On view in Dicks at Fortnight Institute, Aura Rosenberg, “Dialectical Porn Rocks” (1989–16), rocks, newspaper, xerox, resin, dimensions variable (image courtesy Fortnight Institute)
The Legacy of Radical Protest
When: Tuesday, November 15, 7pm ($15 members/$30 non-members)
Where: The Public Theater (425 Lafayette Street, Noho, Manhattan)
Last week’s election result has mobilized thousands of people around the country to demonstrate. There’s an palpable appetite to turn shock, grief, and frustration into positive action. Tonight, five speakers — Dread Scott, Miguel Algarin, Monica Dennis, Libertad Guerra, and Bobby Seale — will discuss the history of art and activism, with a focus on the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. —TM
Let’s Talk About Dicks
When: Wednesday, November 16, 6–8pm (RSVP required)
Where: Fortnight Institute (60 E 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan)
The week after the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States seems like a particularly good time to talk about dicks, both literal and metaphorical. You can do so on Wednesday night with Elizabeth Berdann, Aura Rosenberg, Mira Schor, Aurel Schmidt, Betty Tompkins, and Nicole Wittenberg — six of the eight artists in an exhibition at the Fortnight Institute that, as per its straightforward title, Dicks, is devoted exclusively to images of the male appendage. —JS
A Town Hall on Emotional Labor
When: Wednesday, November 16, 6:30–8pm
Where: EFA Project Space (323 W 39th Street, Garment District, Manhattan)
Many of us — especially women — known intimately the challenges of emotional labor, which typically goes unpaid and unacknowledged. Artist Megan Snowe is working to make us more aware of our feelings and the way they effect our everyday lives by forming the Emotional Labor Union, which “exists to protect the rights of emoting citizens, negotiate fair use of emotional information and provide resources for increased emotional awareness, intelligence, agency and regulation.” This town hall meeting — part of the exhibition Once More, with Feeling — will provide a public forum for attendees to start discussing the underdiscussed emotional economy. —JS
A Multimedia Owl Movie
When: Friday, November 18, 8pm
Where: ISSUE Project Room (22 Boerum Place, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn)
Be among the first and few to catch a new 16mm cinema work by Lary 7 — the multimedia composer’s first “fixed media film” in his over-40-year-long career. This one promises to be an mind-bender, as Lary 7 fiddles with the syncing of projected images and accompanying sounds. It will be presented for just two nights, with a bonus performance by a musical quartet (including Lary 7 on double bass) kicking off the first screening. As its title, Owl Movie, implies, the film will feature an owl — a stuffed one suggesting a mood of mystery and ominousness to come. —CV
(via queensmuseum.org)
The Black Panthers’ Unfinished Business
When: Saturday, November 19, 2–4pm
Where: Queens Museum (New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens)
At the Queens Museum, a new exhibition asks that we don’t relegate the Black Panthers movement to the past. The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution, which grew out of a book by Bryan Shih, features portraits of and interviews with party members. On Saturday, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from some of those members, who, beyond their involvement in the party, have worked in mental health and alternative-to-incarceration programs, emergency rooms, and organizations like the Salvation Army and the New York City Board of Education. In light of last week’s presidential election, it’s painfully clear that the work of the Black Panther Party is truly unfinished, and we need all the help we can get in constructively thinking about our future. —EWA
An Ever-Evolving Group Show
When: Saturday, November 19, 6–1opm
Where: 630 Flushing Avenue (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn)
The Re: Art Show is an ever-evolving group exhibition set inside the hulking former Pfizer factory. Each month, the show opens anew, with some works updated, others replaced, and new ones added; there is no fix end date. On Saturday, the fifth iteration, titled Re:Re:Re:Re:Re, kicks off with a night of readings, performances, and conversations in response to the presidential election. A number of artists are on the schedule, but any attendee who wants to may also participate or perform. —JS
On view in Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:, Sessa Englund, “Constraint” and “Relax” (both 2016) (image courtesy Re: Art Show)
Art School Alternatives
When: Saturday November 19–Sunday November 20
Where: Pioneer Works (159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn)
Like so much of higher education, traditional visual art programs proffering BFAs and MFAs are quickly losing their appeal because of the debt they require students to take on and the disproportionate number of underpaid and overworked adjunct faculty members upon which they rely. The Alternative Art School Fair promises to offer a vast range of other routes to art education, from the artist-run Beta-Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Oslo’s Ventriloquist Summerschool to more established institutions like Black Mountain School and Ox-Bow. Lectures, panels, and workshops will run throughout the weekend, covering subjects like the challenges faced by new alternative art schools (Saturday at 5:30pm), architecture’s impact on arts education (Sunday at noon), and the roll of small presses in arts education (Sunday at 5:30pm, moderated by Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian). —BS
Metropolitan Meditations
When: Sunday, November 20, 7pm ($9)
Where: UnionDocs (322 Union Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
This Sunday, Urban Omnibus, the publication of the Architectural League, and Union Docs are staging a tribute to Peter Hutton at UnionDocs. Hutton, who died this June, was a filmmaker and a merchant seaman; a wanderer’s heart fueled his avant-garde work, which often centered on urban landscapes, from China to Iceland. This screening includes one of his New York Portrait studies, made in the 1980s as a silent, meditative journey through the city’s built environment. —AM
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With contributions by Elisa Wouk Almino, Allison Meier, Tiernan Morgan, Benjamin Sutton, and Claire Voon
