Contents for April 26, 2021
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1. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, online April 27
2. Patty Chang, FF Alumn, live online April 26
3. Dread Scott, FF Alumn, online at Pratt Institute, May 22
4. Yoko Ono, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
5. Lady Pink, Susan Martin, FF Alumns, at Museum of Graffiti, Miami, FL
6. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, FF Alumn, at Five Myles, Brooklyn, opening April 29
7. elin o’Hara slavick, FF Alumn, at the Wallace Trust, opening Apr. 21
8. Alice Eve Cohen, FF Alumn, wins Midwest Jewish Playwriting Contest
9. Jerry Kearns, FF Alumn, at Frosch&Co, Manhattan, opening May 1
10. Rachel Frank, FF Alumn, receives 2021 Socrates Annual Fellowship
11. Michelle Handelman, FF Alumn, at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, thru Aug. 15 and more
12. Judith Ren-Lay, FF Alumn, now online at JudithRen-Lay.com
14. Barbara Kruger, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
15. Charles Henri Ford, FF Alumn, at Mitchell Algus Gallery, May 1
16. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, now online in The Brooklyn Rail
17. Tali Hinkis, Rachel Frank, Brooke Singer, Laura Splan, FF Alumns, at Long Island Explorium, NY, thru June 25
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Weekly Spotlight: Alba Sanchez, FF Alumn, now online at https://franklinfurnace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17325coll1/id/80/rec/1
This week Franklin Furnace is excited to spotlight Alba Sanchez’ witty and hilarious performance “The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Puerto Rican Body.” This one-woman performance piece from November of 1996 is a lively, subversion chock-full of sarcasm and acuity on the subjects of race, ethnicity, class, stereotypes and more. Sanchez adeptly mixes a tone of personable intimacy with her vivid humor. “The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Puerto Rican Body” has such imaginative depth that it’s hard to imagine it’s only 30 minutes. (Text by Sophia Mick, FF Intern, October 2020)
please watch at:
https://franklinfurnace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17325coll1/id/80/rec/1
thank you.
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1. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, online April 27
PADILLA’S SHADOW
A Commemorative Act in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Poet’s Confession
A virtual performance that will be streamed on the internet and social media
(In Spanish with English subtitles)
On April 27, 2021, a choral reading of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla’s legendary confession will be streamed via social media throughout the day and night. Twenty Cuban intellectuals from the island and the diaspora have participated in the project, which is directed by Cuban American artist Coco Fusco. To avoid any attempt by Cuban authorities to block participation from island residents, all readings have been pre-recorded and transmitted via encrypted messaging.
Five institutions in the United States and Europe will be presenting Padilla’s Shadow via their social media and/or web portals: The Showroom in London, The Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, and the Herberger Institute in Arizona, The Perez Art Museum Miami, and Franklin Furnace.
Padilla’s Shadow commemorates the 50th anniversary of one of the defining moments of the Cuban revolution with regard to freedom of expression. In the early 1960s, Heberto Padilla was one of Cuba’s most internationally celebrated poets and a recipient of national awards. Upon his return from an extended stay in the Soviet Union, where he opened Cuba’s first press agency in Moscow and befriended dissident poets, Padilla fell out of favor because of his critical views. He was arrested in 1971, held for thirty-six days at State Security headquarters and subjected to psychological torture. Two day after his release, on April 27, 1971, he made a public confession at the Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba under the watchful eye of State Security agents.
This ritualized public penance, in which the poet denounced himself, his wife and several close friends as counterrevolutionaries, sent shockwaves through literary circles around the world. The Cuban government tried to use the confessions as proof of its right to imprison the poet. However, the gesture was seen abroad as Cuba’s version of a Stalinist show trial. As a result of the international outcry, the film of the confession was suppressed.
Padilla’s confession served as a harbinger of what was to follow: a period known as the Grey Five Years in which dozens of Cuban artists and writers were banished from public life. The Cuban government’s treatment of Padilla made its protocol for handling intellectuals and artists visible and has since functioned as a warning to those that seek to challenge the primacy of state authority.
