Times Square Arts presents the Fall Arts Program. As part of the Alliance’s commitment to showcasing the best of contemporary art, this season’s lineup includes works from Ant Hampton + Christophe Meierhans, luciana achugar, Laurie Berg, Full Circle Souljahs, Jodie Mack, Isabelita Virtual, and Chitra Ganesh, as well as partnerships with Danspace Project, The Rubin Museum of Art, The Kitchen, Advertising Week, the ADVERTISING Club of NY, Museum of Arts and Design, and AIA New York.
All events are free to the public.
September – November, 2018
The Thing: An Automatic Workshop in Everyday Disruption
Artists: Ant Hampton + Christophe Meierhans
The Thing is a workshop, an “automatic” performance, and a claim on your capacities. Twelve participants, alone in a conference room, open a suitcase of cues that guide them to imagine and commit to their own “thing” – a beautiful, disruptive, and inclusive action that they would not normally do but that is eminently doable, something that causes a shift inside the participants and the world around them.
Apply to participate at: http://bit.ly/The-Thing-TSq
September 20–23, 2018, 6pm–10pm
Danspace Project on Times Square
Artists: luciana achugar, Laurie Berg, Full Circle Souljahs
Presented with Danspace Project
Inspired by Times Square’s history as the home of Broadway musicals, vaudeville, dance halls, and vernacular dance forms that emerged throughout the 20th century, three new, site-specific dance works by esteemed New York City artists explore strategies for perception, amplification, and activism within the cacophonous landscape of Times Square.
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scape
6:00pm–6:45pm
Duffy Square
In scape, Berg overlays a landscape of information over live performance via 3-D glasses, exploring Times Square as not just a place of spectacle and traffic but of visual messaging.
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New Mass Dance7pm–8pm
Begins on the Broadway Plaza at 44th Street, concludes on Duffy SquareIn New Mass Dance, achugar creates a site-specific procession inspired by the New Dance Group, a 1930s modern dance collective that taught classes near Times Square promoting social change through movement.
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Behind the Groove – Times Square Edition8pm–10pmDuffy SquareFull Circle Souljahs' Behind the Groove –Times Square Edition is an homage to street and club dance trends from the 1970s to today, giving visibility to an underground dance community long associated with Times Square.
These new works will be presented back-to-back-to-back so that you can experience all three works on one evening or over the course of the weekend.
October 15 – November 2, 2018
Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition Finalists
Presented with AIA New York
Center for Architecture, Edgar A. Tafel Hall
536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY 10012
Presentations October 15, 2018 | 6-8 pm
Celebrate love and design with the first-ever exhibition of proposals for the annual competition that invites architecture firms to reimagine an iconic heart for New York City. Join us opening night for public presentations by invited firms on their processes and proposals, and for the announcement of the selected project for 2019.
MIDNIGHT MOMENT
September 1–30
Posthaste Perennial Pattern
Artist: Jodie Mack
Presented with the Museum of Arts and Design
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
Posthaste Perennial Pattern is a stroboscopic, stop-motion animation made with domestic fabrics and shot on 16mm film. Rapid-fire flowers bridge interior and exterior, design and nature, performing a synthetic floral dance that unleashes the kinetic energy of overlooked materials, objects, and forms.
October 1 – 31
Midnight Sunrise
Artist: Isabelita Virtual
Presented with Advertising Week and the ADVERTISING Club of NY
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
Midnight Sunrise is a study in contradictions: a digital work evoking a natural occurrence at an unnatural time, an ode to the connection of globally disparate locations, and a contemplative re-awakening in the frenetic center of the city that never sleeps.
November 1 – 30
The Scorpion Gesture
Artist: Chitra Ganesh
Presented with The Rubin Museum of Art and The Kitchen
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
The Scorpion Gesture is a rich and colorful phantasmagoria that plays in the intersections of myth and science fiction. Through a multicultural array of art-historical and vernacular visual references, the work explores circular patterns in time and the unlimited human potential for transformation and renewal symbolized by the mudra known as “the scorpion gesture.”
About Midnight Moment
Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to Midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million. For more information, visit http://www.timessquarenyc.org/midnightmoment
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided by ArtPlace America and ArtWorks. Visit TSq.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @TSqArts.
