Name: Second Sundays: September 2024
Start: 2024-09-08
End: 2024-09-08
Location: Pioneer Works

Let Pioneer Works come to you. Subscribe to our newsletter.

PW Closure 10/19

Pioneer Works is closed to the public today, October 19, for a Friends of Firefighters event. 

Bottom [Test]

Own the Archive Sale

This week only, we’re heavily discounting our #PWPress publications to make way for new projects. Find artist-created books for $5, $10, & $15—sales raised from the PW Store are reinvested into funding new, ambitious projects by emerging and underrepresented artists and writers.

Gift Guide

From November 28 through December 14, take 20% off products in the Gift Guide with code: ULTRAFESTIVE. 

Ragas 

Pioneer Works will be closed for normal gallery hours this October 14 & 15 for Ragas Live Festival 2023, learn more 

June closing

Please note, Pioneer Works will be closed for daily admissions until July 7th. We 

open for ticketed programs, view our calendar 

Newsletter Signup

Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test Test 

Bottom

Celebrate 10 years of Pioneer Works by shopping the PW Press Archive Sale! Through October 31, take 10% off Pioneer Works Press items with code 

Flash Flood Closures

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.

April PW Store Banner

Shop the PW Store Spring Sale!

 for the entire month of April and receive an automatic 20% off books, records, apparel, and more. Members save 35%—learn more about membership 

Aura Closure 5/27

Please note:

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

CEO Announcement

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. 

PW Closed 11/11

We're closed all day Friday, November 11 for our annual Village Fête Benefit. To learn more about the After Party and get tickets, visit 

[TEST] Segmented Signup Form 

Let Pioneer Works come to you                                    

Closure Announcement [TOP]

We’re making Pioneer Works accessible to all! While our building is temporarily closed until this September, we are continuing to host offsite programming. See upcoming programs 

PW Newsletter

[Test] [Dev] Modal Detailed Form

[TEST] Top Preview 

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Top Banner [Broadcast]

 takes place at PW to celebrate this digital experiment and the artists, scientists, musicians, writers, and readers who’ve made it possible. RSVP 

Aura Closure 6/3

 will close early at 5pm on Saturday, June 3. Learn more and plan your visit 

[Test] [Dev] Top Text

Test Header

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 

Since 2013, Pioneer Works has hosted Second Sundays, a free monthly open house. Highlighting our programs, artists in residence, and Red Hook community members, Second Sundays features open studios, exhibitions, workshops, live music, and food across all three floors and in our garden. Join us on September 8th for our reopening weekend, following an exciting period of construction and improvements to our home. It’s an all day affair with previews from a new Met Opera commission, an exhibition tour led by artist Alejandro García Contreras, live music and more! As always, Second Sundays are free and open to all. 

Drinks available at the Pioneer Works Bar.

Pioneer Works 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 the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

September’s Second Sunday is made possible by Nissan.

Nissan

ps_metopera_08.jpg

Metropolitan Opera

dissects the ways that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. The artist contemplates how this alteration manifests in the physical body, especially when presented with, and situated in, the sonic rhythms that reverberate across these sites of violence. Comprising a new series of work co-commissioned with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the exhibition marks LeSeur’s first institutional solo presentation in New York.

 centers on a titular video inspired by Stone Mountain in Georgia—a public park distinguished by a three-acre-wide carving that depicts Confederate leaders on horseback, begun in 1923 and completed in 1972. In spite of this, the park remains the state’s most popular attraction, frequented by local residents and tourists alike for its recreational offerings. LeSeur spent the majority of her adolescence in Atlanta and recalls many family gatherings at Stone Mountain. She began researching the site’s history after revisiting it as an adult in 2017 and started to consider its corporeal impact, which eventually gave way to this series.

A poetic translation of the body in collapse, the video stitches together slow-motion captures of the artist falling, unabated and repeatedly, on the mountain’s peak. The work borrows its title from an abridged autobiography written by Alice Coltrane, in which the avant-garde composer recounts her journey through physical and mental tests continuously self-imposed in the pursuit of spiritual transcendence. Similarly, LeSeur pushes herself to extreme physical limits within her own performance practice, as a way of confronting, and subsequently transcending historical acts of violence as a queer Black person. This process of perseverance and self-discovery is captured within the spoken word poetry written and narrated by LeSeur, which provides the basis for the film’s score.

