Category Archives: Past News

Westbeth video artist Maya Ciarrocchi
in NY Times article about
“Telephone” art exhibit/

Maya Ciarrocchi TELEPHONE

Sometime last winter, Terri St.Arnauld and Frank Yezer, photographers in Austin, Tex., and Maya Ciarrocchi, a video artist in New York, each received an email that contained a song. The tune was by Stelth Ulvang, a musician from Denver, whom they had never met. In a spare recording, on banjo and accordion, Mr. Ulvang sang of a forlorn man and a landscape of smoke and clouds.

All three recipients got down to work, poring over the lyrics, “trying to understand what the artist was conveying,” Ms. St.Arnauld said. Their goal was to make something inspired by the song, and to connect in a mysterious creative experiment.

Read more about the project here:
NY Times article

Lilly Rivlin film “Esther Broner: A Weave of Women” featured at Grace Paley Symposium at New School on April 9, 2015

Lilly Rivlin GracePaley Schedule

In 1975 Esther Broner and Naomi Nimrod wrote the first Women’s Haggadah, paving the way for modern Jewish feminism. For the next 36 years, Esther Broner led the Feminist Passover Seder in New York City, with a core group of women. This film documents the evolution of Jewish feminism through archival footage and interviews with leading Jewish feminists. At the same time it tells the story of Esther Broner, described by the New York Times as a writer who explored the double marginalization of being Jewish and female. Without her, we can assume, modern Jewish women might not have found a worthy place in the home, in society, and in Jewish tradition.

More info about the film: www.estherbronerthefilm.com

More info about symposium:

Council Member Corey Johnson visits Westbeth.

Left to right: Mae Gamble, RogerBraimon, Christina Maile, Marta Almirall Morales, Corey Johnson, Pawnee Sills, Geo Cominskie, Halina Warren. photo: Tequila Minsky

Left to right: Mae Gamble, RogerBraimon, Christina Maile, Marta Almirall Morales, Corey Johnson, Pawnee Sills, Geo Cominskie, Halina Warren. photo: Tequila Minsky

In a wide-ranging Villager article, editor Lincoln Anderson talks to Corey Johnson about his work in pursuing affordable housing, his fight for contextual zoning, and his commitment to finding ways to ease income inequality in NYC.

Included in the article are the issues raised in a short but intense meeting, Corey Johnson held with Westbeth tenants recently where tenants discussed the Board’s refusal to disclose documents relating to Westbeth finances, and warehousing of apartments.

Johnson said, he’s incensed at what’s going on at the Westbeth artists’ housing complex, where the board of directors has sued to stop the residents from getting access to public records from the state Attorney General’s Office.

“The corporation and the board at Westbeth should stop hiding the documents and be transparent,” Johnson stated. “And they should stop warehousing apartments and start occupying them with artists who need affordable housing.

Read the full Villager article here.
http://thevillager.com/2015/03/26/pushing-for-rent-rollback-johnson-rolls-into-year-2/

Carole Byard ‘s Rent Series is subject of a discussion at the Schomburg Center Thursday March 12 at 6:30PM.

KMBT_C364e-20150202125823

The Schomburg Center for Research into Black Culture celebrates the work of visual artist, Carol Byard, with a conversation addressing the “Rent Series”. The program will center on Byard’s discovery–after her father’s death–of a cache of rent receipts he’d kept in his life-long efforts to provide housing for their family, always struggling to do so. In the early 1980s, Byard set about to reimagine her father efforts in a series of images which she titled “Rent.” Join Byard’s peers for a conversation and showcase of her work. Guest speakers include, Grace Williams, Tomie Arai, and Eve Sandler.

For further info: Schomburg Center for Research into Black Culture

For an interview with Alexis de Veaux about Carol Byard’s work and the Rent series: http://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/02/19/carole-byards-rent-series

Photo credit: Artwork from Carole Byard’s “Rent Series,” courtesy of Alexis De Veaux

Maya Ciarrocchi & Kris Grey
“Gender/Power (composition II)”
Installation and Performance
March 25 -28
Gibney Dance:
Agnes Varis Performance Lab

Maya Ciarrocchi Gender

Wednesday, March 25 – Saturday, March 28
Installation opens at 4:00 pm nightly
Performances at 6:00 pm, 7:00 pm, & 8:00 pm nightly
Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performance Lab

http://www.gibneydance.org/maya-ciarrocchi-kris-grey/

Tickets
$20 General Admission
$15 Seniors, Students, & Gibney Dance Class-Card Holders

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis
Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (Entrance at 53A Chambers St.)

Box Office
Mon – Fri, 2pm – 6pm;
Sat, 4pm – 6pm
646.837.6809
On performance days, the box office will be open until showtime.

Email Andrew Magazine at andrew@gibneydance.org with ticket inquiries.

The first collaboration between video artist Maya Ciarrocchi and visual/performance artist Kris Grey, Gender/Power (composition II) is an immersive installation activated by performance, sound, and video that poses questions about the dynamics of power in relation to gender. The content of the work is created in collaboration with individuals who have made specific decisions to disrupt or subvert gender signifiers. Focusing on embodiment, identity, and representation, the performers present narratives regarding their actual and perceived gender; these stories destabilize binary gender and expose our assumptions regarding the social signifiers used to define sex and power.

Maya Ciarrocchi is a New York City based video artist whose work addresses identity and otherness via documentation and durational portraiture. Her work has been exhibited in New York at: Anthology Film Archives, Chashama, The Chocolate Factory, Microscope Gallery, New York Live Arts, Sasha Wolf Gallery, among other institutions and at: Artisphere (VA), Borderlines Film Festival (UK), Moving Pictures Festival (CAN). Residencies include the Kala Art Institute (CA), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (NY), and Ucross (WY). She is the recipient of grants from the Jerome and Puffin Foundations and received Jeff and Bessie awards for video scenography. Ciarrocchi earned her M.F.A. in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts and her B.F.A. in Dance from Purchase College.

Kris Grey/Justin Credible is a New York City based gender-queer artist whose work exists at the intersection of activism, storytelling, and studio production. Grey earned a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Masters Degree in Fine Art from Ohio University. Grey was a 2012 Fire Island Artist Residency recipient, a resident artist for the ANTI Festival for Contemporary Art in Kupoio, Finland in 2012 and 2014, and a teaching artist in 2013 at The International Centre for Training in the Performing Arts in Brussels, Belgium.

Gender/Power (composition II) was created with commissioning support from Gibney Dance.
Photo by Maya Ciarrocchi.

The project has also received residency support from the Baryshnikov Art Center (also in March)
http://bacnyc.org/residencies/resident/maya-ciarrocchi