Calendar & Events

What Are You Thinking, 2011
Single-channel video, black-and-white, sound; 3 min. Collection of the artist; courtesy Ratio 3, San Francisco; Alex Zachary, New York; and Cabinet, London; commissioned by Frieze Film 2011, Frieze Art Foundation

Baseballs II, 2011
Baseballs Collection of the artist; courtesy Ratio 3, San Francisco; Alex Zachary, New York; and Cabinet, London

For her presentation in the fourth floor gallery space, Lutz Bacher will release hundreds of baseballs, which, once they reach their resting places, will define the plane of the stone floor. A video projected on the wall above them plays looped excerpts from a movie soundtrack of a man and women talking while driving in a car in the rain. While the sound plays, the projection slowly fades from black to white to black again, both endlessly repeating. Like much of her earlier work, this installation combines image—or its absence—with language, confusing and complicating the meaning of and relationship between each element.

Free with Museum admission; no special ticketing required.

Kevin Jerome Everson has made an expansive body of work composed of over seventy short-form pieces and five feature-length films that present images of the lives of black Americans through his own distinctive practice of cinematic portraiture: a blend of fiction and documentary that hones in on subjects of labor and leisure. His latest feature, Quality Control, looks at the workings of an Alabama dry cleaner’s from every angle of operation, from its machine-filled back room to the front-desk interaction with customers. For his long, uninterrupted takes, Everson uses complete rolls of black-and-white 16mm stock, lending the film an air of historical certitude while subtly undermining its truth claims. Keenly observational, Quality Control reveals the hidden choreographies of an average workday, arguing for the inherent art of a job well done.

SCREENING TIMES
May 23, 24, and 26
12, 2, and 4 pm
May 25
2, 4, and 7 pm
May 27
12 and 2 pm

PROGRAM
Quality Control, 2011
16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 70 min.
Courtesy Trilobite-Arts-DAC and Picture Palace Pictures

Screenings are free with Museum admission. Admittance is on a first-come, first-seated basis until capacity is reached. Late admittance is strongly discouraged, so please arrive early.

Lucy Raven‘s What Manchester Does Today, the Rest of the World Does Tomorrow, is playing the LCD Soundsystem song Dance Yrself Clean. Fellow Biennial artist Jason Moran programmed the instrument to play a straight transcription (which syncs exactly with LCD Soundsystem’s recording), a stride interpretation, which takes the instrument’s history into account as it moves through various idioms and Moran’s more free-form response to the original recording. The rolls were made under Raven’s supervision, from MIDI files that were programmed by Moran and punched by Julian Dyer, with permission granted by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy.

Lucy Raven lives and works in Oakland, California and New York City. Jason Moran is a jazz pianist who lives in New York and plays and records under his own name and as a member of The Bandwagon. Julian Dyer is a Wokingham-based business analyst for National Grid, and one of six remaining pianola perforators in the world.

PERFORMANCES
Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays
through June 3
2 pm
Sundays through June 3
4 pm

Free with Museum admission. Space is limited and is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please join us for the free opening reception of Creative Destruction, curated by the Whitney Independent Study Program’s 2012 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows denisse andrade arévalo, 
Liz Park
, Tim Saltarelli
, and Kristina Scepanski.

Creative destruction refers to capitalism’s inherent tendency to create new wealth by destroying the previous economic order. Initially described by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, this concept was popularized in the United States after World War II when economist Joseph Schumpeter adapted it as a model of economic innovation but still warned of its self-destructive nature. Creative Destruction reclaims the phrase in order to emphasize how preexisting systems of representation can be reconfigured for different political purposes.

This event is free of charge and open to the public.