Dessert Train (Video Still, 2018)
Check out the great shout out to the upcoming Chocolate Factory Season including Creative Residencies curated by Blaze Ferrer including the return of GOOD DAY GOD DAMN!
And keep your eyes HERE for updates on dates and times!
For the final Sunday Service of the spring season, curated by Mariana Valencia, performance, film and sound artists explore notions of solid states. Featuring Ayano Elson, Jordan Lord, lily bo with Julia Santoli, and Jean Carla Rodea!
Sunday, June 3, 2018 | 7:00 pm | RSVP on fb HERE
They ask whether something that’s solid is something that can be pressed into, dislocated or broken— Are solid states reliable? Through observations of shorelines, the stages of ice and wax they find sustenance in time as the symbology of open chests attune us to the other. Imagery, live performance and sound interpret these transitions that find a homes within flux.
About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
Image Credit: Drawing by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot
Balasubramanian brings together artists, astronomers, and artist-astronomers to show and tell stories of transformation. The evening becomes a great deal of magical fun. Featuring JP Ventura, Ellianan Schwab, Sophia Mak + Bex Kwan, Mark Popinchalk and Moiya McTier. A dataset becomes music; a telescope reading becomes Art Deco; dust becomes a system; a shift in planetary motion becomes a folk tale; a rock becomes a family.
Sunday, May 6, 2018 | 7:00pm RSVP on fb HERE
“We were peering into this darkness, crisscrossed with voices, when the change took place: the only real, great change I’ve ever happened to witness, and compared to it the rest is nothing.”
—Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics
About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
Image: From the Ashes, Rena Anakwe. Courtesy of the artist.
The third season of Sunday Service returns curated by artist Rena Anakwe! Tackling her interest in the ways we manifest healing, she brings us Sharon De La Cruz, Johann Diedrick, Delphine Fawundu, GENG, and Pamela Liou! This Sunday Service offers a glimpse into the ways that five artists evoke their own healing and discovery through various forms of media, storytelling and ritual.
Sunday, April 8, 2018 | 7:00pm | RSVP on fb HERE
In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING, Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”
About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
Saturday, March 24, 2018 | 7pm | $10/$5 | The Theater at MAD
Click here to purchase tickets
Good Day God Damn is a forty-minute performance and multimedia installation by At Play performing artist-in-residence Stephanie Acosta, featuring live performers Leslie Cuyjet and Angie Pittman and video created in collaboration with artists Mimi Gabriel and Jessie Young.
Developed through discursive research and rigorous ensemble work, Good Day God Damn employs video projection, sound, and live performance to consider the fractured American landscape, transforming MAD’s Theater in the process. Acosta and her community-turned-cabal of performers flow through domestic borders, mingle with the extraterrestrial, and unpack the limitations of land, drawing on cinematic thriller conventions in an exploration of terror, tectonic shifts, psychedelic self-harm, and toxic monuments.
This work-in-progress showing marks the culmination of Acosta’s At Play residency. It is the first in a multi-installment series the artist is developing that engages movement research and experimental film structures to tear through the personal in the terrain.
Good Day God Damn - Extracted Excerpt
Traveling through the fractured American landscape, looming vibrations push the ground up and the cosmos down as our community-turned-cabal explores domestic terror as self-harm. Through the lens of a thriller our cell flows through domestic borders, mingles with the extraterrestrial and unpacks landlocked limitations through discursive research and rigorous ensemble development. This live event will include two GDGD ensemble members in person, and many others in absentia.
