Poetry Parade for Site and Sight
Oct 8, 2015
Anna Craycroft read to the piers from the installation of Mary Heilman, Sunset, 2015:
Excerpt from Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Kathy Acker, “New York City in 1979” (1979)
Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)
September 2015. Photograph by Filip Wolak
On Saturday, September 26, the Whitney hosted the Poetry Parade for Sight and Site. The event was an iteration of an ongoing collaboration by A.K. Burns and Katherine Hubbard in which artists, curators, and cultural thinkers read self-selected texts to works of art. Texts are chosen and paired with works either as a celebration, homage or to stage a confrontation. This parade of readings focused on works of art in the exhibition, America Is Hard to See and site-specific locations and views from within and onto the Whitney.
Follow the parade in the slideshow below. All photographs by Filip Wolak, September 2015.
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Anna Craycroft read to the piers from the installation of Mary Heilman, Sunset 2015:
Excerpt from Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Kathy Acker, “New York City in 1979” (1979)
Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999) -
A.K. Burns read to Bill Traylor, Walking Man, 1939-42:
Laurie Anderson, “walking and falling”
Excerpt from Park McArthur and Constantina Zavitsanos, Other forms of conviviality: The best and least of which is our daily care and the host of which is our collaborative work
Sun Ra, “I’m strange” -
Rit Premnath read to Michelle Stuart, #28 Moray Hill, 1974:
Sreshta Rit Premnath, Withdrawn (2015), Falling (2015), Slump (2015), Falling Laborers (Excerpted from news articles from Bangalore in 2015 published by The Deccan Herald, an Indian daily newspaper) (2015), and excerpt from Plot (2013) -
Nayland Blake read to Nancy Grossman, Head,1968:
Audre Lorde, “Coal”
Wally Wallace as quoted By Jack Fritscher, Letter announcing the opening of the Mineshaft and the Mineshaft dress code
Promotional copy for Bond No. 9’s fragrance Nouveau Bowery -
Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 1958–66. Oil with wood and mica on canvas, 128 7/8 × 92 1/4 × 11 in. (327.3 × 234.3 × 27.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of The Jay DeFeo Trust and purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Judith Rothschild Foundation 95.170. © 2015 The Jay DeFeo Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Justin Allen read to Adrian Piper, Food for the Spirit, 1971:
Justin Allen, “Color Metaphor”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “truth” and “my dreams, my works, must wait till after h -
Catherine Lord read to Felix Gonzales Torres, Untitled, 1989:
Excerpts from:
Cindy Patton, Sex and Germs (1985)
Mattachine Society, Stonewall Rebellion Plea (1969)
Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist” (1891)
ACT UP (1986)
Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” (1977)
David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives (1987)
Diane DiPrima, “Revolutionary Poem #2” (c. 1969) -
Katie Hubbard read to LaToya Ruby Frazier, Landscape of the Body (Epilepsy Test), 2011:
Excerpts from:
Cathy Caruth, “A Ghost in the House of Justice, A Conversation with Shoshana Feldman” in Listening to Trauma
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons (2013)
Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language” (1977) -
Kamau Amu Patton read to Glenn Ligon, Warm Broad Glow II, 2011:
Kamau Amu Patton, Themed Nomad No Plastic Form (2013)