Name: Second Sundays: May 2021
Start: 2021-05-09
End: 2021-05-09
Location: Pioneer Works

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Building Closures Due to Flash Floods

Due to weather conditions, Pioneer Works is suspending open gallery hours for Friday, September 29. MHYSA's performance has been rescheduled for Sunday, October 1, with all tickets being transferred to the new date.

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 will close early at 5pm on Saturday, May 27. Learn more and plan your visit 

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Just Announced: Pioneer Works Names Mara Manus Chief Executive Officer

The Board of Directors of Pioneer Works is pleased to announce that Mara Manus, former Executive Director for New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), has been appointed as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer. 

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We're pleased to announce the first major renovation of Pioneer Works! To accommodate the first phase of our construction, we're temporarily relocating to 133 Imlay Street opening in Spring 2022.

Early Closure 5/10/23

Due to programming, Pioneer Works will be closed to the public on Wednesday, May 10. We will be open from Thursday through Sunday for the remainder of the week. Learn more and plan your visit 

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Pioneer Works will be closed on 11/28 - 11/29 in observance of Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day.

Second Sundays is a free event series that engages Pioneer Works disciplines through live music, food, artists’ open studios, and programs. 

This Second Sundays celebrates the launch of the 

, our virtual home for interdisciplinary discourse—a place that ignites thought, encourages curiosity, and cultivates conversations on Music, Technology, Science, and the Arts. You’ll see QR codes around the building linking to content on The Broadcast—scan them for videos, articles, and to learn more!

Food and drinks provided by Fort Defiance.

Won’t be able to join us in person? Enjoy online programs on 

Pioneer Works continues to follow and enforce all Covid-19 safety guidelines. Face coverings are mandatory for staff and visitors while onsite, as is maintaining social distancing of a minimum of 6 feet. For the safety of staff and attendees, even with your RSVP, there may be a wait time for entrance to Second Sundays, as we continue to operate with a strictly limited capacity due to Covid-19. Thank you so much for your cooperation in keeping Pioneer Works safe!

Please note, some programming will be held on the second and third floors of Pioneer Works. At this time, we do not have an elevator. Please email 

 for any questions or concerns regarding accessibility.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Second Sundays: 
May 2021

<div>
Second Sundays is a free event series that engages Pioneer Works disciplines through live music, food, artists’ open studios, and programs. <a href="https://pioneerworks.org/series/second-sundays/">View Series</a>
This Second Sundays celebrates the launch of the <a href="https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pioneer Works Broadcast</a>, our virtual home for interdisciplinary discourse—a place that ignites thought, encourages curiosity, and cultivates conversations on Music, Technology, Science, and the Arts. You&#8217;ll see QR codes around the building linking to content on The Broadcast—scan them for videos, articles, and to learn more!
Food and drinks provided by Fort Defiance.
</div>
Won&#8217;t be able to join us in person? Enjoy online programs on <a href="http://8ballradio.nyc">8 Ball Radio</a> and <a href="https://ohyay.co/s/second-sundays" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OhYay</a>. More info below.
Pioneer Works continues to follow and enforce all Covid-19 safety guidelines. Face coverings are mandatory for staff and visitors while onsite, as is maintaining social distancing of a minimum of 6 feet. For the safety of staff and attendees, even with your RSVP, there may be a wait time for entrance to Second Sundays, as we continue to operate with a strictly limited capacity due to Covid-19. Thank you so much for your cooperation in keeping Pioneer Works safe!
<span data-slate-fragment="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">Please note, some programming will be held on the second and third floors of Pioneer Works. At this time, we do not have an elevator. Please email <a href="mailto:access@pioneerworks.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">access@pioneerworks.org</a> for any questions or concerns regarding accessibility. 
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
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Visit NYCTrust in our onsite recording studio, where they will host a pop-up shop, DJ sets, and special live performances in our garden throughout the day. Names You Can Trust is an independent record label based out of Brooklyn, NY. Since 2004, the label has manufactured a mix of vintage &amp; modern sounds typical of the New York experience—spanning Afro-Latin, Reggae, Disco, Dance, &amp; Instrumental Music. Tune into Pioneer Works Broadcast or <a href="http://8ballradio.nyc" rel="noopener" target="_blank">8ballradio.nyc</a> to listen live.

Studio Takeover: NYCTrust featuring Greenwood Rhythm Coalition & La Cumbiamba NY

The Green-Wood Rhythm Coalition is produced, directed, and overseen by partners Andrew Mason and Eric Banta of NYCTrust. The Coalition encapsulates the long-standing ethos that the label was built on: scientific studio productions, international celebrations of the good groove, and a life-long dedication to unearthing new and vintage records. Their DJ sets are a direct line into the same funky pedigree and a sure shot good time. Tune into Pioneer Works Broadcast or <a href="http://8ballradio.nyc" rel="noopener" target="_blank">8ballradio.nyc</a> to listen live.

Greenwood Rhythm Coalition (DJ Sets)

As part of NYCTrust&#8217;s studio takeover for Second Sundays, members of the La Cumbiamba will do a special performance in the Pioneeer Works Garden. La Cumbiamba NY, from Queens, NY, performs concerts and workshops with traditional instruments from the Indigenous cultures and the European and African Diasporas as well as the Mestizo culture of Colombia.

La Cumbiamba NY (Live)

To celebrate the release of Swamp Dogg’s Sorry You Couldn’t Make It</a> (co-released by Joyful Noise and Pioneer Works Press), Pioneer Works sent a crew to Los Angeles to film Swamp Dogg and his band performing music from the album, live in his home studio.
<a href="https://pioneerworks.org/publishing/swamp-dogg-sorry-you-couldnt-make-it/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Purchase</a> a limited edition copy of Sorry You Couldn&#8217;t Make It.

From the Broadcast: Swamp Dogg, Sorry You Couldn't Make It

Brand New Heavies, an exhibition curated by Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas—collectively known as Deux Femmes Noires, brings together monumental work by Abigail DeVille, Xaviera Simmons, and Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Each artist has produced a new, site-specific installation that combines video, sculpture, and architecture, and comprises natural, industrial, and found materials. DeVille has created a 20-foot domed version of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. housing a network of video portals depicting varied landscapes, and Simmons constructed a 15-foot tall sculptural installation, crafted from organic materials, that features a video representing two polarities—sensual (carnal) and historical (analytical). Uddoh presents Black Poirot, an immersive video and sound installation that reenvisions Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express from a Black perspective. Together, these works offer varied experiential environments that viscerally engage history, memory, place, pop culture, spirituality, and desire. 

The title, Brand New Heavies, is inspired by the name of an acid jazz and funk group formed in 1985 in Ealing West London. Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, soul, funk, and disco that originated in London clubs. Deux Femmes Noires chose this title for its apt connection to the artists represented, who could all be considered “New Heavies” in the artworld. Each artist in Brand New Heavies has a distinct ability to utilize disparate sources, materials, and media to create multi-layered narratives that offer a more complex understanding of our relationship to history, identity, politics, and place. Engaging in multifaceted explorations of the self, DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh examine these ideas closely, then render them on a colossal scale. 

Brand New Heavies is Chevremont and Thomas’s second curatorial project together; the first, The Aesthetics of Matter, featured young, rising talent and premiered at the Volta New York Art Fair. For this exhibition, Deux Femmes Noires wanted to work with three ambitious artists—DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh—who were selected for their distinct visionary practices, individual ability to tackle monumental scales (both conceptual and physical), and their rigorous investigation into the politics around the Black body. Deux Femme Noires knew these artists would embrace the opportunity Pioneer Works offers as a community-engaged, artist-focused institution with a distinct physical space. 

About the Artists

Abigail DeVille is best-known for her large-scale sculptural installations that engage the history of violence against marginalized people and places. For Brand New Heavies, DeVille has created The Observatory, a monumental installation composed of steel trussing, chicken wire, and charred wood that takes aim at Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Building. A scaled-down version of the Capitol dome, The Observatory will house a complex network of miniature video portals that combine still photography, video shorts, home videos, and archival footage of significant historical sites, including the Historic Stagville Plantation in North Carolina, Sullivan Island in South Carolina, and the Combahee River. Above the 20-foot structure, charred liberty poles hang inverted and suspended from the ceiling. This reversal of a common symbol of freedom (dating back to the colonization of the Americas) suggests an alternative history to the one commonly perpetuated, and the videos inside the dome similarly construct a parallel account of those who have been fighting for freedom since the 16th century.