This disturbing chapter of Cuban history is still discussed in the Latin American press, but it has been largely forgotten in the United States, even though prominent intellectuals such as Susan Sontag, Jean Paul Sartre and Italo Calvino defended Padilla in the 1970s. In Cuba today, many artists know something about what happened, but few have had access to the words that were uttered on that fateful day. Many of the project’s participants have told Fusco that they are shocked by the text, that it has provoked bouts of anxiety, sleeplessness and nightmares.
Padilla’s confession is a study in political abjection that is painful to witness and reproduce. But it is necessary, especially now when a new generation of Cuban artists and intellectuals are challenging the state’s authority over them. Fifty years after Padilla’s auto-da-fe, the Cuban government continues to demonize critical voices and characterize intellectuals that challenge the revolution as lackeys of foreign powers.
Padilla’s Shadow is a project of the San Isidro International Movement and 27N.
Performers: Carlos Aguilera, Lupe Álvarez, Katherine Bisquet, María Antonia Cabrera Arus, Sandra Ceballos, Armando Correa, Mabel Cuesta, Enrique Del Risco, Néstor Díaz de Villegas, Rafael Díaz-Casas Julio Llópiz Casal, Eilyn Lombard, Martica Minipunto, Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, Amaury Pacheco, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Alexis Romay, Iris Ruiz, Abel Sierra Madero.
Design: Hamlet Lavastida
Translation: Rialta
For more information contact: coco.fusco@gmail.com
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2. Patty Chang, FF Alumn, live online April 26
please visit this link:
thank you
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3. Dread Scott, FF Alumn, online at Pratt Institute, May 22
please visit this link:
thank you.
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4. Yoko Ono, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
please visit this link:
thank you.
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5. Lady Pink, Susan Martin, FF Alumns, at Museum of Graffiti, Miami, FL
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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6. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, FF Alumn, at Five Myles, Brooklyn, opening April 29
A two-person exhibition, “Daughters of Lam” at Five Myles, Brooklyn.
APRIL 24 – MAY 30, 2021
DAUGHTERS OF LAM
RACHELLE DANG & JODIE LYN-KEE-CHOW
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, APRIL 29,6-8PM
http://fivemyles.org/daughters-of-lam
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7. elin o’Hara slavick, FF Alumn, at the Wallace Trust, opening Apr. 21
elin o’Hara slavick is exhibiting work from After Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima in the traveling show Family Tree Whakapapa (with her 3 artist sisters, Susanne, Sarah and Madeleine) at the Wallace Trust in Auckland, New Zealand, April 21- June 13, 2021. There is a full-color catalogue accompanying the show with an essay by Katherine Guinness.
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8. Alice Eve Cohen, FF Alumn, wins Midwest Jewish Playwriting Contest
Yahoo!!! My play OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR won the Midwest Jewish Playwriting Contest today!!!!
So much gratitude to director Sara Rodriguez, our marvelous cast, Jacob Heimer, Nadia Diamond, Evelyn Giovine, Ben Diamond, and Joyce Cohen; Jewish Plays Project David Winitsky, Will Steinberger, casting director Judy Bowman, video editor Janet Bentley, contest host, Chicago’s Continuum Theater.
You can watch the 15 min video excerpt of Oklahoma Samovar and 9 other finalists and cast your vote for the National Jewish Playwriting Contest at:
https://www.jewishplaysproject.org/digital
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9. Jerry Kearns, FF Alumn, at Frosch&Co, Manhattan, opening May 1
May 1 – June 6, 2021
Dear friends of Nora,
I’m pleased to begin this spring with a painting exhibition at FROSCH& CO. 34 East Broadway, New York City. I will be at the opening Saturday May 1 from 2-6 p.m. Love to say hello to you.
