17 Ugly Years: A Performance Party for Ugly Duckling Presse
Wednesday March 17th
7.30 pm to midnight

To celebrate this new series, many artists, musicians, and performers will create events, dances, happenings, music, and experiences to help you party like it’s the fin de siecle!

See the slideshow here

Featuring:

Deville Cohen will install and perform “Flat Tire” a 3-dimensional living diorama;
Ellie Ga will do individualized Card Readings, based on her recent performance lecture “The Fortunetellers”;
playwright and performer Kristen Kosmas will do a one-woman 12-character performance of her play Hello Failure, recently published by UDP’s Emergency Playscript Series;
artist and musician Marisol Limon Martinez (from The Reading) will install and perform “Keyboard Convent,” an interactive keyboard performance;
Urara Tsuchiya will host a Naked Sewing Circle, where guests come naked and (with Urara’s help) sew the very clothes they wear for the rest of the party;
the Ashcan Orchestra will play music for violin, toy piano, glockenspiel, cymbal, floortom, toy organ, and deskbells;
You Nakai (whose scores are forthcoming from the UDP Emergency Playscript Series) will perform “Tria Partio Voki,” a solo musical composition for a party;
Jim Findlay performs a shard from his new work-in-progress “Botanica”;
members of the NTUSA will perform excepts from their new work in progress, The Golden Veil, by Normandy Sherwood;
visual and performance artist Gaël Peltier will perform “The Big Time,” in which the artist changes his own envelope by gaining weight, incorporating classic american comedy.

Also featuring Karinne Keithley singing requests just for you (with a ukelele), interactive pangolins by Jeffrey Joe Nelson, music by Joey Wyoming and Holiday Inn, video installation by Mike Taylor and Iki Nakagawa; films projected by Joel Schlemowitz; occasional dances by Laboratory Theater directed by Yvan Greenberg, an elevator performance by Filip Marinovich, and a new solo work by Japanese artist and punk musician Yoshihito Mizuuchi.

Refreshments will be served; imbibe them at your own risk, intellectuals!

Free admission Donation are welcome

www.uglyducklingpresse.org

THURSDAY MARCH 11th
7.30 to 11 pm

Supermachine Poetry Journal Launch Party. Featuring readings by Christian Hawkey, Genya Turovskaya, and others. Music by Body Actualized Control! For the past two years the Supermachine Reading Series has stood among the others as the hippest and most invigorating poetry series in the city. Having featured such visionary poets and writers as Trinie Dalton, Joshua Beckman, Dorothea Lasky, and Matvei Yankelevich, Supermachine moves fearlessly into print with an aesthetic that is hopeful, immature, accessible, daring, cosmic, anti-slam poetry (duh!), anti-academic (thankfully), and many other things.

Contributors: Lindsey Boldt, Brandon Brown, Brent Cunningham , Christian Hawkey, Will Hubbard, Paul Killebrew, Noelle Kocot , Natalie Lyalin, Derek McCormack, Lee Norton, Douglas Piccinnini Genya Turovskaya Jeffrey Yang Matthew Zapruder

www.supermachinepoetry.com

Free admission

Giuseppe Stampone

Born in Cluses (France) in 1972,  and works  in Milan and in New York.
The artist has shifted away from personally defining the event, which was intimately experienced by the spectator, and now builds it up interactively with the viewer, basing it on considerations about present-day social and environmental issues.
The first of these was Acquerelli per non sprecare la vita [Watercolours Not to Waste Life], on safeguarding water resources. It involved 10,000 children with Progetto Mondo of the MLAL NGO, as well as Amnesty International, which both intend to extend the project to 30 countries around the world.

The Invisible Dog Elevator

Originally an antique looking freight elevator, Giuseppe Stampone turned the space into a unique art piece using quotes from Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is written on the walls of the shaft. Starting out in Hell on the first floor, the elevator lifts you up through Purgatory, up to Paradise on the third floor. This work was commisioned by No Longer Empty for the Grand Opening of The Invisible Dog on October 2009 and is part of the permanent collection of the Invisible Dog.

www.giuseppestampone.net

Jeff Amurao

Do you remember? what color was it? was it part of a dream or did it really happen?
photographs help us to remember. entwined in all photographic images is an eternal present captured as history, understood in an ever shifting here and now.
the truth of the event is as much a part of our present as of our past, and even the future colors what we see. photographs frame our memory and from them we cannot help but conjure emotions that are part fiction.

