They Humiliate The Human

Sunday December 14th, 5pm
Deltaworkers headquarters, 641 Caffin Avenue
Free entrance and drinks

For the last event of the year Timmy van Zoelen presents the performance The Whale’s Ear (2014), and the teaser trailer for his new film They Humiliate The Human.

Whaling

Image: Whale Stranded at Berckhey, copper engraving by Jacob Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, 1598.

THE WHALE’S EAR
This multimedia performance is a speculative reading of an etching by Jacob Matham titled ‘Whale Stranded at Berckhey’.

The Whale’s Ear is supported by Tent. Rotterdam

THEY HUMILIATE THE HUMAN
In Van Zoelen’s upcoming film, which he is developing as a result of his research period in New Orleans, the male voice of the artist takes us through his existential account of time travel by way of slurping energy drinks. Eventually They Humiliate The Human will be the result of a series of sensual phantasies exploring the voluptuousness of time-travel through object-oriented power relations.

Other Odyssey

Friday 5 December at 7PM, Performance directed by Dafna Maimon
Address: Second Line Stages, Digital Cinema. 800 Richard Street
In collaboration with New Orleans Film Society
Tickets: Free

A video program presenting the new live video Other Odyssey and short film The She The Same by Dafna Maimon, accompanied by the teaser of Lindsay Lawson’s new feature film The Smiling Rock.

dafna zonsopgang

Other Odyssey is a live video by artist Dafna Maimon. Set in a cinema it rethinks the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey from the perspective of the matriarchal Bonobo primate, humans closest relative and the only being on the planet that practically eliminated violence from her society. Other Odyssey fantasises about returning to that moment depicted in the film when the early human apes realise that a bone could be used as a weapon and tool for oppression or dominance, and proposes an other use for it, a use more in line with the affective and sensual lifestyle of the Bonobo’s.

The She The Same (2014, 20 min.) is a part of a bigger homonymous project including a performance and artefacts, in which the experience of our “true other” is set parallel to phantom limb pain. By looking back at mythologies in which each human was once separated from his or her “other half” in the beginning of times, this “lost other” could be considered to be a phantom limb or body. This research project, developed with the help of a neuroscientist, explores the way in which we construct our own bodies and those of our lovers. Simultaneously the idea of a double body or our true other half is a convenient tool for the production of expectation, desire and the romantic industries such as the capitalist ventures that profit from societal construct of romance and love.

Dafna Maimon (FIN/IS, b.1982, lives in Berlin) works with film, video, and performance. Her work explores human drama and the construction of the self through invented autobiographical characters that battle with the configuration of individuality, alienation, the body, and the perception of reality. Her films showcase the economy of close personal ties as well as to materialise through them, placing value on the idea of community on a grassroots level. Equally central within Maimon’s practice is the research and employment of the constructs of cultural artefacts such as cinema, TV, theater and science.

Other Odyssey is supported by the Finnish arts promotion center TAIKE

Holding On (By The Skin Of Teeth)

Saturday November 22nd at 3PM, conversation between Joanne Bland, Jeremiah Day, and Jackie Sumell.
Address: Administration Building Auditorium, Xavier University, 1 Drexel Drive

This interdisciplinary afternoon will include contemporary art and grass-roots memory, looking at the role of the guide, witness, story-teller: an afternoon of performance, presentation and discussion taking up the problem of memory and politics in a spirit of peer dialogue and public reflection. The presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion. The afternoon is organised in collaboration with Xavier University’s Art Department and the Department for Communication Studies. Coffee and snacks will be served.

Home base of Lowndes County Freedom Organisation, AL

Home base of the Lowndes County Freedom Organisation, AL

The afternoon will feature a special presentation by Joanne Bland, a legend in the circles of civil rights history-making, co-founder of the National Voting Rights Museum and the youngest marcher on ‘Bloody Sunday’ which led to the Selma-to-Montgomery March and ultimately to the passage of the Voting Rights act of 1965. Joanne has in recent years developed a unique storytelling- guide practice, giving tours of Selma that tell the story of ‘Bloody Sunday’ as an entry point to the broader history and its meaning for today. Joanne will introduce and then reflect upon her own work and the situation we find ourselves in.

