On View: October 16-November 22
The Kitchen at Westbeth (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft)
Time:
Gallery hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm (Free)
Using the techniques and technologies associated with photography, cinema, and the stage, Rawls’ [siccer] challenges divisions between the living, the captured, the rehearsed, and the performed. Experimenting with stop-motion animation, the work features a compilation of still images that have been stitched together to produce moving images depicting a cast of Black dancers in various states of movement. These stop-motion videos are then projected onto chroma green frames suspended from the ceiling, reminiscent of the green screens commonly associated with film production. At once caught, distilled, fragmented, and unfinished, gestures glitch in and out of focus across Rawls’ cinematic scaffolding, which both literally and metaphorically speaks to the complex visibility of Blackness in contemporary society.
The project’s title is inspired by the Latin adverb “[sic],” used to indicate incorrect spelling within a quotation, and often employed when Black vernacular speech is cited within a standard English text. Through this titular reference, [siccer] illuminates the ways in which Black performance evades white and Western forms of “correction” and classification, suggesting instead a way of being that is both iterative and endlessly becoming, much like the project itself. Within the work, as language and gestures mutate, so too does meaning, in the process revealing meaning itself as yet another construction—as that which both becomes and comes undone. In an image-saturated world wherein our technologies and identities are inextricably intertwined, [siccer] invites audiences to consider the verbal and physical play that marks how Black performance actively eludes capture and speculates on the potential for collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.
Co-presented by Performance Space New York and L’Alliance New York’s Crossing The Line Festival, the live performances of [siccer] accompany the artist’s exhibition at The Kitchen, a book published by Wendy’s Subway, and an album published by the artist.
Concept, Choreography, and Direction: Will Rawls
Performance: Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Sound Design and Vocals: Holland Andrews and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Director of Photography, Video Editor, and FX: Lauryn Siegel
Technical Director: David Szlasa
Lighting and Scenic Designer: Maggie Heath
Costume Designer: Saša Kovačević, Dana Doughty
Audio Designer: Jimmy Garver
Dramaturg: Kemi Adeyemi
Studio Rawls Studio Director: Margaret Knowles
[siccer] Producer: Benedict Nguyễn
Will Rawls: [siccer] is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator, and Angelique Rosales Salgado, Assistant Curator.
BIO
Will Rawls is an artist and choreographer whose multidisciplinary practice explores the ambiguities of Blackness—its visibility and erasure, its performance and abstraction—to reframe the relationship between language and the body. In 2016, he co-curated Lost and Found, a six-week program of performances and artist projects at Danspace Project focused on the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS on dancers, women, and people of color. Based in Los Angeles, he currently teaches in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles and lectures widely in academic and community contexts. In addition, his work has been exhibited across the U.S., including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.
The Kitchen Funding Support and Credits
The Kitchen’s programs are made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, The Kitchen Global Council, Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council, as well as through generous support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and in part by public funds from the Manhattan Borough President, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The Kitchen acknowledges the generous support provided by the Collaborative Arts Network New York (CANNY). As a coalition of small to mid-sized multidisciplinary arts organizations, CANNY is committed to strengthening the infrastructure of arts nonprofits throughout New York.
[siccer] Funding Credits
[siccer] was originally commissioned by The Kitchen in partnership with co-commissioners, The Momentary, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, On the Boards, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. [siccer] was made possible, in part, by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is a Creative Capital Project. [siccer] is also a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). [siccer] also received substantial developmental support from THINKLARGE.US, a family run nonprofit created by Don Quinn Kelley and Sandra L. Burton to aid in the creation of new work. [siccer] is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature through the Media Arts Assistance Fund a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm.
[siccer] was developed and supported, in part, by residencies at The Momentary and Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, with additional support by On the Boards and The Kitchen; a creative residency at Petronio Residency Center, a program of the Stephen Petronio Company; with financial, administrative and residency support from Dance in Process at Gibney with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Movement Research; the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles and The Hammer Museum Residency; the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University; with production support and residency provided by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Williams College and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
The forthcoming [siccer] album was made possible with support from the Barbara Streisand Center for the Study of Women at UCLA.
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