Artists Studio: Joan Jonas

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

2022 ARTISTS STUDIO IN THE RESTORED VETERANS ROOM

OUT TAKES: WHAT THE STORM WASHED IN saturday, april 2, 2022 at 7pm and 9pm Directed and Conceived by Joan Jonas Composer Ikue Mori Video Shot by Joan Jonas Edited by David Sherman and Joan Jonas Performers Joan Jonas, Lucy Mullican, Zina, and Ozu Performers in Video Backdrops Tom Bills, Robin Hill, Jeri Coppola, Andrea Lissoni, Willa Schwabsky, Ragani Haas, Joan Jonas, Lila Gavagan, Sekeena Gavagan, Steve Miller, Zora Casabere, Noah Delorme, Zina, Ozu, and others Production Manager Paula Longendyke

Poems Ballad of the Shadowy Pigeons, Baccus, and Verlaine written by Federico García Lorca (as translated by Jack Spicer in After Lorca) Why Is This Age Worse…? (1919) written by Anna Akhmatova “I Will Walk…” from Helen in Egypt written by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) The Brain – is wider than the sky written by Emily Dickinson With Thanks to Sekeena Gavagan, David Gruber, and Tyler Hays

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory's Artistic Council.

2022 SEASON SPONSORS

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

ARTIST STATEMENT Out Takes: What the Storm Washed In is composed of both previously unseen video from the late 1990s to 2020 and video from previous works [In the Trees (2015), Moving Off the Land II (2019)].

This piece is composed of video strung together like beads on a string.

While working mostly in my studio these last two years, I have had the luxury to re-watch and re-discover some unused video I shot over the years. This non-narrative format gave me the freedom to look back on past work in an almost objective way.

I was able to pull out video that was interesting and provocative to me, without worrying about how it “fit” into a story.

The challenge is how to make such unconnected footage have a coherence. I hope to do this through text and live performance.

Shooting locations include Nova Scotia, Canada; San Diego, California; New Mexico; Long Island, New York; and Stuttgart, Germany.

— Joan Jonas

ABOUT THE ARTISTS JOAN JONAS (ARTIST, PERFORMER) IKUE MORI (COMPOSER) Joan Jonas is a world-renowned artist whose work encompasses a wide range of media, including video, performance, installation, sound, text, and sculpture. Jonas’ experiments and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s continue to be crucial to the development of many contemporary art genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theater. Since 1968, her practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of rituals, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas has exhibited, screened, and performed her work at museums, galleries, and in large scale group exhibitions throughout the world. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at Hangar Bicocca, Milan; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the United States Pavilion for the 56th edition of the Venice Biennial; Tate Modern, London; TBA21 Ocean Space at San Lorenzo Church, Venice; and Serralves Museum, Porto. In 2018, she was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize, presented to those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind. A show of large-scale works opened at Dia Beacon in 2021 and will be exhibited at the space through 2023. For the month of April, Wolf Lights will be shown nightly from 11:57pm to midnight on 92 screens in Times Square for the Midnight Moment public art program.

Joan Jonas is currently working on her retrospective to open at the Museum of Modern Art in 2024.

Ikue Mori arrived in New York in 1977 and joined the No wave band DNA where she started playing drums. In the mid-80s, Mori began playing drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music, forging her own highly sensitive signature style and has been involved in the downtown improvisational community ever since. She has collaborated with numerous musicians and artists throughout the US, Europe, and Asia while continuing to produce and publish her own music. Mori won the Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronics Digital Music category in 1999 and shortly after started using a laptop computer to expand her vocabulary, not only playing sounds but creating and controlling visual work as well. She received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2006 and the Instant Award for improvising music in 2019. Ikue Mori started working with Joan Jonas on performances of Moving Off the Land (2018-2020).

LUCY MULLICAN (PERFORMER) Lucy Mullican (b. 1994) is an artist who lives and works in New York and Europe. Since 2014, Mullican has participated in several group exhibitions in New York, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. She will have her first solo exhibition Sensed as well as Seen at Olympia Gallery NY from March 31 – May 21, 2022.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO “…it was a block of music that made you think as the room does: Take Note. Listen deeply. The rest of the world is not like this…that sublime and exclusive room, almost too opulent for this world.”

— The New York Times Launched in March 2016 alongside the inauguration of the revitalized Veterans Room, the Artists Studio is curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran and serves as a space for artists to experiment, collaborate, create, and push the boundaries of their craft. Previous Artists Studio programs have featured performances by: jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran; Dutch contemporary composer Louis Andriessen with pianist Jason Moran; American composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros and noted author, director, and dream specialist IONE; pianist and composer Conrad Tao and multifaceted percussionist, instrumentalist, and composer Tyshawn Sorey; seminal drummer and acupuncturist Milford Graves and drummer and musician Deantoni Parks; artist Lucy Raven; groundbreaking sound designer Ryan Trecartin with his primary collaborator Lizzie Fitch, music producer and DJ Ashland Mines (aka Total Freedom), and composer/producer Aaron David Ross; acoustic ensemble Dawn of Midi; composer Ryuichi Sakamoto; tenor Lawrence Brownlee with pianists Myra Huang and Jason Moran; multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome; vocalist Dominique Eade and pianist Ran Blake with composer Kavita Shah; experimental composer Alvin Curran; internationally renowned composer, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixedmedia practitioner Matana Roberts; pioneer of experimental music Charlemagne Palestine; art icon and DJ Juliana Huxtable; composer and saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell; experimental composer, improviser, and performer Miya Masaoka; My Barbarian collective founders Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade; cutting edge visual artist Rosa Barba; Dominican accordionist Krency Garcia (El Prodigio); and trumpeter jaimie branch and visual artist Carol Szymanski.

NEXT IN THE SERIES JASON MORAN

CAMILLE NORMENT & CRAIG TABORN

may 20 & 21

Pianist and composer Jason Moran returns to the Armory’s Artists Studio series for a night of solo piano and jazz, his first solo program at the Armory since the series’ inception in 2016.

RODNEY MCMILLIAN october 15

Conceptual artist Rodney McMillian presents his musical performance Hanging with Clarence, based on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1985 commencement address at Savannah State University that was rich with conservative views on social programs, race, and sexual harassment.

Performed by McMillian and two back-up singers, the theater work uses Thomas’ speech as its text, while weaving in the artist’s music and poetry.

november 18

Pianist, composer, and electronic musician Craig Taborn is joined by multimedia artist Camille Norment as they return to the Armory after their debut in 2016. Using the physical elements of automobiles to launch in their exploration of space and sound, these two mavericks explore what is known and unknown in the world of sonic play.

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ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. The newly formed collective led

by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artists was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque, and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian, and the Japanese in the appropriate places.”

A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byrd Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.

The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic materials and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design. The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $215-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.

The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legoretta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Emanuel Stern, Adam R. Flatto, Olivia Tournay Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Historic Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2).

Cover photo by James Ewing.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory