J'S THEATER: "not only this but "New language beckons us'" @ NYU

Friday, June 21, 2013

"not only this but "New language beckons us'" @ NYU

Vernissage at Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU

For those in NYC or visiting before July 27, 2013, do check out a wonderful exhibit organized and curated by Andrew Blackley for Visual AIDS at New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections, entitled "not only this, but 'new language beckons us'."

The exhibit features original works by artists in NYU's collections as well as new works by authors in conversation with these artists and their works, including Julie Ault, Dodie Bellamy, Gregg Bordowitz, Nancy Brooks Brody, AA Bronson, Elijah Burgher, Kathe Burkhart, Sean Carrillo, Peter Cramer, Lia Gangitano, Matthias Herrmann, Jim Hubbard, Doug Ischar, William E. Jones, Kevin Killian, Nathanaël, John Neff, Uzi Parnes, Mary Patten, Nina Sobell, Ela Troyano, Ultra-red, Jack Waters, Joe Westmoreland, Danh Vo, and yours truly.

People viewing the cases

As Andrew's announcement states:

This exhibition is composed of archival objects from the Fales Library's Downtown Collection coupled with newly commissioned texts from contemporary artists and writers. Each text corresponds to a figure or object from the collection and highlights interpersonal affinities and adjacencies, influences and recollections. These couplings give voice to still-present narratives and discourses orbiting the intersection of art and HIV/AIDS—a theme that speaks to Visual AIDS' ongoing mission: to serve as an advocate for artists with AIDS and to recognize art as a tool for education and activism in the fight against AIDS.

Some of the texts on display

My contribution is a prose piece riffing specifically on "Hypnos and Thanatos," as well as the drawing books and other artworks by the late painter, graffiti artist and collector, and set designer Martin Wong (1946-1999), onetime lover of the playwright and poet Miguel Piñero (1946-1988) and an important figure in the emerging 1980s Lower East Side/East Village art scene. Other pieces include essays, meditations, poems, one-line provocations, and new visual pieces, and the works from the Fales Collection range across genres, but offer glimpses of a world, or worlds, now almost completely invisible, if not gone, in hypergentrifying Manhattan and New York City. Below are some photos from the opening, which took place on May 23.