Jeremiah Day’s work employs photography, speech, and improvisational movement. Questions of site and historical memory are explored through fractured narratives. Day works with what writer Fred Dewey has called ‘the non-fictional imagination,’ reflecting on sites of memory and politics to produce metaphors to help with our contemporary struggles. In 2008, Day had a working residency in Alabama to understand and commemorate the Lowndes County Freedom Organisation – an independent political party dedicated to civil rights that came out of the Selma-Montgomery March and is famous for being the originator of the Black Panther icon. Day will show his ‘Lowndes County: Prologue’ performance and present his new design for a monument to the LCFO.

Jackie Sumell’s background is in the visual arts, but her multi-disciplinary practice is itself a form of engagement with public life. Her epic project ‘The House That Herman Built’ began from a dialogue with Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3 held for decades in solitary confinement and considered by many to be a political prisoner for his prison activism aligned with the Black Panther Party. Sumell worked with Wallace to design his dream house, a kind of public portrait/protest project. Since Wallace’s passing away last year (only a few days after finally securing his release from prison), the project continues and now becomes a kind of monument to the man and the issues that his story embodies.

 

in tandem

Wednesday November 19th at 7.30PM, screening of video works by Erkka Nissinen & Nathaniel Mellors.
Address: Press Street, 3718 St. Claude Avenue

During Brad Benischek‘s solo exhibition “Nocturnal Emissions” in Press Street‘s Antenna gallery we curate an evening with video works as a part of the MiniPlex program. This evening is specifically compiled with the exhibition in mind, and as such part of the in tandem series. We have been working with Brad in the exhibition What The Modern Era Has Gained In Civility It Has Lost In Poetic Inspiration in 1646, the Hague (NL), and as such feel a strong connection to his absurdist, humorous and sometimes grotesque works. We will introduce and screen works by Hong Kong based Finnish artist Erkka Nissinen and Los Angeles based British artist Nathaniel Mellors.

Both these artist’s works as well as Brad’s work use humor and absurdism to address the little comprehension and control we have over our existence.

Erkka Nissinen, Vantaa (2008)

Nissinen’s body of work is formed by grotesquely absurd videos, sometimes accompanied by installations that relate to the process of making a video. He usually plays a main character in the bizarre narratives that lend from Becket, McCarthy and the Teletubbies amongst others.

Nathaniel Mellors, The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview (2013)

Nathaniel Mellors, The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview (2013)

Nathaniel Mellors makes irreverent, absurd and hilarious videos, sculptures, performances and writings that challenge our notions of taste, morality, and intelligence.

Video Art Manual

Sunday November 16th at 7PM, screening & book sale.
Address: Indywood, 628 Elysian Fields Av.
Admission: $10 (including a free beer)

Deltaworkers will introduce & screen several video works by Keren Cytter. May books will display a selection of books that Cytter wrote or that are related to her work.

Deltaworkers is showing Cytter’s work in New Orleans as we find her to be one of the most prolific and outstanding artists of her generation, an inspiration to many, and on top of that her work has never been shown in this city before. She makes videos -for which she does the writing, directing and editing-, writes experimental novels, and creates performances in which she connect other disciplines to visual arts. By making choices that other artists often don’t dare to make, she manages to confuse and surprise the viewer and to question the conventions of the visual art discipline as a whole. For instance by putting her new works already online before the premiere or opening of the exhibition.

Cytter’s works, in the words of Willem de Rooij, are ‘somewhere in between Fassbinder, John Cassavetes, South Park, and The Blair Witch Project.’ They are often based on templates of literary or cinematic classics, while simultaneously they reflect the influence of the media. She decomposes film into its simplest components, in order to reassemble them together in a very different fashion. Such components include, but are not limited to: actor, role, voice, spoken word, listened text, language and subtitles.

On this evening we will screen the following works:

  • Video Art Manual (2011)
  • Der Spiegel (2007)
  • Corrections (2013)
  • Les Ruissellements du Diable (2008)
  • Rose Garden (2013)
  • Four Seasons (2009)

More about Keren Cytter’s work here

Keren Cytter (b. 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions and performances of Cytter’s work include Vociferous: Keren Cytter with David Aird, Keira Fox and Charlie Feinstein, Wysing Arts Centre, and ICA, London (2013); Show Real Drama, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (2013); A Theatre Cycle, NOMAS Foundation at Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome (2013); Show Real Drama, Tate Modern Oil Tanks, London (2012); Avalanche, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2011); Project Series: Keren Cytter, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); X Initiative, New York (2009); CCA Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu (2009). In 2006 Cytter was awarded the prestigious Bâloise Art Prize at Art Basel.

maybooks_logo

The following books will be available through the May Books bookstand during the entire evening:

indywood

Deltaworkers at the Core Residency Program

Friday November 14th at 3PM, presentation by Joris Lindhout and Maaike Gouwenberg at the Core Residency Program in Houston, Texas
Address: 4101 San Jacinto #209

Established in 1982, the prestigious Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art offers postgraduate residencies for art critics and visual artists.

