Goings On | 02/26/2018 - Franklin Furnace

Goings On: posted week of February 26, 2018

CONTENTS:

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1. Nadja Verena Marcin, FF Alumn, at Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA, opening March 3, and more
2. Joe Lewis, FF Alumn, at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, Manhattan, March 1-April 21
3. Sean Leonardo, FF Alumn, at Nathan Cummings Foundation, Manhattan, March 8, and more
4. Edward Gomez, FF Alumn, now online in Hyperallergic.com
5. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, at 30 John Street, Brooklyn, March 1
6. Iris Rose, FF Alumn, at Tweed Theater, Manhattan, March 25
7. R. Sikoryak, FF Alumn, at Dixon Place, Manhattan, March 2
8. Vernita N’Cognita, FF Alumn, at aSpace, Manhattan, March 2
9. Ann Meredith, FF Member, at Theatre of Note, Hollywood, CA, March 12
10. Gearoid Dolan, FF Alumn, at Superchief Gallery, Ridegwood, Queens, March 1
11. Tom Leeser, Glenn Branca, Spalding Gray, Louise Lawler, Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumns, at CalArts, Valencia, CA, thru March 2
12. Nina Kuo & Lorin Roser, FF Alumns, at Central Booking, Manhattan, March 2
13. Laura Blacklow, FF Alumn, releases new book
14. Michelle Handelman, FF Alumn, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, March 12-18
15. Olivia Beens, Janet Henry, Quimetta Perle, Miriam Schaer, at Taller Boricua, Manhattan, opening March 9

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1. Nadja Verena Marcin, FF Alumn, at Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA, opening March 3, and more

NADJA VERENA MARCIN | OPHELIA at Minnesota Street Project |
OPHELIA at Parsons, The New School | V BIENAL CONTEXTOS 2018

OPHELIA
Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco
Live Performance: Saturday, March 3 at 4 PM
Solo Exhibition of Video Installation through March 31
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3 from 6 to 8 PM

San Francisco, CA (February 20, 2018) — Opening at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco with a live performance in the atrium on Saturday, March 3 at 4pm, the two-year world tour of Nadja Verena Marcin’s conceptual live performance and video sculpture OPHELIA, continues. Awarded a Franklin Furnace Grant and supported by a successful Kickstarter Campaign, the work investigates the relationship between the human destruction of the biosphere, and the history of female hysteria-while speaking to the democratizing power of the meme. Following the live performance, an immersive video installation featuring the video sculpture of OPHELIA, will remain on view in Minnesota Street Project’s gallery 211 through March 31. In conjunction with the SF presentation of the project-curated by Amy Kisch of AKArt-the accompanying programming will be supported by the Goethe Institut San Francisco-including a panel discussion, OPHELIA: REBEL MEME TO SYSTEMS OF POWER & OPPRESSION, with Dena Beard, Executive Director of The Lab; Dorka Keehn, San Francisco Arts Commissioner and Principal KEEHN ON ART; Joseph Becker, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA (TBC); and Nadja Verena Marcin, Artist, on Thursday, March 22, 6-8pm at Minnesota Street Project.

OPHELIA was first unveiled as video-sculpture during Art Basel Miami Beach 2017 at CONTEXT Art Miami, and highlighted both in Artnet’s Everything You Need to Know About All 23 Artfairs at Art Basel Miami Beach and Hyperallergic’s Your Concise Guide Miami Art Week 2017. The live performance premiere of OPHELIA opened the New Ear Festival of sound and performance art in New York this February. Floating in a salt-water solution in a life-size stainless steel sarcophagus, wearing a breathing mask and Ophelia’s dress, Marcin will quote text from Daniil Kharms’ The Werld about our limited human subjective perception. Given the climate changes of the 21st century, in which the world is literally drowning, OPHELIA points to a dystopian future where life must be undertaken inside an underwater world. The project visualizes the fragility of our bodies compared to the forces of nature-in this case water. The image of Ophelia inside an advanced, constructed reality-unable to be heard, kept alive through a mask and encircled by technology, serves as a metaphor for the Anthropocene Period in which we currently live. The project serves as the counterpoint to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which as half-blinded entities, subjectivity guides our perceptions. In contrast, the art and science behind OPHELIA places us on the verge of recovery and discovery as communal effort and responsibility.

