Second Sundays

On view:

The Hiroshima Panels

Fifteen in total, the Hiroshima Panels are monumental, folding wood panels completed by Japanese couple Iri and Toshi Maruki over a span of thirty-two years, from 1950-1982. In a classic byobu format, they vacillate between photographic realness and abstraction, complicating, challenging, and deepening common perceptions of the nuclear bombing and its aftermath. Six panels from the series will be on display in Pioneer Works for the exhibition: Petition (1955), Floating Lanterns (1968), Ghost (1950), Fire (1950), Death of American Prisoners of War (1971), and Crows (1972).

A Body in Fukushima

A Body in Fukushima presents a series of color photographs by artist Eiko Otake and photographer William Johnston taken in Fukushima following the destructive explosion of the nuclear plant in 2014. Eiko and Johnston followed abandoned train tracks through desolate stations into eerily vacant towns and fields in Fukushima, Japan. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the explosions of the Daiichi nuclear plants made the area uninhabitable. Through both vulnerable gestures and fierce dance, Eiko embodies grief, anger and remorse, while Johnston’s crystalline images capture her movements.

Guía de campo

Guía de campo, or Field Guide, is the final articulation of a project the artist began in 2008, in which he used field guides on Latin American and international bird species as material for an immersive installation. Guía de campo (Field Guide) approaches the disarticulation of classification systems and the relation between containers and contents, opposing the idea of expansion to that of compression.

Format No. 2

The French composer Claude Debussy said “music is the space between the notes.” With their new installation Format No. 2, Foo/Skou explore what it would be like if music was visible, and could surround us as audible, oscillating, floating objects. The installation of 200 wooden spheres functions as a notation for an iPhone app for viewers’ phones, where their perspectives affect musical parameters. In addition, a Format No. 2 interface will be available for sale in a limited edition.

Parallax: Berg

A parallax is the difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along shifting lines of sight. Parallax: Berg, an installation by Lucia Kempkes, is a multidimensional play with drawing and video that exposes the collision of synthetic and organic environments to form textural landscapes.

Open Studios:

Carmen Bouyer, Louise Foo & Martha Skou, Molly Lowe, Lucia Kempkes, Cassie Tarakajian, Benjamin Torres, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Bryan Graf, and Christy Gast

Interventions:

#trashDAY: Ho! Hoe! Heaux!

Just in time for the holidays, the #trashDAY duo offers a festive celebration with their last episode of 2015. The usual shit-talking is promised, along with reflections on desserts, diabetes, french fries, champagne rooms, and the possible correlation between the popularity of spandex and general ho-ism. Cocktails will be provided as a backdrop to the first annual Ratch-Sack-Give-A-Way.

Hanging out in the Metaverse: Virtual Reality Demos & Data-as-medium Art

Tech resident Cassie Tarakajian will present a variety of interactive installations. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s short story of the same name, viewers will explore the Earth, in virtual reality, before if was fully formed – when it was a lonely, gray, silent, almost lifeless ball. As you explore, the ecosystem shifts, and the Earth transforms to its vibrant, colorful, current self. Also using a virtual reality headset, another installation will allow viewers to learn – from a first-person perspective – about the hardships Syrian refugees face as they travel to find new homes. Alongside these virtual realities, Wikisonnet is an algorithmic poem generator which can write a sonnet about any given Wikipedia article. It crawls Wikipedia to find all lines in iambic pentameter and then arranges them in sonnet form.

Phantom Texts and Other Nightmares

Tech resident Amelia Winger-Bearskin will wander through Second Sunday interviewing viewers about their technological dreams, desires and anxieties. These audio recordings will be sampled in Amelia’s final work, Pedestrian Knock Down, a radio play about a fantastical interactive and fictional art experience, incorporating artist readings, live music, and interviews with the participants of Second Sundays. The play will premiere on Clocktower Radio this January, with a live performance of the play in the Spring in Pioneer Works’ garden.

Sensible, Sensitive, Senseless Architecture

Danica Selem and Maria Nikolovski’s Interactive installation Sensible, Sensitive, Senseless Architecture is a result of semester-long studio work with Vito Acconci at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Beginning with their research on what’s invisible in architecture, Selem & Nikolovsk explored the different senses through which they experience space. They wanted to return to space’s materiality through the tactile sense, which has become increasingly disregarded since visual perception has taken over, concurrent to technological innovation in the 20th century. Their emphasis on tactility – without it there is no visual or auditive experience – reminds us of the immediacy that comes from touching something (or someone), and putting the tactile, visual and auditive senses in direct codependence.

If/Then/Verify

Nancy Nowacek’s IF/THEN/VERIFY is a research work-in-progress that asks the question: what happens when computer code becomes something like sport, hip-hop or sign language that can be passed on in the street and in dance clubs? Who, then, can gain access to computer coding? And what are the products of that code? IF/THEN/VERIFY challenges the social, economic and political preconceptions of the technology complex by inserting the body as input device into the increasingly disembodied system. It is a speculative project about the future of the body in a digital world and a working system for capturing and translating physical input into digital output. In collaboration with Gene Kogan, Morgan Hille-Rafakis, David Sheinkopf, and Lee Sargent.

Story Telling & Ecology

In collaboration with Place2B’s Storytelling & Ecology research group based in Paris, within the context of the COP 21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, Carmen Bouyer welcomes you to an immersive and participatory installation collecting personal stories as entry points into ecology. These stories are an attempt to begin to identify the components of new meta-narratives, nourishing profound shifts in our life styles.

Tyler Wilcox DJ Set

Wilcox brings to the speakers his experience in the underground “deep house” scene and the whole universe of music that he found dancing at parties like the Loft. He plays records and investigates how they relate and speak to one another, and explores the syncretic mysticism within the classic New York and New Jersey dance culture.

Radyo Shak Broadcast

Clocktower Radio departs from its typical Second Sunday program to broadcast live freeform radio from the Ghetto Biennale of Haiti, including Rara bands, DJs, conversations with locals, artists, writers, and more! In collaboration with Pioneer Works, Radyo Shak was organized by Clocktower Productions and Richard Fleming on the occasion of the 4th Ghetto Biennale in Haiti, and streams live from a shack in the Grand Rue Atis-Resistans compound of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Intercourse:

Intercourse Issue 4 Launch Party

Ongoing: An Intercourse-themed ball toss and mistletoe-kissing with a stranger are two ways to get a copy of Intercourse issue 4. The magazine will also be available at a discounted price of $10!

Caroling

Pioneer Works staff and editors sing carols and introduce the magazine.

Live Music:

Taiko Masala

Taiko Masala combines the precision and power of Taiko drumming with the training and discipline of Japanese martial arts.

The group’s arsenal of instruments, all hand-made by the ensemble, range from small, eight-inch, hand-held drums to five-foot barrel drums, and features the giant 250-pound O-daiko. Taiko Masala has performed throughout the US, and brings both excitement and a stunning visual element to their performances.

Delsonido

Delsonido is the brainchild of producer/composer Elkin Pautt, a Barranquilla, Colombia native who spent years touring with Colombian Tropical pop acts before moving to Brooklyn and starting Delsonido, a seven-person group with musicians from Colombia, Panama and the United States. The group’s music melds Cumbia, Vallenato and Latin sounds with elements of electronic music, fortified with influences of funk and reggae for good measure.