ArtRx NYC
This week, create your own fanzine, check out presidential campaign ephemera at the New-York Historical Society, journey to the Colombian Amazon at Socrates Sculpture Park's summer screening series, and more.
This week, create your own fanzine, check out presidential campaign ephemera at the New-York Historical Society, journey to the Colombian Amazon at Socrates Sculpture Park’s summer screening series, and more.
Fanzines with Susan Cianciolo
When: Tuesday, August 23, 7pm (RVSP Required)
Where: Swiss In situ (102 Franklin Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)
Artist Susan Cianciolo will lead a free fanzine workshop as part of the Nieves and Innen Zine Library exhibition at Swiss In Situ (the temporary name for the Swiss Institute’s temporary space). Providing materials from her own studio, Cianciolo will demonstrate a “basic formula” for creating a collage fanzine. Create a scrappy paean to your favorite artist, start your own comic strip, or go all out and fantasize about creating your own publication. —TM
Embrace of the Serpent
When: Wednesday, August 24, 7pm
Where: Socrates Sculpture Park (32-01 Vernon Blvd, Long Island City, Queens)
For the final film of its superb summer screening series (programmed by the fine folks at Film Forum), Socrates Sculpture Park takes us to the Colombian Amazon by way of the based-on-a-true-story drama Embrace of the Serpent (2015). Drawn from the diaries of two Westerners who traveled throughout the region in the 1900s and the 1930s, it follows the journey of a pair of botanical bounty hunters who are guided through the dense jungle by an intrepid shaman. As ever, the cinematic menu is accompanied by edibles from a regionally related restaurant (La Carreta Paisa) and a set by an aurally appropriate band (BullA en el Barrio). —BS
Night at the Museum
When: Thursday, August 25, 8pm–12am
Where: MoMA PS1 (22–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens)
MoMA PS1 is up late this Thursday, with its Night at the Museum program, giving visitors a chance to celebrate in the fading light (and thankfully fading heat) of summer with food, drinks, music, and special programming organized by artist Meriem Bennani, who has her own show, FLY, on display. Visitors also get a chance to look at the summer exhibitions that will close quite soon, including work by Vito Acconci, Deng Tai, FORTY, Papo Colo, Cao Fei, and Rodney McMillian.
Campaigning for the Presidency, 1960–72
When: Opens Friday, August 26
Where: New-York Historical Society (170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan)
Besides your usual ad or poster, presidential campaigns have also produced cowboy hats, paper dresses, board games, and many other toys and decorative objects. Over 210 examples of these, housed in the Museum of Democracy/Wright Family Collections, will go on view in Campaigning for the Presidency, 1960–1972, tracing John F. Kennedy v. Richard Nixon to Richard Nixon v. George McGovern. I expect the ’60s ephemera will be less repulsive than a nude sculpture of Trump.
Celebrating Flushing’s Pluralism
When: Sunday, August 28, 3:50–6pm
Where: St George’s Church (135–32 38th Avenue, Flushing, Queens)
Often when I walk in New York City, I move from point A to point B, rarely allowing myself the time to meander. The Nonstop Metropolis Walking Tour could help change that habit. The tour, one of six events associated with Rebecca Solnit’s Nonstop Metropolis at the Queens Museum, sets us up for Solnit’s and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s forthcoming title New York City Atlas, which will explore the diverse languages and cultures of Queens. Led by the editor-at-large of the book, Garnette Cadogan, the tour will ask us to pause and pay attention to the historically tolerant and dynamic neighborhood of Flushing. —SR
Bill Viola
When: Sunday, August 28, 6:30pm
Where: Totah (183 Stanton Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
Totah gallery is presenting a work by the stalwart video artist Bill Viola as part of its 8’19” moving-image exhibition organized by Laurence Kardish, former senior curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art, and independent curator Sarah Lehat. The entire series pays tribute to light, incorporating documentary and narrative, as well as abstract and experimental work. Bill Viola’s contribution consists of two historic single-channel videos recorded in foreign provinces: “Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait in Light and Heat)” (1979), made in Tunisia, and “Hatsu-Yume (First Dream)” (1981), shot in Japan. —SR
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With contributions by Elisa Wouk Almino, Tiernan Morgan, Seph Rodney, and Benjamin Sutton
