New CHOREOGRAPHYHello Museum

Cover Image: Movement Research in Residence with AUNTS at the New Museum, 2013. Pictured: Rebeca Medina, Colin Nusbaum, and Tatyana Tenenbaum. Photo: Travis Chamberlain

Fall 2014 R&D Season: CHOREOGRAPHY

Organized by the New Museum’s Department of Education and Public Engagement, R&D (Research and Development) Seasons connect various projects across multiple platforms around a new organizing theme each fall and spring. The Fall 2014 R&D Season theme is CHOREOGRAPHY.

This R&D Season leads an investigative examination of choreography via a range of activities, anchored by an ambitious six-month residency with artist duo Gerard & Kelly (Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly) and a multiphasic international commission with the Brooklyn-based performance project AUNTS. Here, choreography is mined for its potential to negotiate the systems of value that govern intimacy, transmission, and exchange alongside an interrogation of the systems of control specific to different mediums and the politics of space.

Gerard & Kelly, Fall 2014 R&D Season Artists-in-Residence: “P.O.L.E. (People, Objects, Language, Exchange)”: September 1, 2014–February 15, 2015

Gerard & Kelly work within an interdisciplinary framework to create project-based installations and performances that use choreography, writing, and a range of other mediums to address questions of sexuality, collective memory, and the formation of queer consciousness. This fall, they will develop a new project that continues their investigations of the choreography of relationships and the movement of cultural transmission via the vernacular of pole dancing. Their research will utilize multiple spaces throughout the Museum and includes public programs, workshops, and culminates with a solo exhibition on view in the Museum’s Lobby Gallery from February 4 to 15, 2015.

From October 8, 2014 to January 25, 2015, Gerard & Kelly will transform the Fifth Floor gallery into a space for fieldwork, movement practice, and interactive research; it will also be used as a place to display documentation of the events, encounters, and exchanges that make up their residency. Among other resources, the gallery will contain practice poles for dancing, occasionally used for practical skilling by the artists, their collaborators, and the public. As an extension of their research, Gerard & Kelly have also organized “In Bed With…,” a series of two-on-one encounters exploring questions of precarity and work, the transmission of performance scores, choreography, objects, and poetry, which will take place October 29, November 1, December 13, and January 15.

“In Bed With…”
This series features two-on-one encounters exploring questions of precarity and work, the transmission of performance scores, choreography, objects, and poetry. These conversations will take place on the mattresses in the Fifth Floor gallery.

October 29, 2014: In Bed With…Chris Kraus
November 1, 2014: In Bed With…Andrea Fraser
December 13, 2014: In Bed With…Heather McGhee
January 10, 2015: In Bed With…Tere O’Connor

Open Pole
During “Pay-What-You-Wish” Thursday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., the public is invited to observe and participate in pole-dancing classes and practice sessions.

November 6*
November 13
November 20*
December 4
December 11*
January 8
January 15*
January 22*

*Class with Keisha Franklin, yoga, dance, and pole instructor at Shockra Studio

*Workshop as Work: Reusable Parts/Endless Love
Curious as to how a work of performance has multiple lives—both as something to be watched and experienced as a reader and as something to be done and experienced as a participant—Gerard & Kelly will reformat an existing project into a public workshop taking place in the New Museum Theater. This workshop will test intimate scores with larger groups and explore transmission of work entering its second and third “generation.”

December 7, 2014: Workshop as Work: Reusable Parts/Endless Love

CLASSCLASSCLASS at the New Museum: January 28–February 13, 2015

Augmenting their residency, Gerard & Kelly have invited New York City–based CLASSCLASSCLASS to operate its program of process-based, affordable dance classes in the New Museum Theater. CCC has made a significant intervention into education in the fields of performance and dance and has structured a production model that relates to broader explorations of alternative ecologies for working and living. Classes are open to adult dancers and non-dancers from the general public.

