New Museum Announces a New Seasonal Approach to Public Programming Exploring Ideas Over Time Through Multi-Platform Dialogues
By: Robert Diamond Oct. 09, 2013
Spearheaded by the New Museum's Department of Education and Public Engagement, R&D (Research and Development) Seasons will connect various projects in the galleries, Theater, and Resource Center around a new organizing theme each fall and spring. The inaugural fall 2013 R&D Season theme is Archives. Programming will be presented in the form of exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist residencies, online publications, an after-school program for teens, and family day activities. Artists will engage across many of these initiatives to realize projects that take multiple forms. The fall Archives Season explores archival forms, systems, processes, and concerns across a broad range of contemporary art and curatorial practices. "Our efforts in the Education Department toward exploring process and experimentation have led us to taking a 'research and development' approach to what we do," said Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement. "For 'XFR STN' (Transfer Station), our first project of the Archives Season (which recently closed), we turned the Fifth Floor Education gallery into a full-fledged digitization lab. There, visitors learned about legacies of video art, but also became familiar with evolving techniques for moving image and digital preservation. It was a project with historical relevance that also posed urgent questions for the immediate future of art."
"PERFORMANCE ARCHIVING PERFORMANCE": NOVEMBER 6, 2013-JANUARY 12, 2014
"Performance Archiving Performance" takes up archiving and its relationship to live art as its focus for the second part of the fall 2013 R&D Season. This special presentation will include an exhibition of artist-generated archiving systems, an accompanying series of performance residencies, and a lineup of performances and talks with artists, curators, and scholars.
Performance archives seek to preserve some legible record of live art's imprint on culture for future study; however, many argue that archived representations of performance cannot fully capture the nuances of ephemeral experience so essential to the form. Projects by a canary torsi, Jennifer Monson, Julie Tolentino, and Sara Wookey acknowledge these concerns by conceiving of the relationship between performance and archives as unique systems. Within these systems, the acts of recording, storing, indexing, and redistributing are as much a part of the work as the performance itself. As a result, the site of performance-its position in time, space, and form-is placed in question so that the actual process of archiving may be interpreted as its own mode of performance, its own singular event.
"Performance Archiving Performance" is organized by Travis Chamberlain, Associate Curator of Performance and Manager of Public Programs. This presentation of works that engage archive as medium will be on view in the Fifth Floor Resource Center from November 6, 2013-January 12, 2014.
- "Performance Archiving Performance" Artists Talk
Saturday November 16 | 3 PM | Free to Members, $6 General Public
How might different artists' approaches to the concerns of archiving performance be taken up and addressed by museums and institutional archives? Participants include artists Yanira Castro, Kathy Couch, Jennifer Monson, Julie Tolentino, and Sara Wookey, and the New Museum's Travis Chamberlain.
INDIVIDUAL PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS
Jennifer Monson: "Live Dancing Archive" (2012-ongoing)
Jennifer Monson's "Live Dancing Archive" consists of three components-each constituting a specific approach to the practice of archiving ephemeral phenomena such as dance and the ongoing flux of environmental systems. These components include a video installation, a digital archive atlivedancingarchive.org, and a solo performance.
- Sky Room Concert with Jeff Kolar and Jennifer Monson
Thursday October 24 | 8 PM | $10 Members, $12 General Public
Accompanying an improvised performance by Jennifer Monson, composer Jeff Kolar provides a sound design that responds to the delicate and sophisticated atmospheres and shifting spatial parameters of bodies in relationship to one another in the New Museum's Seventh Floor Sky Room.
Julie Tolentino: "The Sky Remains the Same" (2008-ongoing)
Exploring the body's potential as both a medium and container of record, Julie Tolentino's "The Sky Remains the Same" invites select collaborators (including Ron Athey, Franko B, David Dorfman, David Rousseve, and Lovett/Codagnone) to choose a work from their own performance history to archive into/onto her body. For more information, visit julietolentino.com.
Julie Tolentino will archive three works selected for her by the artists Lovett/Codagnone, presented as part of a residency for "The Sky Remains the Same," November 11-24 at the New Museum. The archiving process for this particular group of works is constituted by a series open studios, panels, and public performances.
- CANDIDATE in Concert: A Gesture Absolutely Vile
Sunday November 10 | 4 PM | $10 Members, $12 General Public
An ongoing collaboration between Lovett/Codagnone and musician Michele Pauli, of Italian band Casino Royale, CANDIDATE produces extreme electro-industrial dance music. With special appearances by Jim Fletcher, Julie Tolentino, and Kate Valk.
- "The Sky Remains the Same": How Do You Map the Sky?
Saturday November 23 | 1 PM | Free to Members, $6 General Public
A discussion of the archival processes of Julie Tolentino's "The Sky Remains the Same" will be accompanied by a premiere screening of The Archive of Lovett/Codagnone's "Closer" (1999-2005) and/or "For You" (2003), a video work that proposes the camera as a catalyst and intermediary for archiving performance by multiple bodies into/onto the body of one person. With Lia Gangitano, Joshua Lubin-Levy, and Sarah Schulman.
- "The Sky Remains the Same": The Archive of Lovett/Codagnone's "WEIGHTED" (2010)
Saturday November 23 | 3-6 PM | FREE
Lovett/Codagnone's "WEIGHTED" addresses failure as a "feasible, honorable" possibility, and questions the concept of death as the ultimate failure of life. The short duet is executed here in its authorized archival form as a durational repetition of the same score, performed in sequential pairings by John Lovett, Alessandro Codagnone, Julie Tolentino, and Stosh Fila. A talkback with the artists concludes the event.
Sara Wookey: "reDANCE" (2011-ongoing)
Founded by Sara Wookey, "reDANCE" is a platform for public engagement that features processes and re-enacted works of renowned choreographers of the Judson Dance Theater era performed by another generation of dance artists. "reDANCE" explores the immateriality of dance and its archival practices through live performance, workshops, and discussions. For more information, visit redanceproject.org
- "Disappearing Acts & Resurfacing Subjects: Concerns of (a) Dance Artist(s)"
Sunday November 17 | 4 PM | $10 Members, $12 General Public
Sara Wookey performs a new solo work that considers dance as a disappearing act and questions recurring subjects floating in the public sphere-such as the preservation, ownership, and value of dance itself.
a canary torsi: "The People to Come" (2012-13)
"The People to Come" is a project by a canary torsi, a group led by Yanira Castro whose work is anchored in live performance and extends into other media and online platforms. "The People to Come" is comprised of a website and performance installation, both of which are activated by a conditional relationship to the participation of audiences through a meticulously designed archiving system. For more information, visitthepeopletocome.org. a canary torsi will stage the closing of the online archive for "The People to Come" as a real-time archiving installation in the New Museum Theater, on view beginning December 11 and culminating in a special concert event on December 15 at 4 p.m.
- "The People to Come": Closing the Archive Concert
Sunday December 15 | 4 PM | $10 Members, $12 General Public
Musical collaborators of a canary torsi's "The People to Come" reunite to perform a live improvised score to accompany the final hours of the archiving of the project as a site-specific installation in the New Museum Theater. With Peter Bussigel, Stephan Moore, Caroline Park, and Tim Rovinelli.
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