Performers/Collaborators: Performing Live Mimi Gabriel + Jessie Young (Developed along with Angie Pittman + Leslie Cuyjet) Dur. 15 min
. . . . . . . . . . . More Info on Pies and Performance Below. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pie & Performance*winter - Saturday, March 17 - Tickets at door: $10-$20 (sliding scale)
8pm Doors 8:30-10pm | 16 St. Francis Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11216
Pie & Performance gathers artist and audience interested in activating empathy and steeping in togetherness. The performances take place in various rooms, hallways, and corners of a three-story home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. And, there is always pie! Organized seasonally by Amity Jones, Kirsten Schnittker, and Tara Sheena.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .*program*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Good Day God Damn - Extracted Excerpt by Stephanie Acosta | stephanieacosta.org
Performing Live Mimi Gabriel + Jessie Young Developed along with Angie Pittman + Leslie Cuyjet
untitled (panorama study II) by Laura Bartczak | laurabartczak.squarespace.com
collaborators: Laurel Atwell, Katelyn Hales, Corinne Cappelletti, Kay Ottinger, Amity Jones
Void: Honest Rituals for Lost Souls (working title) by Raha Behnam | rahabehnam.com
#myroomchronicles by Evelyn Lilian Sánchez Narvaez
King by Kyle Marshall | kmchoreography.com
chance realization + history by Sarah Snider | sarah-gwen.com
Image credit: Scott Shaw
To kick off the spring season of Sunday Service, curator Jess Pretty invites artists to respond to the notion of critical desire and the exploration of radical thriving as a methodology for taking up spaces we claim to reside in. Featuring artists Trinity Dawn Bobo, Taylor Crichton, DJ JCLEF, Amanda Krische, and Evelyn Sanchez
Sunday, March 4th, 2018 | 7:00pm | RSVP on fb HERE
Jess Pretty states, “i’m interested in rigorously interrogating pleasure as a way of living past survival, seeking other worlds and times and spaces for art. other possibilities for our delicate bodies to be present in performance. questioning how are we constantly evaluating the stakes involved in our work-making process. the labor of being unapologetic. i desire work rooted in the fantastic that helps formulate how to queer our own possibilities and modes of migration.”
About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.
This killer line up can't be beat! We are so thrilled to be back with another season of mad creators brining vibes and modes of engagement together for our performance/discourse series. This work is only made possible by the efforts of my Co-Founder/Programmer Alexis Wilkinson and the gang over at Knockdown Center. See you SUNDAY!!
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performance and presentations that bring together a mulitiplicy of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdixciplinary endeavors, and diversity in forma showcase in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Spring Schedule 2018
March 4 | 7pm: Curator Jess Pretty
April 8 | 7pm: Rena Anakwe
May 6 | 7pm: Curator Janani Balasubramanian
June 3 | Curator Mariana Valencia
Deep Decent is a 20 min long video response to a long term collaborative process with choreographer Jessie Young on her ensemble dance piece titled Descend Sky. Following the long history of art as discourse I came home after a long studio visit with Young and created this expanded video work in response to the involved world of deep sea, the horror of reflection and the impossibility of true direction.
You can watch a snacky sample HERE or below!
A 3 channel projection of Deep Descent showed along with Young's performance of Descend Sky as part of Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts in December 2017.
Composer Jason Finkelman
Photo by Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design
Museum of Art and Design - Choreographer in Residence
So excited to announce that I will be spending the Fall into Winter at the Museum of Art and Design as Choreographer in Residence! I'll be developing the first installment of an interdisciplinary project currently titled Good Day God Damn. There will be showings in February 2018 at MAD, Joining me as inaugural Choreographers in Residence are NIC Kay and Steven Reker, invited by the brilliant Danny Orendorff we will tackle sound and play and create new works in the new year. Check overly serious pic of me below!
Original Collage by Sarah Patten
We are beyond ourselves with excitement to announce The Ladies Almanack WORLD PREMIERE is an official selcection for Outfest LA as part of the Platinum section!!!
More festivals to come but for now mark your calendars for Wednesday July 12th @ 9:45pm at the Directors Guild of America! We'll be at Outfest all week so come say hello and see more of what this iconic festival has to offer.
Online tickets on sale NOW! (PRESALE is SOLD OUT but there will be STAND BY!)
It has been a long and complex road to create this feature film from scratch. It is only through the support of our community and our commitment to this team and story that any of this is possible and we are so excited to be starting the road to you the audience.
THANK YOU to all of the artists, makers, friends, family, lesbians, queers, poets, lovers, who helped us create this world. We are forever in your debt!
Forever your proud producer,
Stephanie
The Ladies Almanack - Platinum - DGA 2
(USA, 2017, 87 min) - World Premiere
Directed By: Daniel Shy
Cast: Hélène Cixous, Guinevere Turner and Eileen Myles
Learn the secrets of 1928’s Parisian lesbian literary circle. Based on Djuna Barnes’s book following lesbian Casanova Natalie Barney, this Super 8 film explores the rich queer femme social scene of jazz-age Paris. Spanning time, the large cast, including Hélène Cixous, Eileen Myles, and Guinevere Turner, portrays the lives of artists and luminaries (Gertrude Stein, Collete, Dolly Wilde), exposing the lush lesbian landscape that gave rise to some of literature’s most treasured writing. World Premiere.
