FREE LIVE FILM, LIVE PERFORMANCE, RECYCLING ATLANTIS NOVEMBER 12-14 5-9pm, 80WSE Gallery, 80 Washington Square East

LIVE FILM, LIVE PERFORMANCE, FREE STUFF, FREE ADMISSION
Come see Carmelita Tropicana channel Yolanda La Pinguina, experience live film produced as you watch by Ela Troyano and Uzi Parnes                       

Wednesday-Friday, November 12-14 5-9pm

Recycling Atlantis November 12-14 at 80WSE Gallery

Uzi Parnes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Ela Troyano

RECYCLING ATLANTIS

A live exhibition celebrating the radical philosophies of Jack Smith

80WSE Gallery is pleased to present RECYCLING ATLANTIS, a live exhibition by Uzi Parnes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Ela Troyano in celebration of the artist, philosopher and educator Jack Smith. The exhibition will be on view November 12th, 13th & 14th from 5:00pm - 9:00pm.

Uzi Parnes, Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano have been collaborating on film and performance since the early 1980’s when they first met legendary filmmaker Jack Smith. Twenty-five years after his death from AIDS in 1989, RECYCLING ATLANTIS celebrates Smith’s radical philosophies about the role of art in society through an interactive exhibition project, produced live in collaboration with 80WSE Director Jonathan Berger and NYU students and faculty over the course of three evenings.

Some time around 1978 Jack Smith penned a manifesto in which he outlined a utopian futuristic urban environment, centering around a series of proposed social programs and articulated in the form of an unrealized film, which employed numerous Hollywood movie stars in service roles for Smith’s new progressive world. The manifesto as a whole is emblematic of the entirety of Smith’s creative practice and philosophical approach, where the boundary between art and life was non-existent and the act of creation became the literal construction of a new reality.  Among the proposals in Smith’s manifesto were a “free paradise abandoned objects in the center of the city near where the community movie sets would also be.” These two projects highlight integral practices that remain a constant throughout Smith’s work: the fantastical transformation and repurposing of discarded materials and trash for both his home and film sets, often one and the same, and the discovery and employment of unknown and unwanted performers as “superstars” for his films, a concept that he pioneered ahead of his contemporary Andy Warhol.

RECYCLING ATLANTIS centers around Parnes, Tropicana, and Troyano’s revisiting of Smith’s manifesto and their subsequent interest in interpreting and realizing his proposed “free paradise of abandoned objects” and “community movie set” within the space and time of an exhibition. In 80WSE’s front gallery space, visitors will be able to take or leave their own objects to recycle, growing and shrinking a large and varied mound of items in the center of the room, while an accompanying audio recording of Tropicana’s performance Cry a la Jack chronicles one of Smith’s legendary performances hinging on his powerful transformation of a common toilet plunger.  A second gallery presents four simultaneous slideshows of performance and portrait photographs created between 1981 and 1989 through an ongoing collaboration between Smith and Parnes, most notably a series of images shown publically in NYC for the first time documenting Smith’s play I Was A Male Yvonne DeCarlo for the Lucky Landlord Underground, with accompanying audio from the performance, shot over the course of three nights in 1982.

80WSE’s remaining three conjoined gallery spaces will serve as the site for a live film, existing in a permanent state of development, in which the boundaries between design, production, and presentation are dissolved, much as in Troyano’s first film Bubble People, which featured Jack Smith and was shot at Parnes’ loft performance space “Performances Staged” in 1982. One production area will serve as the setting for an ongoing improvised film shoot, featuring Tropicana as “Yolanda La Pinguina,” (one of Smith’s recurring characters), using Smith’s philosophical texts as a script, NYU students and visitors as performers, and “abandoned objects” as props. In a second area, Parnes and Troyano will establish a working editing studio where they will merge footage spanning three decades, making selections from their collaborations with Smith and Tropicana on film, video, photo, and theater works. Through live mixing, layering, and altering these historical materials the artists will generate a new composite ongoing and ever-changing film. A third area will serve as a cinema continuously screening live feed footage from both Parnes and Troyano’s studio as well as the active “community movie set”.

The format of the exhibition seeks to reflect the critique of arts culture with which Smith was concerned for the entirety of his career, as well as the holistic approach to art making that he chose to pursue as a result of these concerns, one where he considered every part of the creative process, from thought to distribution, as an essential contributing artistic gesture towards achieving the total work. Through their open collaborative re-invention of materials from the recent and distant past, in the space and time of the present, Parnes, Tropicana, and Troyano focus RECYCLING ATLANTIS on the continued and increasing relevance of a question which opens Smith’s 1978 manifesto: “Could art be useful?”

