contents
curatorial statement
in order of performance:
- alejandro yoshii
- robert hickerson + alejandra simon
- angeli
- michael watson
- sara jimenez
- cecilie beck
- jeffery berg
architectural installation
mural
view toward manhattan from rooftop photo credit patrick templeton
http://cargocollective.com/whatmightbelefttosay
curatorial statement In 1955, Allen Ginsberg published his widely controversial celebration of the “angelheaded hipsters” that propelled the culture of his day. His epic poem, while touching on a wide range of themes such as sexuality, class, and otherness, praises the bohemian dialogue which is part and parcel of the urban experience in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The “greatest minds of his generation” came together on stoops and in smoke-filled rooms to discuss ideas that would eventually spread across the world in movements that would change the cultural landscape forever. The poem is a sonnet to those who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills of Empire State out of the moon In Howl, dialogue, place, and the artist are intertwined as a trinity of cultural creation. This summer, we take to the rooftops to continue these conversations which are an indispensable part of our shared urban experience. - Alicia DeBrincat and Patrick Templeton
performance stage photo credit patrick templeton
alejandro yoshii photo credit alicia debrincat
alejandro yoshii Glory Howl “Glory Howl was a performance piece consisting of a structure similar to a bathroom stall with a hole on the wall, and an audio recording of Allen Ginsberg reading the poem Footnote to Howl. I distorted the audio to make Ginsberg’s voice deeper and slower. I carried the structure slowly onto the stage with my pants down, limiting my walk to short steps. Once on the stage, I knelt down, put my mouth on the hole, and lip-synched the audio. Following the lip-synch, I slowly carried the structure off stage, revealing obscene and poetic grafitti inscribed on the other side.” - Alejandro Yoshii
alejandro yoshii photo credit alicia debrincat
alejandro yoshii photo credit alicia debrincat
robert hickerson + alejandra simon photo credit alicia debrincat
robert hickerson + alejandra simon Neither Flowers nor Chocolate “In rereading HOWL, I became especially interested in how Allen Ginsberg describes the seeking of pleasure, and the repercussions of fulfilling those desires. I approached Alejandra Simon, a former dancer, vintage fashion historian, and dear friend to collaborate to create Neither Flowers nor Chocolate. The performance utilized a spandex harness, something I have worked with previously to materialize interpersonal relationships. Through working with Alejandra, the resulting performance surpassed my expectations, creating a demonstration of sexuality as experienced by the individual. Ultimately this mirrored HOWL, focusing not so much on the repercussion of over-indulgence, but on how we alone experience sexual togetherness.� - Robert Hickerson
robert hickerson and alejandra simon photo credit alicia debrincat
robert hickerson and alejandra simon photo credit alicia debrincat
angeli photo credit alicia debrincat
angeli Unveiling Veiling “Unveiling Veiling is a process that engages in conceptual methods and variables as a mode of exploring orientations of concealing and revealing the text and the body in translations into performance. Through repurposing materials and piecing together dislocated histories, it revolves the focal point to absences and margins to open up spaces of possibility. I ask friends who have lived in New York for varying lengths of time to make a new text from Howl by selectively blocking out words in black. I use this text as source material for a performance, creating space for mistranslations and new ways of reading. Aleatory points, the veil as a root, we take to the sky.� - Angeli
angeli photo credit patrick templeton
angeli photo credit patrick templeton
angeli photo credit alicia debrincat
angeli photo credit tamara yurovsky
michael watson + performance assistance provided by caitlin turski photo credit alicia debrincat
michael watson
+ performance assistance provided by caitlin turski In Remembrance of Me In remembrance of me is a live performance exploring the themes of loss, immortality and charity. In this performance, I approach the audience slowly holding an empty wooden chalice. I carefully place the chalice onto the ground and walk behind a platform containing a form wrapped in white sheer fabric. After a pause, I carefully unwrap the fabric to reveal a large sum of rice. A support performer approaches with water and a towel. She pours water over my hands and I wash them before touching the rice. I gently spread the rice over the platform. As I take some rice into one hand, I stand up and walk over to an audience member and gesture for the their hand. Cradling their hand, I pour the rice into it and say, “Will you please pass this along?� The rice begins to circulate around the space, moving from one hand to the next. I walk back to the rice and continue this ritual with different people in the audience. After several minutes, I make my way back to the platform of rice and kneel before it. I slowly wrap the rice back inside the fabric, stand up and walk away. - Michael Watson
michael watson + performance assistance provided by caitlin turski photo credit alicia debrincat
michael watson + performance assistance provided by caitlin turski photo credit alicia debrincat
jeffery berg photo credit alicia debrincat
jeffery berg AMERICAN BOY I could have been an American girl raised on promises. At seven, desperate for red flats, Reeboks with red laces instead. Played Petty on the piano for the July 4th picnic. Grill smoke in the air, I spun out onto the lawn, yearning for my red laces to be pigtail ribbons. Some years later, Petty’s song in The Silence of the Lambs, Brooke Smith singing along in the dark, patting the steering wheel, on her way to entrapment at the bottom of a concrete pit in the basement of Buffalo Bill – that deep-voiced, scarred-face I never wanted to end up like, tucking it in, prancing in the mirror with a boa. That same summer, my name shared with Dahmer, I read about him in Time in the dentist office. After all it was a great, big world with many people to run from. Freezer-packed genitals. The boy who almost got away. - Jeffery Berg (This poem first appeared in Assaracus.)
