Contents for June 9th, 2025
CONTENTS (please click on the links or scroll down for complete information on each post):
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Weekly Spotlight: Anh Vo, FF FUND Recipient 2024-25, at The Plaza at 300 Ashland, Brooklyn, June 14
1. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, FF Alumn, at Observatorio Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, June 25
2. Clifford Owens, FF Alumn, at David Kordansky Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 26
3. Chloë Bass, FF Alumn, at Alexander Gray Associates, Manhattan, opening June 13
4. Marisa Morán Jahn, FF Alumn, at National Public Housing Museum, Chicago, and more
5. Guerrilla Girls, FF Alumns, now online at BBC.com
6. Robert Rauschenberg, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
7. Alina & Jeff Bliumis, FF Alumns, new publication, and more
8. Silvia Ziranek, FF Alumn, at Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK, thru July 13, and more
9. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, at Microscope Gallery, Manhattan, June 16
10. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/1090652276
11. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, at Provincetown Film Festival, MA, June 11-15
12. Irina Danilova, FF Alumn, now online at https://www.irinadanilova.net/Bus59.html
13. Mimi Gross, FF Member, at The Brooklyn Museum, June 13-November 2
14. Kite, Amy Ruhl, FF Alumns, at Amant, Brooklyn, June 25
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Weekly Spotlight: Anh Vo, FF FUND Recipient 2024-25, at The Plaza at 300 Ashland, Brooklyn, June 14
Upcoming FUND Performance: Anh Vo (FF FUND 2024-25)
“Possessed by Capital” on Saturday, June 14, 9:30pm
Begins at The Plaza at 300 Ashland, 85 Flatbush Avenue
Ends at the Apple Store Downtown Brooklyn, 123 Flatbush Avenue
If Marx has to “take flight into the misty realm of religion” to flesh out his theory of commodity fetishism, Possessed by Capital takes seriously this religiosity of commodity consumption to stage a worship dance for the temple of Apple Store in Downtown Brooklyn.
Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in New York City, with a second base in Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental performance, Hanoi performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Vo is indebted to Miguel Gutierrez’s unapologetic queerness and amorphous excess, Moriah Evan’s speculative commitment to the depth of interiority, Tehching Hsieh’s existential sense of time, and Ngoc Dai’s guttural sonic landscape of postwar Vietnam. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with esteemed theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).
Possessed by Capital was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive. This work was supported by an Early Creative Residency at the Chocolate Factory Theater.
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1. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, FF Alumn, at Observatorio Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, June 25
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel to perform at Observatorio Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Plataforma Vértices: Ecologies of the Senses / Experimental practices and inquiry into the visible and invisible / Observatorio Fabra, Barcelona
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 / 10:00 AM 3:30 PM
Camí de l’Observatori, s/n, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, 08035
Barcelona, Spain
To RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdpDS94k26ETvRzWCs400JaryjaLFqHP0MonQiTHiOLzEWpkw/viewform
About Observatorio Fabra: https://www.barcelona.cat/en/discoverbcn/pics/el-observatorio-fabra-92168174918
About Plataforma Vértices: https://plataformavertices.com/
Ecologies of the Senses explores the threshold where meteorological dynamics intertwine in an ever-changing process, a feedback loop that configures a relational framework essential for sustaining life. It invites us to cross the threshold—where the measurable and the intuitive meet—to reimagine our relationship with the natural rhythms that surround us and, ultimately, constitute us.
The activities explore how we inhabit space when space itself is reconfigured, inviting artists and creators to design contemporary rituals that translate meteorological phenomena into sensorial languages, contaminating boundaries between the material and the intangible, between science and imagination, between data and memory, between climate impact and the intimate perception of the world. Ecologies of the Senses is carried out within the framework of the Thousand Years of Skies program.
ACTIVITIES – 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Visit to the meteorological section of the Fabra Observatory led by meteorologist Alfons Puertas, where we will learn about the effects of meteorological phenomena in the city of Barcelona.