Xaviera Simmons is known for work that encompasses photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Rooted in experience, memory, abstraction, and history, her practice is fundamentally concerned with the complex relationship between language, landscape, and subjectivity. For Brand New Heavies, Simmons will construct a new, immersive sculptural work, Even in the variations, the division of pleasures help situate us to advocate for, that is grounded in the physical, visceral, and earthly. Comprised of molded, earth-based spheres stacked one atop another in a concentric formation, Simmons’s installation projects physicality and sensual tactility. The towering sculpture contains a video that presents two binaries: that of intimacy and eroticism, and what the artist describes as the more banal "matter of fact" data and statistics found within American political discourse. The environment synthesizes and simultaneously engages the “classical” and the modern, creating a balance between human lust and desire and intellectual information-based research.

Combining performance, ceramics, video, and sound, Rosa-Johan Uddoh explores the infatuation with places, objects, and celebrities that pervades British popular culture and the resulting/lasting effect it has on self-formation. For Brand New Heavies, Uddoh will present a new multimedia environment that features Black Poirot, a video and sound installation. A play on Agatha Christie's crime novel Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and its protagonist Hercule Poirot, the 20-minute video is a “recasting” of the novel. The work follows a script narrated by the artist that investigates a forgotten crime aboard the fictional Oriental-Other Express. Uddoh combines archival footage with visually sparse scenes as an anti-colonial gesture that prioritizes the auditory experience over pure visual seduction. Uddoh will also present videos from her three-part Performing Whiteness series, which explores the labor of performance by Black and Brown women.

An accessible version of Black Poirot by Rosa-Johan Uddoh, suitable for a deaf and hard of hearing audience, is also available at the front desk of Pioneer Works.

The Major Sponsors for Brand New Heavies are the Ford Foundation and Gucci.

<img class="alignnone wp-image-13759" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large.png" alt="" width="368" height="45" />            <img class="alignnone wp-image-13760" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2.png" alt="" width="155" height="25" />

This exhibition is also supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

<img class="alignnone wp-image-12813 size-full" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-9-e1613145470866.png" alt="" width="150" height="27" />            <img class="alignnone wp-image-12802 size-full" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black-e1613145524617.png" alt="" width="150" height="35" />

Brand New Heavies

Patty Chang’s multi-channel video installation Milk Debt, ongoing since 2018, features lists of fears solicited from an open call in Hong Kong and the United States—including one in New York during the height of its COVID epidemic. Compiled into a running script, the list is read by women pumping their breast milk in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the US/Mexico border. Rich with hormones prolactin and oxytocin—which together promote bonding between mother and newborn—breast milk, in Milk Debt, becomes a charged and timely metaphor for the importance of empathy, understanding, and mutual obligation during a time of worldwide crises. Formerly presented at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, this exhibition marks its New York debut.

The project came into being after Chang, a longtime New Yorker, moved to Los Angeles in a record-breaking heatwave. Feeling intense worry about climate change, a friend suggested she jot down her fears onto a list, which grew to four pages. Chang invited her friends and colleagues to contribute their own worries, and she began conceiving these lists as a prompt for performance and video. Since then, Milk Debt has expanded to include nine female performers and the list has grown in scope. Perhaps most striking about the project is the uniformity of concerns spread across every demographic: fear of death, fear of catching COVID, fear of losing a job, fear of being unloved. The project, in its essence, serves as a portrait of collective anxiety. At a time of deep political division, civil unrest, pandemic spread, and doubts of our collective future, the idea of the collective itself has never been more important. Widely recognized for her pioneering, often provocative feminist work that has grown in acclaim since the 1990s, Chang‘s centering of the female body, in this instance, opens it up to collective contribution.

Taking its title from a tenet in Chinese Buddhism, which states payments must be made toward a mother’s afterlife for years of her life-giving breast milk, Milk Debt suggests that there are many debts we, as a human race, owe to the planet and to each other. As Chang has noted: “I believe that the act of producing breast milk and lactation is an empathetic act. Biologically, breast milk is created when the body starts to produce the hormones of prolactin and oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced when someone is in love. The act of producing breast milk allows the woman to engage in this state of being, which some might describe as being more connected, being more open and accepting, and not thinking of oneself first.”

Patty Chang: Milk Debt was curated at Pioneer Works by David Everitt Howe. The project originated at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, and was originally curated by Anuradha Vikram. 

Performers: Devinee Flores, Jenny Gillet, Natalie Godinez, Haejung Kim, Kestrel Leah, Heather Lin, Annika Morris, Rebekah Neel, and Laura Young | Camera: David Kelley, Patty Chang, Michael Mui Ting Fai, Matthew Lee Tak Hin, and Tony Ng King To | Edit: Jisoo Chung and Patty Chang | Assistance: Jisoo Chung, Jane Lam, Babsi Loisch, and Hannah Kim Varamini | Sound: Kenny Klimak – Barking Dog | Color: Jisoo Chung and Stephen Siemens – Post Mango | Technical Direction: Matthew Mann | System Design: Kyle Keays Hagerman | Lead Programmer: Chloe A. Thompson | Programming: Peter Kirby | AV Installers: Ryan Caruso, Garth MacAleavey, Logan Miley, Federico B. Romero

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<div class="textlayer">Patty Chang would like to thank Anuradha Vikram; Dr. Yeewan Koon, Dr. Chunwa Chan, Dr. Vivian Sheng, and the students from the department of fine art at The University of Hong Kong; Melissa Lee and Hera Chan from the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage &amp; Arts, Hong Kong; Jane Lam; Michael Mui Ting Fai; Matthew Lee Tak Hin; Tony Ng King To; Kestrel Leah; Asha Bukojemsky; Jan Williamson; Sue Yank; Frida Cano; Jeny Amaya; Michael Ano; Rocio Garcia; Elena Hernandez and Familias Latinas Unidas; Jaime Cruz and Pico Neighborhood Partnership; Gabriela Avila &amp; Community Corporation of Santa Monica; Nancy Bender, Cecilia Tovar, Susan Lamb, Patty Wong and Santa Monica Public Library; Carla Fantozzi, Monica Banach and Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center; Students of Santa Monica College; Students of University of Southern California; Danielle Abrams; Hannah Kim Varamini; Babsi Loisch; Miranda Van-Boswell; Mark Zhang; Jennie MaryTai Liu; Asuka Hisa; Asher Hartman; Anna Sew Hoy; Sony Ta; Chloe Flores; Julie Tolentino; Christina Valentine; Abbey Williams; Bruce Yonemoto; Jennie C. Jones; Laura Parnes; Peter Kirby; Furen Dai Victor Wang and Emilie Yixu Chen from M WOODS; Marisa Sage; Ilana Lapid; David Kelley; Kate Gilmore; and David Everitt Howe, Kyle Keays Hagerman, and Chloe Alexandra Thompson from Pioneer Works.</div>
<div></div>
</section>About the Artist

Patty Chang is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator who uses performance, video, installation, and narrative forms when considering identity, gender, transnationalism, colonial legacies, the environment, large-scale infrastructural projects, and impacted subjectivities. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and internationally at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; BAK, Basis voor actuele Kunst, Utrecht; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, England; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Times Museum in Guangzhou, China; and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She has received a United States Artist Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, a Creative Capital Fellowship, short listed for the Hugo Boss Prize, a Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

This exhibition's Pioneer Works presentation is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The project was also supported, in part, by 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, University Artists Scheme – The University of Hong Kong, Art Matters Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, and the United States Artists Fellowship.

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Patty Chang: Milk Debt

Originally scheduled for Fall 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bomb is a multimedia experience by artist Smriti Keshari and critically acclaimed writer Eric Schlosser. The installation design, created by Ben Kreukniet, immerses the viewer within the story of nuclear weapons—from the Trinity Test in 1945 to current discourses today in 2021—in order to explore the perverse beauty and seduction of the machines, alongside the existential threat they still pose.

Inspired by nuclear weapon command and control centers, the bomb’s design suggests the technological fallibility of such systems, the devastating consequences of potential errors and malfunctions, and the impossibility of ever fully controlling these machines. The film at the heart of the installation combines animation with archival footage and an original score by electronic music quartet The Acid. It runs for 59 minutes, displayed on a circular floor-to-ceiling bank of screens with exposed wiring and circuit boards.

Created by Smriti Keshari &amp; Eric Schlosser | Film by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari &amp; Eric Schlosser | Music: The Acid | Art Director: Stanley Donwood | Animation: The Kingdom of Ludd |  Installation Producer: Hazel Gibson | Installation Design Ben Kreukniet | Technical Lead: Adam Paikowsky

About the Artists

Eric Schlosser is a writer whose work has been published in dozens of countries, performed on stage, and adapted into films. His most recent book, Command and Control, tells the story of America's effort to prevent nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident. It was a New York Times best seller and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in History.

His two other books were also New York Times best sellers. Fast Food Nation helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. And Reefer Madness looked at the nation's underground economy, depicting the plight of undocumented immigrants and the injustices caused by the war on drugs. His next book is on the American prison system. 