Deltaworkers founders Joris Lindhout and Maaike Gouwenberg give a talk about their vision on artist residencies and introduce the Deltaworkers program and some of the artists they are working with in 2014.

Deltaworkers at Tulane University

Wednesday October 29th at 4.45PM, presentation by Joris Lindhout and Maaike Gouwenberg at the Stone Auditorium Tulane University
Address: Woldenberg Art Center – Newcomb Art Department, 6823 St Charles Ave

Deltaworkers directors Joris Lindhout and Maaike Gouwenberg talk about how their research in the Southern States brought them to New Orleans in 2010. They will tell about the history, present and future of the residency, and show works by artists that take part in the residency this fall or are included in this years events.

The Nature of The Search

Tuesday October 28th at 8PM, conversation between artist Remy Jungerman, Brook Davis Anderson, and Teresa Parker Farris; a presentation by Tijdelijke Samenscholing.
Address: 641 Caffin Ave, Holy Cross

The evening takes off with a conversation between Dutch artist Remy Jungerman, Prospect executive director Brooke Anderson, and folklorist Teresa Parker Farris, in which they focus on the different cultural elements and the specific aesthetics in the work of Jungerman starting from their mutual interest in the book Flash of the Spirit (Robert Farris Thompsen) and several works by Jungerman.

In their first public performative presentation in the city, theatre group Tijdelijke Samenscholing will share the findings of their research into the origins of the specific New Orleans sound and the social political function that music has in public space.

Interruptions throughout the evening come from the band The Big Hunger. Musicians Stan Vreeken and Jasper Slijderink met with many musicians in town, which will be audible in their tunes.

The evening will take place in the garden of the residency house and will end in a bonfire. Feel free to BYOB. The title of the evening is a quote from Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer, an important source of inspiration for P.3.

Blue Devil (2010)

Blue Devil (Remy Jungerman, 2010)

Remy Jungerman (1959) was born in Moengo, Suriname and has lived in Amsterdam since 1990. As a sculptor/ mixed media artist his recent work is intrinsically related to his Surinamese origins and is centered on global citizenship in today’s society. Jungerman uses collages, sculptures and installations to show cultural critique(s) of the local and the global, the internal and the external. Traditional materials and objects are placed in different contexts that challenge the established notions of their representation within Western society.
 Jungerman gets his inspiration from Afro-religious elements of the traditional Maroon culture in Suriname and the Diaspora. At the same time he is also inspired by Western trends in art and modern communication technology.
He first studied art at the Academy for Higher Arts and Cultural Studies, Paramaribo (Suriname). After moving to Amsterdam in 1990 he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Since his first group exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Jungerman has participated in several solo and group exhibitions worldwide. His work has also been published in numerous publications worldwide. In 2008 he received the Fritschy Culture Award from the Museum het Domein, Sittard The Netherlands. Various institutions and private collectors worldwide among which have acquired his work, amongst them Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Rennies Collection Vancouver, Art Omi collection NY and The Francis J. Greenburger Collection NY.

Brooke Davis Anderson is the executive director of Prospect 3. She held the position of Deputy Director of Curatorial Planning at LACMA and from 1999 to 2010, Anderson was Director and Curator at The Contemporary Center and the Henry Darger Study Center at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. Previous to these posts, Anderson was Director of the Diggs Gallery and Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, at Winston‑Salem State University, in Winston‑Salem, North Carolina; Adjunct Instructor at Columbia University, New York, and City College of New York, New York; Guest Curator at Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; and Acting Director, Assistant Director, and Gallery Assistant at the Francesca Anderson Gallery, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Anderson has curated exhibitions and lectured extensively around the world. She has authored numerous books including Martin Ramirez: The Last Works (Pomegranate Press, California, 2008), Martin Ramirez (American Folk Art Museum with Marquand Books, 2007), and Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum (American Folk Art Museum with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001), among many others, in addition to numerous articles and essays.

