Part Two:

A Film in Pieces

June 8 – August 13, 2016

 //

Written by Vaginal Davis

Directed by Susanne Sachsse

Original score by Xiu Xiu

Lighting by Jackie Shemesh

Film by Michel Auder

Dramaturgy by Roger Mathew Grant

Production design by Jonathan Berger, Jesse Bransford, Damien Davis, Michael Forrey, Jessica Garcia, Ben Hatcher, Sawyer Mitchell, Hugh O'Rourke, and Various Projects Inc., in collaboration with NYU Steinhardt BFA students Ian Alcock, Johanna Asgeirsdottir, Victoria Browne, Helen Chu, Callie Cramer, Eleanor Gollin, Yuki Hamada, Sonja Haroldson, Juliette Hayt, Melissa Karine Jacobs, Giani Jones, Susannah Liguori, Haley Long, Daniel Mock, Marta Murray, Phoebe Randall, Aidan Romick, Paula Rondon, Harlie Rush, Anjelica Russell, Rebecca Salmon, Beverly Terry, Joshua Toor, Reba Kittredge Tyson, Jerry Wilson, Miranda Zhang.

Performed by Ian Alcock, Chris Blue, Alex Casso, Vaginal Davis, Kellian Delice, Roger Mathew Grant, Jennifer Miller, Dave Perrett, Susanne Sachsse, Zachary Schoenhut, Manuel "Vicki Baum" Schubert, Aliza Shvarts.

 Xiu Xiu’s original score performed live by NY Choral, the Horkheimer Arkestra, and Jamie Stewart.

Supporting cast: The New School for Public Engagement students John Arnold, Harry Charlesworth, Zachary Clause, Izzy Cohan, Sorcha Fatooh, Jacquelyn Gallo, Eitan Goldstein, Helayne Kushner, Luisa Moreira De Alcantara, Julia Moses, Patricio Schmiegelow, Brownwen Williams, and Jametria Wright. Facilitated by Ricardo Montez and Joshua Lubin-Levy.

All aspects of The Magic Flute’s production process and performance will be utilized as raw material by filmmaker Michel Auder, who will present “A Film in Pieces” as 80WSE Gallery’s Summer exhibition, on view from June 8 - August 13, 2016. Auder’s film places the original production back in to the space from which it came, by means of distortion and reconfiguration.

Founded in 2001, the CHEAP Kollektiv is a performance, music, film, art and action group based in Berlin, Germany. The collective’s core collaborators include actress Susanne Sachsse, film historian Marc Siegel, translator Daniel Hendrickson, and artist Vaginal Davis.  The CHEAP Kollektiv has mounted numerous productions throughout the world, including collaborations with Bruce La Bruce, Rick Owens, Ronald Tavel, Mario Montez, Wilhelm Hein, Holly Woodlawn, Narcissister, Hans Scheirl, Jakob Lena Knebel, and Carmelita Tropicana among many others.

The Magic Flute is made possible through the generous support of the 125th Steinhardt Anniversary Grant, the New York University Arts Council, NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, Department of Performance Studies, NYU Steinhardt Office of Global Affairs, NYPAC - the New York Performance Artists Collective, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and in collaboration with Goethe-Institut and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

In medias res brings together artists who disrupt, transform and distort expectations and limitations, suggesting new sites for expansion and imagination. Initially intrigued by the concept of borders and conditions of openness and exclusion, the show exposes in-between spaces of permeability and ambiguity and how artists approach these terrains. Many of the artists in the show look to these spaces as points of departure — as non-spaces that exist between the tangible and intangible, scientific and poetic, imaginative and factual, cathartic and anxious — but ones that are ultimately rife with possibility. 

Artists Rebecca Salmon, Eric Santoscoy-McKillip and Carly Burnell are forthright in the ways they disrupt and displace, altering and transforming physical space through a process which insists on material agency. Others, such as Dae Young Kim and Sala Moore demonstrate an embodied approach, by way of expressing the collapsibility of physical and psychic dimensions. Works by Tritia Lee, Reba Kittredge Tyson and Jonathan Yukio Clark are grounded in personal, visceral narratives and create new visual and physical spaces that reflect, expose and mirror. The works on display often challenge their own materiality, collapsing or expanding dimensions, to create a sense of unending space. 

Using personal and ungraspable histories as sources of inspiration, In medias res looks at what it means to cross a threshold, to be defined by physical and mental borders, and to create new possibilities, definitions and processes.