Schlosser was an executive producer of Richard Linklater’s film Fast Food Nation, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, the documentaries Food Chains and Hanna Ranch, as well as co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. He was a producer of the documentary Command and Control, which was short-listed for an Oscar.

Smriti Keshari is an Indian-American multimedia artist and filmmaker whose work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to art installations. She brings an experimental approach to exploring under-represented themes and experiences outside the mainstream. 

Keshari is a former artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works and the National Theatre in London. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and others. She has spoken about art and social change at the United Nations, the BBC, SXSW, Bloomberg Philanthropy, and TED. She was a TED Prize finalist and a 2016 Foreign Policy's Global Creative Thinker. 

She is known for her acclaimed multi-media installation, the bomb, which was heralded as “a stunning avant-garde approach to a plea for nuclear disarmament.” the bomb has been shown throughout the world at film festivals (the Berlinale, Tribeca), music festivals (Glastonbury), art institutions, on Netflix, and at the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Most recently, Keshari created DISINTEGRATION, a film and music installation that takes audiences through 1,460 days of headlines from the New York Times featuring Donald Trump's presidency. Keshari brings a collaborative spirit to all her projects, previously having created work with Eric Schlosser, artist Stanley Donwood (Radiohead), electronica band The Acid, installation designers United Visual Artists, filmmakers Sanjay Rawal and Kevin Ford, and others. 

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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<img class="alignnone wp-image-12802" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black.png" alt="" width="233" height="55" />

Smriti Keshari and Eric Schlosser: the bomb

Lizzi Bougatsos is an artist and performer. A singer for the band Gang Gang Dance and punk/noise outfit I.U.D. for over a decade, Bougatsos has performed at Kunsthalle Zurich, The Whitney Museum, The Sydney Opera House, The Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Bergen Kunsthall.  Her work has been exhibited at Hauser &amp; Wirth, Gladstone Gallery, Museo d’arte Contemporanea di Roma, Kunste Werke, MoMa PS1, Participant Inc., American Fine Arts Co., Reena Spaulings, and James Fuentes Gallery. Bougatsos is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant, and her work is included in The Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst and The Dikeou Collection.

Lizzi Bougatsos

Xenia Bond (b. 1992, London) works in sculpture and installation. She graduated from the Stäedelscule in Frankfurt under Judith Hopf and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Bond’s exhibitions include: Husslehof, APT Gallery, Zona Mista, Studio Picknick, and Neue Alte Brücke. She is interested in the formal relationship of materials and their reception as emotives, and communicating external relationships in her life. Bond’s works are neither immersive nor “looking outside.” These polarities are avoided. Instead the aim is to provoke a reaction between the imagination of the self and the viewer. The drift of signs and possible narratives, both concrete and imagined, characterize Bond’s works.

Xenia Bond

Claudia Bitran (1986–) is a Brooklyn-based painting and video artist. Bitran holds an MFA from RISD and a BFA from the Universidad Catolica de Chile.

She has exhibited at Muhlenberg College, Practice Gallery, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Museo de Artes Visuales, and elsewhere. Bitran has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and more. Grants and awards include: The New York Trust Van Lier Fellowship, Hammersley Grant, Emergency Grant Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Jerome Foundation Grant for Emerging Filmmakers, 1st Prize Britney Spears Dance Challenge, 1st Prize UFO McDonald’s Painting Competition, 1st honorable mention at Bienal de Artes Mediales.

Claudia Bitran

Alexandra Bell (b. 1983, Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the complexities of narrative, information consumption, and perception. Utilizing various media, she deconstructs language and imagery to explore the tension between marginal experiences and dominant histories. Through investigative research, she considers the ways media frameworks construct memory and inform discursive practices around race, politics, and culture. Her work has been exhibited at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, MoMA PS1, and the Whitney Museum of Art. She received the 2018 International Center of Photography Infinity Award in the applied category. She is a 2019 CatchLight Fellow.

Alexandra Bell

Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker working to understand how systems of oppression are informed and reinforced by trauma, history, and memory. His work spans experimental film and video, animations, essays, and installations, and contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and diaspora. In 2017, Sanzgiri graduated from the Art, Culture and Technology program at MIT. His film At Home But Not At Home made its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2020, and his follow up film Letter From Your Far-Off Country recently premiered at the New York Film Festival. His work has been screened extensively at festivals and galleries nationally and internationally.

Suneil Sanzgiri

Jenson Leonard was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Initially a poet, he became interested in memes during his six-year tenure as a cook at a Belgian waffle kiosk. He found himself drawn to the immediacy and reach of instant publication on social media, the confluence of which exacerbate the arguably inherent power of the image for those who see. His early work used the canonical Twitter meme format, but developed into the more ornately parodic style that predominates in the left-leaning corners of Facebook. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pratt Institute. His work has been featured in VICE Motherboard, Juxtapoz, AQNB, and Rhizome.

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Jenson Leonard

In the Pioneer Works Garden, enjoy the flower kiosk created by Ken Marcelle of Mat Blak New York in Red Hook. Marcelle will showcase his flower stemming used in his men’s hairstyling business and aptitude for inspired lifestyle ideas.

Flower Stand from Mat Blak 

Join the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York in the Pioneer Works Garden for solar viewing and to learn about telescopes. *Weather permitting*

Solar Viewing with Amateur Astronomers Association

Watch favorite episodes from the Broadcast series, Password Protected. Password Protected is a video series consisting of &#8220;studio visits&#8221; with artists through the use of desktop screen-sharing.

Password Protected Screening

Night Moth: A Mythology of Escape is a web installation and ongoing collaborative multimedia project between D.W.—a youth at Columbia Secure Center maximum prison for girls in the Hudson Valley and artist Maggie Hazen. Together they are exchanging a notebook via proxy through a locked fence and developing a mythology about Luna, a green moth goddess imprisoned on the moon, and her friend Seven, a seven legged octopus. This exchange is ongoing and will evolve as more of their mythology is written. This project is part of the Juvenile Justice Digital Arts Project (JJ-DAP) which seeks to unlock a future where incarcerated women are given a voice by using art as both a foundational strategy and catalyst for change.

Night Moth: A Mythology of Escape

In celebration of the Pioneer Works Broadcast, visit the Science Studios and trip out on the Broadcast Monologues, &#8220;Trip Out on Time Travel&#8221; with brilliant speaker and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll alongside original, trippy visuals by artist Azikiwe Mohammed, and more.

Broadcast Monologues

This May, Lane Adjacent is proudly showing work from Joey Frank’s outlet oeuvre. These artworks are frustrating and will fill you with all the emotions of looking for a light switch in an unfamiliar bathroom or closet—or trying to find a place to plug in you phone. The work is non-functional, but its scale makes you think of the larger network of domestic wall nipples that connect out lives to the teets of electricity.

Unsafe Currents

OhYay will be hosting an online public reading of Tech Resident Kara Güt&#8217;s virtual play. The play follows two player-characters within the game Red Dead Redemption Online as they encounter existential quandaries in the digital desert. The misadventures that ensue reflect our current societal moment as we grapple with what it means to exist within digital spaces. The play is currently a work-in-progress, and the reading will resemble a table read taking place in Kara&#8217;s virtual studio on the <a href="https://ohyay.co/s/second-sundays" rel="noopener" target="_blank">OhYay platform</a>.

Kara Güt Table Read on OhYay

Award-winning online radio station 8ball Radio will be streaming audio from various programs at Pioneer Works throughout the day. Tune in live at <a href="https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Pioneer Works Broadcast</a> and <a href="http://8ballradio.nyc" rel="noopener" target="_blank">8ballradio.nyc</a>.

8 Ball Radio

MaySS_Web_3x2_201029

. Each artist has produced a new, site-specific installation that combines video, sculpture, and architecture, and comprises natural, industrial, and found materials. DeVille has created a 20-foot domed version of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. housing a network of video portals depicting varied landscapes, and Simmons constructed a 15-foot tall sculptural installation, crafted from organic materials, that features a video representing two polarities—sensual (carnal) and historical (analytical). Uddoh presents 

 an immersive video and sound installation that reenvisions Agatha Christie’s 

 from a Black perspective. Together, these works offer varied experiential environments that viscerally engage history, memory, place, pop culture, spirituality, and desire. 

