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The New York Public Library

presents

 

A Performance Art Series Event

 

Vox Vernacular

 

Tony Oursler

and his group of performers

Tony Conrad, Constance DeJong

Jim Fletcher, Joe Gibbons

Kim Gordon, Josie Keefe

Tracy Leipold, Brandon Olson

Jason Scott, Holly Stanton

 

Wednesday May 21, 2014

6:00 p.m. 

 

South Court Auditorium
South Court Lower Level

 

The New York Public Library

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

5^thAvenue at 42^nd Street

New York, NY 10018

917-275-6975

 www.nypl.org

(directions)

 

 Auditorium doors open to public at 5:30 p.m.
All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.  

 

Over the years Oursler has worked with a tight group of performers for his uncanny installations.  For this event many of his performers come together for the first time to deliver excepts of these texts live.  They perform selections from Tony Oursler's new book Vox Vernacular, recreating Oursler's video installations and sculptures in a dynamic live reading. 

 

Tony Oursler / Vox Vernacular compiles fifty transcripts of Oursler’s videos, offering an entirely new way to apprehend the nuances of his work. The selection of pieces featured in the book date from between 1977 and 2013, spanning nearly the entirety of Oursler’s practice. Adding valuable context are scholarly essays explaining Oursler’s creative process and full-color illustrations of his videos. Among other revelations, these transcripts show that Oursler is not merely a video artist, but a writer as well. The vernacular language that Oursler employs is written to be spoken by “electronic entities” and carries a sort of musical cadence that makes his text surprisingly lyrical. This comprehensive anthology uncovers the poetry in Oursler’s work and captures the unique nature of his artistic voice.

 

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the event.

 

Tony Oursler was born in New York in 1957. He completed a BA in Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. His art covers a range of mediums including video, sculpture, installation, performance and painting. Oursler has mounted solo exhibitions at prestigious exhibitions including Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine; Tate Modern, London; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; MASS MoCA, Massachusetts; Kunstverein Hannover, Germany; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii; Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland; P.S.1, New York; Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France; Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Rome, Italy; Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Brazil; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Musee d’Orsay, Paris; Kunstforeningen GL Strand, Kobenhavn, Denmark; Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; Institut Valencia D'Art Modern, Valencia, Spain; Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. Portikus Frankfurt, Germany; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, NZ; Malmo Konsthall, Sweden; Center of Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Salade Exposiciones Rekalde, Bilbao, Spain.

 

Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. Conrad is well known as a leading exponent of improvisational and experimental music since the '60s. He has performed and recorded with, among many others, John Cage, La Monte Young, and Tony Oursler. In 2009 his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and elsewhere. He is represented by Galerie Daniel Buchholz and in New York by Greene Naftali Gallery.

 

Constance DeJong  is an American artist writer and playwright. She is also well known for her numerous collaborations with Tony Oursler on projects such as Fantastic Prayers. DeJong has exhibited internationally with projects produced by organizations such as the Dia Foundation for the Arts and Minetta Brook. She is currently a professor of art and time based media at Hunter College.

 

Jim Fletcher performs primarily with the New York City Players theater company with Richard Maxwell. He also danced in Sarah Michelson's Devotion (Kitchen, 2011) and appeared in Elevator Repair Service's production of Gatz (Public Theater, 2012). 

 

Joe Gibbons is recognized as a groundbreaking filmmaker in experimental autobiography and has made over 30 films. He has been recognized with fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Black Maria Film and Video Festival, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. He has screened his work at the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, Museum Of Modern Art, and on PBS. He is a 2001 recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

 

Kim Gordon is an American musician, vocalist, visual artist, record producer, video director, and actress. Gordon, who initially started out as a visual artist, rose to prominence as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. She has collaborated with Tony Oursler on multiple video projects since the 1980s.

 

Josie Keefe (b 1987 New York) is a multi media artist whose work focuses primarily on photography and prop design. Specializing in analog production techniques, she has exhibited and taught video and photography across the country. She has art directed feature films, music videos, and photo shoots. Dedicated to producing small-scale artist publications, Josie is a founding member of Showpaper, Mall Tapes, and Great Point Books.  Find her most days at Tony Ourlser's studio and most nights working with her hands.

 

Tracy Leipold has a background in performance, experimental theater and music. She studied classical voice for eighteen years and trained in the Meisner acting technique. Tracy began working with video artist Tony Oursler in the early '90s. Performance collaborations include a worldwide broadcast with Nam line Paik and singing a car alarm for Fluxus artist, Larry Miller’s composition Sentinel at the Newark Art Museum.

 

Brandon Olson is an actor and artist who has worked in theatre, fashion, video,  art  and nightlife in New York since 1998. He's graced the major downtown stages of LaMama, Dixon Place, PS 122,  Joes Pub and Theatre for the New City, and worked with Tabboo!, Patricia Field,  Karen Finley, Susanne Bartsch, Chris Tanner,  and Stephan Sadnauoie.  Most recently,  he played the role of M.C.  in New Stage Theatre's production of Jollification/Mortification  at LaMama.  He is delighted to be working with Tony Oursler, having appeared in a number of his videos and sculptures for the past couple of years.  

 

As co-founder of BPMLWRLVL [est. 2011], Jason Scott's stark passion for music derives from his singer/songwriter/producer roots. Raised in a Baptist church choir and later attending the 'Fame school', LaGuardia Arts, the pursuit of "the next sound" became his driving force. The Queens, NY native has promoted and hosted raw talent at their inception such as Kid Cudi, Theophilus London, Jesse Marco, Brenmar, Mess Kid, Fat Tony, and Jade/Blind Benny, NiRE and BOY/FRIEND. Through extensive experience as an independent A&R, publicist, booking agent, and manager to musicians, Jason Scott has worked with major brands such as Cornerstone/The Fader, Downtown Music, Heineken, Vitamin Water, Mass Appeal, Reason Clothing, and Peters Mountain Works. As of 2013, the self-taught DJ has already spun all over the U.S. alongside SBTRKT, Ryan Hemsworth, Cashmere Cat, Ben UFO, Sango, Dubbel Dutch, Slava, Trippy Turtle, DJ Yolo Bear, Alex Pasternak of Lemonade, and Adam Weiss of HAM On Everything. Jason Scott's experimental DJ sets feature a bold repertoire of ghetto R&B, Deep House, funky Hip-Hop, UK Garage, Grime, Juke, Dancehall and Break Beats filled with smooth psychedelic vocals of highs and lows, fit for both a rave and a bedroom.

 

Holly Stanton (b. 1988, California) is an art producer and exhibition coordinator living and working in New York. She is currently the Exhibition & Program Manager at SculptureCenter, and has previously worked and collaborated with Tony Oursler, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), and Triple Canopy. Independently, she has curated exhibitions and performances at Back Yard Projects in Manhattan, co-founded the small-edition artist book press Great Point Books, and has contributed texts to Kitsune Journal, Top Magazine and Triple Canopy Annotations. She has released art books through Medium Rare Press and Great Point Books, and recently contributed to and edited Vox Vernacular, an anthology of art texts by Tony Oursler, published by Yale University Press. Holly received her BA in Art History at Columbia University in New York. 

 

Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, and in its first year, Performance Art Series events stage provocative interdisciplinary happenings by contemporary visual artists.