In the artist’s own words: “My work aims for a more intentional and sensitive connection to, participation with, and activation of, sites of violence, sparking continuous dialogue around the impact these sites have had on Black communities. This work is communal, historical, social, political, and environmental. It is, for me, health care. At the core of this project, I introduce new forms of healing and reconciliation within the midst of trauma and violence, through repeated gestures and the transformation of sound into a physical presence. My practice continuously considers ways in which art can transform violence into something beyond. 

transforms memories of violence, remnants of violence, and even physical embodiments of violence into transcendences.”

Accompanying the video installation are other multi-medium pieces created by the artist through her experiential remembrance of recent encounters with Stone Mountain, including a painting completed during LeSeur's 2023 residency at Pioneer Works. While visiting the monument, LeSeur observed her bodily reactions—for instance, a nervous flick of her hand—and took note of the way that she breathed as she walked around the site. These movements, emotions and feelings are translated into mark-marking gestures on paintings and drawings and provided a rhythmic baseline for how LeSeur blew into glass during the creation of the sculptural works. In doing so, LeSeur captures natural responses, otherwise imperceptible to others, into tangible records that surpass the limits of time and place.

 (b. 1989 in Bronx, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses a range of media including video, installation, photography, painting, and performance. Her body of work, a celebration of Blackness, queerness, and femininity, seeks to dismantle systems of power and achieve transcendence and liberation through perseverance. Through the insertion of her body and voice into her work, LeSeur provides her audience with an opportunity to contemplate themes such as identity, family, Black grief and joy, the experience of invisibility, and what it means to take up space as a queer Black woman—a rejection of the stereotypes which attempt to push these identities to the margins. The artist has received several notable awards including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024), Leslie-Lohman Museum Artists Fellowship (2019), the Time-Based Medium Prize as well as the Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 (2018). LeSeur has appeared in conversation with Marilyn Minter at the Brooklyn Museum, presented by the Tory Burch Foundation, and has lectured at The New School, NY, NY and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, among others. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at MFA Boston, Boston, MA; Swivel Gallery, NY, NY; The Shed, New York, NY; Marlborough, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Assembly Room, New York, NY; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Arnika Dawkins, Atlanta, GA; and others. Residencies include Pioneer Works, iLab at The University of the Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, ArcAthens, NARS Foundation, Marble House Project, and MASS MoCA.

Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal is co-commissioned by Pioneer Works and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and curated by Vivian Chui. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by the Tulsa Artist 

 and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Monument Eternal

DUE TO OCCASIONAL PROGRAMMING, THIS EXHIBITION WILL BE CLOSED ON THE FOLLOWING DATE

Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal

¿Quién no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

Who hasn't tried to turn a stone into a memory?

marks the first institutional solo exhibition by 

. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, the artist is best known for elaborate sculptures that cross-pollinate interests that range widely, from popular culture and eroticism, to global art history and the occult. Inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization, the exhibition blends Contreras’s ceramic practice with earlier interests in concrete pouring, photography, and experimental video.

Within the exhibition, various components appear on mounds of sand, like remnants of a forgotten tomb. Concrete pillars and ornamental sculptures, cast on site during Contreras’ Summer 2024 residency at Pioneer Works, surround a porcelain skeleton that bears witness to the metaphorical passage of time. Various plants, both dead and alive, allude to a desolate desert landscape are also placed onto the sand—a material that not only provides the basis for ceramics but, more importantly, represents the final transformation from flesh to dust that is central to countless religious philosophies.

Adjacent to these sculptures and objects is a concrete wall frame, embedded with painted, ceramic eyes. Conceived as a portal into the artist’s personal memories, it becomes a container for a procession of landscape images, each shot in the various locales that he has visited in recent years. A video installation, captured by a cell phone camera and projected vertically, serves as a meditation on the mobile omnipresence that dominates how contemporary life is recorded and broadcast. By situating his own lived experiences within the sculptural environment, Contreras considers what defines personhood, from objects to memories and contemplates their meaning within the context of life and death.