, is inspired by the name of an acid jazz and funk group formed in 1985 in Ealing West London. Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, soul, funk, and disco that originated in London clubs. Deux Femmes Noires chose this title for its apt connection to the artists represented, who could all be considered “New Heavies” in the artworld. Each artist in 

 has a distinct ability to utilize disparate sources, materials, and media to create multi-layered narratives that offer a more complex understanding of our relationship to history, identity, politics, and place. Engaging in multifaceted explorations of the self, DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh examine these ideas closely, then render them on a colossal scale. 

 is Chevremont and Thomas’s second curatorial project together; the first, 

 featured young, rising talent and premiered at the Volta New York Art Fair. For this exhibition, Deux Femmes Noires wanted to work with three ambitious artists—DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh—who were selected for their distinct visionary practices, individual ability to tackle monumental scales (both conceptual and physical), and their rigorous investigation into the politics around the Black body. Deux Femme Noires knew these artists would embrace the opportunity Pioneer Works offers as a community-engaged, artist-focused institution with a distinct physical space.

 is best-known for her large-scale sculptural installations that engage the history of violence against marginalized people and places. For 

 a monumental installation composed of steel trussing, chicken wire, and charred wood that takes aim at Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Building. A scaled-down version of the Capitol dome, 

 will house a complex network of miniature video portals that combine still photography, video shorts, home videos, and archival footage of significant historical sites, including the Historic Stagville Plantation in North Carolina, Sullivan Island in South Carolina, and the Combahee River. Above the 20-foot structure, charred liberty poles hang inverted and suspended from the ceiling. This reversal of a common symbol of freedom (dating back to the colonization of the Americas) suggests an alternative history to the one commonly perpetuated, and the videos inside the dome similarly construct a parallel account of those who have been fighting for freedom since the 16th century.


 is known for work that encompasses photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Rooted in experience, memory, abstraction, and history, her practice is fundamentally concerned with the complex relationship between language, landscape, and subjectivity. For 

, Simmons will construct a new, immersive sculptural work, 

Even in the variations, the division of pleasures help situate us to advocate for,

 that is grounded in the physical, visceral, and earthly. Comprised of molded, earth-based spheres stacked one atop another in a concentric formation, Simmons’s installation projects physicality and sensual tactility. The towering sculpture contains a video that presents two binaries: that of intimacy and eroticism, and what the artist describes as the more banal “matter of fact” data and statistics found within American political discourse. The environment synthesizes and simultaneously engages the “classical” and the modern, creating a balance between human lust and desire and intellectual information-based research.

Combining performance, ceramics, video, and sound, 

 explores the infatuation with places, objects, and celebrities that pervades British popular culture and the resulting/lasting effect it has on self-formation. For 

, Uddoh will present a new multimedia environment that features 

 a video and sound installation. A play on Agatha Christie’s crime novel 

 (1934) and its protagonist Hercule Poirot, the 20-minute video is a “recasting” of the novel. The work follows a script narrated by the artist that investigates a forgotten crime aboard the fictional Oriental-Other Express. Uddoh combines archival footage with visually sparse scenes as an anti-colonial gesture that prioritizes the auditory experience over pure visual seduction. Uddoh will also present videos from her three-part 

 series, which explores the labor of performance by Black and Brown women.

by Rosa-Johan Uddoh, suitable for a deaf and hard of hearing audience, is also available at the front desk of Pioneer Works.

This exhibition is also supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Brand New Heavies, an exhibition curated by Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas—collectively known as Deux Femmes Noires, brings together monumental work by Abigail DeVille, Xaviera Simmons, and Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Each artist has produced a new, site-specific installation that combines video, sculpture, and architecture, and comprises natural, industrial, and found materials. DeVille has created a 20-foot domed version of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. housing a network of video portals depicting varied landscapes, and Simmons constructed a 15-foot tall sculptural installation, crafted from organic materials, that features a video representing two polarities—sensual (carnal) and historical (analytical). Uddoh presents Black Poirot, an immersive video and sound installation that reenvisions Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express from a Black perspective. Together, these works offer varied experiential environments that viscerally engage history, memory, place, pop culture, spirituality, and desire. 
The title, Brand New Heavies, is inspired by the name of an acid jazz and funk group formed in 1985 in Ealing West London. Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, soul, funk, and disco that originated in London clubs. Deux Femmes Noires chose this title for its apt connection to the artists represented, who could all be considered “New Heavies” in the artworld. Each artist in Brand New Heavies has a distinct ability to utilize disparate sources, materials, and media to create multi-layered narratives that offer a more complex understanding of our relationship to history, identity, politics, and place. Engaging in multifaceted explorations of the self, DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh examine these ideas closely, then render them on a colossal scale. 
Brand New Heavies is Chevremont and Thomas’s second curatorial project together; the first, The Aesthetics of Matter, featured young, rising talent and premiered at the Volta New York Art Fair. For this exhibition, Deux Femmes Noires wanted to work with three ambitious artists—DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh—who were selected for their distinct visionary practices, individual ability to tackle monumental scales (both conceptual and physical), and their rigorous investigation into the politics around the Black body. Deux Femme Noires knew these artists would embrace the opportunity Pioneer Works offers as a community-engaged, artist-focused institution with a distinct physical space. 
About the Artists
Abigail DeVille is best-known for her large-scale sculptural installations that engage the history of violence against marginalized people and places. For Brand New Heavies, DeVille has created The Observatory, a monumental installation composed of steel trussing, chicken wire, and charred wood that takes aim at Washington, D.C.&#8217;s Capitol Building. A scaled-down version of the Capitol dome, The Observatory will house a complex network of miniature video portals that combine still photography, video shorts, home videos, and archival footage of significant historical sites, including the Historic Stagville Plantation in North Carolina, Sullivan Island in South Carolina, and the Combahee River. Above the 20-foot structure, charred liberty poles hang inverted and suspended from the ceiling. This reversal of a common symbol of freedom (dating back to the colonization of the Americas) suggests an alternative history to the one commonly perpetuated, and the videos inside the dome similarly construct a parallel account of those who have been fighting for freedom since the 16th century. 

Xaviera Simmons is known for work that encompasses photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Rooted in experience, memory, abstraction, and history, her practice is fundamentally concerned with the complex relationship between language, landscape, and subjectivity. For Brand New Heavies, Simmons will construct a new, immersive sculptural work, Even in the variations, the division of pleasures help situate us to advocate for, that is grounded in the physical, visceral, and earthly. Comprised of molded, earth-based spheres stacked one atop another in a concentric formation, Simmons’s installation projects physicality and sensual tactility. The towering sculpture contains a video that presents two binaries: that of intimacy and eroticism, and what the artist describes as the more banal &#8220;matter of fact&#8221; data and statistics found within American political discourse. The environment synthesizes and simultaneously engages the “classical” and the modern, creating a balance between human lust and desire and intellectual information-based research.
Combining performance, ceramics, video, and sound, Rosa-Johan Uddoh explores the infatuation with places, objects, and celebrities that pervades British popular culture and the resulting/lasting effect it has on self-formation. For Brand New Heavies, Uddoh will present a new multimedia environment that features Black Poirot, a video and sound installation. A play on Agatha Christie&#8217;s crime novel Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and its protagonist Hercule Poirot, the 20-minute video is a “recasting” of the novel. The work follows a script narrated by the artist that investigates a forgotten crime aboard the fictional Oriental-Other Express. Uddoh combines archival footage with visually sparse scenes as an anti-colonial gesture that prioritizes the auditory experience over pure visual seduction. Uddoh will also present videos from her three-part Performing Whiteness series, which explores the labor of performance by Black and Brown women.
An accessible version of Black Poirot by Rosa-Johan Uddoh, suitable for a deaf and hard of hearing audience, is also available at the front desk of Pioneer Works.
The Major Sponsors for Brand New Heavies are the Ford Foundation and Gucci.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-13759" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large.png" alt="" width="368" height="45" srcset="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large.png 1500w, https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large-300x37.png 300w, https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large-1024x125.png 1024w, https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large-768x94.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 368px) 100vw, 368px" />            <img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-13760" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2.png" alt="" width="155" height="25" srcset="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2.png 788w, https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2-300x48.png 300w, https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2-768x124.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 155px) 100vw, 155px" />
This exhibition is also supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12813 size-full" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-9-e1613145470866.png" alt="" width="150" height="27" />            <img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12802 size-full" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black-e1613145524617.png" alt="" width="150" height="35" />

