Friday and Saturday, August 5 & 6
On Friday and Saturday, August 5 & 6, poets, artists, and critical writers converge to present a range of contemporary possibilities for writing both in and about art and performance. This weekend’s events are curated by Patricia Milder and staged in partnership with The Brooklyn Rail, an independent journal offering critical perspectives on arts, politics, and culture.
Friday, August 5 7:00 pm Readings by John Yau, Patricia Milder, and Additional Writers from The Brooklyn RailFollowed by a Pork and Poetry! pig roast and music by New Zion Trio
Both writing and performance exist in time. For this Friday night event, poet-critics share work that escapes neat boxes and definitions, and seeks to capture live experience, whether located in art, performance, or life itself.
"John Yau is an alert critic of contemporary art, so it's not surprising that his poetry seems inflected by the work of experimental artists such as Pollock, Guston, Eva Hesse and Jasper Johns. Like Frank O'Hara, another great poet who was also an art critic, he startles by his openness to a wide band of influences." — John Ashbery
About the Artists
John Yau is the author of more than 50 books of poetry, criticism, and fiction. His collaborations with artists have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris. He is the Art Editor of The Brooklyn Rail, and lives in New York City.
Patricia Milder is a writer, art critic, and independent curator. She is the Managing Art Editor of The Brooklyn Rail and regularly contributes to PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and Artcritical. She is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts, New York.
Featuring Jamie Saft (piano/keyboards), Larry Grenadier (acoustic bass), and Craig Santiago (drums), New Zion Trio unites Roots Reggae, Dub, Doom, and Jazz styles in an extra-mellow acoustic setting. Burning Reggae and Dancehall beats provide the platform for complex original Jazz and Soul compositions, forging a unique and deep new world of sound. NZT’s debut album, Fight Against Babylon, was released in May 2011 on Veal Records. Individually, they’ve performed and recorded with Pat Methany, Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, B-52’s,John Zorn, Foghat, and Donavan.
Saturday, August 6, 2011 8:00 pm Performance as Language with Aynsley Vandenbroucke and Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Drawing on the disciplines of dance, visual art, and poetry, Aynsley Vandenbroucke and Jibade-Khalil Huffman individually translate written language into live, aesthetic experience.
Aynsley Vandenbroucke
Untitled
Untitled is a written dance performed by one woman, her computer, and, perhaps, a couple of friends. An intimate meditation on the movement of language, it examines the making of meaning and the subtle processes of creating art and companionship.
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Teen Wolf/Teen Wolf Too
Teen Wolf/Teen Wolf Too is a poem in the form of two movies projected side by side. A text in the form of subtitles is projected in alternating turns on each of the two screens. As the projections run, Huffman will improvise a sound collage/score for laptop, turntable, and cassette players.
“Jibade-Khalil Huffman issues electric lines interrupted by bursts of static. His poems are hazardous. I'd say be careful but you won't want to be." — Luc Sante
"’I'm obsessed with the movement of ideas and the choreography of language,' types Aynsley Vandenbroucke, her words projected on a screen. Those thoughts pervade "Untitled," a piece in which no one dances, but thoughts about dance and our relationship to art are gently, poetically, presented." — Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times
About the Artists
Choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke is Artistic Director of Mount Tremper Arts. Her work has been performed in New York City, San Francisco, and Brazil, and she is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Dance at Princeton University. movementgroup.org
Jibade-Khalil Huffman is the author of 19 Names For Our Band (Fence Books, 2008) and James Brown Is Dead (Future Plan and Program/Project Row Houses, 2011). He has exhibited and performed works of art and writing at MoMA/P.S.1, The Museum of Arts and Design, and the Tank in New York City.