RASHAADNEWSOME

To Be Real

January 10 through February 23, 2020

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and San Francisco Art Institute announce the Bay Area debut of Rashaad Newsome ’s To Be Real, an exhibition environment of collage, sculpture, and the interactive AI humanoid, Being. The exhibition presents a series of neo-Cubist portraits in expressive frames, threading an ornamental glamour through figures reflecting on agency, Blackness, and the radical futurity of emerging identities.

RUNNING

January 17 and 18, 2020 at 7 pm

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and San Francisco Art Institute will present Rashaad Newsome’s immersive performance, Running. In this abstract portrait of soul, composed for light and voice, three singers explore the “vocal run”: a musicology term for a rapid series of ascending or descending musical notes, usually improvised and sung in quick succession. With the vocalists Kyron El, Aaron Marcellus, and Devin Michael from its New York City premiere Running features an original score composed by the artist, incorporating samples of vocal runs by Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, James Brown, and Kelly Price, among others.

FIVE SFMOMA Prints
September 19, 2019 – May 30, 2020, at NY Live Arts Ford Foundation Live Lobby Gallery 

Using 3D data obtained during his 2016 FIVE SFMOMA performance, Rashaad translated the fierce, spiraling movements of five vogue dancers to the two-dimensional surface of the prints. In collaboration with the Tamarind Institute, ten plates were created and printed using traditional lithographic methods. In keeping with his expansive, interdisciplinary method of working, Newsome brought 3D printing and collage into the project, incorporating three-dimensional printed forms, and collaged images of the of dancers body into each print. The suite includes five distinct prints representing each of the five dancers. This series incorporates a complex layering of performance, ephemeral and recorded movement, traditional printing and digital technology, bringing a new vibrancy and dimensionality to the printed surface. Also on view will be the performance video of FIVE SFMOMA as well as a newly commissioned large scale wall vinyl titled SHAWAM!

STOP PLAYING IN MY FACE! and ICON

September 4, 2019 -March 1, 2020

The exhibition focuses on Newsome’s video works inspired by the origins and continued dynamism of Vogue performance. For over a decade, Newsome has worked with members of the Vogue community, which developed in New York City’s queer ballroom scene of the 1970s. With a particular interest in critiquing the popular appropriation of Vogue in the early 1990s, and with the aim to bring these queer communities of color from the Vogue scene into the institutional space, Newsome creates work that reframes how performers are represented and explores the beauty, agency and complexities of Vogue performance.

In addition to the exhibition, Rashaad’s work is also the main inspiration for MoAD’s 2019 Afropolitan Ball, taking place October 19. The event will feature room projection-mapped in commissioned videos created by Newsome’s studio.

For more info visit the links below.

STOP PLAYING IN MY FACE! and ICON

MoAD’s 2019 Afropolitan Ball

 

 

New York Live Arts, in partnership with Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, presents an exhibition To Be Real, site-specific installation FIVE SFMOMA Prints, and performances of FIVE and The Champion Ball.

September 12 – November 30, 2019

New York, NY (August 9, 2019) —New York Live Arts, in partnership with Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, presents Rashaad Newsome’s multifaceted BLACK MAGIC at New York Live Arts (Live Arts), Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC), and Icebox Project Space (Icebox), September 12 – November 30, 2019. The project includes an exhibition at PPAC, site-specific installation at New York Live Arts, and performances at Live Arts and Icebox. BLACK MAGIC is a holistic reflection on agency, Blackness, and the futurity of intersectional identities and oppression.

BLACK MAGIC’s inaugural presentation begins with an exhibition of all new work in collage and sculpture, To Be Real, at PPAC September 12 – November 30, 2019. At the conceptual center of To Be Real, which takes its name from Cheryl Lynn’s 1977 queer anthem, is Newsome’s ‘child’ so to speak, a cloud-based, A.I. humanoid named Being (2019). Being is the first generation of Newsome’s LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant project. The Being’s mind has been populated with the works of radical authors, revolutionaries, and theorists such as Paulo Freire, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Being acts as a critical guide to the exhibition, exploring ideas of agency and hegemony within artificial intelligence. Being’s body is represented in the exhibition by a 3D avatar of a humanoid robot. Its torso and faceplates are all African mahogany inspired by the female Pho mask from the Chokwe peoples of the Congo.