In conceiving these works, Contrerast studied a wide range of referential sources including relics and beliefs from ancient pagan civilizations; Jungian archetypes; the writings of Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Joseph Campbell; and television series such as Thundercats and Sailor Moon. Also of particular significance are two architectural sites: Le Palais Idéal in Hauterives, France, which was intended to become a mausoleum for a postal worker who toiled fastidiously for over three decades to create an eventual burial site for himself and the Temple of the Inscriptions in Chiapas, Mexico, a Mayan burial site that Contreras recalls as an important representation of his childhood.

¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

 explores the dichotomy between the ephemerality of human beings and the material objects that they leave behind. Contreras asks, “What defines us as individuals? Is it the things created and accumulated in life, or is it the memories of the soul? Do we keep anything with us in our transition to death?”

 is curated by Gabriel Florenz. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

 (b. 1982 in Tapachula Chiapas, Mexico) characterizes his creative work by experimentation and dialogue between different materials and technical resources, making his work a mix between various media such as painting, sculpture, photography, video and graphics. The themes of his work are linked to his personality and through his artistic projects, he explores topics and themes inspired by contemporary popular culture, Mexican folklore, myth, occultism and religion. He holds a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Mexico City, Mexico. His work was the winning acquisition of the 2006 Artfest WTC and he is a two-time recipient of the FONCA / Young Creators Scholarship. Contreras has held solo exhibitions at Proyecto NASAL, Gamma Galleria, House of Gaga, Travesia Cuatro, Saenger Galeria and Eito Eiko, among others. He has been included in art fairs including NADA, New York and Miami with Swivel Gallery and ArtOsaka with Eito Eiko. Contreras recently completed a residency in Paris, through Art Explora in collaboration with Cité internationale des arts.

Alejandro García Contreras: ¿Quién no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

 (IE) is a free-jazz quintet with an experimental punk mentality, that consists of poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (often known as Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes.

It is a community band playing deeply improvised, rhythm music full of love and social commitment. IE came together spontaneously, organically, in April of 2015 at “Musicians Against Police Brutality,” a day of protest sound and discussion in Brooklyn. All were artists and activists of varying degrees: Philadelphia-based Ayewa and Neuringer, and D.C.-based Stewart as veterans of the Mid-Atlantic noise-hardcore-experimental scene, while Holmes and Navarro as recent New England Conservatory grads. Each of the studio albums that followed — 2020’s Who Sent You? and 2021’s Open The Gates — developed this legend further.

In 2023, IE signed to the fabled Impulse! Records and released its most accomplished work to date, Protect Your Light, on September 8, 2023, primarily recorded at New Jersey’s historic Van Gelder Studios. It features eight examples of how IE’s collaborative composition strategies and Ayewa’s in-communion verses result in some of the most potent music being made in the third decade of the 21st century, music with communal light and love at its heart. Get to that love on time — don’t force history to guide you.

Irreversible Entanglements is an inaugural Working Artist Fellow. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Irreversible Entanglements

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores communication practices and poetics across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants - Experiments with Google; and

a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). Rasheed is the author of five artists' books: 

An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations

 (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication 

 (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). She is on faculty at the Yale School of Art, MFA Sculpture Department, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consulting business that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions in designing expansive and liberatory learning experiences.

Rasheed is an inaugural Working Artist Fellows. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Kameelah Janan Rasheed

Carrie Sijia Wang is an artist and educator whose work investigates the humanization of machines and the mechanization of humans. Merging art, technology, and research, she creates participatory experiences, videos, and performances that integrate algorithmic interactions and artificial intelligence. Wang is a 2023 More Art fellow, a Year 8 member of NEW INC, and a 2020 Mozilla Creative Media Award recipient. She has shown and presented work with venues including Rhizome, New Museum, Onassis Foundation, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, ACM SIGGRAPH, and A.I.R.Gallery. Her work has been featured in publications such as the Business Insider, Slate, and Computerworld. Wang currently teaches at New York University. Additionally, she leads a series of hands-on workshops designed for underserved youth to explore AI and its social implications.

Wang is an inaugural Working Artist Fellow. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Carrie Wang

Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne are artists whose work examines the shifts in behaviors, desires, language and economics catalyzed by computational systems and the internet. In their collaborations they have simulated international organizations, run a real dating service in NYC, and read the entire Enron email archive. Recent works include Synthetic Messenger commissioned by STRP Festival, The New York Apartment commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Good Life commissioned by Rhizome. They are 2023 Creative Capital awardees and their work has been widely discussed in the media, in outlets such as Art Forum, The New Yorker, Marie Claire, The Ellen Show, Art in America, The World Almanac, Slovenian Public Radio and India Today. In 2015, the UN filed a complaint with the US Department of State about their work.