WORKSHOP – Invisible Meteorological Landscape
We will learn to build projects with Arduino to build meteorological technologies to explore different invisible physical and environmental phenomena, exploring the uses and possibilities of these instruments for the creation and implementation of interdisciplinary projects.
Led by the creator Sandra Huerto. A second session of this workshop will be held on Saturday, June 28 (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), for those who want to expand their knowledge and be able to create or implement it in an artistic project. The second session will not be held at the Observatory, a space to be defined.
PERFORMANCE
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel
Corpo-Cosmic Approaches / Earth, Water, Fire and Air
Nicolás convenes a group to delve into a series of somatic practices that initially propose an introspective investigation of four elements present in our bodies: earth, water, fire, and air. These presences are invoked from the context of the Fabra Observatory gardens and investigated internally through a guided, very subtle process. The impetus of this approach is to invite us to intuit and activate the connections we are called to continually forge in order to maintain homeostasis at the physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual—and planetary—levels. The session eventually moves from the personal to the collective, using conversation as a means to delve into the practice of deep listening—offering our full attention to the person sharing, without judging, advising, questioning, or interrupting. This method helps us receive messages openly, including the emotions they bring with them. Corpo-Cosmic Approaches / Earth, Water, Fire and Air seeks to inhabit the gardens of the Fabra Observatory to travel from the micro to the macro in the cosmos that houses us and that we house within us.
Bio: Nicolás www.interiorbeautysalon.com
Presentation of the project “Solarigrafies del Observatorio Fabra” by Jordi Bofill Cunillera, a craftsman of experimental analog photography, specialized in solarigraphy: https://www.instagram.com/photosensitiveexperiences/
FREE ACTIVITY PRIOR REGISTRATION WITH LETTER OF INTEREST
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdpDS94k26ETvRzWCs400JaryjaLFqHP0MonQiTHiOLzEWpkw/viewform
IMPORTANT:
Due to limited spaces, a €10 deposit is required to formalize registration. This amount will be refunded once attendance is confirmed on the day of the event.
Target audience:
Contemporary artists, creators, researchers, and other artistic disciplines seeking to incorporate science and technology into their creative work, as well as those interested in exploring new forms of expression that address environmental issues.
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2. Clifford Owens, FF Alumn, at David Kordansky Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 26
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
I’m thrilled and overjoyed to open a solo exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery (New York) on June 26, 2025.
My last solo in New York City was 9-years ago. Massive thank you to David for taking this risk with me, his entire team (especially Andy Rosenwald) for their care and kindness, and legendary art dealer and curator Jay Gorney for being on this journey with me.
The gallery has also commissioned four new performances, including a trio of vignettes to be executed over the duration of the opening.
Please see link below to a beautifully crafted press release with dates of subsequent performance (every other Thursday).
https://www.davidkordanskygallery.com/exhibitions/clifford-owens
I sincerely hope to see you at the gallery this summer!
Warmly and with an abundance of gratitude,
Clifford
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3. Chloë Bass, FF Alumn, at Alexander Gray Associates, Manhattan, opening June 13
Chloë Bass: Twice Seen
New York
June 13–July 26, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, June 13, 5:00–7:00 PM
We turn to time, 2024 (still), Four-channel HD video and audio, 23 minutes, 57 seconds
Chloë Bass: Twice Seen
June 13–July 26, 2025
Alexander Gray Associates, New York, presents Chloë Bass: Twice Seen, the artist’s first solo commercial exhibition. Debuting a 2024 multichannel video installation alongside new text-based prints and mirrored works, Bass’s show is a multifaceted investigation into the nature of representation, positioning racial and cultural hybridity as foundational to American identity.