Teresa Parker Farris is a folklorist and writer who specializes in the vernacular traditions of the American South. She serves as Chair of the Louisiana Folklife Commission, a governor-appointed advisory board for the state’s folklife program, and on the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’s Cultural Programs Advisory Panel.  A Ph.D. candidate in history and art history at Tulane University, she holds an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi, studying under folklorist Bill Ferris, and a B.A. from Haverford College where she focused on Southern literature, in particular the writings of William Faulkner.  Ms. Farris was the folklife section editor for A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana, a project of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and has essays in the Museum of American Folk Art’s Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture’s Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.  She has also contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues published by Tulane’s Newcomb Art Gallery, where she has worked since 2006.  

Tijdelijke Samenscholing (“Temporary Gathering”) is a Dutch theatre group consisting of musician Stan Vreeken and actors Michiel Bakker and Carole van Ditzhuyzen. In their work, they combine social political and literary sources with personal stories, themes or thoughts. Like the actors, the music in the performances has its own autonomous voice, and is not used to support the play or to create a specific mood. The music looks at the themes in the play in a totally different way, which creates an extra layer in the text-based theatre plays of Tijdelijke Samenscholing. Again and again, the performances present a balancing act between truth and lies, public and private, the reality outside and the actual situation on stage.

Tijdelijke Samenscholing is in New Orleans to research their next piece, which will investigate the origins of jazz and the role that music plays in public space. For this play, the group collaborates with The Big Hunger, the band of which Stan Vreeken is a member. They are looking for answers to questions like: has music thrived in spite of the city, or has it restored it? How have different traditions informed one another? Has New Orleans’ music performed a role in social justice? Is music’s existence at odds with the people who live here, has it catered to some while alienating others, or has it carved out the city as we know it? And how has that changed throughout the city’s history, between tragedy and tourism, inequality and the internet?

Over the last years, the five musicians of The Big Hunger have built up an extensive live-reputation in Amsterdam, where they are hosting their own pop-session. The alternative pop-songs of The Big Hunger are soulful, dynamic, and clearly stand out from other acts in the Netherlands.

PechaKucha Night | New Orleans | Volume 14 – We Can Do It!

Wednesday October 8th at 7PM, introduction to the Deltaworkers program for fall 2014.
Address: The Rusty Nail, 1100 Constance St

pk-nola

Volume 14 Presenters:

Yanti Turang
Dennis Lomonaco
Derrius Quarles
Joris Lindhout / Maaike Gouwenberg
Emilie Taylor
Keith O’Brien
Bob Snead
Mary Ellen Carroll
Stevie Lewis

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Food by La Cocinita
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At The Rusty Nail
1100 Constance St, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130

See also pechakucha.org.

Statues Also Die

Thursday October 2nd at 7PM, artist talk by Timmy van Zoelen & performance by The Big Hunger.
Address: Good Children Gallery, 4037 St. Claude Ave

On Thursday October 2nd at 7PM, artist Timmy van Zoelen gives a presentation at Good Children Gallery. He introduces his plans for the coming months and screens the essay film ‘Les statues meurent aussi’ (Statues also Die) by Chris Marker & Alain Resnais.

During his residency Timmy works on a new film in which objects, narratives, theory, and performances intertwine into a damp and hot swamp-sci-fi. A film where ideas about ecology, myth, and consumerism overlap and melt together. Well known places and ideas might evaporate and new forms will become manifest in a series of performances and sculptures, that will be used in the film.

sprite thing

In his work Timmy exercises his idiosyncratic views by sharing his salacious and facetious speculations on nature, currency and ideology. Cruising over the terrain of voluptuous emotions he moves from propulsion to representation, from foreplay to display, while continuously analysing desire. Therefore his practise is one of struggling, between abstinence and indulgence, and between the tangible and the virtual.

While the allure of appropriation and the ease of digital image production encourages artists to produce work solely in and of the digital, Timmy continually traverses the blurry lines between virtual and corporeal life and investigates its effects.

Timmy van Zoelen (NL, 1982) completed a two-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam and holds a MFA from Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Recent shows include the solo-presentation Astroturfer at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2014), and a variety of group shows including Zamboni for the Moose at Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam (2014), Blu Heron Social Club, Rotterdam (2013) and Bourgeois Leftovers at De Appel, Amsterdam (2013).