Brain and Lavigne are inaugural Working Artist Fellows. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne

Erin Johnson (b. 1985, US) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in New York. Her immersive installations and short films explore notions of collectivity, dissent, and queer identity. In her shape-shifting videos, constellations of artists, biologists, and film extras address the imbrication of science and nationalism. Johnson received an MFA and Certificate in New Media from UC Berkeley in 2013, attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2019, and recently completed residencies at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL), Lower Manhattan Community Council (LMCC), Hidrante (San Juan, PR), and Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY). Her work has been exhibited or screened at BIENALSUR 2023 (Buenos Aires), MOCA Toronto (Toronto), Munchmuseet (Oslo), Sanatorium (Istanbul), Times Square Arts (New York), deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Boston), Billytown (The Hague), and REDCAT (LA).

Johnson is an inaugural Working Artist Fellows. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Erin Johnson

vanessa german is a self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography. Her practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity, tenderness and connection as vital forces of reckoning, redemption and transformation.

german’s public art works include, THE MUSEUM OF EMANCIPATORY OBJECTS, a co-created, experientially devised museum of objects and performance at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, in 2022, and THE SPIRIT HOUSE for Hazelwood Green, a community co-created structure, In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2022, and OF THEE WE SING, part of Monument Lab and Beyond Granite’s inaugural art exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

vanessa german

Alejandro García Contreras (b. 1982 in Tapachula Chiapas, Mexico) characterizes his creative work by experimentation and dialogue between different materials and technical resources, making his work a mix between various media such as painting, sculpture, photography, video and graphics. The themes of his work are linked to his personality, and through his artistic projects, he explores topics and themes inspired by contemporary popular culture, Mexican folklore, myth, occultism and religion. He holds a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Mexico City, Mexico. His work was the winning acquisition of the 2006 Artfest WTC, and he is a two-time recipient of the FONCA / Young Creators Scholarship. Contreras has held solo exhibitions at Proyecto NASAL, Gamma Galleria, House of Gaga, Travesia Cuatro, Saenger Galeria, and Eito Eiko, among others. He has been included in art fairs such as NADA, New York and Miami with Swivel Gallery, and ArtOsaka with Eito Eiko. The artist has also recently completed a residency in Paris, through Art Explora in collaboration with Cité internationale des arts.

Alejandro García Contreras

Get to know our current artists-in-residence in their work through Open Studios.

Led by animator and Pioneer Works tech arts alum Umber Majeed, participants will explore how to envision and create futuristic -(automobile)-machines through drawing exercise and 3D modeling. Who is your design aimed towards? Can this machine transport through time/space? How can your design be translated in digital space? We will be exploring these ideas through sci-fi inspired prompts, drawing ideas on paper before transferring concepts onto accessible technology programs like Blox 3D Junior.   

 
With generous support from Nissan.

(Auto)Mobile Medias

As we gear up for our upcoming Climate Futures event, revisit a discussion from our Scientific Controversies series on the marvels of swarm intelligence. Join our Director of Sciences, Janna Levin, and her esteemed guests, Prof. Simon Garnier and Dr. Corrie Moreau, as they delve into the question: Are we, like ants and slime molds, examples of swarm intelligence that has evolved an illusion of a coherent self? 
Engage with us as we explore the hidden threads connecting nature, technology, and our own existence. Watch the full conversation and discover more on our Pioneer Works YouTube channel.

Swarm Intelligence

12pm - 5 pm
Location: North Hall
Grab a scavenger hunt sheet from the North Hall and enjoy an in depth exploration of Pioneer Works latest exhibitions Alejandro García Contreras’: ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? and Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal. Once you’ve completed the hunt, return your sheet and claim your prize!

Learn and Engage: Scavenger Hunt

Our students have been working hard embracing the world of STEAM with our Ideas in Animation and Documentary Film Program. Observe the digital and cinematic masterpieces from our student animators and filmmakers throughout the school year and summer. Our school partners include PAVE Academy, PS 15, PS 676, Joseph Miccio Community Center and Red Hook Initiative. Special shoutout to our fabulous summer educators Robin Pak, Emma Mora, Victorious De Costa and Mónica Torres!