Born in 1984 to a Trinidadian abstract artist and poet and a Jewish psychoanalyst, Bass embodies the cultural hybridity at the heart of her exhibition. Her immersive four-channel video installation we turn to time, recently acquired by the Walker Art Center, combines self-documented recordings from four families across the United States. As Bass writes, “… [the work] is the discovery and presentation of an archive … that quintessential form of nostalgic visual culture, the family home movie, featuring visibly mixed race, intergenerational families throughout the United States.” The footage, captured at various gatherings, brims with laughter, quotidian tasks, contemplative gazes, and telling silences. By transforming these private moments into public meditations on identity, Bass’s installation challenges historical and contemporary representations of America that elide the country’s inherent racial complexities.
Bass’s work recalls that of conceptual artists like Adrian Piper, Yoko Ono, and Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024), who was both a mentor and friend. Like these artists, Bass’s installation traces the connection between representation, visibility, and power. Created against the backdrop of the United States’ fraught history—where anti-miscegenation laws criminalized interracial relationships for centuries—her videos present mixed-race family life as quintessentially American. “Throughout American history, the mixed-race body is usually presented either as a disaster … or as a kind of magic,” she writes. “… we turn to time resists the binaries of tragic/magic, choosing instead to engage with the idea of mixture as fundamentally American.”
we turn to time, 2024 (still), Four-channel HD video and audio, 23 minutes, 57 seconds
Bass’s mirrors and letterpress prints, both titled PRETEXTS, further refine these ideas. The hand-silvered, obliquely engraved mirrors build on the artist’s earlier Wayfinding installations, posing evocative statements to viewers that implicate them through reflection—incorporating them literally and figuratively into the exhibition’s exploration of visibility. Meanwhile, Bass’s prints describe scenes from a single 1960s-era archival home movie. Printed on salvaged offcuts from her mother’s print practice, these works use language and material to extend Bass’s examination of how histories are recorded, emphasizing the gap between lived experience and representation. The texts for both the glass and letterpress works draw from the research and writing Bass did in preparation for we turn to time, including her 2018 lecture-performance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, THIS IS A FILM.
Bass’s work represents a profound exploration of identity and belonging. Through her video installation and text-based pieces, she dismantles conventional national narratives to offer a nuanced portrait of American selfhood—one that defies simple categorization. As Bass concludes, her art invites more comprehensive understandings of “…who we are, and who we could be.”
The artist’s work has been the subject of many one-person exhibitions, including Wayfinding, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY (2024); #sky #nofilter: Hindsight for a Future America, co-presented by Art + Practice and California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Wayfinding, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Wayfinding, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO (2021); Wayfinding, St. Nicholas Park, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2019); and The Book of Everyday Instruction, Knockdown Center, Queens, NY (2018), among others. The artist’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Cantando Bajito: Chorus, Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY (2024); In These Truths, Albright-Knox Northland, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY (2022); Close to You, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2022); and Art on the Grid, Public Art Fund, New York (2020), among others. Bass’s performances have been spotlighted at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2023); COUNTERPUBLIC, St. Louis, MO (2019); Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Berlin, Germany (2019); and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2018), among others. Her work is in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY and California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, including New York University Future Imagination Fund Fellowship (2022); Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Arts and Culture Grant for SPCUNY (2021); and Art Matters Fellowship (2019), among others. Bass’s major projects often culminate in publications. Working with collaborators, she has released #sky #nofilter (2020); The Book of Everyday Instruction (2018); Art as Social Action (2018); Say Something, Jamie (2018); What is shared, what is offered (2017); and The Bureau of Self-Recognition (2013).
384 Broadway
New York NY 10013
United States
Tel: +1 212 399 2636
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4. Marisa Morán Jahn, FF Alumn, at National Public Housing Museum, Chicago, and more
This Spring, the four flights of colorful wallpaper that artist Marisa Morán Jahn designed for Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum has been receiving accolades from publications such as the Smithsonian Magazine, Chicago Block Club, The Art Newspaper, and the The Chicago Tribune who referred to the artwork as “ecstatic.” Entitled ReCreation, the wallpaper remixes archival photographs and celebrates the extraordinary cultural efflorescence in Baltimore from the late 1960s through the 1970s led by working families and Black mothers whose extraordinary leadership contributed to a legacy of solidarity still seen today.