BNH_spinning_210308

Brand New Heavies, an exhibition curated by Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas—collectively known as Deux Femmes Noires, brings together monumental work by Abigail DeVille, Xaviera Simmons, and Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Each artist has produced a new, site-specific installation that combines video, sculpture, and architecture, and comprises natural, industrial, and found materials. DeVille has created a 20-foot domed version of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. housing a network of video portals depicting varied landscapes, and Simmons constructed a 15-foot tall sculptural installation, crafted from organic materials, that features a video representing two polarities—sensual (carnal) and historical (analytical). Uddoh presents Black Poirot, an immersive video and sound installation that reenvisions Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express from a Black perspective. Together, these works offer varied experiential environments that viscerally engage history, memory, place, pop culture, spirituality, and desire. 
The title, Brand New Heavies, is inspired by the name of an acid jazz and funk group formed in 1985 in Ealing West London. Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, soul, funk, and disco that originated in London clubs. Deux Femmes Noires chose this title for its apt connection to the artists represented, who could all be considered “New Heavies” in the artworld. Each artist in Brand New Heavies has a distinct ability to utilize disparate sources, materials, and media to create multi-layered narratives that offer a more complex understanding of our relationship to history, identity, politics, and place. Engaging in multifaceted explorations of the self, DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh examine these ideas closely, then render them on a colossal scale. 
Brand New Heavies is Chevremont and Thomas’s second curatorial project together; the first, The Aesthetics of Matter, featured young, rising talent and premiered at the Volta New York Art Fair. For this exhibition, Deux Femmes Noires wanted to work with three ambitious artists—DeVille, Simmons, and Uddoh—who were selected for their distinct visionary practices, individual ability to tackle monumental scales (both conceptual and physical), and their rigorous investigation into the politics around the Black body. Deux Femme Noires knew these artists would embrace the opportunity Pioneer Works offers as a community-engaged, artist-focused institution with a distinct physical space. 
About the Artists
Abigail DeVille is best-known for her large-scale sculptural installations that engage the history of violence against marginalized people and places. For Brand New Heavies, DeVille has created The Observatory, a monumental installation composed of steel trussing, chicken wire, and charred wood that takes aim at Washington, D.C.&#8217;s Capitol Building. A scaled-down version of the Capitol dome, The Observatory will house a complex network of miniature video portals that combine still photography, video shorts, home videos, and archival footage of significant historical sites, including the Historic Stagville Plantation in North Carolina, Sullivan Island in South Carolina, and the Combahee River. Above the 20-foot structure, charred liberty poles hang inverted and suspended from the ceiling. This reversal of a common symbol of freedom (dating back to the colonization of the Americas) suggests an alternative history to the one commonly perpetuated, and the videos inside the dome similarly construct a parallel account of those who have been fighting for freedom since the 16th century. 

Xaviera Simmons is known for work that encompasses photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Rooted in experience, memory, abstraction, and history, her practice is fundamentally concerned with the complex relationship between language, landscape, and subjectivity. For Brand New Heavies, Simmons will construct a new, immersive sculptural work, Even in the variations, the division of pleasures help situate us to advocate for, that is grounded in the physical, visceral, and earthly. Comprised of molded, earth-based spheres stacked one atop another in a concentric formation, Simmons’s installation projects physicality and sensual tactility. The towering sculpture contains a video that presents two binaries: that of intimacy and eroticism, and what the artist describes as the more banal &#8220;matter of fact&#8221; data and statistics found within American political discourse. The environment synthesizes and simultaneously engages the “classical” and the modern, creating a balance between human lust and desire and intellectual information-based research.
Combining performance, ceramics, video, and sound, Rosa-Johan Uddoh explores the infatuation with places, objects, and celebrities that pervades British popular culture and the resulting/lasting effect it has on self-formation. For Brand New Heavies, Uddoh will present a new multimedia environment that features Black Poirot, a video and sound installation. A play on Agatha Christie&#8217;s crime novel Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and its protagonist Hercule Poirot, the 20-minute video is a “recasting” of the novel. The work follows a script narrated by the artist that investigates a forgotten crime aboard the fictional Oriental-Other Express. Uddoh combines archival footage with visually sparse scenes as an anti-colonial gesture that prioritizes the auditory experience over pure visual seduction. Uddoh will also present videos from her three-part Performing Whiteness series, which explores the labor of performance by Black and Brown women.
An accessible version of Black Poirot by Rosa-Johan Uddoh, suitable for a deaf and hard of hearing audience, is also available at the front desk of Pioneer Works.
The Major Sponsors for Brand New Heavies are the Ford Foundation and Gucci.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-13759" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large.png" alt="" width="368" height="45" srcset="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large.png 1500w, https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large-300x37.png 300w, https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large-1024x125.png 1024w, https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/F_F_Logo_Black_large-768x94.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 368px) 100vw, 368px" />            <img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-13760" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2.png" alt="" width="155" height="25" srcset="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2.png 788w, https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2-300x48.png 300w, https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/GUCCI_logo_BLACK100mm-2-768x124.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 155px) 100vw, 155px" />
This exhibition is also supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12813 size-full" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-9-e1613145470866.png" alt="" width="150" height="27" />            <img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12802 size-full" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black-e1613145524617.png" alt="" width="150" height="35" />

Patty Chang’s multi-channel video installation 

, ongoing since 2018, features lists of fears solicited from an open call in Hong Kong and the United States—including one in New York during the height of its COVID epidemic. Compiled into a running script, the list is read by women pumping their breast milk in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the US/Mexico border. Rich with hormones prolactin and oxytocin—which together promote bonding between mother and newborn—breast milk, in 

, becomes a charged and timely metaphor for the importance of empathy, understanding, and mutual obligation during a time of worldwide crises. Formerly presented at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, this exhibition marks its New York debut.

The project came into being after Chang, a longtime New Yorker, moved to Los Angeles in a record-breaking heatwave. Feeling intense worry about climate change, a friend suggested she jot down her fears onto a list, which grew to four pages. Chang invited her friends and colleagues to contribute their own worries, and she began conceiving these lists as a prompt for performance and video. Since then, 

 has expanded to include nine female performers and the list has grown in scope. Perhaps most striking about the project is the uniformity of concerns spread across every demographic: fear of death, fear of catching COVID, fear of losing a job, fear of being unloved. The project, in its essence, serves as a portrait of collective anxiety. At a time of deep political division, civil unrest, pandemic spread, and doubts of our collective future, the idea of the collective itself has never been more important. Widely recognized for her pioneering, often provocative feminist work that has grown in acclaim since the 1990s, Chang‘s centering of the female body, in this instance, opens it up to collective contribution.

Taking its title from a tenet in Chinese Buddhism, which states payments must be made toward a mother’s afterlife for years of her life-giving breast milk, 

 suggests that there are many debts we, as a human race, owe to the planet and to each other. As Chang has noted: “I believe that the act of producing breast milk and lactation is an empathetic act. Biologically, breast milk is created when the body starts to produce the hormones of prolactin and oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced when someone is in love. The act of producing breast milk allows the woman to engage in this state of being, which some might describe as being more connected, being more open and accepting, and not thinking of oneself first.”

was curated at Pioneer Works by David Everitt Howe. The project originated at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, and was originally curated by Anuradha Vikram.

Performers: Devinee Flores, Jenny Gillet, Natalie Godinez, Haejung Kim, Kestrel Leah, Heather Lin, Annika Morris, Rebekah Neel, and Laura Young | Camera: David Kelley, Patty Chang, Michael Mui Ting Fai, Matthew Lee Tak Hin, and Tony Ng King To | Edit: Jisoo Chung and Patty Chang | Assistance: Jisoo Chung, Jane Lam, Babsi Loisch, and Hannah Kim Varamini | Sound: Kenny Klimak – Barking Dog | Color: Jisoo Chung and Stephen Siemens – Post Mango | Technical Direction: Matthew Mann | System Design: Kyle Keays Hagerman | Lead Programmer: Chloe A. Thompson | Programming: Peter Kirby | AV Installers: Ryan Caruso, Garth MacAleavey, Logan Miley, Federico B. Romero

Patty Chang would like to thank Anuradha Vikram; Dr. Yeewan Koon, Dr. Chunwa Chan, Dr. Vivian Sheng, and the students from the department of fine art at The University of Hong Kong; Melissa Lee and Hera Chan from the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage & Arts, Hong Kong; Jane Lam; Michael Mui Ting Fai; Matthew Lee Tak Hin; Tony Ng King To; Kestrel Leah; Asha Bukojemsky; Jan Williamson; Sue Yank; Frida Cano; Jeny Amaya; Michael Ano; Rocio Garcia; Elena Hernandez and Familias Latinas Unidas; Jaime Cruz and Pico Neighborhood Partnership; Gabriela Avila & Community Corporation of Santa Monica; Nancy Bender, Cecilia Tovar, Susan Lamb, Patty Wong and Santa Monica Public Library; Carla Fantozzi, Monica Banach and Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center; Students of Santa Monica College; Students of University of Southern California; Danielle Abrams; Hannah Kim Varamini; Babsi Loisch; Miranda Van-Boswell; Mark Zhang; Jennie MaryTai Liu; Asuka Hisa; Asher Hartman; Anna Sew Hoy; Sony Ta; Chloe Flores; Julie Tolentino; Christina Valentine; Abbey Williams; Bruce Yonemoto; Jennie C. Jones; Laura Parnes; Peter Kirby; Furen Dai Victor Wang and Emilie Yixu Chen from M WOODS; Marisa Sage; Ilana Lapid; David Kelley; Kate Gilmore; and David Everitt Howe, Kyle Keays Hagerman, and Chloe Alexandra Thompson from Pioneer Works.

 is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator who uses performance, video, installation, and narrative forms when considering identity, gender, transnationalism, colonial legacies, the environment, large-scale infrastructural projects, and impacted subjectivities. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and internationally at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; BAK, Basis voor actuele Kunst, Utrecht; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, England; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Times Museum in Guangzhou, China; and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She has received a United States Artist Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, a Creative Capital Fellowship, short listed for the Hugo Boss Prize, a Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

This exhibition’s Pioneer Works presentation is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The project was also supported, in part, by 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, University Artists Scheme – The University of Hong Kong, Art Matters Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, and the United States Artists Fellowship.