Uzi Parnes is a New York based filmmaker, photographer, curator, and actor. Presentations of his work have been shown internationally, most recently in a career survey at The Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin, 2012). His dissertation, Pop Performance: Four Seminal Influences, was published in 1988 and has become an influential reference for scholarship around Jack Smith’s work. Parnes was founder and co-director with Ela Troyano of legendary 1980's performance club “Chandalier.”

Carmelita Tropicana is an Obie award winning performance artist and writer. Her work has been presented by INTAR Theatre (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo (Sevilla), El Museo del Barrio (NYC), and Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). I, Carmelita Tropicana – Performing Between Cultures, a book surveying her work, was published in 2000.

Ela Troyano is an interdisciplinary filmmaker, born in Cuba and based in NYC. Most recently, Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana were commissioned by Performance Space 122 to create the performance Post Plastica, which was presented at El Museo del Barrio in 2012. In 2010 she and Uzi Parnes were invited by the Berlin Film Festival to present The Silence of Marcel Duchamp, a collaborative live cinema performance. Troyano’s work has been supported through numerous fellowships including Creative Capital, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Sundance Lab.

Concurrently with RECYCLING ATLANTIS, Uzi Parnes’s installation of photographs, BASRA ON FIRST AVENUE: Jack Smith’s Last Apartment, will be on view from October 29, 2014 - January 26, 2015 at 80WSE Gallery’s satellite space, a series of five street-level windows located at the corner of Broadway and East 10^th Street. The installation is on view 24 hours a day.

80WSE Gallery is located at 80 Washington Square East, between West 4^th Street and Washington Street. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10:30AM-6PM. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information about the exhibition, please contact the gallery at 212-998-5751 or email 80wsefrontdesk@nyu.edu.

Special thanks to Gladstone Gallery and Fales Library. RECYCLING ATLANTIS is made possible through the generous support of Materials for the Arts.

JACK SMITH’S LAST APARTMENT

  BASRA ON FIRST AVENUE

“When the film is long since over the apartment will be lived in and used with its kitchen in the style of a ruined sambucca, beached in a papyrus swamp and perhaps someone will be gazing at the Bagdadian sink instead of a T.V.  The apartment, the architecture entertains you, it soothes you. It helps you, it civilizes you, it is ‘BASRA’…”  Jack Smith, excerpt from grant application, February 5, 1982.

I shot these photos of Jack’s apartment at 21 First Avenue shortly after he passed in 1989.  I began in daylight but as the apartment was quite dark I returned later with a movie light and reshot some of the darker areas.  Even then I realized the apartment would ultimately have to be surrendered to the landlord and felt it was important to document the incomparable environment Jack lived in and had created as a set for his never-lensed  film project Sinbad in the Rented World.

         October 29 through January 26, at Broadway Windows, B’way & E. 10St., N.Y.                                                 a project of 80WSE Gallery

Recycling Atlantis will feature a "paradise of unwanted objects"

RECYCLING ATLANTIS, November 12-14 @ 80WSE Gallery

I am looking forward to this exciting 3 day event with Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano, curated by Jonathan Berger.

The Three Witches scene from Macbeth, cut from Loisaida Lusts 1986

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IyA9jPrZ2Y&feature=youtu.be
This scene was mostly cut from Loisaida Lusts, 1986 by Uzi Parnes and Ela Troyano

because it was too long to work with the rest of the film.  (A few other scenes needed to be cut as well.) But as it is such a powerful rendition of the Three Witches scene from Macbeth, I thought it should live on somewhere...  It stars the inimitable legends of NYC downtown performance Lillian Kiesler, Maryette Charlton, and Jane Lawrence Smith.  The scene was shot on Ave. C in 1985 and directed by Uzi after extensive rehearsals indoors but the ending developed as we shot.  Camera; Ela Troyano

Chandalier Fashion Show 1982 at Performances Staged, with Jack Smith wearing one of my Chandaliers and a very young me in the back getting the lights to come on...

I recently found this photo taken by Rafik Azuni of Jack performing in my 1982 performance, at the old loft in SoHo, thought it would be fun to share, especially for those who were there...

