Visual Art
We of Me: Molly Surno
- 6PM
Co-produced by BAM and Recess
Recess realizes process-based projects in a public setting.
BAM and Recess are pleased to present a new performance piece by Brooklyn-based artist Molly Surno, featuring twenty men performing a choreographed soundscape, using hand-crafted musical hair brushes. The performers, arranged in the center of BAM’s Lepercq Space, will prepare their hair with the amplified brushes. Surno and Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) will then mix the sound in real time as it is generated. These distortions will result in a meditative, repetitive, and layered composition.
The piece takes its title We of Me from Carson McCullers’ novel Member of the Wedding, in which the protagonist describes her desire to unify and fantasy to belong. In Surno’s piece, the performers’ bodies will double, refract and merge as each enacts his part and relinquishes his subjectivity to the larger composition. Audio cues from the brushes, coupled with the intimate, repetitive grooming gestures, will tie each performer to the other, while the dissonance of the sound will create a rupture between the illusion of unified bodies and the reality of isolation. Recalling La Monte Young’s Dream House, the Theatre of Eternal Music, and Edward Van Tassel’s Integratron, Surno’s composition will activate and complicate the physical and emotional effects of sound on the individual and the collective body.
About Recess
Recess supports artists working in a public setting to define and advance the possibilities of contemporary art making and viewing. Session, Recess’s signature program, supports the creation of new work by giving artists financial and technical support, mentorship, and sustained use its storefront platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition space. In addition to Session, Recess hosts an online residency, a critical writing program, events and performances, and engages in meaningful partnerships with likeminded institutions.
About Molly Surno
Molly Surno (b. Los Angeles) is a Brooklyn-based installation artist who works in film and video, sculpture, sound, and photography. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2013. Surno was a Steeprock Arts summer resident in 2015. Kodak Film granted Surno a sponsorship for 2011-2012, which she continues to use to develop an experimental documentary about a transgender Native American beauty pageant in the American Southwest. Her work has been exhibited at the Essl Museum and the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art. Surno is also the founder and director of Cinema 16, which pairs contemporary musicians with experimental films; Cinema 16 has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Kitchen, and MoMA/PS1.
Leadership support for BAM Visual Art provided by Agnes Gund and Toby Devan Lewis
This event is currently at capacity, but don’t despair.
Additional spots may become available on the day of the event due to cancellations. These spots are given on a first-come, first-served basis right before the event starts.
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