Ophelia, the ingénue driven mad by grief and unrequited love in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, has captured the imaginations of worldwide artists, writers, and theorists over the years. Among the most recognized images of Ophelia is Sir John Everett Millais’ masterpiece Ophelia (1851-2). It depicts the tragic figure moments before her death-the picturesque beauty singing her last song before the weight of her gown pulls her to the bottom of the riverbed. The poster girl for hysteria, she epitomizes a passionate, young woman, pressured by society to the point of a mental breakdown. Invoking the historical icons of Millais’ Ophelia, Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Jeff Koons, 1985), and The Werld (Daniil Kharms, 1939), the modular sculpture-transformable both for the live performance and the video sculpture-is designed in collaboration with New York architect and co-founder of Kunstraum LLC, Fernando Schrupp.

As part of the San Francisco iteration of the project, Marcin also will lead a workshop March 16-18, exploring performance and video art as ways of reflecting on social and political constructs, human behavior and elemental emotions at The Growlery-where Marcin will be completing a month-long artist residency. Following the SF presentation of the project, OPHELIA will travel to Nube Gallery in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (April); SomoS in Berlin as part of the Gallery Weekend Berlin (April / May); Moltekerei e.V. in Cologne, Germany as part of the DC Open Gallery Weekend (September); AlbumArte in Rome, Italy, curated by Giulia Casalini of Arts Feminism Queer (November / December); Museum Schauwerk in Sindelfingen, Germany (February 2019). In addition to the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation, the work was made possible, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and with general operating support from the New York State Council on the Arts. OPHELIA is part of the NYFA – New York Foundation of the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship Program. Supporters are provided with international tax deductible donation letters via the project’s NYFA website. For more information, or to become a sponsor, partner, or other inquiries, please contact Nadja Verena Marcin Studio: nvmstudio@gmail.com.

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DATES + LOCATIONS
Live Performance: Saturday, March 3, 4pm sharp
Minnesota Street Project Atrium
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
[RSVP HERE]

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3, 6-8 pm
Exhibition: March 3 – 31, 2018
Minnesota Street Project, Gallery 211
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am-6pm

Workshop OPHELIA: REBEL MEME TO SYSTEMS OF POWER & OPPRESSION Led by Nadja Verena Marcin: Friday, March 16 – Sunday, March 18, 12-6 pm
The Growlery Residency
235 Broderick Street
San Francisco, CA 94117

Panel Discussion OPHELIA: REBEL MEME TO SYSTEMS OF POWER & OPPRESSION
with Dena Beard, Director, The Lab; Dorka Keehn, San Francisco Arts Commissioner and Principal, Keehn on Art; Joseph Becker, Associate Curator Architecture and Design, SFMOMA (TBC); and Nadja Verena Marcin, Artist: Thursday, March 22, 6-8pm
Minnesota Street Project Atrium
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

and

TEST BED
Parsons, The New School, New York
Aronson Gallery
curated by Pillow Culture
February 17 to March 10

Dream Machines Screening
Kellen Auditorium
Saturday March 3, 6.30 PM

TEST BED: Installation, Exhibition and Screening
Asclepeion: a complex of sanctuaries and temples overseen by Asclepius, the god of healing. The organization of the Ascleopeion fostered dream incubation, therapeutic sleep, prophetic dreaming, and medicinal healing. Abaton: 1. A place to which access is restricted, especially a sacred space or enclosure; a sanctuary. 2. An enclosure or building attached to a temple of Asclepius, in which supplicants wishing to be cured slept. (OED)
TEST BED: a Modern Abaton is an installation, an exhibition, and a series of fourteen public performances and dialogues on the interaction of space, the slumbering body, and the accessories of sleep. Organized by Pillow Culture and sponsored by the MFA Interior Design Department at the Parsons School of Design, TEST BED will be held at Parson’s Aronson Gallery located at 66 Fifth Avenue and 13th St. from February 17 through March 10, 2018.
Dream Machines, assembles a series of short films exploring the ethereal borderlands between unconscious desires and conscious thought, visionary dreaming, and spaces of somnambulistic sanctuary. Films by an international roster of historical filmmakers and contemporary artists, have been selected by writer Deena Denaro-Bickerstaffe and experimental filmmaker Albert Nigrin, who will be introducing the screening.