Milk Debt

Patty Chang’s multi-channel video installation Milk Debt, ongoing since 2018, features lists of fears solicited from an open call in Hong Kong and the United States—including one in New York during the height of its COVID epidemic. Compiled into a running script, the list is read by women pumping their breast milk in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the US/Mexico border. Rich with hormones prolactin and oxytocin—which together promote bonding between mother and newborn—breast milk, in Milk Debt, becomes a charged and timely metaphor for the importance of empathy, understanding, and mutual obligation during a time of worldwide crises. Formerly presented at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, this exhibition marks its New York debut.
The project came into being after Chang, a longtime New Yorker, moved to Los Angeles in a record-breaking heatwave. Feeling intense worry about climate change, a friend suggested she jot down her fears onto a list, which grew to four pages. Chang invited her friends and colleagues to contribute their own worries, and she began conceiving these lists as a prompt for performance and video. Since then, Milk Debt has expanded to include nine female performers and the list has grown in scope. Perhaps most striking about the project is the uniformity of concerns spread across every demographic: fear of death, fear of catching COVID, fear of losing a job, fear of being unloved. The project, in its essence, serves as a portrait of collective anxiety. At a time of deep political division, civil unrest, pandemic spread, and doubts of our collective future, the idea of the collective itself has never been more important. Widely recognized for her pioneering, often provocative feminist work that has grown in acclaim since the 1990s, Chang‘s centering of the female body, in this instance, opens it up to collective contribution.
Taking its title from a tenet in Chinese Buddhism, which states payments must be made toward a mother’s afterlife for years of her life-giving breast milk, Milk Debt suggests that there are many debts we, as a human race, owe to the planet and to each other. As Chang has noted: “I believe that the act of producing breast milk and lactation is an empathetic act. Biologically, breast milk is created when the body starts to produce the hormones of prolactin and oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced when someone is in love. The act of producing breast milk allows the woman to engage in this state of being, which some might describe as being more connected, being more open and accepting, and not thinking of oneself first.”
Patty Chang: Milk Debt was curated at Pioneer Works by David Everitt Howe. The project originated at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, and was originally curated by Anuradha Vikram. 
Performers: Devinee Flores, Jenny Gillet, Natalie Godinez, Haejung Kim, Kestrel Leah, Heather Lin, Annika Morris, Rebekah Neel, and Laura Young | Camera: David Kelley, Patty Chang, Michael Mui Ting Fai, Matthew Lee Tak Hin, and Tony Ng King To | Edit: Jisoo Chung and Patty Chang | Assistance: Jisoo Chung, Jane Lam, Babsi Loisch, and Hannah Kim Varamini | Sound: Kenny Klimak – Barking Dog | Color: Jisoo Chung and Stephen Siemens – Post Mango | Technical Direction: Matthew Mann | System Design: Kyle Keays Hagerman | Lead Programmer: Chloe A. Thompson | Programming: Peter Kirby | AV Installers: Ryan Caruso, Garth MacAleavey, Logan Miley, Federico B. Romero
<section class="pdf_page" aria-label="Page 1">
<div class="textlayer">Patty Chang would like to thank Anuradha Vikram; Dr. Yeewan Koon, Dr. Chunwa Chan, Dr. Vivian Sheng, and the students from the department of fine art at The University of Hong Kong; Melissa Lee and Hera Chan from the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage &amp; Arts, Hong Kong; Jane Lam; Michael Mui Ting Fai; Matthew Lee Tak Hin; Tony Ng King To; Kestrel Leah; Asha Bukojemsky; Jan Williamson; Sue Yank; Frida Cano; Jeny Amaya; Michael Ano; Rocio Garcia; Elena Hernandez and Familias Latinas Unidas; Jaime Cruz and Pico Neighborhood Partnership; Gabriela Avila &amp; Community Corporation of Santa Monica; Nancy Bender, Cecilia Tovar, Susan Lamb, Patty Wong and Santa Monica Public Library; Carla Fantozzi, Monica Banach and Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center; Students of Santa Monica College; Students of University of Southern California; Danielle Abrams; Hannah Kim Varamini; Babsi Loisch; Miranda Van-Boswell; Mark Zhang; Jennie MaryTai Liu; Asuka Hisa; Asher Hartman; Anna Sew Hoy; Sony Ta; Chloe Flores; Julie Tolentino; Christina Valentine; Abbey Williams; Bruce Yonemoto; Jennie C. Jones; Laura Parnes; Peter Kirby; Furen Dai Victor Wang and Emilie Yixu Chen from M WOODS; Marisa Sage; Ilana Lapid; David Kelley; Kate Gilmore; and David Everitt Howe, Kyle Keays Hagerman, and Chloe Alexandra Thompson from Pioneer Works.</div>
<div></div>
</section>
About the Artist
Patty Chang is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator who uses performance, video, installation, and narrative forms when considering identity, gender, transnationalism, colonial legacies, the environment, large-scale infrastructural projects, and impacted subjectivities. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and internationally at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; BAK, Basis voor actuele Kunst, Utrecht; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, England; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Times Museum in Guangzhou, China; and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She has received a United States Artist Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, a Creative Capital Fellowship, short listed for the Hugo Boss Prize, a Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
This exhibition&#8217;s Pioneer Works presentation is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The project was also supported, in part, by 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, University Artists Scheme – The University of Hong Kong, Art Matters Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, and the United States Artists Fellowship.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-12862" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-10.png" alt="" width="203" height="37" />
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12802" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black.png" alt="" width="238" height="56" />

PattyChang (1)

