LIC LIVE ART
PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL
Organized by LOCAL PROJECT ART SPACE & Jana Astanov
http://localproject.org/
AUGUST 22nd, 6-10 PM
CULTURE LAB LIC at THE PLAXALL GALLERY
5-25 46th Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101
Media Sponsor CREATRIX Magazine
Join Local Project Art Space for an evening of live art at the Culture Lab LIC at The Plaxall Gallery Parking Lot. As part of our emerging curators program and in conjunction with Culture Lab LIC outdoor summer programs, we are coming together to celebrate art and community.
Please keep in mind this is an outdoors event that will follow social distancing guidelines. Please wear a mask and maintain a 6 foot distance from those not in your household. There is plenty of space to safely accommodate anyone who would like to attend.
NO MATERIAL: CANNIBAL WEALTH
Curated by Furusho von Puttkammer
Deity Delgado
Poet7
Cacia Zoo
Joseph Sledgianowski
Lewis Derogene
ALEMBIC: BODY AND SPIRIT
LIVE ART AS HEALING ART
Curated by Jana Astanov
Jaguar Mary + Evie Star
Marni Kotak
Arantxa Araujo
Ronit Levin Delgado + Iren Kamyshev
Sindy Butz
DIY UTOPIA(S)
Curated by Sierra Ortega
Kennie Zhou
La Candelaria
GOODW.Y.N
MUSIC by PRONE
How does one define Performance Art in the era of COVID-19? Though a solid definition of the practice has always been elusive, the last few months of social distancing, self-isolation, and mask-wearing has caused us, the curators, to reevaluate. Gestures that seem almost performative in nature -standing six feet apart, bumping elbows in lieu of hugs – are the new and accepted normal, while past forms of socializing from The Before Times appear alien and fictional. The virtual extension of our domestic spaces have become our solace, acting as only a rudimentary, if vital, simulacrum of social connection. Every moment, every waking breath whether uneasy through a mask or haggard through a tube, has become performative and politicized. The only sane option is to view this new reality as a total and complete Performance.
The Internet, our civilization’s most advanced technology, growing exponentially in quantum leaps, is still unable to simulate the full extent of human sensory experience, while the concept of human perception itself is expanding, with neurobiology now recognizing iteroception as a sensory system that helps us assess internal feelings. With all this scientific and technological knowledge, these few months of isolation during the pandemic made us all realize that human connection is essential to our sense of well being. The online dimension will certainly inscribe itself in the history of performance art. However, we at Local Project Art Space made a bold decision to gather our community in a socially distanced live event.
We engaged our sixth sense to select 3 curatorial projects as part of our Emerging Curators program to present the extent of contemporary utopian currents that dwell under the social fabric of our community to access individual and collective feelings, to transmute life into art in one LIVE ART event. We see our curators as visionaries whose sensitivity connects them to the creative force of the Universe from which the artists emerge, weaving their personal stories, and practices as embodiment, physical and monumental, of what there is. Call it Reality, Culture, or the Underground.
Ultimately, we reject the outdated structures of our society, with its institutions established centuries ago, as unfit to effectively serve us, and stand for collaborative process, communal becoming, and collective dreaming! As we reimagine our world, taking to the streets and parking lots, amplifying the voices on the brims of official culture and society to get to the core, Earth’s heartbeat, our species awakens to the utopian bliss.
Jana Astanov, ALEMBIC: Body & Spirit: Live Art as Healing Art
“Quantum physics confirms the most far out theories of Western as well as Hindu philosophies unifying within the concept of the world as one consciousness that expresses itself through the creative medium of space and time. Live art with that experience of being “caught in the moment” seems to allow the transmutation of energies, possibly even transforming the audience into the extreme mode of participation as the collective body. In the times of political and social divisions between the class of 1% and the rest of us, the precarious equilibrium of our cities in the face of XXI century pandemics, and the technological advancements that do not soothe our souls, evoking the creative healing powers of artistic practice is the quantum leap of holistic thinking.”
