events

NATURAL STUDIES

8/15/2024

thingNY returns to the Brick with a double bill made up of Joseph White's You Against Nature and their latest collectively written opus, Mouthful, as part of the eclectic Exponential Festival.

You Against Nature is a new opera from the genre-fluid librettist and composer Joseph White who the Times calls “magical… mulchy… ribald… outlandish…” You Against Nature is based on the French decadent classic Against Nature, and situates a self-isolating aesthetic explorer in the present day. Expect forty minutes of homilies on modern-day alone time, attempts at life-hacking, and nihilistic indulgence taken to extraordinary lengths, performed by five singing, storytelling instrumentalists.

Mouthful is the latest collaboratively composed experimental opera from thingNY. Situated in the orbit of a large communal table, the ensemble explores digestion and excretion: of food, of blood, of ancestry and linguistic transmission. Each performance is different. With switching roles, in-ear monitors and instruments, the performers act as transmitters of each other’s songs, languages and choreography: reckoning with various degrees of appropriateness and appropriation, comprehension and (mis)translation.

In conjunction with these performances, thingNY simultaneously presents a new multimedia gallery show at the Brick Aux:
Aug. 15-31: TO TONGUE-TIE

MASK POLICY:
Part of what lets us present work to an audience at the current moment is to have a fully masked audience. If you don't have a mask, a KN95 will be provided for you.
Most of us have had our various long term health struggles, and for some of us that includes having bodies that make us particularly vulnerable to Covid and other airborne diseases. We can’t do this alone: the performing part and the keeping ourselves safe part. We need your participation in both.
These pieces are about trying to live in isolation and about trying to situate yourself within a community that stretches over time [and might come together around a table]. Being able to perform these pieces in a room with all of you is something we do not take for granted - in fact we’ve made some recent work for people to experience on their own, and so we were excited to build Mouthful to be experienced collectively.
Thank you for joining us this evening. This performance couldn’t happen without you.

THU AUG 15 @ 8pm
FRI AUG 16 @ 8pm
SAT AUG 17 @ 3pm
SAT AUG 17 @ 8pm

The Brick
579 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn NY

TICKETS

You Against Nature
[world premiere]
by Joseph White

Performed by:
Paul Pinto
Gelsey Bell
Dave Ruder
Andrew Livingston
Erin Rogers

Mouthful
[world premiere]
Written and performed by:
alejandro t. acierto
Isabel Castellvi
Dave Ruder
Paul Pinto
Andrew Livingston
Gelsey Bell

In conjunction with:
To tongue-tie
A multimedia gallery show
@ Brick Aux
Aug 15-31

to tongue-tie

8/15/2024

Halal (2019) by Raheleh Filsoofi

A multimedia gallery show.

In conjunction with the performances of mouthful included as part of thingNY’s run of Natural Studies for the Exponential Festival, To tongue-tie is a curatorial exhibition project that shares video and object-based work at the edges of language. Highlighting work that speaks to layered forms of ancestry, (food) consumption, and the body, this exhibition brings together pieces and collaborations by Gelsey Bell+Erik Ruin, Mel Carter, Benedicto Figueroa, Raheleh Filsoofi, Jana Harper, Kameron Neal, and Paul Pinto+Erin Rogers. Working across media, artist’s projects explore how the shape and function of the mouth – as an opening, as a crevice, as a portal – can offer productive metaphors for the depths of heritage in the wake of imperialism, settler colonialism, and cultural erasure.

Poetically imagining the openings in the ground, Gelsey Bell’s performative setting of Anne Boyer’s poem “What Resembles the Grave” is energetically animated by Erik Ruin in a video work that contends with the layered implications of a hole as a site of expansive critique. Extending the hole as an opening, Kameron Neal’s silent video work Makeout/Breakout frames a tongue-filled kiss smothering a glass surface to provide the viewer access to an overactive gesture of desire and opening. Navigating a different kind of opening, Mel Carter’s sculptural glass works are filled with what they term “liquid spells” derived from tinctures, teas, and blended herbal concoctions meant to heal the compounding effects of settler colonial violence. Neal’s spit moves from the flat glass into the mouths of Carter’s organic clear containers. Placed at the exteriors of glass and reflecting on the site of the bodega as a consumptive and connective space, Benedicto Figueroa’s LED signage flickers lines of poetry that recall stories of his parents from the grave while Paul Pinto+Erin Roger’s operatic video work recounts a theft at the tienda by “desperate youth” caught in a tension between bad behavior and as subjects of a bad environment. Surrounded by glass and fragile relationships, Figueroa and Pinto+Roger’s works illuminate the cavities that hold the tongue’s desire for taste and the stories these places tell. Alternatively, oscillating between the storefront and the domestic, Raheleh Filsoofi’s lit ceramic work Halal marks surfaces of consumption with the declaration of permission - one that signals a legacy of culture and practice through its textural materiality. Similarly working with markings and inscriptions, Jana Harper’s Memorial for Mackinac uses her written text to illuminate the names of familial descendants from the Mackinac Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, in a gesture that accumulates history through the display of lineage and ancestry.