16TH ANNUAL POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

It's nice to be in this company if only just this once...

                                         The 16th Annual


                             POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE 


                                          is coming soon!

Featuring artworks by Uzi Parnes, Janine Antoni, Jim Hodges, Donald Baechler, Janet Cardiff, Polly Apfelbaum, Catherine Opie, Tony Feher, Marcel Dzama, Ed Rusha, Kiki Smith, Mary Heilmann, John Baldessari, Ida Applebroog, Burt Barr, Julie Mehretu, Ragnar Kjartansson, Cary Leibowitz, Rirkrit Tiravanija, L.J. Roberts, Robert Longo, Moyra Davey, Danh Vo, Kate Shepherd, Geoffrey Hendricks, Ross Bleckner, Jane Hammond, Lawrence Weiner, Jessica Rankin, Dotty Attie, Kay Rosen, Jack Pierson, Robert Buck, William Wegman, Hans Haacke, Joel Shapiro, Marilyn Minter, McDermott & McGough, Louise Lawler, John Waters and over 1300 others!!!


Tell your friends - and join us at the Preview Party and Benefit Sale!



All events hosted at 
Luhring Augustine
531 W 24th Street, NYC

PREVIEW PARTY: FRIDAY, JANUARY 24th
The only opportunity to see the entire exhibition. 
Silent Auction & Raffle Prizes. (No postcard sales.)

* Artist Preview from 6pm-8pm
Participating artists can attend the Preview for free, starting at 6pm, one hour after VIP Preview. Additional guests $50 each. 

* VIP Preview begins at 5pm
Don't like crowds?  $50 admission (payable at the door or online here) allows guests into the gallery one hour before the general doors open.  Beat the crowd and get an extra close look at all the amazing artwork. 

BENEFIT SALE 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 25 from 10 AM - 6 PM  (Buy 4 - Get 1 More)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26 from 12 PM - 4 PM      (Buy 2 - Get 1 More)

All postcard artwork only $85 each.  Artworks displayed anonymously.  Artist's name revealed after purchase.  First-come, first-served.  On Saturday, buy four postcard-sized artworks and choose a fifth one as a "thank you" from us, and on Sunday, buy two postcards and get a third.  $5 suggested admission.  With so much wonderful art on display, you are bound to find something you love - and all proceeds supports the programs of  Visual AIDS.

SEE YOU THERE!
 

Still from BATTERER Friday 10/19 at 2:15 and Saturday 10/20 as part of HOMOVIES at the IFF, Kino Moviemento Berlin

QUEER LOVE: The Homovies will be screening in Berlin Friday 10/19 at Moviemento 2:15 pm and Saturday 10/20 at 10:15 pm

http://www.israelfilmfestivalberlin.com/de/?p=856

UZI PARNES: QUEER LOVE – THE HOMOVIES, 1978 – 2010

Israeli-born Uzi Parnes is a prolific member of the New York Underground Scene. As a filmmaker, performer, photographer and club founder he shaped and influenced queer art practice in the US-American metropolis since the 1970s.

SEX PIERS

Uzi Parnes, USA 1978/1983, 8 min, English OV

In 1978, Uzi Parnes started taking photos of the piers – primarily slides for use in his slide shows. These included both classic shots documenting the architecture and fantasy shots where he would shoot a roll of film at the piers and then superimpose other images on this first layer by running the slide film through the camera more than once.

QUEER LOVE POEM

Uzi Parnes, USA 1991, 10 min, English OV

A portrait of the boy who got away.

SEVEN DAYS WITH THE SAME DICK (GINGER ViTAS, PART 1)

Uzi Parnes, Ty Ginger, USA 1992, 17 min, English OV

The film captures the first throes of lust and desire that characterize the primary stages of hooking up with the filmmaker’s Israeli boyfriend Ty.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

Uzi Parnes, USA 1994, 5 min, English OV

A coming out story. After visiting the filmmaker for Passover, his mother called and asked if he is laying down with that Israeli man.

BATTERER (GINGER VITAS, PART 3)

Uzi Parnes, USA 1995, 28 min, English OV
mit: Rosa von Praunheim, Uzi Parnes, Sweetie, Carmelita Tropicana,  Lou Maletta, Slave Dale, Tom Murrin, Jason Reeves, Don Boyle, Darrell Perry, Ela Troyano

On June 20, 1994 the filmmaker strangled his domestic partner – Ty Ginger. "Batterer" is a fictional exploration of what might have happened had he not released his hold once Ty stopped struggling. It explores the motivation behind this act of violence, but as a surreal black comedy.