Sierra Ortega, DIY UTOPIA(S)
“Bodies, no longer solid, evaporate into a field of virtuality. We dance on the precarious edge. Embrace that unknown force, for the future is always necessarily an imperfect stumbling towards. And so, I ask the following questions: what does Utopia look like/feel like? How can our relations be used to generate liberatory topographies? How can we manifest the future together? These questions are an invitation to collectively experience the precarious space of creation through the work of four queer artists who each uniquely embody the kinds of collective and DIY artistic practices that can transform the anxiety of the present moment into actions that gesture toward new futures.”
Furusho von Puttkammer, NO MATERIAL
“New York City used to be exactly like a Richard Price novel: seedy, dirty, and full of risk. The parties were 24 hours, the music was DIY, and the art was raw. Then the children of upper middle-class suburbia, drawn by the romance and history of the city, moved to New York and began to warp the city to fit with their suburban ideals. No Material is a series of performance nights harking back to the old-school tradition of New York performance. Everybody is broke, everybody is desperate, and everybody is convinced that they’re the next undiscovered breakout star.”
As a media sponsor of LIC LIVE ART festival CREATRIX Magazine interviewed some of the participating artists in anticipation of the upcoming event, taking place on August 22nd at Culture Lab LIC at The Plaxall Gallery, and organized by Local Project Art Space. Below are the links to our conversations:
CURATORIS BIOS
Jana Astanov is a post-disciplinary artist, a poet and an independent curator born in Poland, and living in the US. She is a founder of CREATRIX Magazine: www.creatrixmag.com, portal for creative expression focused on art, activism and spiritual practice. Her work includes performance art, sound art, poetry, photography and installation. She describes her performance art practice as “mythology vs ideology” referring to her two main interests: the political & economic foundations of our civilization and mythological/ religious values. In her work, she utilizes spiritual traditions, dance movement derived from the Grotowski technique, sound art, ritualistic theatre and astrofeminism, a term she has developed through her character Yannanda The One Who Speaks With The Stars. Together with her partner Niko van Egten she co-created an electronic music group ASTRALOOP featuring her poetry in dark electronic arrangements.
She has performed at Tate Modern, Smack Mellon Gallery, Grace Exhibition Space, Venice Biennale, Documenta 2017, and many other galleries, festivals and independent venues worldwide. She is also the author of five collections of poetry: Antidivine, Grimoire, Sublunar, The Pillow Book of Burg, and Birds of Equinox.
Sierra Ortega is a genderqueer, interdisciplinary performance and new media artist and curator based in Queens, NY. Utilizing their background in performance, speculative philosophy, and queer and feminist politics, they have come to develop an artist/scholar practice that is deeply personal, constantly chaotic, and furiously DIY. Their work seeks the limits of human affective capacity as a means to generate post-capitalist futures of constant transformative mutation. Most recently, they have curated work at Local Project Space, The Center for Performance Research, Café Beit, and The Hollows Artspace.
Furusho von Puttkammer is a multimedia artist, independent curator, and music video director whose practice highlights the lives and work of marginalized people. She has worked with artists such as Gavin Rayna Russom (Black Meteoric Star, LCD Sound System), Lanee Bird, Albert Diaz (SAMOS), Zachery Allan Starkey, The Lesbian Herstory Museum, and Bernard Sumner (New Order). von Puttkammer is also the founder of the nomadic performance art night No Material, which showcases emerging artists of all genres in NYC. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a BFA and Honors in Fine Arts. Currently, she is the curator for Art in Odd Places 2021: NORMAL.
