Xaviera Simmons "Junctures (transmissions to)"
Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
This event has ended.
OFF/SITE is a new collaboration between The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Goethe-Institut New York. Both institutions are committed to examining contemporary ideas from a culturally specific, global context—black culture and culture from Germany, respectively. OFF/SITE features two site-specific artist projects and a series of public programs at the Wyoming Building, the Goethe-Institut’s programming space in the East Village. Each of these projects is accompanied by a public program uptown at the Studio Museum.
OFF/SITE is not simply an outpost, annex or proxy for two institutions. Instead, it is an aesthetic platform that reflexively points to notions of place and experience, as well as physical, architectural and bodily presence. In a space shared by curators, cultural programmers, artists and communities, OFF/SITE reflects an ethos of experimentation, interaction and the ongoing quality of group work.
In her site-responsive project junctures (transmissions to), the first exhibition in the OFF/SITE series, artist Xaviera Simmons will engage writers, artists and musicians, as well as a participatory audience, in a time-based, collaborative work. Over five weeks, these “micro-residencies” will take place on Wednesdays and Saturdays in a closed structure within the Wyoming Building. Simmons and her collaborators will exchange ideas regarding interactivity, mysticism, agency and artistic process. They will then periodically share their conversations with the public in the form of photocopies, film projections, staged readings and sound recordings. Xaviera Simmons: junctures (transmissions to) highlights opacity, enigma and desire as performative strategies for art-making that frustrate expected modes of viewership. The artists record and then make public what might happen in an intimate space of contingency.
Brooklyn-based Xaviera Simmons (b. 1974, New York) works in a wide range of media, including photography, sculpture, installation, performance and sound. She received her BFA in photography at Bard College, and in 2005 completed the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in Studio Art and a two-year Meisner actor training program with The Maggie Flanigan Studio. She has held multiple residencies and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at institutions locally and nationally, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, Art in General and MoMA PS1, in New York, and The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
Hours and Locations
Micro residencies will take place on Wednesdays (5:30–9:00 pm) and Saturdays (2:00–5:45 pm). The installation will be on view throughout the Wyoming Building’s opening hours: Tuesday and Thursday–Saturday, 1–6 pm, and Wednesday, 1–9 pm. Artist collaborators include: Belinda Becker, Brendan Fernandes, Sophie Hamacher, Paula Henderson, Benjamin Landers, Austin McCutchen, Teresa Mora, Prolex, Li Sumpter.
On October 21, 7–9pm, at The Studio Museum in Harlem:
Please join us for In Conversation with Xaviera Simmons, an evening with the artist and collaborating guests. The Studio Museum in Harlem is located at 144 West 125th Street (between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Boulevards) New York, New York.
OFF/SITE will continue in Winter/Spring 2011 with an artist project from Marc Brandenburg, and the event series Up/Down, North/South: Three Evenings.
Media
Schedule
from September 24, 2010 to October 27, 2010