
Kunstverein NY is pleased to present YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE AN HOUR AGO, a monthly series guest-curated by performance artists, filmmakers, and writers, presented at White Slab Palace.
To start-off the series on February 28, performance artist Arturo Vidich assumes the role of curator for an evening with Bettina Atala, Alejandro Crawford, and Yve Laris Cohen. This inaugural evening intends to reconstitute conventional narrative movements found in conversation, film, performance, poetry, and television.
For YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE AN HOUR AGO, Bettina Atala will screen a version of Season 1 Episode 2 (2007, 59 min.), a projection presentation which exists as part film, part theater, and part reality television. Considering the boundaries between reality and fiction, the presentation examines its own production process step by step, as it is being created in front of the audience. Atala speaks, tells anecdotes, reveals unnoticed details, and if needed, fast-forwards through the boring moments.
Alejandro Crawford will unfold [top secret] (2010), a work that uses mass-media sound and video bites as musical notes, so that one might play them like one plays the piano.
Yve Laris Cohen will present Jōb (2010). Jōb is a pretty vehicle. Is adapting. Is pretty and a means to. Is telling.
About the artists...
Bettina Atala was born in a small town in France. She became part of the French performance group Grand Magasin in 2000. As a trio, Grand Magasin realized a series of plays that include Do you see what I see? 0 task(s) out of 1 have been executed successfully, 5th
international forum of corporate cinema and The resurfacing problem. Previous versions of Season 1 episode 2 were shown at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; invited by the Cahiers du Cinéma, at the Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse; the Mac/Val in Vitry-sur-Seine; the Arsenic in Lausanne; and the Festival du Film de Femmes, Créteil. The English version has been performed at the Stukteater, Belgium; and the FIAF, New York.
Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford was born in Murcia, Spain. He is the author of Morpheu (BlazeVOX 2009), editor of zenSLUM, and co-editor of Le Dodo. He has shown at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, New York; and in Athens,
Georgia. Crawford is a former Fulbright scholar to Portugal,
and a current graduate student in the Interactive Telecommunications
Program at NYU Tisch.
Yve Laris Cohen makes things that happen in time, and that usually involve bodies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Performance Studies and Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a current MFA candidate in Visual Arts at Columbia University. Cohen has previously shown at The Tank; Movement Research at the Judson Church; Dixon Place; and DraftWork at St. Mark’s Church, all in New York.
About the curator…
Arturo Vidich is an inter-media artist from New York City. His performance work has been shown at The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, The Judson Theatre, The Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place, Chashama, AUNTS, and BRIC. He has also shown in Belgium, The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, and New Zealand. Vidich co-directs Culture Push, and within it, a collaborative residency called Genesis Project for artists who work with or through the body and other media. Vidich has collaborated and performed with Deborah Hay, Yvonne Meier, Daria Faïn, Allison Farrow, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Hari Krishnan, Eiko & Koma, Lower Lights Collective, Clarinda Mac Low, Christopher Williams and Nami Yamamoto, and with Aki Sasamoto since 2001, as well as assisted Douglas Repetto and Jeffrey Schiff. His writing has been published in Movement Research Performance Journal. Vidich is currently a graduate student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU Tisch School.
*Subsequent YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE AN HOUR AGO evenings will be held from 6-8pm on the last Sunday of each month.
Upcoming: The Marianne Vitale Experience, March 28 - a series of film and performance curated by Marianne Vitale; Better Days, April, 2010 - an artist's store curated by Aurora Pellizzi; and an interview between Wafaa Bilal and Ashley Rawlings, also scheduled for April, 2010.

February 14 – March 21, 2010
Opening Sunday, February 14, 3-6 pm
Kunstverein NY @ Silvershed, 119W 25th Street, PH, New York 10001, NY
Open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 12-6pm, and by appointment.
Special Events:
Sunday, February 14, 3-5pm: Flying Elisha, on Silvershed’s terrace rooftop.
Children and Valentiners welcome. Kites and warm drinks provided.
Friday, March 19th, 6:30pm: a reading by Larissa Harris and Nate Harrison.
Kunstverein NY is pleased to present the first New York joint exhibition of Carla Herrera-Prats and Tyler Rowland, an investigation into the nature of collaboration and communication. I overheard two people… activates the work and relationship between Alexander Graham Bell, well known as the inventor of the telephone, and his assistant Thomas Watson, who both resided in the Boston area.
After working together for two years, Bell and Watson filed the first telephone patent on February 14, 1876 amid much controversy, hours before another inventor, Elisha Gray, filed claim for a similar device. One month later, Bell successfully placed the first telephone call to his assistant with the invitation, “Mr. Watson—come here…I want you.”
Both Carla Herrera-Prats and Tyler Rowland met in 2001 while attending CalArts. They started working together in 2006 when Herrera-Prats relocated to Boston to teach at the Boston Museum School, and Rowland was teaching at Harvard University in Cambridge.
I overheard two people … transfers the aural experience of the telephone into a variety of sensorial media, including a participatory kite flying performance on February 14th to open the exhibition, and in homage to Elisha Gray, or history’s “second best”; and On March 18th, the artists’ partners will commemorate Bell and Watson’s relationship with a reading of the first telephone transcript between the inventors.
Carla Herrera-Prats was born in Mexico City. She received her MFA from CalArts and participated in the Whitney ISP in New York City. She is currently part of the collaborative CAMEL. Her recent exhibitions include El Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City; The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore; Art in General, and Artists Space, New York. She has also shown in Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, and Puerto Rico. She has been awarded grants from CalArts, the Van Lier Foundation, the Jumex Collection, and the LEF Foundation. She currently teaches at Cooper Union.
Tyler Rowland was born in Reno, NV and raised in Phoenix, AZ. He holds an MFA from CalArts and has shown at Murray Guy Gallery, New York City; GASP, Boston; More Fools in Town, Turin; LACE, and Eungie Joo’s Six Months, LA. He currently teaches at Vassar College.
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