ARTISTS BIOS
Marni Kotak is a multimedia and performance artist presenting everyday life being lived. She has received international attention for her durational performances and exhibitions, most notably “The Birth of Baby X” (2011) in which she gave birth to her son as a live performance and “Mad Meds” (2014) during which the artist slowly withdrew from psychiatric medications prescribed for postpartum depression. In “Treehouse” (2017), Kotak — who had just experienced a devastating fire in her home — created a refuge for herself and others to pause from the overwhelming aspects of life. For “Dancing in the Oval Office” (2019), the artist invited the public to join her in her version of the oval office to dance for a more open, inclusive, and peaceful society. Kotak’s works have also appeared at the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile, Artists Space, Exit Art, Momenta Art, English Kills Gallery, Grace Exhibition Space, among others. She has performed extensively in the US and abroad. Kotak’s work appears in “The Art of Feminisim: Images that shaped the Fight for Equality”, 1957-2017 by Helena Reckitt (Chronicle Books, 2018) and “Blackwells Companions to Contemporary Art: A Companion to Feminist Art “(2019) among other publications. Her exhibitions have been featured in ArtFCity, Artforum, Blouin Artinfo, Art Pulse, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, Studio International, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Time Magazine, Washington Post, among many others. She has also appeared on Good Morning America (ABC), CBC Radio, NPR, and other broadcasts. Grants include Franklin Furnace Fund Award and the Brooklyn Arts Council among others. Marni Kotak received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College and is represented by Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
Jaguar Mary is a performance artist, glossolalia vocalist, filmmaker and hoop dancer. Her specific concerns, and the directives that have driven her art practice, engage black feminist discourse, questions of history, and recently, ritual performance and practice in art. Jaguar Mary aka Jocelyn Taylor has shown and performed internationally, at the Johannesburg and Havana Biennials, the New Museum, Museum of Modern Art, KARST Gallery in the UK and Dietch Projects in New York. In 1989, she co-founded the historic Clit Club with Julie Tolentino.
Jaguar Mary has also collaborated with feminist artists Annie Sprinkle, Yvonne Rainer and Cheryl Dunye and others. Her essay, “Testimony of a Naked Woman” about being a black feminist sex-worker was included in Afrekete: An anthology of Black Lesbian Writing edited by Catherine McKinley and Joyce Delaney. Under the name Jocelyn Taylor, she was commissioned to make work for the Public Art Fund and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. She’s also received grants from the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is an alum of the Whitney Independent Study Program and has an MFA in Film and Video from California Institute for the Arts, and an MFA in Performance and Performance Studies from Pratt Institute. Jaguar Mary is an artist-in-residence at the Art/Life Institute in Kingston, NY.
Kennie Zhou aka Kendergartener is a Chinese artist based in Brooklyn, trained as a director and performer at NYU Tisch. They make performances that are inspired by butoh, drag, noise performance, post-modern dance, and more, concerning the multiplicity of identities, alternative narrative structures and referential systems, and so on. They have previously presented their works in spaces such as The Judson, The Glove, The Living Gallery, NYU Tisch Drama, La Mama, and UCCA.
Nicole Goodwin is the author of Warcries, as well as the 2018-2019 Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient, the 2018 Ragdale Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship Recipient, 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow as well as the 2013- 2014 Queer Art Mentorship Queer Art Literary Fellow. She published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” in the New York Times’ parentblog Motherlode. Additionally, her work ‘”Desert Flowers” was shortlisted and selected for performance by the Women’s Playwriting International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa
Deity Delgado: Deity Delgado got her first opportunity to dance burlesque at the (Walker St) Blue Angel Cabaret in 1994,since then she’s performed in Ibiza, Spain for several years and has performed gigs in New York City at Penny Arcade’s BITCH!DYKE!FAGHAG!WHORE!, Velocity Chyaldd’s BadAss Burlesque, Hypergender Burlesque, Kitty Nights East Burlesque, Nursetie Burlesque, Dragon-I Hong Kong, Paradise Tanzibar (Munich, Germany). Deity currently works at The Box NYC, The Box Soho, The Slipper Room. Irene and her partner currently curate burlesque parties inside their home. It’s called Casa Delgado
Poet7: Poet7 was born January 30th, 1992 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Since his parents were active in the military they moved around very frequently. Poet7 lived in Washington, Japan, Maryland and Dc all before settling in Virginia at the age of 6. It wasn’t until 26 that Poet7 quit his job of 7 years and moved to New York City to pursue his creativity. Over the years Poet7 has performed at the Richmond Jazz festival in 2015 opening up for Smashmouth, a Def Jam showcase, and countless open mics in Virginia and New York. His work now includes spiritual poetry, producing, and engineering a hip-hop conscious sound in his home studio. Poet7 hopes to reveal the oneness of all in his work, and spread love through all he comes in contact with.
Cacia Zoo (WAITING ON CONFIRMATION): Cacia moved to NY to become an artist. She ended up doing many odd jobs that she hates instead while doing art & performance on the side. In 2019. She started doing stand up. It started off as a rant, she fell in love with comedy. “When life gives you lemon; take it and make jokes about it” She’s still working on deep self love. With every laugh, she finds it a bit easier to love herself.
