Elmo at Light Industry

Not really, but I couldn't resist. Here's the information about this Tuesday's show:

Theater of Code

Curated by Christiane Paul

at Light Industry

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 7:30pm

220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York

Theater of Code will present three performance/interventions that explore how computer code, scripting language, and software applications relate to the movement of bodies and the staging and choreography of our lives.

Adrianne Wortzel's A Re-enactment of The Battle of the Pyramids is a performance installation of reconfigured robotic toys performing military maneuvers in rigid choreographed formations. Clusters of these toys snap to synchronization in response to a call to arms, their movements emulating the rigid and postured fighting strategies of Napoleonic warfare. These strategies, employed in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, were particularly idiosyncratic in Egypt where they were persistently performed without consideration of either the desert environment or the fighting strategies of the enemy. The work is intended as a testimony to the tragic consequences of imperialism and the dangers, follies and sadness of a rationale for blind obedience that makes victims out of warriors.

Ursula Endlicher's Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited is a ten-part live performance series, which utilizes Web code as choreography. In the performance of facebook on March 3, 2009, at Light Industry, three dancers, the audience, and the artist will shape the course of the performance. The source of the website—its HTML tags—is interpreted live on stage into new dance movements, which are immediately translated into text-based descriptions and then stored online in the html-movement-library. This information is reused on stage as new instruction material. As the data performance progresses, more html-movements are developed, stored and altered by the participants. The user (=the audience) takes an active role in the performance of facebook.com. The inclusion of the html-movement-library on stage enables a simultaneous exchange of instruction and performance, data and movement input and output, and a continuous transfer between Web and body.

MTAA returns to Light Industry with two new performances of code-based art. In the first work—titled $"##'—MTAA re-stages John Cage's 4'33" within a framework of a new media lecture. The second project is a demonstration of Autotrace, a software-generated appropriation and shape creation system. As part of the Autotrace performance, MTAA will use one of the newly generated "Autotraced shapes" to create a ridiculously large, two-dimensional, site-specific work right in front of the audience's eyes.

Together, the three projects comment on the various levels in which our movements—from military maneuvers to social interaction and the presentation of a lecture—are encoded by technologies.

Light Industry Graces a New Space

They've outgrown their space. This Tuesday will be the first presentation in the new Light Industry space at 220 36th Street - now on the 5th Floor. Movin' on up.

from the email:

This week, Light Industry is relocating to a new, larger space at 220 36th Street in Building 2 of Industry City, just around the corner from our current 33rd Street location in Building 9. As we expand our programming substantially in 2009, this move marks an exciting new phase in Light Industry’s still brief history, and is a testament to Industry City’s continued generosity and support of the project.

Tuesday's show is $7 at the door, and it begins at 7:30 PM. Here's what you'll see:

Only in Darkness Is Your Shadow Clear

A projection performance by Bruce McClure

“Strobing can be defined as an illusion, or impression, created by a regular relationship between the speed of the subject matter being photographed and the interval between exposures. Wheels that appear to be turning backward, despite the obvious forward motion of the vehicle, offer an excellent example of this kind of illusory effect. Strobing is generally regarded by a cameraman as undesirable and is often minimized by changing the number of spokes on the wheel. Meanwhile, in the repose of the movie house, with photography behind us, it is the phasing of light and sound and its cessation, all according to the constancy of the projector’s action that provides us with an occasion for a desirable mental wandering...

“This said, I will conclude my descriptive treatment of ‘Only in Darkness Is Your Shadow Clear’ by saying that the audience will witness another resurrection of the incandescent machine age. I will use three modified 16 millimeter projectors, three film foliums, two of which that will be bi-packed with loops, guitar effects pedals and two loudspeakers. I would also like to note that the title for this show comes from a poem by Hart Crane and is a correlate of lyrics taken from Monster Magnet’s ‘Dopes to Infinity’ – I can see by the hole in your head that you want to be friends you’re the right one baby.” - BM

Followed by a conversation between McClure and Glen Fogel.