Also on view is Ansista, a 3D creation of the neo-cubist figures seen in the more 2D collages suspended in the Vogue dip dance move. Though formally it uses assemblage, the piece is analogous to cubism, which is heavily investigated in many of the exhibition’s works. As a way of queering the subject, the lower body, which is comprised of a lifelike sex doll, is outfitted in drag padding, acrylic nails, high heel boots, and a costume that fuses traditional African and drag ballroom aesthetics. Ansista embodies the very culture that inspired it —an affirmation for femme, womanist, non-binary POC empowerment, which is simultaneously reflected in the surrounding collage work.

As a means of extending the conversation of agency explored within the exhibition, Rashaad Newsome is collaborating with Snap Inc. and creating custom augmented reality lenses. Visitors of the show will be invited to download an App that will allow them to hold their phone up to static works in the exhibition to reveal hidden aspects. The works will confront the viewer head-on, looking back at them, engaging in their own sort of Oppositional gaze. They will speak to the viewer about what they are meant to represent and what they can represent, as well as recite excerpts from Michel Foucault’s Relations of Power. On the occasion of Newsome’s Champion Vogue Ball, he will premiere the ‘Get Your 10’s’ lens, a personal lens that allows everyone at the event to feel like a winner.

Newsome will be in conversation with exhibition curator Jasmine Wahi at the Rhoden Arts Center/PAFA on October 17, 2019, discussing the entire Black Magic project in two cities and three parts that reflect on Blackness, gender, and futurity. To Be Real will be traveling to Fort Mason in San Francisco on January 10, 2020, through February 23, 2020, along with the west coast premiere of Newsome’s new performance RUNNING.

Newsome’s installation for Live Arts’ Ford Foundation Live Gallery lobby wall, opening September 19, 2019, features a video and unique lithographs generated from the performance process of the artist’s acclaimed FIVE. An expansion of the digital data captured during his 2016 FIVE SFMOMA, Newsome uses 3D data obtained during the live performance and translates the fierce, spiraling movements of five vogue dancers to the two-dimensional surface of the prints. In collaboration with the Tamarind Institute, ten plates were created and printed using traditional lithographic methods. In keeping with his expansive, interdisciplinary method of working, Newsome incorporates three-dimensional printed forms and collaged images of the dancers’ bodies into each print. The suite includes five distinct prints representing each of the five dancers. It incorporates a complex layering of performance, ephemeral and recorded movement, and traditional printing and digital technology.

Newsome’s electric performance piece FIVE will make its Live Arts, and Philadelphia debuts at New York Live Arts November 8-9, 2019 and at Icebox November 23, 2019. Featuring local artists in each cast, FIVE is a multimedia performance that abstracts the art of Vogue Femme, a dance form originating from the African-American and Latinx LGBTQ+ community of 1970s Harlem. In the performance, five dancers represent the five elements of Vogue Femme—hands, catwalk, floor performance, spin dips, and duck-walking. As each dancer takes the floor, an M.C., an operatic vocalist, a black gospel choir, and five musicians improvise an interactive soundtrack, building to a carefully structured crescendo of sound and movement. Using custom made motion-tracking technology, created from a combination of creative coding and video game hardware, Newsome maps the movement patterns of dancers during the live performances and transforms the collected data into digital neoactionist drawings in real-time on a screen above the performance.

Since 2013, Rashaad Newsome has staged his annual King of Arms Art Ball, a live performance event that brings together renowned figures from the LGBTQ+ ballroom community with luminaries from the worlds of art, fashion, music, literary, and activism. For The Champion Ball at Icebox on November 16, 2019, Newsome will continue the tradition of a ball, a historic Harlem-originating competition featuring visual effects and performance. For this event, all categories will be based exclusively on the work and legacy of Black LQBTQ+ artists. The Champion Ball will create a platform to celebrate queer artists of color, explore contemporary social justice issues, and provide space for emerging artists to showcase their work. Judges for the event include David Hartt, Bill T. Jones, Erica-Kane-Lanvin, Dawn Ebony, and more to be announced.