Patty Chang’s multi-channel video installation Milk Debt, ongoing since 2018, features lists of fears solicited from an open call in Hong Kong and the United States—including one in New York during the height of its COVID epidemic. Compiled into a running script, the list is read by women pumping their breast milk in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the US/Mexico border. Rich with hormones prolactin and oxytocin—which together promote bonding between mother and newborn—breast milk, in Milk Debt, becomes a charged and timely metaphor for the importance of empathy, understanding, and mutual obligation during a time of worldwide crises. Formerly presented at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, this exhibition marks its New York debut.
The project came into being after Chang, a longtime New Yorker, moved to Los Angeles in a record-breaking heatwave. Feeling intense worry about climate change, a friend suggested she jot down her fears onto a list, which grew to four pages. Chang invited her friends and colleagues to contribute their own worries, and she began conceiving these lists as a prompt for performance and video. Since then, Milk Debt has expanded to include nine female performers and the list has grown in scope. Perhaps most striking about the project is the uniformity of concerns spread across every demographic: fear of death, fear of catching COVID, fear of losing a job, fear of being unloved. The project, in its essence, serves as a portrait of collective anxiety. At a time of deep political division, civil unrest, pandemic spread, and doubts of our collective future, the idea of the collective itself has never been more important. Widely recognized for her pioneering, often provocative feminist work that has grown in acclaim since the 1990s, Chang‘s centering of the female body, in this instance, opens it up to collective contribution.
Taking its title from a tenet in Chinese Buddhism, which states payments must be made toward a mother’s afterlife for years of her life-giving breast milk, Milk Debt suggests that there are many debts we, as a human race, owe to the planet and to each other. As Chang has noted: “I believe that the act of producing breast milk and lactation is an empathetic act. Biologically, breast milk is created when the body starts to produce the hormones of prolactin and oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced when someone is in love. The act of producing breast milk allows the woman to engage in this state of being, which some might describe as being more connected, being more open and accepting, and not thinking of oneself first.”
Patty Chang: Milk Debt was curated at Pioneer Works by David Everitt Howe. The project originated at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, and was originally curated by Anuradha Vikram. 
Performers: Devinee Flores, Jenny Gillet, Natalie Godinez, Haejung Kim, Kestrel Leah, Heather Lin, Annika Morris, Rebekah Neel, and Laura Young | Camera: David Kelley, Patty Chang, Michael Mui Ting Fai, Matthew Lee Tak Hin, and Tony Ng King To | Edit: Jisoo Chung and Patty Chang | Assistance: Jisoo Chung, Jane Lam, Babsi Loisch, and Hannah Kim Varamini | Sound: Kenny Klimak – Barking Dog | Color: Jisoo Chung and Stephen Siemens – Post Mango | Technical Direction: Matthew Mann | System Design: Kyle Keays Hagerman | Lead Programmer: Chloe A. Thompson | Programming: Peter Kirby | AV Installers: Ryan Caruso, Garth MacAleavey, Logan Miley, Federico B. Romero
<section class="pdf_page" aria-label="Page 1">
<div class="textlayer">Patty Chang would like to thank Anuradha Vikram; Dr. Yeewan Koon, Dr. Chunwa Chan, Dr. Vivian Sheng, and the students from the department of fine art at The University of Hong Kong; Melissa Lee and Hera Chan from the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage &amp; Arts, Hong Kong; Jane Lam; Michael Mui Ting Fai; Matthew Lee Tak Hin; Tony Ng King To; Kestrel Leah; Asha Bukojemsky; Jan Williamson; Sue Yank; Frida Cano; Jeny Amaya; Michael Ano; Rocio Garcia; Elena Hernandez and Familias Latinas Unidas; Jaime Cruz and Pico Neighborhood Partnership; Gabriela Avila &amp; Community Corporation of Santa Monica; Nancy Bender, Cecilia Tovar, Susan Lamb, Patty Wong and Santa Monica Public Library; Carla Fantozzi, Monica Banach and Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center; Students of Santa Monica College; Students of University of Southern California; Danielle Abrams; Hannah Kim Varamini; Babsi Loisch; Miranda Van-Boswell; Mark Zhang; Jennie MaryTai Liu; Asuka Hisa; Asher Hartman; Anna Sew Hoy; Sony Ta; Chloe Flores; Julie Tolentino; Christina Valentine; Abbey Williams; Bruce Yonemoto; Jennie C. Jones; Laura Parnes; Peter Kirby; Furen Dai Victor Wang and Emilie Yixu Chen from M WOODS; Marisa Sage; Ilana Lapid; David Kelley; Kate Gilmore; and David Everitt Howe, Kyle Keays Hagerman, and Chloe Alexandra Thompson from Pioneer Works.</div>
<div></div>
</section>
About the Artist
Patty Chang is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator who uses performance, video, installation, and narrative forms when considering identity, gender, transnationalism, colonial legacies, the environment, large-scale infrastructural projects, and impacted subjectivities. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and internationally at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; BAK, Basis voor actuele Kunst, Utrecht; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, England; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Times Museum in Guangzhou, China; and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She has received a United States Artist Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, a Creative Capital Fellowship, short listed for the Hugo Boss Prize, a Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
This exhibition&#8217;s Pioneer Works presentation is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The project was also supported, in part, by 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, University Artists Scheme – The University of Hong Kong, Art Matters Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, and the United States Artists Fellowship.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-12862" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-10.png" alt="" width="203" height="37" />
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12802" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black.png" alt="" width="238" height="56" />

Originally scheduled for Fall 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 

 is a multimedia experience by artist Smriti Keshari and critically acclaimed writer Eric Schlosser. The installation design, created by Ben Kreukniet, immerses the viewer within the story of nuclear weapons—from the Trinity Test in 1945 to current discourses today in 2021—in order to explore the perverse beauty and seduction of the machines, alongside the existential threat they still pose.

Inspired by nuclear weapon command and control centers, 

’s design suggests the technological fallibility of such systems, the devastating consequences of potential errors and malfunctions, and the impossibility of ever fully controlling these machines. The film at the heart of the installation combines animation with archival footage and an original score by electronic music quartet The Acid. It runs for 59 minutes, displayed on a circular floor-to-ceiling bank of screens with exposed wiring and circuit boards.

is a writer whose work has been published in dozens of countries, performed on stage, and adapted into films. His most recent book, 

, tells the story of America’s effort to prevent nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident. It was a 

 best seller and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in History.

 helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. And 

 looked at the nation’s underground economy, depicting the plight of undocumented immigrants and the injustices caused by the war on drugs. His next book is on the American prison system.

Schlosser was an executive producer of Richard Linklater’s film 

, as well as co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary 

 is an Indian-American multimedia artist and filmmaker whose work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to art installations. She brings an experimental approach to exploring under-represented themes and experiences outside the mainstream.

Keshari is a former artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works and the National Theatre in London. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and others. She has spoken about art and social change at the United Nations, the BBC, SXSW, Bloomberg Philanthropy, and TED. She was a TED Prize finalist and a 2016 Foreign Policy’s Global Creative Thinker.

She is known for her acclaimed multi-media installation,

, which was heralded as “a stunning avant-garde approach to a plea for nuclear disarmament.” 

 has been shown throughout the world at film festivals (the Berlinale, Tribeca), music festivals (Glastonbury), art institutions, on Netflix, and at the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Most recently, Keshari created 

, a film and music installation that takes audiences through 1,460 days of headlines from the 

 featuring Donald Trump’s presidency. Keshari brings a collaborative spirit to all her projects, previously having created work with Eric Schlosser, artist Stanley Donwood (Radiohead), electronica band The Acid, installation designers United Visual Artists, filmmakers Sanjay Rawal and Kevin Ford, and others.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

the bomb

Originally scheduled for Fall 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bomb is a multimedia experience by artist Smriti Keshari and critically acclaimed writer Eric Schlosser. The installation design, created by Ben Kreukniet, immerses the viewer within the story of nuclear weapons—from the Trinity Test in 1945 to current discourses today in 2021—in order to explore the perverse beauty and seduction of the machines, alongside the existential threat they still pose.
Inspired by nuclear weapon command and control centers, the bomb’s design suggests the technological fallibility of such systems, the devastating consequences of potential errors and malfunctions, and the impossibility of ever fully controlling these machines. The film at the heart of the installation combines animation with archival footage and an original score by electronic music quartet The Acid. It runs for 59 minutes, displayed on a circular floor-to-ceiling bank of screens with exposed wiring and circuit boards.
Created by Smriti Keshari &amp; Eric Schlosser | Film by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari &amp; Eric Schlosser | Music: The Acid | Art Director: Stanley Donwood | Animation: The Kingdom of Ludd |  Installation Producer: Hazel Gibson | Installation Design Ben Kreukniet | Technical Lead: Adam Paikowsky
About the Artists
Eric Schlosser is a writer whose work has been published in dozens of countries, performed on stage, and adapted into films. His most recent book, Command and Control, tells the story of America&#8217;s effort to prevent nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident. It was a New York Times best seller and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in History.
His two other books were also New York Times best sellers. Fast Food Nation helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. And Reefer Madness looked at the nation&#8217;s underground economy, depicting the plight of undocumented immigrants and the injustices caused by the war on drugs. His next book is on the American prison system. 
Schlosser was an executive producer of Richard Linklater’s film Fast Food Nation, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, the documentaries Food Chains and Hanna Ranch, as well as co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. He was a producer of the documentary Command and Control, which was short-listed for an Oscar.
Smriti Keshari is an Indian-American multimedia artist and filmmaker whose work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to art installations. She brings an experimental approach to exploring under-represented themes and experiences outside the mainstream. 
Keshari is a former artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works and the National Theatre in London. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and others. She has spoken about art and social change at the United Nations, the BBC, SXSW, Bloomberg Philanthropy, and TED. She was a TED Prize finalist and a 2016 Foreign Policy&#8217;s Global Creative Thinker. 
She is known for her acclaimed multi-media installation, the bomb, which was heralded as “a stunning avant-garde approach to a plea for nuclear disarmament.” the bomb has been shown throughout the world at film festivals (the Berlinale, Tribeca), music festivals (Glastonbury), art institutions, on Netflix, and at the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Most recently, Keshari created DISINTEGRATION, a film and music installation that takes audiences through 1,460 days of headlines from the New York Times featuring Donald Trump&#8217;s presidency. Keshari brings a collaborative spirit to all her projects, previously having created work with Eric Schlosser, artist Stanley Donwood (Radiohead), electronica band The Acid, installation designers United Visual Artists, filmmakers Sanjay Rawal and Kevin Ford, and others. 
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-12862" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-10.png" alt="" width="203" height="37" />
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12802" src="https://sunset.pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black.png" alt="" width="233" height="55" />

thebomb (2)

