The Unisphere, Corona Park, Queens (via josepha/Flickr)
This week, enjoy Batman in Bryant Park, experience Cuban culture in Queens, visit MoCADA for an exhibit on how black communities are affected by natural disasters, sign up for the new Greenpoint Open Studios, and it’s your last chance to see shows by Hito Steyerl and another on Capitalist Realism before they close.
You have your work cut out for you, but don’t worry, it’s only art!
75 Years of Batman
When: Wednesday, August 13, 12:30–1:45pm
Where: Bryant Park Reading Room (Bryant Park, Midtown, Manhattan)
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the beloved Batman franchise, and to celebrate Bryant Park is hosting young Batman writer Scott Snyder, author of the first five issues of Batman: The New 52, for its outdoor reading series Word for Word Author. Snyder will engage with host John Cunningham, the VP of marketing at comic book powerhouse DC Entertainment, to discuss Batman’s cultural impact and the ever-changing DC universe. —AT
Passport Thursdays: Cuba
When: Thursday, August 14, 7–10pm (Free)
Where: The Queens Museum (New York City Building, Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, Queens)
This Thursday, head out to the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows for a night of Cuban music and a screening of Habanastation, Cuba’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Oscars. The Queens Museum’s Cuban-themed evening is part of “Passport Thursdays,” a weekly celebration of the different international locales that comprise the borough’s community. The Cimarron Project will be performing live and discussing the different styles and range of Afro-Cuban music. Bring a blanket and a hamper, kick back, and enjoy.
A/wake in the Water
Kevin Jerome Everson=, still from “Half On, Half Off” (2011), 16mm film transferred to video, color, silent; 3:20 min (courtesy the artist and Picture Palace Pictures)
When: Thursday, August 14, 7–9pm
Where: Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (80 Hanson Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)
Join MoCADA for the opening reception of an exhibition focused on how black communities are affected by natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, and the earthquake that shook Haiti in 2010. Through staged reenactments, performances, and films piecing together found footage, the group show addresses the lack of appropriate response and aid these communities experience and the repercussions they consequently encounter. —CV
Explore the Tunnels and Atriums of Midtown Manhattan
When: Friday, August 15, 11am–12:30pm ($20)
Where: Food Emporium Coffee Shop (810 8th Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan)
NYC History buff Robert Amwell is hosting a tour of Midtown’s hidden pathways and tunnels. The event listing boasts that guests will learn how to “move through Midtown during the most torrential of downpours without ever getting wet.” Best of all, the tour will also focus on hidden art and architecture gems, including a Roy Lichtenstein mural “hung on the wall of a corporate lobby” — anyone know where it is?
Hito Steyerl, “How Not To Be Seen. A Fucking Didactic Educational” (2013), HD video file, single screen
How Not to Be Seen
When: Closes Friday, August 15
Where: Andrew Kreps Gallery (537 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
In her second exhibition at Andrew Kreps, Berlin-based artist Hito Steyerl takes a multimedia approach to privacy and physicality in the internet age. The exhibition features two films, “Strike” and the eponymous “How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational Installation,” alongside a series of sculptural objects. The film “How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational Installation” quite literally serves as an instructional video on how to become invisible in an age of digital surveillance, with solutions as elaborate as using green-screen effects to disappear into virtual shopping malls and as tongue-in-cheek as simply being a female over 50. In the words of the artist:
This condition opens up within and by means of an avalanche of digital images, which multiply and proliferate while real people disappear or are fixed, scanned and over-represented by an overbearing architecture of surveillance. How do people disappear in an age of total over-visibility? Which huge institutional and legal effort has to be made to keep things unspoken and unspeakable even if they are pretty obviously sitting right in front of everyone’s eyes? Are people hidden by too many images? Do they go hide amongst other images? Do they become images?
—AT
Greenpoint Open Studios Sign-Up Party
When: Friday, August 15, 7–10pm
Where: Diamond Bar (43 Franklin Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn)
Want to be a part of Greenpoint Open Studios (GOS) 2014? Head down to the Diamond Bar on Franklin Street this Friday for a night of art and music. The deadline for GOS is August 31, and if you sign-up on Friday night, you’ll get a free beer on the house. Images from previous GOS events can be found at greenpointopenstudios.com.
Living with Pop: A Reproduction of Capitalist Realism
KP Brehmer, “Deutsche Werte (German Values)” (1967) (photo by Mostafa Heddaya)
When: Closes Sunday, August 17
Where: Artists Space (38 Green Street, Soho, Manhattan) and Artists Space Books & Talks (55 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)
Closing this weekend, Artists Space’s Living with Pop, bills itself as the first US exhibition to examine “Capitalist Realism,” a term coined for the work of Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Leug, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter in 1963. Split across both Artists Space locations, one half of the exhibition is dedicated to examining the influence of Fluxus on the four artists. Check out Hyperallergic’s review by Mostafa Heddaya:
Despite the gulf of politics and recent history, what’s striking about Capitalist Realism is that its effect is in many ways indistinguishable from that of American Pop Art: the trouble is not that the glib vocabulary of advertising assimilates critique, but that it flattens it.
Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum
When: Closes Sunday, August 17
Where: American Folk Art Museum (2 Lincoln Square, Upper West Side, Manhattan)
Closing in New York this Sunday before embarking on a four-year tour across the US, Self-Taught Genius celebrates artworks from the American Folk Art Museum’s collection. Reviewed by Edward M. Gómez for Hyperallergic Weekend last June, highlights include Ammi Phillips’ “Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog” (1830–1835), David Cordier’s, “Birth Record for Hana Oberholtzer” (1816), and “Flag Gate” (c. 1876) whose creator remains unknown.
(via centerforbookarts.org)
Zines+ and the World of ABC No Rio
When: Through Saturday, September 27
Where: The Center for Book Arts (28 West 27th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Comprised of ephemera from the ABC No Rio zine library archives, Zines+ and the World of ABC No Rio promises to introduce the history of the zine while examining its myriad forms and functions:
The exhibit presents and explains a range of these self-same printed materials, mixing both artists’ original creations with items from the ABC No Rio zine library archives, covering subject matter from arts-community history to political commentary.
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With contributions by Alix Taylor and Claire Voon