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Artists
luciana achugar (b. 1970, lives and works in New York City) is a two-time Bessie Award recipient and was additionally nominated for a 2016 Outstanding Production Bessie for her work An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love. Other accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council President’s Award, and the 2017 Alpert Award. In 2015, OTRO TEATRO was named “Best Touring Work” by Austin’s Critics Circle. She is currently a 2018–19 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist in Residency where she is developing her next work, Brujx, to be premiered in October 2018 at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. lachugar.org
Laurie Berg (b. 1980, works and lives in New York City) is a dancer, performer, collagist, and jewelry maker. Her projects have appeared at The Kitchen, WeisAcres, BAX, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Dixon Place, Beach Sessions Dance Series, Astor Alive! Festival, The Invisible Dog Art Center as part of The Joyce Theater’s Unleashed Series, The Whitney Museum, The Mattatuck Museum of Art (CT), Catch, Avant-Garde-Arama, WiM at the TBG Theater, Pieter PASD (CA), Roulette Intermedium, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Food for Thought, Danspace Project’s Food for Thought and DraftWork series, and at Danspace Project as part of PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness - Rhythm and Humor, FACADE/FASAD, 303 Gallery, ICMC at Stony Brook University, the TANK, draftwork, and AUNTS among others. Berg was a 2016–17 LMCC Workspace Artist-In-Residence, the 2016 recipient of the Tom Murrin Performance Award, was a 2013 New York Live Arts Studio Series Artist and a 2010 Movement Research Artist-In-Residence. She co-curated the 2017 Movement Research Spring Festival and is currently a member of the Movement Research Artist Advisory Council. She also co-produces AUNTS, an underground platform for dance and performance, with Liliana Dirks-Goodman. lauriemberg.com
Full Circle Souljahs: Gabriel “Kwikstep” Dionisio (b. 1968, lives and works in New York City), started dancing between the ages of six and seven, influenced by Soul Train and block parties in New York City. He has taught highly sought-after workshops in breaking techniques at the Broadway Dance Center, Red Bull Beat Riders, and Red Bull BC One. For over 20 years, he has taught workshops in New York public schools, libraries, and colleges across the country in an effort to make students aware of hip-hop lifestyle and fundamental movement, as well as the history and meaning behind hip-hop culture. Kwikstep has performed in PBS’s Peabody Award-winning Everybody Dance Now, the Great Performances twentieth-anniversary special, and Kurt Weill’s September Songs, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. He won a “Bessie” award for choreography in 1991 and founded the internationally known Full Circle in 1992. In 1996 Kwikstep and his wife, Rokafella, incorporated Full Circle as a non-profit hip-hop collective known as Full Circle Productions Inc; its members are known as Full Circle Souljahs. Today he is an international icon in breaking known for his smooth style, versatility, and signature head spins. Kwikstep was also an original founding member and principal dancer in companies such as Rhythm Technicians and GhettOriginal (creators of Jam on the Groove, nominated for a 1996 Drama Desk Award). He, along with his wife, wrote, choreographed, and directed Soular Powerd (2002), a hip-hop theater piece that ran to sold-out audiences for three weeks at the New Victory Theater. Together they wrote, choreographed, and directed a new hip-hop theater piece commissioned by the Kennedy Center called Outside the BachX. Most recently, Kwikstep was Associate Director and Choreographer for a hip-hop theater piece, Syncing Ink (2017), directed by Niegel Smith, which ran at the Flea Theater. fullcirclesouljahs.com
Full Circle Souljahs: Ana “Rokafella” Garcia (b. 1971, lives and works in New York City) has represented women in hip-hop dance professionally for two decades. She has taught workshops at NYU, Queens College, MIT, UMASS, and Howard University, as well as at neighborhood high schools and community centers. She is an artist in residence at the American Tap Dance Foundation, an Adjunct Professor at The New School, and a DANCE NYC Annual Symposium planning committee member. She co-founded Full Circle Prod Inc, NYC’s only non-profit break dance theater company, with her husband, veteran b-boy Kwikstep, generating theater pieces, original poetry, and New York City-based dance related events. She directed All the Ladies Say, a documentary highlighting the b-girl lifestyle, with support from the Ford Foundation, and performs music based on her experiences growing up in hip-hop’s Mecca. She is hired internationally to judge break dance competitions based on her mastery of the classic hip-hop dance style, and she teaches unique workshops aimed at evolving and preserving its technical aspects. She has worked within the New York City public school system exposing young students to the possibility of a career in dance. In May of 2017, she launched Shiroka, a t-shirt fashion line, with Japanese graffiti writer Shiro. She has been featured in pivotal rap music videos, tours, films, and commercials, and has choreographed for diverse festivals and concerts such as Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Momma’s Hip-Hop Kitchen, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. fullcirclesouljahs.com
Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) graduated from Brown University in with a BA in Comparative Literature and Art-Semiotics, and received her MFA from Columbia University. Ganesh’s work has been widely exhibited, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego La Jolla, Berkeley Art Museum, Bronx Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum, MoMA PS1, and Baltimore Museum. Ganesh’s work has been widely exhibited across Europe and South Asia, including at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, the Saatchi Museum, MoCA Shanghai, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Kunstverein Göttingen, Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, Princes of Wales Museum in Mumbai, Devi Art Foundation, Travancore Palace, and the Dhaka Art Summit at Shilpakala Academy. In 2013-14, she was Artist-in-Residence at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program, and in 2015-2016, she was a Robina Foundation Fellow for Arts and Human Rights at Yale University Law School. Ganesh is the recipient of numerous residencies and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her works are held in the public collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum, Whitney Museum, and Museum of Modern Art. chitraganesh.com
Ant Hampton (b. 1975, lives and works in Germany) is a British artist, writer, and performance maker. His work began in 1998 under the name of Rotozaza. Since 2007, his Autoteatro series tours widely and includes Etiquette, The Quiet Volume, Cue China, OK OK, This Is Not My Voice Speaking, The Extra People, and Crazy but True. Ant often collaborates with other artists, including Tim Etchells, Christophe Meierhans, Britt Hatzius, Glen Neath, Gert-Jan Stam, Ivana Müller, and Anna Rispoli. Ant Hampton’s performance works vary greatly in content and tone, yet always involve an explicit tension between, on the one hand, formal or structural elements that are fixed and unchangeable, and on the other, what has to be lived and negotiated in the moment. Since 1999, he has explored a strategy of guiding people through unrehearsed performance situations. This began with works in front of an audience where guest performers, different every time and often non-professional, would agree to follow instructions without any prior preparation. Later, this developed to include the audience themselves, in often small-scale and intimate formats such as cafes (Etiquette) and library reading-rooms (The Quiet Volume). More recently Ant’s practice has been marked by a step away from the idea of art as a safe or autonomous space towards works (Someone Else, The Thing) where a participating ‘audience’ take meaningful risks and experience real consequence. anthampton.com
Jodie Mack’s (b. 1983, London, UK; lives and works in Vermont) 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, Projections at the New York Film Festival, and the Viennale. She has presented solo programs at the 25FPS Festival, Anthology Film Archives, BFI London Film Festival, Harvard Film Archive, National Gallery of Art, REDCAT, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, and Wexner Center for the Arts among others. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Cinema Scope, The New York Times, and Senses of Cinema. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 2014 "25 New Faces to Watch" and one of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' YBCA 100 in 2015, she is an Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College. She is a 2017/18 Film Study Center Fellow and Roberta and David Logie Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. jodiemack.com
Isabel Martínez (b. 1976, lives and works in Barcelona, Spain) is the name behind Isabelita Virtual, an award-winning advertising creative director and photographer with over 15 years of experience at advertising agencies including SCPF, DDB Barcelona, and JWT NY. Isabel has been awarded by Cannes Lions, Clio Awards and the D&AD Festival. In 2011, Isabel launched @IsabelitaVirtual. Since then, she has collaborated as a creative director and image-maker with brands and cultural institutions such as Dior, Hermès, Kenzo, Sony, Louis Vuitton Foundation, and The Moscow Ballet. In 2014, New York Magazine’s “The Cut” included her on its list of 50 Social Media Voices to Follow. In 2015, 2016, and 2017, she was featured as one of the 100 Most Relevant Spanish Women of the Year. In 2018, the @IsabelitaVirtual Instagram Gallery was honored by the Webby Awards (hailed as “the internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times) in the category of Best Social Content in Art & Culture alongside powerhouse cultural institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and LACMA.