Preceded By: Overload/Babel
Dir: Linzi Juliano/Kayla Tange, 2 min.
Image courtesy of Same As Sister
This month's Sunday Service is bringing longtime loves Same As Sister on as curators. Titled Pairings in Horror: The Visceral + The Visual Impact, the evening will feature live and digital performances by Lamy Istrefi Jr. with Leo Genovese + Mersiha Mesihovic/CircuitDebris,Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects + Gil Sperling, plus a special reading by Rie Yamaguchi-Borden. Each pair will utilize live and digital elements to emphasize the sensory pleasure that best represents their collaboration between disciplines. Set in a haunted house, the artists’ unique interpretations of the shared text will become rooms into their uncanny and unpredictable imaginations, perhaps even nightmares.
About Sunday Service
Sunday Service is a curated series of short-form live performances across mediums. Taking place the first Sunday of each month in the Ready Room, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of in-progress works, performances, and presentations, anchored by a framing principle such as a question, proposition, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service encourages works in progress and interdisciplinary endeavors showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster experimentation and critical discourse amongst peers.
A continued delving into the sensory worlds created for Potted Palm V.1, the artist returns to the studio to expand on the evolving relationship with an increasingly distant memory of home.
I Am A Potted Palm V. 2 , Saturday, June 24th @ 8:40p
Edge Zone as part of Miami Performance International Festival.
In the wake of this invitation to perform in my home town, which I have never done, brought into relief the extent to which my recent practice has worked to create a memory phantom of this place that made me. Using this place ness from which to reimagine what it means to feel estranged from that which held my families exiled past. A work created to both conjure and harmonize what it had meant to be so far so long, now returns to it’s place of birth and it’s fertile bone yard.
For more info on Miami Performance International Festival check out their site www.miamiperformancefestival.org
Image Credit: James Allister Sprang, Untitled, 2017. Giclee Print, 17in x 25in.
So ready for upcoming Sunday Service hosted by Andrea Arrubla as part of BABZ FAIR 2017 and the line up is killer!!! The evening will reflect and celebrate the legacy of the seminal poet Essex Hemphill established among contemporary literary and visual artists with Tiona Nekkia McClodden, James Allister Sprang, Peter BD, and Karmenife X.
The 5th annualBABZ FAIR 2017 presented by Blonde Art Books is a weekend long event that features small press art and poetry publishers, and individual artist projects, alongside a program of performance, readings, and workshops. BABZ Fair will be taking place Friday, June 2 through Sunday, June 4, 2017.
Over the years the BABZ Fair has grown dramatically and this year the fair will feature art books and zines by over 100 publishers and artists from across the country. This year we are collaborating with artist Andrea Arrubla to produce the weekend programming. The full program schedule, including a new expanded program series, and workshop series, will be announced shortly.
Sunday Service is a curated series of short-form live performances across mediums. Taking place the first Sunday of each month in the Ready Room, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of in-progress works, performances, and presentations, anchored by a framing principle such as a question, proposition, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service encourages works in progress and interdisciplinary endeavors showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster experimentation and critical discourse amongst peers.
Image courtesy of Caitlin Baucom Image: Walter Wlodarczyk, 'Activation IV: Fire' from GENERATION SHIP
NEXT WEEK we are BACK with the raging Sunday Service: Caitlin Baucom presents... An Only Child, Orlando Estrada, Greem Jellyfish, PAUL (Angelina Dreem),QUALIATIK, & Lorelei Ramirez.
The evening, titled 'A Raging Grace,' will gather artists across disciplines who are lit from within by a burning well, and rather than combust use its fuels to go higher and brighter.
‘It’s like having a sickness that gets more fierce as it passes on to wellness. We don’t have to view that period as an invitation to despair, but as a sign of potential transformation… whatever pain we are experiencing…’ –bell hooks
Working across performative disciplines, they are each also active as organizers and participants in their broader communities, acknowledging that the roots of rage go beyond the merely personal and its power can feed the world. Together ‘we admit that we don’t want to see the world blown up; we are for the human species.’
–Andrea Juno & V. Vale, Angry Women.
Sunday Service is a curated series of short-form live performances across mediums. Taking place the first Sunday of each month in the Ready Room, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of in-progress works, performances, and presentations, anchored by a framing principle such as a question, proposition, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service encourages works in progress and interdisciplinary endeavors showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster experimentation and critical discourse amongst peers.