Originally scheduled for Fall 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bomb is a multimedia experience by artist Smriti Keshari and critically acclaimed writer Eric Schlosser. The installation design, created by Ben Kreukniet, immerses the viewer within the story of nuclear weapons—from the Trinity Test in 1945 to current discourses today in 2021—in order to explore the perverse beauty and seduction of the machines, alongside the existential threat they still pose.
Inspired by nuclear weapon command and control centers, the bomb’s design suggests the technological fallibility of such systems, the devastating consequences of potential errors and malfunctions, and the impossibility of ever fully controlling these machines. The film at the heart of the installation combines animation with archival footage and an original score by electronic music quartet The Acid. It runs for 59 minutes, displayed on a circular floor-to-ceiling bank of screens with exposed wiring and circuit boards.
Created by Smriti Keshari &amp; Eric Schlosser | Film by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari &amp; Eric Schlosser | Music: The Acid | Art Director: Stanley Donwood | Animation: The Kingdom of Ludd |  Installation Producer: Hazel Gibson | Installation Design Ben Kreukniet | Technical Lead: Adam Paikowsky
About the Artists
Eric Schlosser is a writer whose work has been published in dozens of countries, performed on stage, and adapted into films. His most recent book, Command and Control, tells the story of America&#8217;s effort to prevent nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident. It was a New York Times best seller and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in History.
His two other books were also New York Times best sellers. Fast Food Nation helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. And Reefer Madness looked at the nation&#8217;s underground economy, depicting the plight of undocumented immigrants and the injustices caused by the war on drugs. His next book is on the American prison system. 
Schlosser was an executive producer of Richard Linklater’s film Fast Food Nation, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, the documentaries Food Chains and Hanna Ranch, as well as co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. He was a producer of the documentary Command and Control, which was short-listed for an Oscar.
Smriti Keshari is an Indian-American multimedia artist and filmmaker whose work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to art installations. She brings an experimental approach to exploring under-represented themes and experiences outside the mainstream. 
Keshari is a former artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works and the National Theatre in London. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and others. She has spoken about art and social change at the United Nations, the BBC, SXSW, Bloomberg Philanthropy, and TED. She was a TED Prize finalist and a 2016 Foreign Policy&#8217;s Global Creative Thinker. 
She is known for her acclaimed multi-media installation, the bomb, which was heralded as “a stunning avant-garde approach to a plea for nuclear disarmament.” the bomb has been shown throughout the world at film festivals (the Berlinale, Tribeca), music festivals (Glastonbury), art institutions, on Netflix, and at the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Most recently, Keshari created DISINTEGRATION, a film and music installation that takes audiences through 1,460 days of headlines from the New York Times featuring Donald Trump&#8217;s presidency. Keshari brings a collaborative spirit to all her projects, previously having created work with Eric Schlosser, artist Stanley Donwood (Radiohead), electronica band The Acid, installation designers United Visual Artists, filmmakers Sanjay Rawal and Kevin Ford, and others. 
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-12862" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/dclaLogo_color_2-10.png" alt="" width="203" height="37" />
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-12802" src="https://pioneerworks.org/wp-content/uploads/NYSCA-Logo-Black.png" alt="" width="233" height="55" />

Lizzi Bougatsos is an artist and performer. A singer for the band Gang Gang Dance and punk/noise outfit I.U.D. for over a decade, Bougatsos has performed at Kunsthalle Zurich, The Whitney Museum, The Sydney Opera House, The Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Bergen Kunsthall. Her work has been exhibited at Hauser & Wirth, Gladstone Gallery, Museo d’arte Contemporanea di Roma, Kunste Werke, MoMa PS1, Participant Inc., American Fine Arts Co., Reena Spaulings, and James Fuentes Gallery. Bougatsos is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant, and her work is included in The Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst and The Dikeou Collection.

Lizzi Bougatsos is an artist and performer. A singer for the band Gang Gang Dance and punk/noise outfit I.U.D. for over a decade, Bougatsos has performed at Kunsthalle Zurich, The Whitney Museum, The Sydney Opera House, The Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Bergen Kunsthall.  Her work has been exhibited at Hauser &amp; Wirth, Gladstone Gallery, Museo d’arte Contemporanea di Roma, Kunste Werke, MoMa PS1, Participant Inc., American Fine Arts Co., Reena Spaulings, and James Fuentes Gallery. Bougatsos is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant, and her work is included in The Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst and The Dikeou Collection.

lizzi-bougatsos-meditations-on-a-flow-break-up-2017

Lizzi Bougatsos, Meditations on a Flow Break Up, 2017

Lizzi Bougatsos, performance still with Kim Gordon_Penny Slinger, 2019

Xenia Bond (b. 1992, London) works in sculpture and installation. She graduated from the Stäedelscule in Frankfurt under Judith Hopf and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Bond’s exhibitions include: Husslehof, APT Gallery, Zona Mista, Studio Picknick, and Neue Alte Brücke. She is interested in the formal relationship of materials and their reception as emotives, and communicating external relationships in her life. Bond’s works are neither immersive nor “looking outside.” These polarities are avoided. Instead the aim is to provoke a reaction between the imagination of the self and the viewer. The drift of signs and possible narratives, both concrete and imagined, characterize Bond’s works.

Xenia Bond (b. 1992, London) works in sculpture and installation. She graduated from the Stäedelscule in Frankfurt under Judith Hopf and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Bond’s exhibitions include: Husslehof, APT Gallery, Zona Mista, Studio Picknick, and Neue Alte Brücke. She is interested in the formal relationship of materials and their reception as emotives, and communicating external relationships in her life. Bond’s works are neither immersive nor “looking outside.” These polarities are avoided. Instead the aim is to provoke a reaction between the imagination of the self and the viewer. The drift of signs and possible narratives, both concrete and imagined, characterize Bond’s works.

xenia-bond-4-2019

Xenia Bond 4, 2019

xenia-bond-5-2019

Xenia Bond 5, 2019

xenia-bond-8-2019

Xenia Bond 8, 2019

xenia-bond-9-2019

Xenia Bond 9, 2019

Xenia Bond 6, 2019

Claudia Bitran (1986–) is a Brooklyn-based painting and video artist. Bitran holds an MFA from RISD and a BFA from the Universidad Catolica de Chile.

She has exhibited at Muhlenberg College, Practice Gallery, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Museo de Artes Visuales, and elsewhere. Bitran has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and more. Grants and awards include: The New York Trust Van Lier Fellowship, Hammersley Grant, Emergency Grant Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Jerome Foundation Grant for Emerging Filmmakers, 1st Prize Britney Spears Dance Challenge, 1st Prize UFO McDonald’s Painting Competition, 1st honorable mention at Bienal de Artes Mediales.

Claudia Bitran (1986–) is a Brooklyn-based painting and video artist. Bitran holds an MFA from RISD and a BFA from the Universidad Catolica de Chile.
She has exhibited at Muhlenberg College, Practice Gallery, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Museo de Artes Visuales, and elsewhere. Bitran has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and more. Grants and awards include: The New York Trust Van Lier Fellowship, Hammersley Grant, Emergency Grant Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Jerome Foundation Grant for Emerging Filmmakers, 1st Prize Britney Spears Dance Challenge, 1st Prize UFO McDonald’s Painting Competition, 1st honorable mention at Bienal de Artes Mediales.

claudia-bitran-2018_filters_12-light-boxes_pencil-on-plastic-and-wood

Claudia Bitran 2018_Filters_12 light boxes_Pencil on Plastic and wood

claudia-bitran_fallen_2019_video-animation-instalation-tvs_-cindy-rucker-gallery

Claudia Bitran_Fallen_2019_Video Animation Instalation TVs_ Cindy Rucker Gallery

claudia-bitran_untitled_2019_acrylic-on-mdf_-site-specific-install-miami

Claudia Bitran_Untitled_2019_Acrylic on MDF_ Site specific Install Miami

Claudia Bitran_White Shoes_2018_Acrilic and Latex on MDF_22 free standing paintings_Practice Gallery

Alexandra Bell (b. 1983, Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the complexities of narrative, information consumption, and perception. Utilizing various media, she deconstructs language and imagery to explore the tension between marginal experiences and dominant histories. Through investigative research, she considers the ways media frameworks construct memory and inform discursive practices around race, politics, and culture. Her work has been exhibited at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, MoMA PS1, and the Whitney Museum of Art. She received the 2018 International Center of Photography Infinity Award in the applied category. She is a 2019 CatchLight Fellow.

Alexandra Bell (b. 1983, Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the complexities of narrative, information consumption, and perception. Utilizing various media, she deconstructs language and imagery to explore the tension between marginal experiences and dominant histories. Through investigative research, she considers the ways media frameworks construct memory and inform discursive practices around race, politics, and culture. Her work has been exhibited at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, MoMA PS1, and the Whitney Museum of Art. She received the 2018 International Center of Photography Infinity Award in the applied category. She is a 2019 CatchLight Fellow.