BLACK MAGIC is generously supported by the William Penn Foundation with additional support from New Music USA and the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This presentation is part of the Live Arts’ Live Feed creative residency program, a laboratory for the development of newly commissioned work directed toward the Live Arts theater. The Live Feed program is supported in part by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Partners for New Performance.

BLACK MAGIC PROGRAM SCHEDULE

● September 12th – Exhibition Opening of To Be Real at PPAC, Philadelphia, PA
● September 19th – Unveiling of Rashaad Newsome’s Installation at Live Arts’ Ford Foundation Live Gallery, New York, NY
● October 17th – Rashaad Newsome in conversation with To Be Real Curator Jasmine Wahi at the Rhoden Arts Center/PAFA, Philadelphia, PA
● November 8-9th – Live performance of FIVE at New York Live Arts, New York, NY
● November 16th – The Champion Ball at Icebox, Philadelphia, PA
● November 23rd – Live performance of FIVE at Icebox, Philadelphia, PA

NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

Located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City, New York Live Arts produces and presents dance, music and theater performances in its 20,000 square-foot home, including a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square-foot studios. New York Live Arts offers an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people; it supports the continuing professional development of performing artists. New York Live Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; it is the company’s sole producer, providing support and the environment to originate innovative and challenging new work for the Company and New York’s creative community.

PHILADELPHIA PHOTO ARTS CENTER

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is an artist-centric institution rooted in Philadelphia that supports the study, production, and exhibition of contemporary photographic practices for a radically diverse audience.

ICEBOX PROJECT SPACE

The Icebox Project Space is an innovative and experimental contemporary exhibition space where visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, and performers are able to work, think, and collaborate within a uniquely large scale and open structure.

The Icebox boldly explores the notion and limitations of what defines an exhibition. It seeks to challenge and explore while fostering the creative process. The Icebox engages a broad National and International audience, and visitors should expect a level of engagement with programming, with the space itself, and with the community, it continues to build. Please join us in creating this expanding dialogue.

FUNDING

Support is provided by Con Edison, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Gladys Krieble Delmas, the Ford Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation,
Alice Lawrence Foundation, Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, Otter, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Scherman Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Public support for New York Live Arts is from Humanities New York, National Endowment for the Arts, 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 Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Press Contact:
April Hunt
sparkplugPR
april@sparkplug-pr.com

 

Westfield and Art Production Fund are pleased to announce the second installment of their ongoing public video art program. Starting April 25, 2018, renowned artist Rashaad Newsome’s ‘ICON’ will be displayed across all of the large-scale screens at Westfield World Trade Center NYC and Westfield Century City LA until May 2018. The video works will appear on both center’s state-of-the-art digital media networks, including Westfield World Trades 19 screens of varying size, with one measuring 4 stories tall and another 280 feet long and Century City’s two 100-foot large-format and high impact digital media screens. ‘ICON’ is an amalgamation of several ideas I’ve been working with over the past decade: the design formula of heraldry, ornament, architecture, vogue fem performance, hip hop culture and the resilience of black queer folk,” said the artist. “In some ways, they are a live action departure from my collage work.”

“The architecture of this period also has many connections to the body, I was thinking a lot about the ribbed vaults and Vitruvian principle found in a lot of these spaces,” explained Newsome. “In the video the dome is activated by queer black bodies performing as a metaphor, for the queering of these seemingly disparate elements. It is queer, not because queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people are visibly leading many contingents of the resistance against dehumanization, but because both the movement and the runway are populated by people who seek to queer, or destabilize the status quo and redistribute material forms of power.”

ELEMENTS OF VOGUE A CASE STUDY IN RADICAL PERFORMANCE

17 NOVEMBER 2017 – 6 MAY 2018

CURATED BY: SABEL GAVALDÓN & MANUEL SEGADE

ELEMENTS OF VOGUE considers the manifold ways in which minorities use their bodies to produce dissenting forms of beauty, subjectivity, and desire. These minor poetics are perceived as a threat to the normative world, and yet craved by mainstream culture—as exemplified by Madonna’s exploitation of the aesthetics of vogue. Looking into the debates, conflicts, and cultural struggles surrounding voguing as a case study in radical performance, Elements of Vogue tackles the intricate dynamics of assimilation and resistance. This is not an exhibition “about” voguing, but an essay that unfolds in multiple directions by looking at the queer body as an archive, in order to map out the different subjectivities, affective legacies, and embodied histories that come together in ballroom culture. Voguing, then, reveals itself as a case study to understand the emergence of pose, and its ability to articulate new social forms. The exhibition traces the networks of affiliation that shape the lives of those who cohabit in the space of the undercommons, and the strategies that enable them to dismantle the hegemonic categories of race, sex, and gender. Because a pose is sometimes enough to interrupt the process of normalisation, and the least of gestures can put history on hold.

Rashaad Newsome and writer Emmanuel Iduma in conversation on the occasion of Newsome’s most recent presentation, ‘Reclaiming Our Time’, on view at De Buck Gallery, as well as on the occasion of his new immersive performance piece RUNNING at the Park Avenue Armory.

This evening is hosted by De Buck Gallery on November 8th 2017 6-8pn. RSVP is essential via info@debuckgallery.com

Emmanuel Iduma is the author of The Sound of Things to Come (first published as Farad in Nigeria), and A Stranger’s Pose, a forthcoming travelogue (Cassava Republic Press, 2018). He co-edited Gambit: Newer African Writing. His essays on art and photography have been published widely, including in ArtNews, Guernica, Aperture, and Brooklyn Rail. He is editor of Saraba Magazine, and a faculty member of the MFA Art Writing program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. He was also the associate curator of the Nigeria Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

This January Rashaad Newsome will be participating in the CTM Berlin Festival with his electric performance FIVE.

CTM 2018 Turmoil explores the state of music and sound practice in the face of a confusing and critical present: What is the sound of turmoil? What are aesthetics of tumult? Which other sonic and musical responses could we conceive of to counter the current overload of agitation? As it inquires into these questions, this CTM edition also renews and strengthens a commitment to welcoming a wide range of artists and audiences with diverse backgrounds.

In “FIVE Berlin”, another multi-night showcase at HAU2 exploring the crossroads of movement and sound, multidisciplinary American artist Rashaad Newsome will investigate African, European, and North-American roots in the NYC underground dance tradition, vogueing. Accompanied by a makeshift orchestra comprised of NY-based Mc. Princess Mami Precious, baritone opera singer Justin Austin, and five local musicians, five dancers represent – and perform – each of the five individual elements of vogue femme. Using video game controllers and custom motion tracking software, Newsome maps and visualizes the movement patterns of dancers in real time. During the performance, drawing, music, dance, and technology collide and build into a beautifully structured crescendo of sound and movement. The project is kindly supported by the Capital Cultural Fund.

From 26 January – 4 February 2018, CTM 2018 returns to its constellation of exciting nightlife and cultural venues in Berlin, including HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berghain, YAAM, and Festsaal Kreuzberg.

For more info and tickets: http://www.ctm-festival.de/festival-2018/welcome/ctm-2017-1st-announcement/

DIGITAL BODIES

 

October 31 -December 3rd ‘ICON’ will be on view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, as part of theDigital Bodies exhibition program. Digital Bodies is a one-year program that features videos by artists who use and manipulate digital technologies—mainly computer-generated images, signs, and systems sourced from digital platforms—to reflect on how these technologies have impacted our everyday lives and changed the ways we relate to the world. Given our current state of constant digital expansion and acceleration, these works express the pervasiveness and indispensability of digital culture in shaping our daily interactions.

Tuesday, November 7 at 7:00pm and 9:00pm Rashaad Newsome will present his newest performance work at Park Avenue Armory titled RUNNING, an immersive performance evoking an abstract portrait of soul created through light and voice. RUNNING is centered on the musicology term for a singer’s improvised embellishment; a “vocal run” is a rapid series of ascending or descending musical notes sung in quick succession. Running is a vocal effect that spans a variety of musical genres from the 19th century to today. Newsome’s dynamic performance features three local New York City vocalists performing an original score composed by the artist, inspired by samples of vocal runs by Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, James Brown, and Kelly Price, among others. Click on the link below to buy tickets.

RUNNING