Light Industry: Branden Joseph on Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant in Europe

Tuesday's presentation with Branden Joseph is entitled "The Roh and the Cooked: Structural Film, Actionism, Paracinema." On Tuesday the 27th, the show begins at 7:30 PM, and it costs $7 at the door. Light Industry is at 55 33rd Street, on the third floor.

Actionism sounds kind of like what Obama is asking from everyone, right? No more complain-ism, bemoan-ism, or big idea-ism without plans...now we're in for the real deal. That makes this that much more relevant.

An associate professor at Columbia, Joseph's most recent publication is Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (Zone Books, 2008). I'll bet some copies are at this presentation.

Here's the run down from the calendar:

Branden W. Joseph will discuss the travels of Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant throughout Europe in the early 1970s. Their itinerary, and the transformations in Conrad’s work upon his return to the United States, sheds light on the particular “crisis” of experimental cinema at the time and the manner in which it was (temporarily) overcome. Revising current understandings of the notion of there being “two avant-gardes” (as Peter Wollen famously put it), an examination of Conrad’s development and his interactions with Malcolm Le Grice, Wilhelm and Birgit Hein, and Otto Muehl will outline another line of avant-garde development. Drawn from Conrad’s personal archives and other research, this talk covers material that is not included in the author’s recent book, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage. The talk will be preceded by a screening of relevant films: Kurt Kren, Mama und Papa (1964); Malcolm Le Grice, Little Dog for Roger (1967); Wilhelm and Birgit Hein, Roh Film; Annabel Nicholson, Slides (1970); and Tony Conrad, 4-X Attack (1973), Curried 7302 (1973), and 7302 Creole (1973).

Inauguration Celebration Alternative: Light Industry has "Landscape Suicide"

So if you don't feel like partying like it's ten years after 1999 tonight, you can check out James Benning's Landscape Suicide at Light Industry. It sounds like a mix of documentary and "America's Most Wanted" recreated scenes about two separate murders California and Wisconsin. I'm sure it will be an uplifting evening. But if it's not, at least you get to check out NY Magazine's hotspot of the week.

See the calendar at Light Industry's website for more information.

Tickets are now $7 at Light Industry's door; the show starts at 7:30 PM.

Light Industry
55 33rd Street, 3rd Floor.

Light Industry: Canada on Tuesday; NYC and Mediterranean on Wednesday

Light Industry will have two presentations this week. Both shows are at 7:30 PM - that's a change! Also, it's now more pricey to check out the shows...$7 at the door. I guess they figure they've got people hooked. What hasn't changed is the location: 55 33rd Street, on the third floor. Check out their link above to read more about each show.

Tuesday evening will be Christina Battle's Canadian experience. As described by the artist:

“17 hours of darkness (reflections on this place I call home)” brings together a collection of works by contemporary Canadian artists exploring the dark and nagging anxieties associated with the Canadian landscape. An investigation of my own obsession with Canada’s natural climate, artists represented attempt to navigate the darkness that envelops our days for so many hours of the year. As we brace for another long winter I wonder how this obsession has shaped our collective memory and in turn impacts the Canadian experience...oh, and of course, there’s some hockey in there too.

Wednesday evening will feature Jem Cohen's informal presentation of stuff he has collected. The image above is from Jem Cohen. As described by the artist:

In my closets, cabinets, and storage rooms there are stacks of films. Some eventually become parts of finished projects, some were shown here and there in live music collaborations, some never make it beyond the apartment wall. An informal evening of mostly 16mm rarities and sketches; a few things never previously projected and at least one never previously seen, the journey more than the destination.

Hellfire and Holiday Refreshments at Light Industry

Okay, so it's really Hellfire and Rhinestones, but I thought that the "holiday refreshments will be served" after the fiery description of the evenings offerings was very funny.