OPHELIA – Nadja Verena Marcin
Aurelia or Echo In Her Eyes: Part 3 – Albert Gabriel Nigrin
Meshes of the Afternoon – Maya Deren
Dreams That Money Can Buy – Hans Richter

Sat, March 3, 2018, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Kellen Auditorium, 66 5th Avenue, Room N101, New York, NY
View Map Add to Calendar

Colonialist at V BIENAL CONTEXTOS 2018
Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, Bolivia
Curated by Rodrigo Rada
March 3 to 29

Through March 29, 2018, Marcin’s Colonialist-a photograph from the collaborative performance with Fernando Schrupp-will be exhibited in V Bienal CONTEXTO, curated by Rodrigo Rada at Museo Nacional de Arte in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In Marcin’s photographic performance work, a couple confronts us in the jungle. Like tribal leaders, they proudly carry a feather crown and look at us reproachfully. Have we, the invaders, accidentally entered their dominion and peeked into their private lives? Similar to an island that has been seized, their lives and couple-hood lay in front of us, an occupied paradise, subjected to our gaze. The paradigms of equalization and escape are at play-their world appearing as a hyperbolic fugue state from a singular reality. A provocative, ironic tone confirms the couple’s level of self-awareness, and indicates a gesture of resistance. The couple must retain their world. The title of the piece alludes to the dynamic of occupied terrain. The paradise of love turns into an island of ‘milles plateaux’ of controversy, commitment, love, and meaning.

ABOUT NADJA VERENA MARCIN
Nadja Verena Marcin utilizes performance art in video, photography and live action to examine the constructed persona. By creating a “theater of cinema” in which the audience can be immersed, Marcin raises awareness through a hyperbolic interpretation of relatable scenarios, enacting symbolic actions, catalyzing the visibility of hidden codes speaking to the Anthropocene Age, gender inequality, systems of power and distribution, and manipulative media representations. Her work appropriates familiar imagery, mirroring the ambiguities of human behavior and psychological mechanism-making visible inherent hierarchies and subverting patriarchal domain. Marcin’s work has been exhibited internationally at: Abrons Art Center, New York; ZKM- Museum for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Zendai MOMA, Shanghai (Himalajas Museum); Museo National de Arte, La Paz; Veneto Videoart Archive, Verona; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Jinsun Gallery, Seoul; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; ICA Philadelphia; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow; Palacio Portales, Cochabamba; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Momentum | Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin; NADA New York; Hudson Valley Contemporary Art Center, Peekskill; Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten, Marl; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn; Aesthetica Art Prize, York; Whitney Houston Biennale, New York; Goethe Institute, Santa Cruz; Middle Gate Geel’13, Geel; Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany; Coup de Ville, Sint Niklaas; VOLTA 9, Basel; Jaeckel Gallery, New York; Temp Art Gallery, New York; Kapinos Gallery, Berlin; 80WSE Gallery, NYU, New York; Esther Donatz Gallery, Germany; Loop Video Art Fair, Barcelona.

Marcin’s video has been included in worldwide film festivals such as Busan International Video Festival, Busan; FIFA, Festival pour film sur l’art, Montreal; International Video Art Festival, Athens; EJECT- Performance Festival, Mexico City; New Beijing International Film Festival, Beijing; Tirana International Film Festival, Tirana, European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück and Videonale 11+12, Bonn. She has received grants, residencies, and prizes such as the Fulbright Award; DAAD Grant; Int. Artist Career Development Grant by Artworks Int; Film Production Grant by NRW Film-und Medienstiftung; Prize for Art and Language by Kunststiftung Sparkasse UnnaKamen; Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant; Arbeitsstipendium, Kunststiftung Bonn; and Franklin Furnace Grant amongst many others. She was an artist resident at the ISCP Residency, New York; KIOSKO Residency, Bolivia and Deutsche Börse Residency at Frankfurter Kunstverein. She has taught and lectured at P.I. Arts Center, New York, City College of New York and Brooklyn College. Her work is being featured in worldwide press such as Huffington Post, VICE, Hyperallergic, Kunstforum, Texte zur Kunst, Art Forum, MSN, and Artnet. Marcin is the Founder and CEO of Kunstraum LLC, an interdisciplinary team of curators, artists and architects that promotes emerging art and outstanding art concepts, recently awarded the Artfair Goers Award for “Video Shop” as Best Booth at NADA New York.

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