www.jeffamurao.com

Ian Trask

Ian Trask is an emerging artist living in New York City. As a sculptor, he explores the inherent aesthetics of material waste.  His compositions present the disassembly of salvaged, once-functional objects, and their re-assembly into aesthetically motivated arrangements.  He argues that one of modern civilization’s greatest tragedies is the abundance of waste that results from an out-of-control, consumptive materialism in an industrially advanced global marketplace.   By choosing trash as his medium he reduces the material demand he places on his own immediate environment while also suggesting to his viewers the importance of redefining how we look at our waste.

http://forkartist.mosaicglobe.com/

Megan Hershman

For the past few years, I have been exploring ideas of fantasy and illusion though the construction and fabrication of dioramas. After assembling these sometimes-abstract sets, I then photograph them using a large-format view camera to create images that evoke a sense of wonder. These scenes I photograph are built within the confines of the studio, allowing me to control most aspects of the space I am creating. The materials that are used are often objects that are found or made within the studio as well. I recontextualize elements that might be found in an actual surreal space such as light,water, or fog. These components shift the viewer’s consciousness and sense of place. By photographing these spaces I hope to emphasize the viewers relationship between perception and wonder.

www.meganhershman.com

Nemo Hoffman

Equations are the key to understanding my art. The sum total of my habits, vices and influential ideas calculated  through wood, metal and plastic in order to compute my aesthetic solutions.  These formulas culminate in three-dimensional pieces of perspective & self-reflection.
Nemo Andrew was born in Washington D.C. in 1976.

www.fauxmo.com

Eirini Vourloumis

Eirini Vourloumis is a freelance photojournalist and writer focusing on features and reportage. Born and raised in Athens, Greece she is currently based in Brooklyn, NY and is a contributing photographer for the New York Times and Polaris images. She is also a contributing writer for the NYTimes Lens blog focusing on documentary and photojournalism. She is interested in covering human interest stories and social issues.

www.eiriniphoto.com

Liz Burow

Liz Burow specializes in textile designs that consider the relationship between nature and the constructed world. Her latest work concentrates on blurring the line between indoors and outdoors, hardscape and softscape. Inspired by the topography and greenery of the natural world, Liz has created works that both respect and tease our efforts to domesticate the environment. Her felt-based wall hangings transform our city life into interior décor and discern the beauty of roads and interchanges; her textile designs toy with our urban landscape, transforming familiar symbols into unusual patterns. Liz’s work considers our impact on our public space, and conceives of ways of bringing this space into our homes.

Liz works in a multitude of creative areas, and makes artwork as well as site specific commissioned design work for architects, interior designers, theatrical productions and private clients. She also teaches design studios within the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Her previous professional experience includes work as an architect for large cultural projects, set designs for theater and opera, interior and branding designs for the hospitality and entertainment sectors, and media graphic design. Liz earned her masters in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and her bachelor of arts in architecture from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. She is originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

www.lizburow.com

SUSAN WEINTHALER

I see it as the artist’s responsibility to recognize truths. One truth I have been exploring in my work is how complex systems are built by applying simple rules. My BITS are such a system. Each BIT measures 2” x 2”, is individually treated and magnetized, then placed en masse on a large sheet of steel attached directly to the wall. This simple mounting mechanism makes for infinitely variable compositions, as the BITS are not supposed to be static. Within these parameters, vastly different BITS have been made using a wide range of materials and treatments, but I have only just begun to explore the potential.  Art should have a life force. I am interested in different theories of the universe and am developing my BITS as an equivalent visual language in art through which I can better translate the world. Life is not rigid, why should art be?  Even though I work on distinct collections, ultimately I consider all of my BITS as one epic work of art with interchangeable parts where anything is possible.

www.weinthaler.com

SUNDAY MARCH 28th
6.30pm

Full Moon Vocalise bringing the Lakota Flute tradition to all New Yorkers in a celebration of the Ant  by artist Xavier Roux. Tiokasin Ghosthorse, seventh generation Lakota flute maker will play the flute. Francis Cholle will join him vocally and facilitate the group process. In this simple and profound ritual, called Vocalise, our voices inspired by the Lakota flute, join together and awaken us to all that is. The Lakota Flute entrains the voice, which in turn frees us from the dualistic nature of the mind. The Lakota nation is called the singing nation. Lakota people have long known the power of the voice on the human psyche, which latest cognitive science research has confirmed. Simply come with an open mind and an open heart to experience a deep sense of connection and renewal after this session. No vocal or musical training is required. Active participation can also be silent.

Free admission – Donation suggested $5

This event is organized by The Human Company Productions with the generous support of The Invisible Dog Art Center and artist Xavier Roux

Contact Francis Cholle
The Human Company Productions
francis@thehumancompany.com
1 917 539 3849