MEMORIMORTI

Uzi Parnes, USA 2010, 23 min, English OV

A dark, multi-layered portrait of Parnes’ parents and their reaction to their son’s queer identity as his father slowly dies.

Guest: Uzi Parnes

Ticket reservation

All images are copyrighted by their respective authors.
Guest: Uzi Parnes
http://www.israelfilmfestivalberlin.com/de/?p=856

I WILL BE SHOWING MY HOMOVIES IN BERLIN ON 10/19 AND 10/20 AT MOVIMENTO AS PART OF THE ISRAELI INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BERLIN

Some stills from 7 DAYS WITH THE SAME DICK 1992

                               Some stills from QUEER LOVE POEM, 1991

  

VAGINAL DAVIS'S review of our Berlin show

NEVER TRAVEL ON A ONE WAY TICKET

Last night saw the amazing intro Spective on the dynamic East Village art tag team of Ela Troyano & Uzi Parnes.  Kudos to Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus for bringing this standout program to Berlin.  Its just what the city needs.  I unfortunately missed the opening and the La Lupe Queen of Latin Soul (2007)film which everyone is talking about.  During Camp/Anti-Camp I had already seen Carmelita Tropicana:  Your Kunst Is Your Waffen which is hilarious and stars the divine Carmelita who is Ela´s sensationally talented sister.  I feel horrible that I missed Uzi´s Structuralism & Sex Program of lovesexxxy shorts. 

Thank god I was able to see Uzi´s magnificent queer love home movies that includes the slide show Sex Piers, Queer Love Poem (1991) that features a stunning Latin youth lust object, the mad cap Seven Days with the Same Dick (1992) Happy Mother´s Day (1993) the disturbingly transcendent Batterer(1995) and triumphantly personal Memorimort (2010)

It was also a treat and pleasure to watch Ela´s 1997 feature Latin Boys Go to Hell which was produced by Jurgen Brunning who also did a fab job as moderator in conversation with Ela after the zany David Does Venus(1984-1989) and another rare short subject flicker featuring a riotious Nick Zedd.  When the brilliant Tante Jurgen is on, he is really ON!!!!!  Daniel Hendrickson was also charming during his Q&A with Uzi.  In the audience:  Empress Stefanie, Uli Ziemons and Pauline Beaudry and an assortment of German, & Greeks trying to escape from football madness.

Tonight is the last evening of the intro Spective with a joint program that includes some rarely seen classix like Carmelita Gets the Spirit (1988) and Loisaida Lusts(1985) and perhaps some surprises, so come on down to historic Potsdamer Platz for your ElaUzi fixxxx.

***

My interview with Manuel Schubert for internet radio program Film Highlights:

 http://www.mixcloud.com/filmanzeiger/rising-stars-falling-stars-with-vaginal-davis-june-2012/

Manuel Schubert • filmanzeiger • filmhighlights» filmanzeiger.de

» filmhighlights - das Kinomagazin

It's OK it's just white chocolate...

WORLD PEACE my very rarely screened 1987 short will play this Friday in Berlin, after two amazing movies by Ela Troyano.  And yes it is only white chocolate.  (The cast preferred to remain nameless.)http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/calendar/single-view/calendar/2012/june/21/article/3453/3004.html

This Weekend in Berlin at The Arsenal Kino 2, at the Sony Center

IF YOU ARE IN BERLIN 6/21-6/23 PLEASE COME SEE MY WORK AT THE ARSENAL KINO 2 FOR MY INTROSPECTIVE WITH ELA TROYANO

Girls Can't Help It! 1986 by Uzi Parnes plays Thursday at 9pm

Batterer by Uzi Parnes 1995 plays Friday at 7pm

 

Loisaida Lusts by Ela Troyano and Uzi Parnes 1985 plays Saturday at 7pm

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/calendar/single-view/calendar/2012/june/22/article/3453/2796.html

Installation view of "Summer Camp". L-R: John Waters, Ken Weaver, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt and Uzi Parnes. Love!

Installation view of "Summer Camp". L-R: John Waters, Ken Weaver, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt and Uzi Parnes. Love!: Installation view of "Summer Camp". L-R: John Waters, Ken Weaver, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt and Uzi Parnes. Love!