// artists //
Carly Burnell
Jonathan Yukio Clark
Dae Young Kim
Tritia Lee
Sala Moore
Rebecca Salmon
Eric Santoscoy-McKillip
Reba Kittredge Tyson

// location //
The Commons Gallery
Barney Building, 34 Stuyvesant St
NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions

// refreshments will be served //

// on view //
February 10 through 20

// credits //
Curated by Stephanie Bokenfohr, Danielle Brock, Sandrine Milet, Moeka Sakuma
Organized by the Visual Arts Administration Curatorial Collective

80WSE Gallery, New York University
January 12 – February 13, 2016

Curated by Pam Grossman

Opening reception: Wednesday, January 13, 6 – 8pm
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 10:30am – 6pm

Language of the Birds: Occult and Art considers over 60 modern and contemporary artists who have each expressed their own engagement with magical practice.  Beginning with Aleister Crowley's trance portraiture and Austin Osman Spare's automatic drawing of the early 20th century, the exhibition traces over 100 years of occult art, including Leonora Carrington and Kurt Seligmann’s surrealist explorations, Kenneth Anger and Ira Cohen’s ritualistic experiments in film and photography, and the mystical probings of contemporary visionaries such as Francesco Clemente, Kiki Smith, Paul Laffoley, BREYER P-ORRIDGE, and Carol Bove.

The concerns and influences of each of these artists are as eclectic as the styles in which they work. While several of the pieces deal with “high” or ceremonial magic, others draw from so-called “low magic” practices and have deeply chthonic roots. The approaches in technique are varying as well, with some doing years of research and preparation for the act of creation, and others working entirely intuitively. Regardless of method, Language of the Birds suggests that all are part of the same lineage: one that pulls on threads from the esoteric web of alchemy, Hermeticism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, divination and witchcraft.

The exhibition takes its name from the historical and cross-cultural notion that there is a magic language via which only the initiated can communicate.  Often referred to as the “language of the birds,” it is a system rumored to operate in symbols, and to be a vehicle for revealing hidden truths and igniting metamorphic sparks.

The artists in Language of the Birds can be considered magicians, then, when seen through this mythopoeic lens. A visual vocabulary is offered up by them, so that we all might be initiated into their imaginal mystery cults and dialog with the ineffable. They speak to us in secret tongues, cast spells, and employ pictures for the purpose of activating profound change in both themselves and in us.  By going within, then drawing streams of imagery forth through their creations, each of these artists seeks to render the invisible visible, to materialize the immaterial, and to tell us that we, too, can enter numinous realms.

Participating Artists

Kenneth Anger * Anohni * Laura Battle * Jordan Belson * Alison Blickle * Carol Bove * Jesse Bransford * BREYER P-ORRIDGE * John Brill * Robert Buratti * Elijah Burgher * Cameron * Leonora Carrington * Francesco Clemente * Ira Cohen * Brian Cotnoir * Aleister Crowley * Enrico Donati * El Gato Chimney * Leonor Fini * JFC Fuller * Helen Rebekah Garber * Rik Garrett * Delia Gonzalez * Jonah Groeneboer * Juanita Guccione * Brion Gysin * Frank Haines * Barry William Hale * Valerie Hammond * Ken Henson * Bernard Hoffman * Nino Japaridze * Gerome Kamrowski * Leo Kenney * Paul Laffoley * Adela Leibowitz * Darcilio Lima * Angus MacLise * Ann McCoy * Rithika Merchant * William Mortensen * Rosaleen Norton * Micki Pellerano * Ryan M Pfeiffer & Rebecca Walz * Max Razdow * Ron Regé, Jr. * Rebecca Salmon * Kurt Seligmann * Harry Smith * Kiki Smith * Xul Solar * Austin Osman Spare * Charles Stein * Shannon Taggart * Gordon Terry * Scott Treleaven * Panos Tsagaris * Charmion von Wiegand * Robert Wang * Peter Lamborn Wilson * Lionel Ziprin

Special Events Related to the Exhibition

Weds, Jan 13: Opening Reception   6-8pm

Weds, Jan 27: Performance of “The Language,” a theatrical piece written by playwright Matthew Freeman, commissioned for Language of the Birds.    7pm - Free and open to the public.

Fri, Feb 5 – Sun, Feb 7: The Occult Humanities Conference at NYU Steinhardt – a weekend long symposium of 14 lectures and performances which explore the influence of magical thought upon art, history, and contemporary culture.  Tickets required - SOLD OUT.

Weds, Feb 10: “Art Workings” Lectures and panel discussion with Professor Susan L. Aberth, Jesse Bransford, and William Breeze, moderated by exhibition curator, Pam Grossman.   7pm - Free and open to the public.

About the Curator

Pam Grossman is an independent curator, writer, and teacher of magical practice and history.  She is the creator of Phantasmaphile, a blog which specializes in art and culture with an esoteric or fantastical bent, and the Associate Editor of Abraxas International Journal of Esoteric Studies.  She is also the co-organizer of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU, and co-founder of the Brooklyn arts & lecture space, Observatory (2009-2014), where her programming explored mysticism via a scholarly yet accessible approach.

Her group art shows and projects have been featured by such outlets as Artforum, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Boing Boing, Art & Antiques Magazine, CREATIVE TIME, Time Out New York, Juxtapoz, Arthur, 20×200, UrbanOutfitters.com, and Neil Gaiman's Twitter.