Aug 15-31, 2024

Opening reception:
Thu. Aug 15 @ 9:30pm-11:30pm

Brick Aux
628 Metropolitan Ave.
Brooklyn NY

Brick Aux Gallery hours are 12-6PM on weekends, varied weekday hours, and by appointment:
[email protected]

Artists:
Gelsey Bell
Mel Carter
Benedicto Figueroa Raheleh Filsoofi
Jana Harper
Kameron Neal
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Erik Ruin

In conjunction with: Natural Studies
a double-bill of new operas
Aug. 15-17 @ The Brick
[TICKETS]

REFUGE: WAVE UPON WAVE

9/19/2023

"REFUGE – a place or a feeling of safety, comfort, community, and regrowth."

The brand new Perelman Arts Center kicks off its inaugural season with an evening of performances on the theme of New York City as a place of refuge. thingNY and the PAC have co-commissioned Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon to set the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz. What's emerged is a technologically augmented choral work for multiple voices and hyperdirectional speakers. This gentle and stirring new antiphonal premieres all around the Perelman auditorium. Also on the bill, an amazing roster of artists: Laurie Anderson, Emel, Wang Guowei, Angélique Kidjo, and Mwenso & the Shakes.
Forró in the Dark performs in the lobby following the evening’s concert.

THE EVENT IS SOLD OUT BUT YOU CAN SHOW UP AND JOIN THE WILL-CALL LINE

Tue. Sep 19, 2023
Perelman Arts Center
251 Fulton Street
New York NY
8:00pm

Tickets
SOLD OUT

Wave Upon Wave
[world premiere]
Words by Natalie Diaz
Music by Raven Chacon

Performed by:
Gelsey Bell
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Dave Ruder
Ashley Pérez Flanagan
Rohan Kymal
Anaïs Maviel
Olivia Shortt

[OPERA CAPTIONS]

5/26/2023

CAPTIONS [firm voice]: For a long, I’ve been in the background. Now it’s time for me to show up.

What if captions ‘step up,’ ‘speak with’ you, and ‘tell’ you about their stories? Will you listen to them?

[opera captions] focuses on captions that bring together accessibility, inner and imagined voices, and improvisation. A semi-fiction, semi-translation, semi-poetry, semi-film, semi-music, and semi-theater performance, [opera captions] reimagines what captions can do beyond functioning as a speech conveyor and a sound interpreter in audiovisual media. This live experience features captions as “an actor” interacting with and personified by bodily-diverse human beings: a collective of New York composer-performers thingNY and wonderful viewers-audiences. [opera captions] invites you to celebrate the lives of captions that have been both cherished and hated.

Accessibility/things to anticipate:

Captions will be the main performance elements. They will also be audible.
There is no sound amplification, and the overall loudness will be moderate.
A very small part of the performance features profanity.

[opera captions] is made possible by the support of The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation, and SubletSeries@HERE.

Jay Afrisando is an Indonesian composer, multimedia artist, researcher, and educator. He works on aural diversity, acoustic ecology, and cultural identity through multisensory and antidisciplinary practices. His works include the 5-channel film installation In Which to Trust? (2022) and the spatial composition Ungklang-Angklung (2019), among others. Collaborating with various artists and culture bearers, he has presented works in various scenes and places, including Sound Scene at Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center’s Virtual Cinema, ARGOS Projector: The Faraway Nearby, and Aural Diversity Conference. He has been awarded the MAP Fund 2022 and the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship 2021-22.
https://www.jayafrisando.com/

Fri. May 26, 2023
HERE Arts
645 Sixth Ave
New York NY
7pm

Tickets

[opera captions]
Created, directed, written and composed by:
Jay Afrisando

Performed by:
Gelsey Bell
Andrew Livingston
Erin Rogers
Dave Ruder
Jeffrey Young

Lighting Designer:
Christina Tang

Project Manager:
Terry Perdanawati

Graphic designer:
Jay Afrisando

Original photo:
kinsum

LINCOLN CENTER

10/29/2022

A slew of artists take to the stages, lobbies and crevices of the refurbished David Geffen Hall. thingNY will perform recent spatial experiments and improvisations including brand new work by Erin Rogers, Andrew Livingston, Isabel Castellvi and the ensemble.

Also, we've made a free sound walk you can download to your phone and listen to while you explore Lincoln Center's newly revamped campus:
https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/oAEuJrHZ1IdwsRET

More info on the other artists that weekend at Lincoln Center's site:
https://www.lincolncenter.org/venue/david-geffen-hall/open-house-weekend

Oct. 29, 2022
8:30pm

The Music Box
David Geffen Hall
Lincoln Center
New York, NY

FREE

Performances throughout the day 10am-10pm

Isabel Castellvi
Erin Rogers
Dave Ruder
Paul Pinto
Andrew Livingston
Jeffrey Young

Loop Etudes - Andrew Livingston and thingNY
Bishop - Andrew Livingston
Unravel Of Course - Isabel Castellvi
Music Box - Erin Rogers
a memory of Dear Nancine - thingNY
Improvisations by the ensemble

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