Jerry
FROSCH&CO is pleased to present BLAM!!!, Jerry Kearns’ first solo show with the gallery. In comic books, the land of irony, violence, and contradiction, BLAM!!! translates as the sound of a gunshot or explosion. The exhibition features paintings the New York based artist worked on from winter 2016 until 2021 — over those years, multiple explosions reshaped the life of Jerry Kearns and all of our lives:In early September 2016, the artist lost his wife, Nora York, an extraordinary woman, a great musician and songwriter, and a wonderful teacher. She was also the center of Jerry Kearns’ life. A second unthinkable happened in November 2016. America elected Donald Trump as 45th President. Already standing on unstable personal ground, the artist began to feel the whole nation quake.2020 became the year from hell. By late February, COVID had ended reality as we had been living it.It has always been Kearns’ intention to make art that takes form from what he experiences. Over the past five years, the artist was mostly floating in grief, cut off from his previous self. He felt strangely unformed, like a baby. His exterior shape was the same as before, but his psyche was in tatters.“The sensation recalled the city after the 9/11 attack. Away from the site, things mostly looked the same, but we were in a profoundly changed reality. Not long after Nora died, an elemental vocabulary began running like a mantra in my head: Babies, Air, Water, Land, Night, Day, Time. That’s when I remembered a page of photos of enfants advertising diapers that I had bought at a magazine shop back in the mid-90s”.—Jerry KearnsCreating a film noir ambiance, the paintings in BLAM!!! are all the same size to echo an animation strip or a video projection. The viewer is encouraged to take in the room as a connected narrative; a visual poem, where many layers of meaning apply.Since the 1980s, Jerry Kearns began to use images from commercial communication as his alphabet. He felt that cartoons, newspaper photos, magazine photography, television and film images made up the most generally understood visual language we have.The paintings in this exhibition compose a dialogue between flat abstract space and rendered illusionary space. Time and space are relative and changing, while drawing and painting are equal players.
BLAM!!! There is a sense of mystery about what is being described. The works conceal a noir tale and the scenes are like those in a dream, people and objects float by. Echoes are everywhere. Each painting is built around overlapping triangles in a square, creating a spinning sensation. Time and space are in flux. The images acknowledge change as the only permanence.Jerry Kearns’ “psychological pop” paintings represent a multidimensional quantum universe. Juxtaposing varied modes of representation, Kearns presents a visual mash-up that highlights how certain iconography expresses American belief structures. In compositions rife with conflict, questioning, contradictions and intrigue, Kearns depicts iconic figures sourced from Western popular culture engaged in perpetual power struggles, though it’s never clear who is winning. His characters fluctuate between protagonist and antagonist in a narrative that reflects our own constructions of reality – a matrix of thought where time and space are condensed and presented in a single, tense moment.Jerry Kearns holds an MFA from UC SANTA BARBARA and has exhibited internationally across the Americas, Europe, and Asia since the 1980s. He has been featured many times in The New York Times, Art and Auction, ARTnews, and Artforum, among others. His paintings are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), National Galerie (Berlin), Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Norton Family Collection (Los Angeles), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Queensland Art Gallery (Queensland, Australia).
Please contact the gallery for additional information or questions
For more images, visit: https://froschandco.com/future
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10. Rachel Frank, FF Alumn, receives 2021 Socrates Annual Fellowship
ARTISTS AWARDED THE 2021 SOCRATES ANNUAL FELLOWSHIP TO CREATE NEW WORK FOR THE EXHIBITION SANCTUARY AT SOCRATES
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 20
Socrates Sculpture Park is delighted to announce the artists selected for The 2021 Socrates Annual: Sanctuary fellowship and exhibition:
Rachel Frank**
Moko Fukuyama
Gi (Ginny) Huo
Anina Major
Jeffrey Meris*
Levan Mindiashvili
Andrea Ray
LJ Roberts
Yvonne Shortt, Jenna Boldebuck, & Kelly Li
Monica Torres*
Monsieur Zohore*
*2021 New York Community Trust Van Lier Artist Fellow
**2021 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow
Since its inception in 1986, Socrates Sculpture Park has been a sanctuary for artists and the public. Applicants to the 2021 open call were asked to submit proposals that addressed the many meanings of sanctuary – as spaces of rest and protection; as holy sites; and as supportive environments.