Pioneer Works Youth Program Gallery with Artsee

Join composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist George Brant in conversation around the ethics of drone warfare, the gamification of remote piloting, and the psychological toll of 21st-century warfare, as depicted in their opera, Grounded. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo portrays Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, where she operates a Reaper drone halfway around the world. The opera explores the mental health challenges that follow combat experience and the morality of death rained down by remote control. D'Angelo and Tesori will perform excerpts from the opera, and Tesori and Brant will discuss how Brant's 2014 play became a Met-commissioned opera.  

Metropolitan Opera Presents: Grounded

New York Mycological Society takes over the science studios to demonstrate mycology basics with hands-on activities, including origami and drawing, for all ages and skill levels. Origami will take place from 1-3pm, led by the local artist and origami master Theresa Hong. Drawing will take place 3-5pm, led by Lindsay Robbins, artist and founder of the NYC Nature Drawing Club.

Exploring the World of Fungi and Mycology with New York Mycological Society 

Join the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York in the PW garden for solar viewing. Telescopes will be provided between 1:00 and 4:00 pm. *Weather permitting*

Solargazing with the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York

Explore the fascinating ecology in the garden and around the Pioneer Works building, led by leaders from the New York Mycological Society. In the event of inclement weather, we will move indoors for a special mycology lecture in the science studios on the third floor. Handheld lenses will be provided. Beginners and all ages welcome.

Eco-Exploration Walk with New York Mycological Society 

Join artist Alejandro García Contreras for a walkthrough of ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?—an exhibition inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, the artist is best known for elaborate sculptures that cross pollinate his myriad interests in contemporary popular culture, eroticism, global art history, and the occult.

Gallery Dialogue with Alejandro García Contreras

This summer, students explored the issue of banned books as Red Hook serves as the film's thematic anchor by featuring locations in and voices from the community. Students used Jason Reynolds' graphic novel, A Long Way Down, as a jumping off point into the issue of banned books and to imagine what a world would be like if we did not have the important lessons it provides. This documentary film program was made possible by Pioneer Work’s partnership with Red Hook Initiative, The Learn & Engage team, the Broadcast department and our incredible educators Mónica Torres and Victorious De Costa.

RHI FREEDOM SCHOOLS FILM SCREENING 

Learn more about the practices of our artists-in-residence during open studio hours. 


Open Studios

Visit our Music Residency Studio in the Pioneer Works Garden to inquire about the application process and residency experience with Justin Frye (Director of Music) & Christina Daniels (Advisor of Residencies and Classes).

2025 Residency Open Call Q&A in Music Residency Studio (Garden)

Joe Boyd joins PW Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss the legendary producer’s long-awaited new book, The Roots of Rhythm Remain. 

PW BROADCAST RADIO HOUR : JOE BOYD IN CONVERSATION WITH JOSHUA JELLY- SCHAPIRO

‘Apollonian Circles’ is a multi-disciplinary musical concert and art installation experience that combines  elements of electronic music, jazz, theater, and performance art. Each performance hinges on audience  participation and improvisation guiding an ever-changing narrative of artistic expression – we are all  participants reflecting one another’s experience as if in a hall of mirrors.

This project explores the very definition of what audiences have come to expect from a traditional concert.  From the moment they arrive, attendees are transported to a mysterious dream-like space where the  unexpected can happen. In the literal center of the room is a large table (decorated with other-worldly  artifacts and ornaments) that is both stage and set piece for the performers and audience to gather.
<br><br>
Apollonian Circles is a constantly evolving musical live work, where concert formats and the relationship  between music, musicians and audiences are explored and challenged. Apollonian Circles grow out of a  constant longing for integration. We bring together artists, performers and ultimately audiences in a space  that feels wide open – yet artistically distinct and defined.
<br><br>
The music is composed and arranged by the Danish multi-instrumentalist Mikkel Hess and performed by his  band (“Hess Is More”) comprised of musicians from Copenhagen and New York and featuring notable  guests such as acclaimed singer Nomi Ruiz. The scenography is developed by Danish theater luminaries  Christian Friedländer and Dicki Lakha in collaboration with award winning director Tue Beiring and  costumes by fashion design superstar Henrik Vibsko.