Miranda who was exposing herself as the one so easily seduced into illusions of finding something deeper, something better, something more meaningful and profound. And so I watched from what was undoubtedly the very best seat in the house as she held up a mirror for all of us to see.

Did this somehow cure me of my own romantic illusions? Not likely. In fact, her performance was so original, so eloquent, so humorous, and so insightful that I am now more determined than ever! Perhaps she will even read this very post and think, ‘Oh, yeah’ I remember that guy. He was pretty interesting. ‘Hmmm.’

Posted by Guest Blogger | Monday, April 9th, 2007 | 0 comments

Arte Povera Now and Then

Arte Povera Now and Then
Perspectives for a New Guerrilla Art

April 14 through May 19, 2007
Opening Reception:
Saturday April 14, 6 p.m. 8 p.m.
Contact Information:
Natane Takeda, 212 560 9728 o rinfo@essogallery.com

I like Esso’they are nice people’

Posted by Esa | Friday, April 6th, 2007 | 0 comments

Isaac Julien’s The Ice Project at Works & Process Feb 3-4

THE ICE PROJECT
by Isaac Julien with choreography by Russell Maliphant

Works & Process at the Guggenheim
Sunday and Monday, February 4 and 5, 7:30 pm
1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street

To Order Tickets:
Call the Guggenheim Box Office at (212) 423-3587

Excerpts of Julien’s installations and film clips of Maliphant’s choreography will be the springboard for this evening presentation at Works & Process at the Guggenheim, which will feature Julien and Maliphant in conversation with art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg.

A PERFORMA Commission
Produced by PERFORMA with Co-Producers Sadler’s Wells, London

PERFORMA, along with Sadler’s Wells, has commissioned world-renowned artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien to create his first evening length performance, The Ice Project. Using his films in dramatic visual interplay with live performers, Julien will work with one of England’s most exciting choreographers, Russell Maliphant, to create a stunningly original production of visual theater.

The performance will be developed at Sadler’s Wells in London in the Spring of 2006 and will open in London at Sadler’s Wells in Fall 2007 before premiering in New York as the centerpiece of PERFORMA 07, the second installment of New York’s biennial of new visual art performance, which will run from November 1-21, 2007. The Ice Project is a PERFORMA Commission with Sadler’s Wells with support from Jerwood Studios at Sadler’s Wells. PERFORMA Commissions are supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and the PERFORMA Producer’s Circle.

“Few, if any, British artist/filmmakers have made their work shown both at Cannes and Documenta to equal acclaim: but Isaac Julien has achieved this rare crossover with a body of work that manages to be both sensuously lush and politically trenchant.”
– The Art Newspaper

“Julien frames his work as’a vessel of fantasy. Treating related subject matter visually rather than verbally, Julien aims for something different: the sense of a dense, confined, limited experience opening out into the infinite room of dream.”
– Artforum

About Works & Process at the Guggenheim

Since 1984, and in over three hundred productions, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, produced by Mary Sharp Cronson, has explored the creative process by providing behind-the-scenes insight into extraordinary music, dance, opera, literary, and theatrical performances. Performances are presented in the Peter B. Lewis Theater in the museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education and are accompanied by discussions among artistic collaborators. Following each performance there is a unique opportunity to meet the artists at a reception hosted in the Frank Lloyd Wright’designed rotunda. Tickets are $24 ($20 for members and seniors, $15 for students), Supporting Associates and Patrons Circle members free with reservations.

To order tickets, call the Guggenheim Box Office at (212) 423-3587

Image: Isaac Julien, Untitled (True North), 2004. Courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York, and Victoria Miro, London.