I've been invited to Summer Camp

No not in the Catskills this one is at Schroeder Romero at 531 West 26th, opening June 7th from 6-8pm.

I'll be showing three color photos of Jack Smith shot in 1982, including two from I WAS A MALE YVONNE DE CARLO FOR THE LUCKY LANDLORD UNDERGROUND.  You can see him peeking through the U in summer.
.http://srandsgallery.com/index.php?/exhibitions/future

BERLIN "INTROSPECTIVE" JUNE 21-23

Ela Troyano and I will be having a joint Introspective at the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art  June 21-23 and I will be showing work that has not been seen in more than 20 years, so I hope you can join us there.http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/kalender/filmreihe/calendar/2012/june/23/article/3453/2796.html

WORLD PEACE 1987

GIRLS CAN'T HELP IT! 1986 

Jane Lawrence Smith, Maureen Angeles and Assotto Saint in LOISAIDA LUSTS by Ela Troyano and Uzi Parnes 1986

Holly Hughes,  Maureen Angeles and Ethyl Eichelberger in Uzi Panes's The MS. LOISAIDA PAGEANT, 1984

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/kalender/filmreihe/calendar/2012/june/23/article/3453/2796.html

Mick at the Rock

             An amazing moment at last night's SNL wrap party.

Queer Life NY: The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront

NOW EXTENDED THROUGH JULY 7!

Queer Life NY: The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront

Now 30% more LOVE AT THE BEACH

Uzi Parnes, LOVE AT THE BEACH 2012 You can get these projected in Times Square by voting to collect: http://UziParnes.artistswanted.org/atts2012http://UziParnes.artistswanted.org/atts2012

Uzi's Two Day Sweet Brisket and Spicy Tuna Gefilte Fish

For my semi-Seder this year I made a sweet brisket as our main course but since the Seder fell on Good Friday and at least one of my guests doesn't eat meat on G.F. I felt I had to make a fish dish as well and home made Gefilte Fish out of Tuna seemed like a great way to go. 

 Brisket recipe:  about a 3.5 lbs brisket.  (I got mine at the W.F. on Union Square),  2 large onions, 1lb white mushrooms, 3 or 4 carrots, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste, 12oz can of apricot nectar, 2 cups sweet red wine (I used kosher wine because we had some in the house for D.D.'s charoset, but any sweet wine will work.)  Preheat oven to 325.  Chop onions and carrots into one inch pieces.  Remove mushroom stems.  Put all the vegetables in an oven safe pot or baking sheet.  Cover brisket with garlic powder, salt and pepper and place over vegetables in pot.  Add apricot nectar and wine.  Cover and roast long and slow at 325 for at least 5-6 hours.  If your oven runs hot lower to 275-300.  After cooking for at least 5 hours remove from oven, and let cool.  Remove meat from pot and let rest on a board.  Meanwhile skim as much fat off the pot as possible.  When the meat has cooled, cut it into slices across the bias and add to the vegetables and sauce.  Let cool and store in fridge overnight.  Before serving the NEXT day, reheat again low and slow at 325 or so until warm throughout-at least an hour or two.  The meat needs to be cooked, sliced, and stored overnight to get all the flavors.  You can substitute liquids you prefer if apricot nectar or sweet kosher wine are not on hand.  Only must is low and slow and storing sliced overnight.

Fortunately this Gefilte Tuna recipe is not quite as time consuming.  i got a 1.5 lbs of packaged frozen spicy orange tuna at W.F. on Union Square.  I defrosted, cut in pieces and placed it in the food processor along with 1/2 an large onion, two scallions, an egg, and half a package of Streitz's Matzo Ball mix.  I processed thoroughly into a thick doughy consistency.  I let the mixture rest in the fridge for about 15 minutes and meanwhile boiled two quarts of water.  When the water boiled I generously salted and then added 4oz of hot sauce and 4 or 5 bay leaves.  Using a teaspoon I shaped 12 small ellipses and gently dropped into the spicy boiling water mixture.  Once the water came back to a boil I lowered the heat to low and cooked the fish for about 45-60 minutes at low heat.  I removed the fish and strained the cooking liquid of all solids then returned the water to the pot.  I reduced the liquid until less than two cups remained.  Let it cool and then poured it over the fish and cooled in the fridge overnight.  Serve cold with lots of horseradish and the sauce.  Nouvelle style gefilte a la Uzi...