Archive for May, 2010
VIDEO — Dan Safer
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010MAILING LIST
Monday, May 10th, 2010There’s always something new and exciting coming up with the Six Points Fellows. Be the first to know about upcoming events by joining our mailing list.
BIO — Alina Bliumis
Monday, May 10th, 2010Alina Bliumis was born in Minsk, Belorussia, and is a multidisciplinary artist living and working with her partner, Jeff Bliumis in NYC. Their work often reflects on their own experiences and develops subjects dealing with migration, social developments and cultural engineering.
The team often develops subjects dealing with urban history, social structure, and cultural developments. Their work concentrates on “foreignness” and “otherness” in daily social encounters, from the public art project in NYC “Language Barriers” to a photo journey “Moscow Diary”, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s book of the same title.
Alina and Jeff’s projects range from public art to site specific installations to projects that are based on public dialogue and public interactivity.
Their works have been internationally exhibited. Selected shows include the 1st and 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Russia), Bat-Yam Museum (Israel), Busan Biennale 2006 (South Korea), The Jewish Museum (NY), Assab One (Italy), Castlefield Gallery (UK) and Andrea Meislin Gallery (NY). Their video works have been screened at many festivals such as New York Video Festival (USA), Media Art Festival Friesland (Netherlands), Resfest 10, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (USA) and Videomedeja (Serbia).
Alina and Jeff’s works are in various private and public collections, including: Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Bat-Yam Museum and the Saatchi collection.
Contact info:
http://www.bliumis.com
PROJECT STATEMENT — Alina Bliumis
Monday, May 10th, 2010Casual Conversations addresses Alina’s communal and individual experience as part of the third wave of Russian-Jewish émigrés – a human wave passing through geographical, political and cultural borders.
This project has produced a pictorial series shaped by cultural and social studies, personal experience and public interactions. Focusing on Russian-Jewish immigrants who fled the Soviet Union from the 1970s to the early 1990s and working closely with the Russian-Jewish diaspora in New York, the project consists of a number of visual mediums, including academic research, photo documentation, public interventions and original artworks.
Through a series of public interventions Casual Conversations brings unconventional art forms to the community and creates a “research/art laboratory” in a public space. Each event targets a specific “problem” and set “reaction” that forms the characteristic brushstrokes of a final community portrait.
This project was presented at the Black and White Gallery in Williamsburg from March-June, 2009.
BIO — Gabrielle Brechner
Monday, May 10th, 2010Gabrielle Brechner is a first generation American and native New Yorker who was raised, literally, at her father’s “American Jewish Theater.”
She spent the first 18 years of her life working her way from the Box Office to the Assistant Director. She received a B.F.A. in Theater Performance from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in English Literature with a Minor in Holocaust Literature.
Since 2001 she has been working as a primary writer and director in Wakka Wakka Productions, Inc., a four-member collaborative ensemble focused on the creation of new productions that push the boundaries of the conventional theatrical art form. Their work has been presented throughout NYC at venues including BB King Blues Club, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and in association with the Cityparks Foundation.
Their 2006 work, The Death of Little Ibsen, described by The New York Times as “an exquisite little one act show the evokes the best of Jim Henson’s early dangerous days with the Muppets,” was received with great critical acclaim and has toured nationally and internationally.
Contact Info:
http://www.wakkawakka.org/
PROJECT STATEMENT — Gabrielle Brechner
Monday, May 10th, 2010Pushing the boundaries of theatrical expression with original puppets, sets and music, Fabrik is the story of the search for home, told through the life of an immigrant man who “made a factory from a button.”
Fabrik tells the story of Moritz Rabinowitz, a Polish Jew who emigrated to Norway in 1911 to escape persecution. In Haugesund, a small fishing village, he discovered a land rich with opportunity, and a place he could prosper. Poor but determined, he eventually became the largest clothing manufacturer in the country, with department stores in several cities and his own factory.
Although wealthy and a leading employer, he experienced a good deal of anti-Semitism. The only Jews in Haugesund, he and his family were treated as outsiders and when the Germans finally invaded Norway, Rabinowitz was the most wanted Norwegian Jew on the Gestapo’s list.