Over 350 artists submitted proposals, which were reviewed by a jury composed of Socrates staff members – Executive Director John Hatfield, Curator & Director of Exhibitions Jess Wilcox, and Curatorial Assistant danilo machado – as well as two curatorial advisors: Emma Enderby, Chief Curator at The Shed and Lauren Argentina Zelaya, Director of Public Programs at the Brooklyn Museum.
The eleven projects selected represent a range of interpretations of the theme, drawing from diverse communities, traditions, and artistic strategies to create unique sculptures and installations of sanctuary. The artist(s) for each project are awarded a $6,000 production grant, $1,500 honorarium, and three-months of access to the resources and fabrication facilities of the Park’s outdoor artist studio. The fellowship culminates in The 2021 Socrates Annual: Sanctuary exhibition, opening in October 2021.
“I am so pleased to welcome another cohort of Socrates Artist Fellows and proud of the role Socrates plays in supporting artists with commissions and presenting their work to a diverse audience in Queens. This year’s theme is perfect for the Park, which has served as a sanctuary of nature and art for so many visitors during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
– John Hatfield, Socrates’ outgoing Executive Director
SUPPORT
This exhibition is organized by Socrates Sculpture Park and curated by Jess Wilcox, Curator & Director of Exhibitions. Major support for The Socrates Annual Fellowship & Exhibition comes from the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowships, the Devra Freelander Artist Fund, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Cowles Charitable Trust, the Jerome Foundation, the Charina Foundation, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation, Ivana Mestrovic, and Spacetime C.C. The exhibition is funded, in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
ABOUT SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
For over 30 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been a model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Over 1,000 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not-for-profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park. Covid-19 Updates: Socrates remains open to the public at regular hours, 9am – sunset, with free
admission.
Park policies and updates regarding health and safety can be found at:
socratessculpturepark.org/Covid19.
The Park is on the ancestral land of the Lenape, Canarsie, and Matinecock peoples.
and
I will be showing several sculptures and two Rewilding videos at the Maine Jewish Museum.
Skowhegan School Artists at the Maine Jewish Museum
Curated by Juliet Karelsen
Alex Katz, Ben Shahn, Julianne Swartz, Neil Goldberg, Lauren Cohen, Abby Shahn, Juliet Karelsen, Natasha Mayers, Gail Spaien, Gina Siempel, Talia Levitt, Naomi Safran Hon, Rachel Frank, Shadi Harouni and Alex Bradley Cohen.
Maine Jewish Museum
267 Congress Street, Portland, ME
May 13 – June 25, 2021
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11. Michelle Handelman, FF Alumn, at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, thru Aug. 15 and more
hello friends…..
I’m excited to announce my upcoming exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Michelle Handelman: These Unruly and Ungovernable Selves, a collaboration between the museum and UW-Madison, curated by students in Associate Professor Anna Campbell’s Design Thinking for Exhibits class. It’s been inspiring meeting with students, dissecting queerness and thinking through the power of counterculture. They’ll be showing a survey of my work both on-site and online with an accompanying catalog. On April 29, I’ll be presenting a talk with the Center for Visual Cultures as part of their series Vulnerable Bodies: In the Wake of the Human.
Currently up through May 15…signs and symbols is presenting Irma Vep, The Last Breath, which seems to gain new significance during this time of isolation. Coinciding with the opening of the exhibition, I’ve released a new limited print edition from the project available on signs and symbols website. Details for all the in-person and virtual events are below.…
MICHELLE HANDELMAN
IRMA VEP, THE LAST BREATH
signs and symbols
April 15 – May 15, 2021
To stream, visit:
https://michellehandelman.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d3db7fd580f20138a651b61a7&id=afc451602e&e=7264d102e4
signs and symbols presents Michelle Handelman’s Irma Vep, The Last Breath streaming online until May 15. Featuring Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina, this project reimagines the silent film character Irma Vep as a queer icon, taking on new meaning during this moment of personal and political upheaval. The gallery will be offering a limited edition print specifically for this exhibition.