Joseph Sledgianowski: Joseph Sledgianowski is a multimedia artist with a main basis in sound and performance. Continuously creating works poking at disassociation and misunderstanding through life. Blurring distance, seperation, depth and tension in giving a physical and mental definition. Joseph collaborates often and continues to curate underground events. He has performed all around the US, Mexico, Canada, and throughout Europe in Estonia, Poland, Germany, Scotland. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Lewis Derogene: Lewis Derogene, aka PhenomenaLewis is a multimedia artist from Haiti and is currently based in CT and NY. PhenomenaLewis’s main medium is digital photography, but she works with drawing, painting, mixed media, sculpture, video, performance and poetry. Her works have to do with the state of being human involving the mind’s influences from its surroundings and that can be spiritual, political, sociological, and other elements. There are many inspiring factors that contribute to her work besides people and their behaviors; music and different geographical locations.
Sindy Butz is an interdisciplinary visual artist, artistic researcher and educator. Butz’s art practice is project based and spans the disciplines of performance art, sculptural installation, performance based photography and video art, video sculpture and coaching and consulting through art and movement. She was born in the communist German Democratic Republic and raised in the suburbs of East Berlin. Butz is living and working in New York since 2009. She received her B.F.A. in sculpture from the AKI- ARTez Netherlands, a M.F.A. in Art in Context from the Institute of Art in Context, University of the Arts (UdK), Berlin Germany.
Website www.sindybutz.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sindybutz/
Marina Abramovic Institute https://mai.art/hearth
Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican artist with a background in neuroscience. Her work is essentially multidisciplinary, feminist, and rooted in bio-behavioral research. Explorations of gender constructions, performativity and identity, and the politics of migration are seen and experienced in her installations, which often include video, sound, photography, mapping, light, and performance. Her work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, at the Radical Women Latin American Art Exhibit, Chashama Space to Present, Grace Exhibition Space, Glasshouse Gallery, The Queens Museum, Panoply Lab, Art in Odd Places in NYC; RAW during Miami Art Week; the Semel and Huret & Spector Gallery in Boston, and the SPACE Gallery and Bunker Projects in Pittsburgh; in Mexico, at El Monumento a la Revolución and La Explanada del MUAC, during the Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro and El Vicio; also participated in the Nuit Blanche Festival in Saskatoon, Canada. @ArantxaAraujo
Ronit Levin Delgado is an Israeli–born, New York–based multidisciplinary visual artist and a Fulbright Scholar. Levin Delgado graduated from MSU, NJ, MFA Studio Art program, and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, BFA Fine Art program. As a performance artist, Levin Delgado has performed at The Cell, Grace Exhibition Space, House of Yes, Paper Box, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, EFA in NYC and many other art festivals, galleries and independent venues worldwide as well as participated in many international collaborations. Her work is featured in both private and public collections. Website: https://www.ronitlevindelgado.com/
Iren Kamyshev (@art.irka) is a multidisciplinary dancer and performing
artist. She was born in Estonia and grew up in Israel.
Iren served in the IDF as an ‘Outstanding Dancer’ and graduated from
the ‘Maslul’ professional dance program, directed by Naomi Perlov
(Angelin Preljocaj). Ms. Kamyshev received her B.A in dance, along with a teaching certification, from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. (JAMD) Iren is an experienced freelance choreographer, dancer, teacher and producer. Her original works have been performed both in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She recently moved to New York City to continue her artistic
journey. Iren has worked in collaboration with many choreographers and
companies in Israel, California, and New York City, including
MakesounD-Music & Dance Projects, Iris Marko, Lilach Orenstein, Blind
Tiger Society, Jiemin Yang, Emilee Lord, and Kristina Bermudez, among
others. Iren’s experience as an immigrant imbues her art with a unique,
multicultural perspective, allowing her to communicate and connect
with her audience through the universal language of MOVEMENT.
This event is a safe community space, social distancing and masks are required, in the spirit of radical inclusion and personal accountability so we can all safely celebrate LIVE ART.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/296603231779668/