Learn more: https://www.marisajahn.com/recreation
Marisa Morán Jahn, along with a team of 3 architects — Rafi Segal, Office of Urban Drafters (Kosovo), ORG Permanent Modernity (Belgium — won an international competition to transform a former brick factory in Kosovo into a climate-forward, art and technology district called “Art-Tek Tulltorja” (tulle means brick in Albanian). Currently, the site is a brownfield the size of NYC’s Times Square. Art-Tek Tulltorja revitalizes this site into a pedestrianized district and urban park, integrating sustainable development, landscape design, and heritage preservation. A model of Art-Tek Tulltorja is on view through November 23 at Palazzo Diedo/Berggruen Arts and Culture at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the opening reception was attended by Preparim and Kristale Rama, the Mayor and First Lady of Prishtina, Kosovo. This project is in the permitting phase and will start construction this year.
Learn more: https://www.marisajahn.com/tulltorja
Created by artist Marisa Morán Jahn and architect Rafi Segal, the HOOPcycle is a MesoAmerican basketball court on wheels that celebrates recreational equity. On Aug 23-24, 2025, the HOOPcycle toodles over from its home at The National Public Housing Museum for a special guest appearance at Bulls Fest, the annual festival hosted by the NBA’s Chicago Bulls at United Center campus. Bulls Fest is Chicago’s ultimate basketball experience featuring a 3v3 tournament and other basketball activations, appearances from Bulls players and legends, local food and artists and an exclusive merchandise collection.
Learn more: http://hoopcycle.art
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5. Guerrilla Girls, FF Alumns, now online at BBC.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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6. Robert Rauschenberg, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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7. Alina & Jeff Bliumis, FF Alumns, new publication, and more
Alina and Jeff Bliumis A Painting For A Family Dinner publication is being issued on occasion of the exhibition AT THE TABLE: Eating and Drinking in Contemporary Art at Museum Ostwall at the Dortmunder U, Germany.
https://www.verlag-kettler.de/en/books/alina-bliumis-painting-for-a-family-dinner
The publication documents our journey: 62 host families, 62 family portraits, 6 countries – Dortmund, Germany 2025, Tokyo, Japan 2022, Lecce, Italy 2013, Beijing, China 2013, Bronx, NY, USA 2012, Bat Yam, Israel 2008.
Foreword by Regina Selter, Who Represents a City? by Christina Danick and Michael Griff, Alina and Jeff Bliumis Diary – short recounts of all dinners in chronological order, photo documentation and family recipes collected along the way.
