Monday November 4, 7:30pm
Beside the Amber Light
Shireen Alia Ahmed, Coco Fitterman, Ida Pruitt, Keiko Uenishi, Lillian Paige Walton, Alexa West, Lulu White

A night of readings, sound, and performance
Curated by Rachel Rosheger


Image courtesy of Rachel Rosheger


We are very pleased to present “Beside the Amber Light”, an event organized by artist Rachel Rosheger bringing together seven multidisciplinary artists for a night of live sound, spoken word, and movement. 

From Rachel Rosheger:

“Exploring the trope of gathering around a fire to tell secrets and stories, the selected works look at ideas of intimacy, mythos, and self reflection. The fireplace symbolizes comfort, warmth, and domestic life while also caging a mesmerizing, dangerous substance. The focus on sound and performance harkens to oral tradition, where ideas and cultural material were passed only by direct presence of the body and voice. Continuing through history and into the present this has remained a powerful and radical method of expression and disseminating information.

Many of the artists involved work primarily in visual media, so the event is an opportunity to experience another side of their practice. Others consistently focus on sound and writing, but also work in curation, new media, and movement.”

Artists in attendance and available for Q&A following the event.



General admission $10
Students & Members $8



Program:

Ida Pruitt
Furnace

7 minutes
A sound sculpture that imitates home heating, Furnace captures a way in which systems animate architecture. 

Coco Fitterman
Like honey is the sleep of the just: some excerpts

10 minutes
A selection of writings looking at how folkloric imagery can function as a lens through which to view contemporary violences. These texts focus on two mythological creatures: Geryon (from the Greek myth of Hercules) and Manananggal (a demon from Filipino folklore) and developed as an accompanying text to an exhibition Coco is organizing this spring. 

Shireen Alia Ahmed
10 minutes
A reading of recent poems that look for the space between desire and geometry.
 
Lillian Paige Walton
Arrival and A School Among Trees 

17 minutes
Daniel, an aspiring young teacher, leaves behind a failed relationship and career to pursue a more fulfilling profession at a school nestled in the hills of western Massachusetts. Punctuated by flashbacks and daydreams of a life left behind, these excerpts from a larger fiction project follow Daniel as he journeys up the winding country roads in the company of a mysterious chauffeur referred to only as the Driver, and later, through the hallways of his future school house. 
 
Lulu White
Keeping the dream alive

10 minutes
A middle aged man reflects on his experience discovering his life’s path in the world of late Anthropocene message boards.
 
Alexa West
Metal detector 

10 minutes
A movement performance engaging metal detectors and the body. It explores the mapping of the body and purposeful vs. accidental activations. 
 
Keiko Uenishi
Pillow talk in the rim of the shadow

20 minutes
An interactive sound performance involving pillows, shadows, and whispers in which the audience will engage with with a hidden voice.

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Coco Fitterman was born in NYC in 1998. Her book of poems say it with flowers was published by Inpatient Press in 2017.

Ida Pruitt is a filmmaker and installation artist who uses light, sculpture, and sound to create imageless animations. She is a graduate of the Cooper Union and her writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail.

Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc since 2001. Uenishi is known for her works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship through sounds in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological environments. Her current research is Partitions: Dividers, Connectors, Gray-zones, Neighbours in Aural Space, an exploration of a “para-sphere” where auditory stimuli sneak over other perceptions, while de-stabilizing relationships, memories, space recognitions and time.

Lillian Paige Walton is a visual artist and writer living and working in New York. She has displayed and performed her work at Eli Ping Frances Perkins, What Pipeline, The Emily Harvey Foundation, Hotel Art Pavilion, King’s Leap and Alyssa Davis Gallery among others. In 2016, she wrote her first work of fiction on a laptop in the back of a moving vehicle. There was no internet connection at the time.

Alexa West lives and works in New York, NY. West studied at the Martha Graham Professional Training Program before receiving her BFA from the Cooper Union in 2017.She has exhibited with Plank Road Gallery (New York, NY), 182 Ave C (New York, NY), Two Forty (Brooklyn, NY), OTION FRONT (Brooklyn, NY), and SITE Gallery (Houston, TX).

Lulu White is a multi disciplinary artist living and working in Queens, New York. Her real name is Louise.

Rachel Rosheger is a visual artist and curator based in New York, focused primarily on new media, sculpture, and installation. She is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art and was a recipient of the Benjamin Menschel Fellowship. She recently participated in the Tri-try Again Studio Residency and currently runs an ongoing screening and discussion series focused on time-based or unconventionally displayed works.


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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2019 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).