Shows | Page 53 of 55 | Performance Space New York

“boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father”

Organized by Matias Viegener

Kathy Acker famously described the father of her main character Janey in Blood and Guts in High School as “boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father.” Centered on Acker’s notorious video with Alan Sondheim, Blue Tape, this screening program examines the urgency with which Acker approached sex, intimacy, relationships and writing in her work. Through this lens we look at clips of Acker reading, performing, and being interviewed from the 1970s to the 1990s—intimate, formal, and unpredictable.

Includes screening excerpts from:
Fuses (1966) by Carolee Schneemann
Blue Tape (1974) by Kathy Acker and Alan Sondheim
Variety (1983) by Bette Gordon
The South Bank Show: Kathy Acker, Season 7, Episode 13 (1984) by Alan Benson
Raw Heat, Kathy Acker (1977)
Kathy Acker at the ICA (1986)

Funding Credits

This event was made possible with support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

“In the beginning there was a young girl…”

Organized by Tina Satter with works by Jess Barbagallo with Lauren Bakst & Shana Fletcher, Ariana Reines, Jim Fletcher, I.U.D., Ser Brandon-Castro Serpas, Jeremy O. Harris with Jesse Rasmussen, Anne Waldman with Erika Hodges & Janice Lowe, Tina Satter with Emily Davis & Amber Gray, and Diamond Stingily

Kathy Acker: “In the beginning there was a young girl…” brings together a group of artists, writers, and performers whose practices and output at times recall the spirit of Kathy Acker and her work, but are also very different. Their collision with her writing and life offers us a necessary live communion with what Acker gave and what is still to come.

Funding Credits

In the beginning there was a young girl… was made possible with support from the Axe-Houghton Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Shubert Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Who Wants to Be Human All the Time

Work by Kathy Acker, Ser Brandon-Castro Serpas, Celia Hempton, I.U.D., Beatrice Marchi, Bjarne Melgaard, Alan Sondheim, Diamond Stingily, Women’s History Museum.

In 1974, 26-year-old Kathy Acker met the conceptual artist Alan Sondheim, and suggested a collaboration that would allow them to get to the bottom of their sexual attraction by exchanging “as much information about ourselves as possible.” The result is Blue Tape, an hour-long, highly charged and confrontational truth-and-sex tape. It is remarkable for its braveness, as well as the insight it gives into a young Acker, about to find her voice on sexuality, intimacy, family, and power relations–all themes that consistently recur throughout her oeuvre. For this group exhibition, Blue Tape will be shown next to works by contemporary artists in dialog with Acker.

Exhibition Program

Funding Credits

Who Wants to Be Human All the Time was made possible with support from the Royal Norwegian Consulate-General in New York, Howard Gilman Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons

Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons is a surreal, sexual, cinematic romp through nocturnal America.

Dane is excited about spending a quiet Autumn in Pepper Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio near the lake. He is a guest in a friend’s home. Her fake plants are mixed in with her real plants. Everyone is waiting for the snow. Upon getting a late-season job at the rough-and-tumble under-dog Pepper Heights Zoo, Dane becomes entangled in a strange plot involving the zoo’s premiere attraction, Zoe The Zebra. Something has been sleeping under Pepper Heights, caged in the dark rock for millions of years, under neat lawns edged by high wild grasses.

Written, composed, performed by Dane Terry. Directed by and developed with Ellie Heyman. Singers: Avery Leigh Draut, Morgan Meadows, Saretta Wesley. 2016 Ethyl Eichelberger Award Winner + participant in Performance Space 122’s Ramp Residency Program.

P.S.122

Traversing dance and visual art, Laris Cohen’s work explores the relationship between the two fields, tracking their overlapping and divergent techniques and structures of support. He often focuses on the specific architectural and economic conventions of the black box, white cube, and sprung floor. For the opening of Performance Space New York’s new theater, Laris Cohen’s new work, P.S.122, maps aesthetic and political fault lines among the building’s tenants over the past 40 years, bringing discrete groups into ambivalent collaboration.

Funding Credits

P.S.122 was commissioned by Performance Space New York and made possible with support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.