Performance | Performance Space New York

John Giorno Octopus Series

 
Thank God For Abortion presents: “They Live”
A live studio audience/ live-streamed abortion broadcast abortion talk and abortion variety show, come enjoy the finest in post-born infotainment.
 
With extra special guests:
 
Pauli Cakes
Founder of xCakesNyc, Community builder, DJ, lover, and artist
 
Morgan Cousins
Planned Parenthood Community Organizer, Region 1
 
Viva Ruiz
Thank God For Abortion
 
Christopher Udemezue aka Neon Christina
Artist, Activist, and founder of RAGGA NYC
 
Chelsea Williams-Diggs
Interim Executive Director, New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF)
 
Dance Embodiment: Megan Curet
Dancer, choreographer, educator, Ph.D. candidate community organizer, and movement facilitator
Song Embodiment: Michael Love Michael
Musician, writer, artist, lightworker
 
At the conclusion of the program visitors will leave the space in a performative enactment ushered by Ruiz as an ejection rhyming with abortion itself.
 
Beanbags, Mocktails, recuerdos, and K95 masks provided
 

Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.

John Giorno Octopus Series

With: Aarron Ricks, Akanbi, and Ley
 
In the Valley Pools our Sorrow is inspired by nightclubs as communal spaces of care, emotion, and expression. On December 1, we will together open a valley within the relentless pulses of daily life.
 
Our world today is possessed by extraordinary change and turmoil–climate crisis, political upheaval, and an ongoing pandemic create difficult, often violent, conditions for life. Amidst these conditions, capitalist expectations for unceasing production continue. We are driven to continue without pause despite our pain.
 
Instead, we make space to pause and feel together. In the heart of this valley, we allow our sorrow, anger, hope, exhaustion and drive to keep trying to pour into the fore. These feelings are our sanity.
 
Nocturnal Medicine creates a deconstructed nightclub that repositions essential elements of the nightclub experience–deep listening, collective movement, and catharsis. An immersive soundscape invokes reflection while a series of cues performed by Aarron Ricks invite guests into stillness, movement, and expression. A ritual sculpture is co-created over the course of the night. In the second half of the evening, DJ Akanbi takes the helm for a potent set, moving us from a meditative state to a high-octane, cathartic dance.
 
With In the Valley Pools our Sorrow, we acknowledge the painful challenges we face. We honor the strength it takes to weather them. We weave connection to our bodies, one another, and our world.
 

Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.

John Giorno Octopus Series

Performers: Jeffrey Meris and Vivian Vivas
 
Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.
 
*Audio Description is available for the in-person performance.

all things under dog, where two things are always true

 
With Joy Norton, Amanda Wallace, Kate Williams, Maxi Hawkeye Canion, and Reed Rushes.
Original music by ADR (Aaron David Ross) and including music by Eartheater.
 
In all things under dog, where two things are always true, Monica Mirabile looks at the ‘mafia’ as an outlaw ecosystem rising from a lack of resources to cultivate a support structure. Working on a therapeutic level within this architecture, Mirabile builds out a collapsing of time from the combined personal histories of the performers and herself—working through questions of grief, trauma, support, and ultimately resilience in family systems and the society they are influenced by. all things under dog travels through symbolic representations of a house—with five distinct rooms dividing The Keith Haring Theatre—and a black hole. Heightening the intimacy of the work, the audience, viewing the piece in small groups, move through the rooms with the performance.
 
Mirabile seeks to bring the “often healing, life-affirmation that happens for the performers in rehearsal” to the performance. In this way, all things under dog, where two things are always true exists along the continuum of the work the artist has been doing at Performance Space, including leading Open Movement, and her participation as a cohort member of 02020.
 

Access Provisions: ASL will be available on November 19 at 6:30 pm.

Co-presented with Creamcake Berlin/HAUHebbel am Ufer.

DIVINE JUSTICE

 
*This is a durational performance, with intermissions for meals and rest. All ticket-holders will also have access to a live stream. You will receive an email shortly before the event containing a live stream link and program.
 

In her 24-hour durational performance DIVINE JUSTICE, the poet, playwright, and astrologer, Ariana Reines has investigated the myths and scholarship around Medea, in order to stage a different kind of courtroom, one designed to mirror the inviolable and fundamentally uncriminal space inside each human being, no matter how vicious, no matter how abused. Disillusioned by failures of the American justice system, the artist asks what would happen if the planet Venus actually structured the American Judiciary, as it presides over Justice in the Zodiac. How would a justice system that truly answers to Venus, a planet of love and good fortune, be structured, how would wrongdoing be corrected, how would damage be addressed, how would victims be made whole? In DIVINE JUSTICE, Reines collapses trial and sentence, judge and jury, into light and sound– a single summer day of Venus tested, and time served.

 
*Content Notice
Please be advised, this event is structured around the Medea myth and contemporary events, and contains candid talk about sex, sexual violence, and gender. It is intended for an adult audience.
 

A 24-hour performance is also just an opportunity to literally spend a day with people, some of whom you’ll know, some who will be new to you. We want you to feel as physically comfortable as possible, and we are also inviting you to join the performers in going beyond what would ordinarily be comfortable. Seating is on a carpeted floor and chairs will also be available. Snacks, non-alcoholic beverages, and coffee, as well as breakfast, will be provided; there will also be breaks for food and physical refreshment. We recommend that you dress comfortably and bring with you:
 
⁠—A picnic basket/snack bag containing the foods and drinks you love.
 
—Meditation cushion, sheepskin, bolster, or pillow— a portable soft thing that helps your body feel held and comfortable.
 
—A toiletry bag containing your personal care essentials.

Jim Fletcher, “Jason”
Birgit Huppuch, “Medea”
Ariana Reines, “Chorus”
Yva Las Vegass as themself


 

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