Christophe Meierhans (b. 1977, lives and works in Brussels, Belgium), was trained as a composer at the Amsterdam Conservatory and at the University of the Arts in Berlin, before he rapidly drifted towards performance and theatre. His work comprises performances, public art interventions, media installations, short films, publications, and music. It has been presented in many parts of Europe. Christophe is a founding member of the duo TAPE THAT and was a co-founder of the Brussels-based collective C&H. He is artist in residence at the Kaaitheatre in Brussels for the 2017-2022 period as well as associated artist to the Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil, Paris. Christophe Meierhans’ first productions, realized mostly with the C&H collective, were essentially dedicated to a deconstructing and reconstructing of the basic social mechanisms which turn a person into a spectator. (Bühnenstück, 2005, Konspiration, 2006) The collective then turned toward a practice of interventions in the public domain with “Postcards from the Future” (developed in different cities between 2007 and 2011 and culminated in 2010-2011 with a series of performances involving 9 different populations of the city of Brussels. Since 2013, Christophe develops a politically engaged and often participatory theatre, either on his own, as with the constitutional rewriting project Some use for your broken clay pots (touring since 2014 across Europe) or the anarchist cooking show Verein zur Aufhebung des Notwendigen – a hundred wars to world peace, or in collaboration with other artists such as Luigi Coppola, with Fondo Speculativo di Providenza, a monetary dispositive aiming at turning a festival audience into a political community, or Ant Hampton, with The Thing, an entirely automated 16 hour workshop-performance. contrepied.de
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Partners
Since it began in 2004, led by co-founders Matt Scheckner and Lance Pillersdorf, Advertising Week has evolved into the #1 business-to-business event in New York cutting across all industries and has expanded rapidly across the globe, replicating its signature formula blending thought leadership on the business of the business by day and show business by night. The Week now enjoys a global footprint with editions in London, Tokyo, Mexico City and Sydney and via AW360 has extended the thought leadership platform beyond the events onto smartphones and tablets the year-round. Advertising Week is produced globally by New York-based Stillwell Partners. advertisingweek.com
The ADVERTISING Club of New York is a non-profit organization for corporate and individual members in the advertising, media, marketing and ad-tech industries. We provide education and networking opportunities to enhance professional development, expose members to innovation and technology, and provide access to influencers/companies across the entire advertising ecosystem, from agencies to clients. In addition to our #ImPART ground-breaking diversity programs, we oversee The International ANDY awards. theadvertisingclub.org
AIA New York. Founded in 1857, AIA New York is the oldest and largest chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The Chapter's members include over 5,500 practicing architects, allied professionals, students, and public members interested in architecture and design. AIA New York is dedicated to three goals: design excellence, public outreach, and professional development. aiany.org
Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences. For over 40 years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 540 new works since its inception in 1994. danspaceproject.org
The Kitchen is one of New York City’s oldest nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater, to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists’ talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence. thekitchen.org
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) champions contemporary makers across creative fields and presents the work of artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill. Since the Museum’s founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum’s curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving twenty-first-century innovation, and fosters a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design. madmuseum.org/exhibition/surfacedepth
The Rubin Museum of Art is an arts and cultural hub in New York City’s vibrant Chelsea neighborhood that inspires visitors to make connections between contemporary life and the art and ideas of the Himalayas and neighboring regions, including India. With a diverse array of thought-provoking exhibitions and programs—including films, concerts, and on-stage conversations—the Rubin provides immersive experiences that encourage personal discoveries and spark new ways of seeing the world. Emphasizing cross-cultural connections, the Rubin is a space to contemplate ideas that extend across history and span human cultures. rubinmuseum.org
The STUDIO is an award-winning production and animation company based in New York. Founded 3 decades ago by Mary Nittolo, its mission is to bring strategic vision, imagination, artfulness, delight and clarity to the world of communication. In addition to being a trusted production partner to Fortune 100 brands, the STUDIO has partnered with major non-profits such as amfAR, Coalition Against Trafficking In Women, World Refugee Fund, CFDA, and ADCOLOR. They have produced graphics for installations for Tribeca Film Institute and web videos for The Metropolitan Museum as well as for The Rubin Museum of Art’s collaboration with Chitra Ganesh. Other projects include animated collaborations with award-winning documentary director Emily Kassie and an animated short, “Take Me There”, with Brooklyn artist Philomena Marano. studionyc.com
Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) is a trade association comprised of major advertisers, retailers, real estate firms, media companies and other businesses involved in the outdoor sign industry in Times Square, along with organizations representing Broadway and the community. Members of TSAC include: ABC Regional Sports & Entertainment Sales, Clear Channel Spectacolor, Daktronics, D3 LED, Digital Domination, Hines Management, Jamestown One Times Square, Lamar Advertising Company, Landmark Sign & Electric, Metro Media Technologies, Newmark Knight Frank, North Shore Neon, P.R.omotion!, Sherwood Outdoor, SL Green, Times Square Alliance, The WOW Factor and Thomson Reuters. www.timessquareadcoalition.org. Follow TSAC on twitter at @TSACNYC.
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Media Contacts:
For Times Square Arts:
TJ Witham
212.452.5234 | TJWitham@TimesSquareNYC.org
Marisa Wayne
212.843.9216 | MWayne@Rubenstein.com
For TSAC:
Justine DiGiglio
212.205.6632 │Justine@NicholasLence.com