Trouw Invites…New Museum: “AUNTSforcamera”: September 10, 2014–February 6, 2015

AUNTS is a community-building apparatus for organizing simultaneous performance and art activities in a shared space. It is based in Brooklyn and presently organized by Laurie Berg and Liliana Dirks-Goodman. This fall the New Museum, by invitation from the Stedelijk Museum and Trouw (a nightclub and arts space in Amsterdam), is organizing a special international dance-for-camera edition of AUNTS as part of the Trouw Invites… exhibition series. Participating AUNTS artists include: Cara Francis, IMMA/MESS, Vanessa Justice, Anya Liftig, Karl Scholz, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Gillian Walsh, Collective Settlement (Felicia Ballos, Jean Brennan, and Charnan Lewis), and collaborators Salome Asega, Chrybaby Cozie, and Ali Rosa-Salas.

“AUNTSforcamera” unfolds publicly through an open-studio production week, shared simultaneously by all participating artists and resulting in new dance-for-camera works that will be exhibited as an immersive moving image installation at Trouw and, later, the New Museum (including new material produced with artists and audiences at Trouw). Select works under commission include: an interactive game utilizing hacked Kinekt software to reward players for learning the original Harlem Shake dance; a new social media platform that will accumulate eight-second viewer-generated dance videos into a single-channel loop; a multi-channel sculptural installation reconstituting the dancing bodies of its creators into a single “exquisite corpse” moving-image form; and an interactive video installation combining hand-dance and shadow puppetry with aerial footage from the operation of an AR Drone flown inside the New Museum Theater.

September 10–14, 2014: “AUNTSforcamera” Production Week: Open Studios
November 6, 2014: “AUNTSforcamera” Opening Event: BYOC! (Bring Your Own Camera!)
November 6–30, 2014: “AUNTSforcamera” Installation: Trouw
December 17, 2014–February 15, 2015: “AUNTSforcamera” Installation: New Museum

Trouw Invites… exhibition series is made possible by support from De Verdieping, TrouwAmsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, AFK, SNS Reaal Fonds, Stichting DOEN, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, IAmsterdam, Stadsdeel Oost, ABN AMRO, and Lloyd Hotel.

NEW MUSEUM SEMINARS: (TEMPORARY) COLLECTIONS OF IDEAS: CHOREOGRAPHY

Classes: September 15–December 15, 2014
Conference: January 23–24, 2015
Aligned with the R&D Season themes, New Museum Seminars provide a platform for discussing and debating ideas as they emerge, in real time, and for developing scholarship directly referencing art’s place in culture. A group of ten to twelve participants from diverse backgrounds will meet regularly for twelve weeks to plan and implement a bibliography, as well as a public-facing conference featuring leading figures whose work has shaped the topic of study.

More information, application, and support for New Museum Seminars: (Temporary) Collections of Ideas

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY PROGRAM
Classes: October 8–December 10, 2014
The New Museum’s Experimental Study Program pairs youths (fifteen to twenty years old) with artists to collaborate on projects and research related to Season themes. Over several months, teens and New Museum staff will undergo an intensive exploration of CHOREOGRAPHY as framed by Gerard & Kelly, CLASSCLASSCLASS, and AUNTS to consider questions about technique, self-determination, and the role of the non-object within museums.

ABOUT THE CHOREOGRAPHY R&D SEASON TEAM
The New Museum’s Department of Education and Public Engagement is spearheaded by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement. “P.O.L.E. (People, Objects, Language, Exchange)” is organized by Burton. “AUNTSforcamera” is organized on behalf of the New Museum by Travis Chamberlain, Associate Curator of Performance and Manager of Public Programs. The Experimental Study Program is organized by Jen Song, Associate Director of Education, and Sasha Wortzel, Educator, G:Class and High School Programs.

SUPPORT
Museum as Hub is made possible by

Support for Museum as Hub and public programs is provided, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support for artist residencies is made possible by Laurie Wolfert.
Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.