Featuring: Zackary Drucker & Flawless Sabrina
Cinematography: Ed David
Photography: Laure Leber
Costumes: threeASFOUR, Garo Sparo
Hair/Makeup: Michael Gwaltney
Choreography: Tori Sparks
Dancers: A.K. Burns, Tori Sparks, Marti Domination
Sound Design: Quentin Chiappetta
and
LIMITED EDITION PRINT
To purchase, visit:
https://michellehandelman.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d3db7fd580f20138a651b61a7&id=63b7911e26&e=7264d102e4
Irma Vep, The Last Breath was made with the support of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the New York State Council of the Arts, Outpost Cuts and Burns Residency.
signs and symbols
New York, New York
and
MICHELLE HANDELMAN
THESE UNRULY AND UNGOVERNABLE SELVES
MADISON MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
April 24 – August 15, 2021
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art presents Michelle Handelman: These Unruly and Ungovernable Selves, which includes Handelman’s new video trilogy, The Pandemic Series (2020-2021), which will be available in its entirety streaming on mmoca.org for the duration of the exhibition. Two of the artist’s earlier moving image installations, Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013/2015), and Candyland (1999), will be on view inside the Museum.
and
ARTIST TALK BY MICHELLE HANDELMAN
THURSDAY APRIL 29, 6:00PM EST
To RSVP for Zoom event, visit:
https://michellehandelman.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d3db7fd580f20138a651b61a7&id=1613a78d80&e=7264d102e4
and
VULNERABLE BODIES: IN THE WAKE OF THE HUMAN
CVC-Center for Visual Cultures’ year-long theme envisions an interdisciplinary platform that can inform and dialogue with a variety of approaches from feminist, queer, crip, critical race, and disability theories, to performance, trauma, and memory studies that question how bodies are visualized, surveilled, imagined, exploited, or negated.
Michelle Handelman: These Unruly and Ungovernable Selves is curated by students in Design Thinking for Exhibits, a UW-Madison Art History Department seminar led by Associate Professor Anna Campbell.
MADISON MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
672 S. Lafayette Park Place
Madison, Wisconsin 90057
BLOODSISTERS 25-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR CONTINUES… with upcoming screenings in France, and Slovenia.
SIGN UP at KINO LORBER to stayed tuned of its release. Use the following URL:
https://michellehandelman.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d3db7fd580f20138a651b61a7&id=d3dba6de6c&e=7264d102e4
I have a STONEWALL NATIONAL MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES talk that I just presented in conversation with the museum’s Executive Director Hunter O’Hanian. If you have a moment, please take a second and check it out at:
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12. Judith Ren-Lay, FF Alumn, now online at JudithRen-Lay.com
Dear friends,
After sending THROUGH A WRY KALEIDOSCOPE – 61 page PDF – I find myself looking to the future, working on updating my website by adding a current blog entry and photo since our lives seem more and more to be lived on-line.
The new URL: https://www.judithren-lay.com/post/transitions
thank you
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13. Katya Grokhovsky, FF Alumn, now online in Artillery Magazine and more
Please visit this link:
-and-
Becoming American
Katya Grokhovsky
Saturday, May 1, 4 PM ET
Live on Instagram and in-person, with a limited capacity*
Katya Grokhovsky will perform a live iteration of her ongoing work Becoming American, in collaboration with dancer Lilach Orenstein, accompanied by a newly commissioned sound work by multidisciplinary artist Sarah Martin-Nuss. The 40-minute performance explores the sense of place, memory, alienation, and displacement of an immigrant protagonist. Grokhovsky incorporates an autobiographical narrative of double migration–from Ukraine to Australia to the United States–into an artistic investigation of identity through family histories and her indoctrination into a consumer-driven culture. Through sound, gesture, movement, and voice, Becoming American seeks to find hope, strength, and a sense of belonging in a new world.