jeffery berg photo credit alicia debrincat
jeffery berg photo credit alicia debrincat
sara jimenez photo credit alicia debrincat
sara jimenez Crush and Release (Ode to fear) “In this second iteration of the series, Crush and Release, Jimenez performed squeezing a pomegranate until the fruit burst while reciting a quote from Marianne Williamson. Jimenez was inspired by the subtext of the poem Howl. In the poem debauchery, loss, wild artistic escapades and the city are described. Jimenez was interested in the soft-underbelly of these outward actions, such as the intense desire to connect, intimacy, identification and vulnerability. In Ancient Egypt, Greece and Isreal, the pomegranate has been a symbol of ambition, fruit of the dead, and fertility, respectively. Jimenez was interested in creating a charged pause where she would energetically connect and unite a diverse body of viewers through enacting and embodying tension and relief, while speaking words that have been used as spiritual guidance in contemporary western culture.� - Sara Jimenez
sara jimenez photo credit alicia debrincat
sara jimenez photo credit alicia debrincat
cecilie beck photo credit alicia debrincat
cecilie beck Heartbeat Generation “I was dressed like one of the therapists/doctors from “Rockland” - (Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital) Underneath the surface I was representing the patients Carl Solomon/Allen Ginsberg. On my body I had written words that were present in “Howl” that I could also relate to with my song Heartbeat.
As the darkness spreads over the city I think about the heartbeat in the sound we all walk along no matter if you’re pretty everybody’s got style in this town It takes 2 steps to find out whom you can trust and it takes 10 more to find out if it’s love Give it give it give it to me Give me your best Give it give it give it to me I don’t care about the rest Give it up give it up Give me a heartbeat Give it give it give it to me just give me a beat Give me a heartbeat So when you think or know you’ve lost your mind when you ain’t got no grain ain’t got no time I can’t tell you that you’ll be just fine but I can say you’ll be alright I can say you’ll be alright It takes someone shady to spot a shady gray and it takes courage to shine along the way Give it give it give it to me.... Oh oh oh Give it up for the Beat ( Generation )”
- Cecilie Beck
cecilie beck photo credit alicia debrincat
cecilie beck photo credit alicia debrincat
architectural installation Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl is a requiem for the “lost battalion of platonic conversationalists” for whom artistic creation hinged on “wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of tea-head joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn.” Art and the experience of the city’s raw and grimy spaces were inextricably bound. Yet Ginsberg describes these visionary artists as trapped in an institution where they “broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons.” 60 years later the artificial space of the gallery still dominates an art world that is seemingly indifferent to any connection to lived experience and the realities that artists celebrate and transform. Therefore, we propose a space that rips the white cube out of its lockbox and leaves it exposed and open on the rooftops of our own making. There will be no more whitewalled enclosures, only performers and viewers and the space between them filled with their moving and living and speaking and dreaming about how things might be otherwise. - Caitlin Turski + Patrick Templeton
architectural installation mural and stage photo credit alicia debrincat
architectural installation mural and stage photo credit patrick templeton
architectural installation audience area photo credit patrick templeton
mural west wall photo credit alicia debrincat
mural by grace hong “In celebration the 60th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, the mural Ginsberg Illuminated is inspired by the poet and his poems as its influence realized the series of rooftop performances. The mural spans across three walls of the rooftop’s central structure situated in relation to the white wall of the stage. Painted on the opposite wall from the stage is a lit light bulb and within it a portrait of Allen Ginsberg. From the light bulb radiates Lichtenberg figures wrapping along the sides of the walls connecting Ginsberg to the stage. Lichtenberg figures are electrical impressions from high voltage charges as they occur in solid, liquid and gaseous materials. These figures represent the projections of ideas, expression and movements inspiring the event’s performances. These symbolic orders of imagery reflect on the resonance of an conic work and revered poet as we continue to re-energize fresh interpretations of Howl.” - Grace Hong
mural north wall photo credit patrick templeton
mural north and west walls photo credit alicia debrincat
http://cargocollective.com/whatmightbelefttosay