Vito Acconci, “Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway?)” (1976) (courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, New York)
This week, Vito Acconci opens at MoMA PS1 (and any serious art-lover will want to see it), El Museo del Sures will document the stories of South Williamsburg, Ida Applebroog talks about her childhood, and much much more.
Living Los Sures: Place, Cultural Heritage and Gentrification
When: Tuesday, June 14, 6–9pm (Free. Registration Required)
Where: Union Docs (322 Union Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
UnionDocs’ multipart project ‘Living Los Sures’ has been working with the Los Sures Latino community in Brooklyn to learn more about its local histories and current struggles with displacement. Absorb some of these stories in a walk that begins at El Museo del Sures and culminates at UnionDocs, which will then screen the 1984 documentary Los Sures that inspired the project and has served to revive many memories of the neighborhood, which, despite once being the poorest in New York City, has a culturally vibrant past. —EWA
The Ventriloquist
When: Wednesday, June 15, 7:30pm
Where: David Lewis Gallery (88 Eldridge Street, Bowery, Manhattan)
Call Her Applebroog
When: Through Thursday, June 16 ($15)
Where: Metrograph (7 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
In her new documentary, Call Her Applebroog, filmmaker Beth B offers an appropriately unflinching and intimate portrait of her mother, the legendary artist Ida Applebroog. Through a mix of archival footage and extensive interviews with Applebroog, who is now in her 80s, the film reconstructs her childhood growing up Orthodox Jewish in the Bronx, her radicalization into an artist who may be best known for her playful nudes, and offers context for the immense success she has achieved late in life. —BS
The Mystical Digital: Closing Party
When: Friday, June 17, 7pm ($5 minimum donation)
Where: Babycastles Gallery (137 West 14th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
This week at Babycastles, hear a poetry sound from a harp, receive a tarot reading from a bot, and and play a “Feminist Confessional” game. After a month-and-a-half-long run, the indie arcade/gallery is closing The Mystical Digital, an exhibition of video games by Kara Stone, with a celebration of the witchy and the techy alike. —CV
(via Facebook) (click to enlarge)
Vito Acconci: Where Are We Now (Who Are We Anyway?), 1976
When: Opens Sunday, June 19
Where: MoMA PS1 (22–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens)
Vito Acconci has been doing architecture and landscape design for the past 15 or so years, but his early work as an artist is legendary. This show at MoMA PS1 will revisit it, from “Following Piece” (1969), for which he followed strangers on the street until they entered private spaces, to “Seedbed,” in which he masturbated for eight hours a day under the floor at Sonnabend Gallery. Although the show will inevitably be comprised in large part of documentation — not the most exciting way to experience performance — it’s not one to miss. —JS
Battleship Potemkin
A still from Battleship Potemkin’s “Odessa Steps” sequence (via Wikipedia)
When: Monday, June 20, 9:30pm ($16)
Where: Nitehawk Cinema (136 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), had an immeasurable impact on twentieth-century art. The Russian director’s experiments with montage and editing completely transformed cinema. Filmmakers such as Brian De Palma and Terry Gilliam have paid homage to its scenes, most notably in The Untouchables (1987) and Brazil (1985). Francis Bacon kept a particularly graphic still from the film’s “Odessa Steps” sequence for inspiration. On Monday, New York band Morricone Youth will perform an original score to the film at the Nitehawk cinema in Williamsburg. Essential viewing. —TM
* * *
With contributions by Elisa Wouk Almino, Tiernan Morgan, Seph Rodney, Jillian Steinhauer, Benjamin Sutton, and Claire Voon
