Art Rx

When: Opens, Wednesday, October 2
Where: New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Creating a body of work that explores the limits and extremes of the body, Burden has cut a mortified, sometimes beautiful path for over forty years, influencing countless along the way. (Death Grips cite him as an inspiration). Wringing through all five of New Museum’s floors, Extreme Measures is a much welcome career retrospective, one hopefully that will show him to be both the guy who took a bullet in the arm for art, as well as more than it. —JP

 Mark Manders Speaks

When: Wednesday, October 2, 6:30–8:30pm ($10)
Where: New School’s Kaplan Hall (66 West 12 Street, Tishman Auditorium, Greenwich Village, Manhattan)

During this talk, the Dutch artist will focus on his interest in public space and the dialogue between between life and art — sounds like an endless topic to be honest. Manders is also currently showing his strangely hypnotic sculpture in the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale, so my guess is he will touch on that (or at least be open to questions about it).

 Outside In: Chinese Art Collection of Andrew Rayburn and Heather Guess

When: Opening October 3, 6-8pm.
Where: WhiteBox Art Center (329 Broome Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

For a short time only, Whitebox Art Center will be exhibiting selections of contemporary Chinese art from the collection of Andrew Rayburn and Heather Gues. Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo Qiang, Chen Wei, Chi Peng, Liu Di, and Mi Mai make up the transient show, a composite look at the ways these two generations of Chinese artists have come to view and understand the rapidly changing modern world. —JP

 The Soap Boxes of Union Square

When: Thursday, October 3, 6:30pm
Where: Tenement Museum (103 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

Ok, whoever thought up this event deserves a raise … it’s brilliant:

For decades, New York City radicals — union leaders, anarchists, socialists — headed to Union Square to rally, listen, learn, and vigorously debate. For this event the Museum will create its own public square, calling upon authors and professors Morris Dickstein, Tony Michels and Lara Vapnek to discuss the history and culture of Union Square. Tenement Actors will perform the speeches of notable early 20th century figures including anarchist leader Alexander Berkman and labor leader and founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

 BRIC Has Arrived

When: Various times during Thursday, October 3–Saturday, October 5
Where: BRIC (647 Fulton Street, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn)

All you really need to know is that there are three days of free programs at BRIC to celebrate the opening of their new $35 Million, 40,000 square foot facility in downtown Brooklyn. The new complex will include a flexible performance space, a 3,000 sq-ft gallery, artist studios, a public access TV center, a cafe, and much more. MUST.SEE.

 Surveillance Sucks

When: Various times during Thursday, October 3–Sunday, October 6
Where: Eyebeam Art and Technology Center (540 West 21st Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Sounds like the people at Eyebeam are just as fed up as the rest of us with feeling powerless over governmental surveillance, so this weekend they are hosting PRISM Breakup, a series of art and technology events dedicated to exploring and providing forms of protection from surveillance. The four day event will bring together artists, hackers, academics, activists, security analysts, and journalists for “meaningful conversation, hands-on workshops, and art installations.”

 ICP Has Four Openings

When: Opens, Friday, October 4
Where: International Center of Photography (1133 Ave of the Americas, Midtown, Manhattan)

Following it’s terrific Triennial show, the ICP one ups itself with a schedule of four new shows: two Lewis Hine exhibitions (Lewis Hine & The Future of America: Lewis Hine’s New Deal Photographs), a JFK assassination show (A Bystander’s View of History), and 10 years of Zoe Strauss. Child workers, the New Deal, life on the margins, murder through the public eye — you have until January 19 to see all four. —JP

 Ann Hirsch: Playground

When: Friday, October 4, 7 pm
Where: New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)

For fans of Vh1’s Frank The Entertainer in a Basement Affair, Annie Hirsch was the contestant eliminated in Episode 7. Some web surfers may recognizer as a “YouTube camwhore.” In reality (whatever that is), Hirsch is a video and performance artist. Her incisive, muddled study of the ways “technology has influenced popular culture and gender” continues October 4 at the New Museum with Playground, a two-person performance “loosely based on the cyber-sexual escapades of [her] adolescent self.” —JP

 Jacques Demy Retrospective

When: Friday, October 4–Thursday, October 17
Where: Film Forum (209 W Houston St., West Village, Manhattan)

Among the French New Wave, Godard was caustic, Truffaut sensitive, Rohmer discerning, and Demy forgotten. In colors and song, Jacques Demy engendered a cinema of delight. “Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” his aching, romantic masterpiece, is a sort of arch-musical, its dialogue entirely sung and accompanied by the great French composer Michel Legrand. Catherine Deneuve stars here as well as in three other Demy films in the the Film Forum’s retrospective. One of France’s great and most joyous of directors. —JP

 Hopper Drawings

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With contributions by Jeremy Polacek