Fabrik has been performed around the globe, and continues to travel and receive acclaim in places like England, San Francisco, and Norway. The Village Voice called Fabrik “A charming and disturbing creation” and The New York Times commented that it was “…consistently startling…”
BIO — Ofri Cnaani
Monday, May 10th, 2010Ofri Cnaani (b. Israel, 1975) lives in New York and works in time-based media, large-scale installations as well as drawing. Cnaani’s work blurs the boundaries between a constructed reality and reality itself and explore spatial awareness by analyzing their formal dimensions within social and psychological spheres. Ofri Cnaani graduated from Hunter College’s MFA studio program in 2004. She is recently completing a large-scale commission to create 10 site-specific video installations at 10 museums of contemporary art in Italy’s Lombardy region. Cnaani is a Six Points Fellow and was twice the winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation award. Solo exhibitions include: PS1/ MoMA, Twister, Network of Lombardy Contemporary Art Museums, Italy; Andrea Meislin Gallery; NYC, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv; Pack Gallery, Milan; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Herzlyia Museum of Art, Israel. Group exhibitions include: Moscow Biennial, The Kitchen, NYC; Bronx Museum of the Arts, NYC; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Arnolfini Foundation Museum, Bristol, UK; Tel Aviv Museum; The Israel Museum, Israel; Prague Triennale among many others.
Contact Info:
http://ofricnaani.com/
ofricnaani at gmail.com
PROJECT STATEMENT — Ofri Cnaani
Monday, May 10th, 2010The Sota Project is a large-scale video installation that reenacts a controversial story from the Talmud. It is a story about jealousy, trust and mortal love that follows an “adulterous” woman who is put on trial by her suspecting husband while her sister helps her fight for her life.
The four walls of the exhibition space are covered by video projections allowing the narrative to develop in time and space in parallel. Not only a “moving picture” but an attempt to create a “moving mural”, Sota explores the relationship between architecture and narrative and offers a new form of a ‘spatial narrative’. Using old visual storytelling techniques (as we can see them mainly in murals and tapestries) and new technologies (sync video, motion sensors, animation) Sota is an attempt to create a hybrid between ancient media and new media both visually and literally. The text can thus burst into both spatial and time-based narratives and calls into question the notion of a coherent truth.
The Sota Project was presented at -->Kunsthalle Galapagos -->, NYC, February – April 2011.
BIO — Dan Fishback
Monday, May 10th, 2010Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. Major works include -->You Will Experience Silence --> (Dixon Place, 2009, which the Village Voice called “sassier and more fun than Angels in America“), No Direction Homo (P.S. 122, 2006), and Please Let Me Love You (Dixon Place, 2006). Also a performing songwriter and recording artist, Fishback began his solo music career in the East Village’s anti-folk scene. His band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America, and has released records in the United States and Japan. Fishback has shared stages with Ani Difranco and Kimya Dawson as part of the punk dance troupe Underthrust. He regularly visits colleges all over the country to lead workshops on solo performance, and to speak on queer and Jewish issues.
In addition to receiving the Six Points Fellowship in 2007, Fishback has been granted residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and Dixon Place. In 2010, he received a Franklin Furnace Fund grant and a residency at Brooklyn Arts Exchange to develop his new solo show, thirtynothing. He freelances as a life coach and doesn’t need certification thankyouverymuch.
Contact info:
http://www.danfishback.com/
dan (at) danfishback (dot) com
PROJECT STATEMENT — Dan Fishback
Monday, May 10th, 2010In ancient Israel, at the dawn of the Chanukah war, the “chosen people” are bored and horny. Judah Maccabee (Dan Fishback), a surly queer teenager, travels to Jerusalem one day with his best friend Ezra (Max Steele). When they encounter a sexy Greek soldier (Joseph Keckler), they must reckon with their responsibilities — to their people, to their libidos and to each other. Their story is interspersed with tale of Ian Fleishman (Dan Fishback), a crazed activist who spends his morning in bed, calling the White House to complain about the state of the world, the state of the war, and the state of his love life. Erotic, neurotic and dorky, performance artist Dan Fishback is fiercer than ever in this absurdist meditation on citizenship, imperialism and sexual ethics.