*This program at Smack Mellon has a limited capacity of 30 in-person attendees. All visitors must read and comply with the guidelines of our COVID Courtesy Code. Please arrive early to ensure your entry to the event, which is first come, first serve. In-person attendees will not be admitted into the gallery after the event begins.
You can find more information about the performance participants at:
http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001PVGVdfQXbaGE3QrEl-Fr-eOHz5z4cKz8yMbJ3nijveKf12hxaWZGkT7Tyk1AMPFnmdXcwcdhN5ykLwSNNnXnk4jvo-cHGaQbYPRRlTweC_tkYAoiubr1vTAryU4d3sge1TFumFb9WviAH2EBs82DdhO2igb9P4GEzAPNQsFrxk7bj8ivflvp2MF4xGnYaR74pnODZX8jIyzDh7oLFQUNjg==&c=0FSbgY4NcmxBqRhncPgpQ_i9NBd20BpDzR5EfEytyOJ-12At2vgX0g==&ch=o7fhTqhl4WZEMCPEUcx_AfUtXqZea1hor9qu8L0x-sYQuwurLwj69A==
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14. Barbara Kruger, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
Please visit this link:
thank you.
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15. Charles Henri Ford, FF Alumn, at Mitchell Algus Gallery, May 1
Final Days:
Saturday April 24 and Saturday May 1
Love and Jump Back
Photography by Charles Henri Ford and items from his estate
Curated by Allen Frame
Charles Henri Ford, Djuna Barnes, ca. 1935
Mitchell Algus Gallery
132 Delancey St, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10002
Hours: Saturday, 12–6 pm and by appointment
516-639-4918
office@mitchellalgusgallery.com
www.mitchellalgusgallery.com
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16. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, now online in The Brooklyn Rail
please visit this link:
https://brooklynrail.org/2021/04/artseen/Boyle-Family-Nothing-is-more-radical-than-the-facts
Mark Bloch writes on a rare USA show by the Boyle Family Nothing is more radical than the facts, an exhibition at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea
Some excerpts
“The Boyle Family is a British collaborative group comprised of Mark Boyle (1934–2005), his wife Joan Hills (b. 1931), and their children, Sebastian Boyle (b. 1962) and Georgia Boyle (b. 1963). In their first solo presentation in New York in over 40 years, the Boyle Family’s “earthprobes” are disorienting re-creations of randomly selected areas of the earth’s surface, made from resin, fiberglass, and found materials, that combine Robert Smithson’s earthiest visions with the uncanny eeriness of a Duane Hanson clone….
“Early on, Boyle and Hills decided to spend their lives working on an art of “everything,” later adjusted to art that “could include anything.” …Despite the diversity of their subjects, the Boyle Family’s primary objective always remained the same: to teach themselves to see, first making large collages out of rejected material, but soon inviting a thousand blindfolded friends to shoot darts at a giant map of the world—an intention to widen their scope by visiting many randomly selected sites and capturing them….
“They investigated the repercussions for human beings, using projections of EKGs, bits of skin, or samples of blood and tears in a series of events titled Son et Lumière—for Earth, Air, Fire and Water—for Insects Reptiles and Water Creatures, and finally—for Bodily Fluids and Functions. At these performances, saliva, earwax, semen, urine, and other substances were projected in London underground clubs at the height of the Swingin’ ’60s, attracting both controversy and fame.
“As counter-cultural bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine played, the influence of the populist scene soon transformed Boyle’s site-related projections into elaborate physical and chemical reaction-inspired psychedelic light shows. As collaborators with their work, Soft Machine brought the Boyle Family along when they toured the United States with the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968, giving them important exposure overseas. Despite this, and major exhibitions around the world that have been devoted to their endeavors, the Boyles remain less known here. But by focusing their global awareness on hyper-local surfaces with such painstaking care, they have ensured the relevance of their collective life’s work for all who will experience it.”
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