Pam’s writing has appeared in numerous mediums, including The Huffington Post, MSN.com, Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment blog, the Etsy blog, Sciences Occultes magazine, and various Fulgur press publications.  As a featured guest on HuffPost LIVE, The Midnight Archive web series, and myriad other radio shows and podcasts, she has discussed the role of magic in contemporary life.

She is Getty Images’ Director of Visual Trends, and she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Matt, and their two cat familiars, Albee and Remedios “Remy” Varo.

For its Winter 2015 season, 80WSE Gallery has partnered with the celebrated Berlin-based CHEAP Kollektiv on staging a radical reinterpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute. The production critically transforms Mozart’s celebrated 1791 musical drama through re-imagining and disordering the narrative of the original opera in to a series of six tableaux vivant, combining elaborately constructed installations with performed sequences and live music. It amplifies the subversive alternatives to humanism already quietly suggested in Mozart’s music and Schikaneder’s libretto, staging an intervention in an ongoing conversation concerning the nature of humanity. The production’s libretto and imagery refract contemporary politics through radical strands of Early Modern philosophy in order to learn more about the conditions that our current moment has inherited from the Enlightenment. 

The Magic Flute consists of two parts:

Part One:

An Opera in 6 Steps

Open Rehearsals

December 1-5, 2015

6pm, 7pm, 8pm

Part One can be attended by reservation only and is free of charge. Audience capacity is extremely limited. Please email 80wsefrontdesk@nyu.edu to make a reservation.

Part Two:

A Film in Pieces

June 8 – August 13, 2016

 //

Written by Vaginal Davis

Directed by Susanne Sachsse

Original score by Xiu Xiu

Lighting by Jackie Shemesh

Film by Michel Auder

Dramaturgy by Roger Mathew Grant

Production design by Jonathan Berger, Jesse Bransford, Damien Davis, Michael Forrey, Jessica Garcia, Ben Hatcher, Sawyer Mitchell, Hugh O'Rourke, and Various Projects Inc., in collaboration with NYU Steinhardt BFA students Ian Alcock, Johanna Asgeirsdottir, Victoria Browne, Helen Chu, Callie Cramer, Eleanor Gollin, Yuki Hamada, Sonja Haroldson, Juliette Hayt, Melissa Karine Jacobs, Giani Jones, Susannah Liguori, Haley Long, Daniel Mock, Marta Murray, Phoebe Randall, Aidan Romick, Paula Rondon, Harlie Rush, Anjelica Russell, Rebecca Salmon, Beverly Terry, Joshua Toor, Reba Kittredge Tyson, Jerry Wilson, Miranda Zhang.

Performed by Ian Alcock, Chris Blue, Alex Casso, Vaginal Davis, Kellian Delice, Roger Mathew Grant, Jennifer Miller, Dave Perrett, Susanne Sachsse, Zachary Schoenhut, Manuel "Vicki Baum" Schubert, Aliza Shvarts.

 Xiu Xiu’s original score performed live by NY Choral, the Horkheimer Arkestra, and Jamie Stewart.

Supporting cast: The New School for Public Engagement students John Arnold, Harry Charlesworth, Zachary Clause, Izzy Cohan, Sorcha Fatooh, Jacquelyn Gallo, Eitan Goldstein, Helayne Kushner, Luisa Moreira De Alcantara, Julia Moses, Patricio Schmiegelow, Brownwen Williams, and Jametria Wright. Facilitated by Ricardo Montez and Joshua Lubin-Levy.

80WSE Gallery will be closed to the public for the month of November, allowing the 3500 square foot space to function as a residency site for the collaborating artists, students, singers, performers, and musicians to realize the piece collectively.

All aspects of The Magic Flute’s production process and performance will be utilized as raw material by filmmaker Michel Auder, who will present “A Film in Pieces” as 80WSE Gallery’s Summer exhibition, on view from June 8 - August 13, 2016. Auder’s film places the original production back in to the space from which it came, by means of distortion and reconfiguration.

Founded in 2001, the CHEAP Kollektiv is a performance, music, film, art and action group based in Berlin, Germany. The collective’s core collaborators include actress Susanne Sachsse, film historian Marc Siegel, translator Daniel Hendrickson, and artist Vaginal Davis.  The CHEAP Kollektiv has mounted numerous productions throughout the world, including collaborations with Bruce La Bruce, Rick Owens, Ronald Tavel, Mario Montez, Wilhelm Hein, Holly Woodlawn, Narcissister, Hans Scheirl, Jakob Lena Knebel, and Carmelita Tropicana among many others.

The Magic Flute is made possible through the generous support of the 125th Steinhardt Anniversary Grant, the New York University Arts Council, NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, Department of Performance Studies, NYU Steinhardt Office of Global Affairs, NYPAC - the New York Performance Artists Collective, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and in collaboration with Goethe-Institut and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.