Published by Museum Ostwall at the Dortmunder U and Verlag Kettler, Germany, May 2025. In German and English
and
Alina and Jeff Bliumis,
A Painting For A Family Dinner
At the Table. Eating and Drinking in Contemporary Art
curated by Christina Danick and Michael Griff
Museum Ostwall at the Dortmunder U (MO), Germany
May 8 – July 20, 2025
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8. Silvia Ziranek, FF Alumn, at Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK, thru July 13, and more
Everyone’s doing it, so here goes: a modest selection of my forthcoming activities
Kind regards
Silvia Ziranek
B(ig) I(n) T(he) E(eighties)
@silvia_ziranek
My COOK (BACK IN HUNGER) maternal/culinary/coping manuscript in the Reading Room of Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, curated by Hettie J Judah 19th April – 13th July 2025, Dundee contemporary Arts, 152 Nethergate, DD1 4DY
I’LL NEVER WEAR THE CLOTHES I’LL NEVER WEAR performance at 7pm, ‘Skin Deep’ development of Clothes You’ll Never Wear, PV 6-9pm and perf 7th June 2025, Blue House Yard, 5 River Park Road, N22 7TB
MY MOVING MEDAL, a WAF25 and WAF on Winstanley commission, is a joyful workshop for anyone experiencing change in any way, open to all, 11am-1pm, Saturday 21/6/25 York Gardens Library, 34 Lavender Road, SW11 2UG. Own your Past, Live your Present, Create your Future! https://welcometowandsworth.com/events/di-my-moving-medal/
MOST/LY MOTIF/LY reworked for the Ragged School Museum Pattern Cutters programme curated by Erica Davies, Oona Grimes and Antoni Malinowski, perf on 21/6/25 at 4.30 prompt, 46-50 Copperfield Road, E3 4RR, London
I TH!NK NOT, a noticeable live work focusing on Feminism & taboo & lipsticks, 7pm on Thursday10th July 2025, part of the APOCALIPSTICK programme, 11-25 July 2025, at Art Bypass Gallery, Dalston E8. Email info@wearesweetart.com for full address and inclusion on Guest List
BY A THREAD sculpture installation and text perf at MOCA, London, and touring to The House of Smalls, Edinburgh, 2025-26
Thank you for reading SCZ
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9. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, at Microscope Gallery, Manhattan, June 16
Please visit this link:
https://microscopegallery.com/videos-by-kathy-brew/
Thank you.
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10. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/1090652276
TO THE GREAT BLANKNESS
MAILING LIST:
Visual Philosophy
PZ, JUNE 5, 2025
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11. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, at Provincetown Film Festival, MA, June 11-15
The 27th International Provincetown Film Festival, June 11-15, 2025, showcases two documentaries that I am featured in:
An amateur filmmaker enters a sleepy New England fishing village with hopes to complete a film.
This is my breakout role as the late legendary Miss Ellie, a 78 year-old former trans minister who performed on Provincetown’s Commercial Street with her red wagon and boombox.
Spiritus – no business like dough business
https://www.provincetownfilm.org/films/spiritus-no-business-like-dough-business
Highlighting the rich history of one of the oldest and beloved family-run businesses in Provincetown—Spiritus Pizza is a local gem and iconic late-night gathering spot. Featuring homespun interviews with owner John Yingling and many former employees, SPIRITUS explores the challenges faced by the business, the queer community and the AIDS crisis, all against the backdrop of changing attitudes in the town during the 1970s and ’80s. Since its founding in 1971, and through the ensuing decades, Spiritus has remained a vibrant epicenter of activity, resilience, and deeply-rooted history in Provincetown—as well as a slice of pizza heaven!
Jay Critchley
Founder & Director
Provincetown Community Compact
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12. Irina Danilova, FF Alumn, now online at https://www.irinadanilova.net/Bus59.html
Please visit this link:
https://www.irinadanilova.net/Bus59.html
Thank you.
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13. Mimi Gross, FF Member, at The Brooklyn Museum, June 13-November 2
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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14. Kite, Amy Ruhl, FF Alumns, at Amant, Brooklyn, June 25
The performance ensemble Flowers in the Basement presents SCHOOL’S OUT, an evening starring Mel Elberg, Kite, and Amy Ruhl. Comprised of solo performances and vignettes, the work reflects on the rituals, residues, and psychic debris of schooling that are also explored in Amant’s exhibition On Education.
With Flowers in the Basement’s unique approach to performance, the evening will serve as a counter-pedagogy, one that exposes the violences tucked beneath the surface of the schoolroom while also carving space for irreverence, intuition, and the bittersweet balm of shared laughter.
for tickets: https://www.amant.org/
Amant 306 Maujer Street Brooklyn, NY 11206 https://www.amant.org/
Thank you.
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For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org
Join Franklin Furnace today:
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Goings On for Artists is compiled weekly by Rohan Subramaniam, Archive Intern, Summer/Fall/Winter 2024/2025
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