Saturday, April 22nd, Byron Westbrook opens his 2017 residency with an iteration of Interval/Habitat -- a technique for site-specific intervention within a social environment. The piece plays a looping sequence of light and sound “scenes” that impose a time-based narrative over all activity within a space. Considering the filmic “cut” as a framing device, the work uses dynamics created by perceptual shifts to facilitate a progressive awareness of self, body, space, and the presence of others.
At 22 Boerum, Westbrook presents Interval/Habitat as a reception environment with embedded performances from artist Madeline Hollander and writer Charity Coleman. The work shifts between the theatrical and mundane -- blurring performative and social atmospheres -- and invites the audience to explore possibilities that may emerge from interacting in a co-composed dynamic space. Interlocuting performances establish key narrative shifts within the piece, altering the social fabric of the room by presenting actions that go beyond expected boundaries of interaction. Here, the dynamic conditions of the space become a collaborator with audience and performers alike.
Byron Westbrook is an artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. He has been performing and showing experimental sound work internationally since 2008. His work focuses on dynamics of perception using sound, lighting and video to interact with architecture and landscape, often pursuing routes that involve social engagement. He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, where he studied with Marina Rosenfeld, Marcus Schmickler and David Behrman. His work has been presented at ICA London, Cafe OTO (London), Fridman Gallery, Abrons Arts Center, Pioneer Works, Experimental Intermedia Foundation (NY), Human Resources (Los Angeles), Disjecta (Portland, OR), Instants Chavires Art Space (Paris), Fylkingen (Stockholm), the LAB (San Francisco), among many others. He has recorded releases with Root Strata, Los Discos Enfantasmes and Sedimental Records. He has previously been in residence at Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Clocktower Gallery, Diapason Gallery, EMS Stockholm, and is currently Visiting Faculty in the Fine Arts Department at Pratt Institute.
Charity Coleman is the author of Julyiary (O'clock Press, 2015), and Tinctures (a forthcoming collection of prose and poetry). A 2014 NYFA Poetry Fellow, she has performed and read her work at BAM, MoMA, Knockdown Center, Dixon Place, The Poetry Project, BHQFU, and numerous other venues. Her criticism, poetry, and prose has appeared in BOMB magazine, Prelude, Dolce Stil Criollo, Joans Digest, Fanzine, Entropy, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.
Madeline Hollander is a New York based artist who works primarily with durational performance and video to explore how human movement and body-language negotiate their limits within everyday systems of technology, intellectual property law, and mass-culture. Hollander has exhibited work at Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Bortolami Gallery, NY; Off Vendome, NY; Signal, NY; Movement Research at the Judson Church, NY; Untitled Art Fair, Miami, FL; Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, NY; the Sculpture Center, NY; Jack Hanley Gallery, NY; Tina Kim Gallery, NY; The Kitchen, NY; Torrance Shipman Gallery, NY; and Human Resources, LA. Hollander has danced professionally with Los Angeles Ballet, CA, and Barcelona Ballet, Spain. She is a current recipient of the 2016 Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship and an MFA candidate in the Film/Video department at Bard College.