Light Industry is staying on the fringes of the season with their December 2nd presentation. On that Tuesday, at 8 PM, for $6 at the door, you can see items that celebrate the golden age of televangelism as curated by Leah Churner. Werner Herzog's God's Angry Man, Christmas in America (from which the photo comes), and footage of "piano man Jimmy Lee Swaggart, who styled himself as the antithesis of his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, and became the subject of an Ozzy Osbourne song in 1988."

All that and holiday refreshments. Anyone want to babysit two under-twos?

See it all at Light Industry
55 33rd Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), 3rd floor

Light Industry Shakes Things Up With Friday/Sunday Shows

After many, many Tuesdays of culture for Industry City, Light Industry is adding new nights to its schedule. Hallowe'en was the first of the Friday evening offerings, and this Friday and Sunday continue the schedule. Tickets, as always, are $6 at the 55 33rd Street door. Go up to the third floor!

On Friday, November 7th, at 8 PM, check out Films by Matt McCormick - presented by...Matt McCormick! The newest offering is Light Tiger Eye, but also on view will be The Problem with Machines that Communicate and clips from McCormick's on-going installation project Future So Bright.

On Sunday, November 9th, also at 8 PM, you can catch Too Early, Too Late by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The website includes a detailed description, including this: The film is thus a diptych. One, France. Two, Egypt. No actors, not even characters, especially not extras. If there is an actor in Too Early, Too Late, it's the landscape.

It's great to see that LI has been enough of a success to add more dates to their calendar. Perhaps the new dates will help bring out new crowds as well.

Light Industry Hosts Peter Goldman's "Echoes of Silence" introduced by Jonas Mekas

This Tuesday, at 8 PM, Light Industry will screen a rarely shown film: Peter Emmanuel Goldman's Echoes of Silence.

from the Light Industry description:

Peter Emmanuel Goldman's rarely screened debut, an underappreciated landmark of the New American Cinema, chronicles the lives of twenty-somethings adrift in New York City, finding tremendous pathos in the smallest moments: a furtive glance across a museum gallery, girls putting on makeup, a stroll beneath the Times Square Marquees. Composed with a lo-fi purity and bereft of diegetic sound, its shadowy images of youthful flaneurs are paired with evocatively hand-painted title cards and a dynamic soundtrack drawn from the artist's LPs that, when combines, conjure up a ballad of sexual dependency like none other.

Light Industry is at 55 33rd Street, on the 3rd Floor. Admission is $6 at the door.

Light Industry Presents Video and Film by K8 Hardy

This Tuesday's show will be films and videos by K8 Hardy - some are recent and some are from as far back as the Nineties!

Themes include the objectification of female bodies, the plundered aesthetics of 70s lesbian imagery (for a music video), corporate architecture's effect on one person's movements, and a Super-8 piece called Ants in her Pants - an experimental piece about the energy and style of a "young and queer generation."

The video/film pieces will be followed by a post-show discussion between K8 Hardy and Ulrike Müller. For more detail, see Light Industry's description.

As always, tickets are $6 at the door. And the door, which is at 55 33rd Street - on the 3rd floor - opens for the 8 PM show.

Enjoy.

Short Films at Light Industry

Ready for an evening out on a Tuesday? Has the film crew working hard in Sunset Park inspired you? Want to relive some funny clips that include Dubya (El Presidente)? Tomorrow night, Light Industry, a new place in Sunset Park to see film and art, is showing the following films:

Blue Christmas, David White, 16mm, 197?, 15 mins
My Love, Michel Auder, video, 1978, 6 mins
Trouble in Baghdad, 16mm, 1963, 7 mins
Ex, Jacques Monory, 16mm, 1968, 4 mins
Litany of Happy People, Karpo Godina, video, 1972, 15 mins
+ assorted television clips.

Tickets are $6, and Light Industry is located at 55 33rd Street - in Brooklyn, of course! Check out their website: www.lightindustry.org