With Womens Work

With Womens Work Screenings at Anthology Film Archives

Wed 12 Mar, 2025, 8pm
Thu 13 Mar, 2025, 8pm
Tickets
($14 - 8) All-Access
Anthology Film Archives

On Wednesday, March 12th & Thursday, March 13th at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room & Anthology Film Archives present projections of work commissioned for ISSUE’s With Womens Work Series (2021). These showings will take place at Anthology in advance of live performances and associated activities at Boerum. The series engaged fifteen artists to create new works inspired by performance scores included in Womens Work, a magazine edited and self-published by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood in NYC. Originally published in 1975, Womens Work sought to highlight the overlooked work of female artists working at the cusp of the visual arts, music, and performance.

These works originally premiered online and were experienced in disparate home screen and sound system arrangements. Now, ISSUE and Anthology join forces for two evenings to present the works back-to-back in a cinematic environment, showcasing the varied compositional structures, cinematic orientations, and unique approaches to the “audiovisual” demands of our current age. 

Program 1: Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 - 8:00pm

Audrey Chen (2021, 17 min, digital)

Sydney Spann, Attached or Detached (partial disappearance) (2021, 24 min, digital)

Annabelle Playe, Ad Astra (2021, 38 min, digital)

crys cole, Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr… (pt.1) (2021, 19 min, digital)

Total running time: ca. 100 min.

Program 2: Thursday, March 13th, 2025 - 8:00pm

Maayan Tsadka, Sonic Botany: RA'ASH ADAMA (earthnoise) (2021, 55 min, digital)

Annea Lockwood: Piano Burning (2021, 59 min, digital)

Performed by Vanessa Tomlinson

Curated by Lawrence English (Room40) and presented as part of Brisbane Festival 2021

Film by Greg Harm (Tangible Media)

Total running time: ca. 115 min 

The video presentation concludes with a showing of renowned composer Annea Lockwood’s iconic Piano Transplants work: Piano Burning. Curated by Lawrence English, featuring a performance from composer and artist Vanessa Tomlinson, this iteration was created in partnership with Brisbane Festival 2021 and Room40 in Australia. In 1968, Lockwood originally set fire to an irreparable, upright piano on the banks of the River Thames in London. It was the first of her Piano Transplants, reconfiguring people’s relationship to one of the most iconic western instruments of our age. ISSUE’s 2021 online presentation of Piano Transplants—all of which can be viewed in the organization’s online archive—ran in tandem with their 2021 Benefit event, which honored Annea Lockwood.

Each of the featured artists will perform new work at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. Brooklyn theater the following week (March 20-22). Each presentation is inspired by the artist’s respective With Womens Work digital commissions, and events will also feature original Womens Work composers, Annea Lockwood and Beth Anderson.

ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering nonprofit performance center, presenting projects by interdisciplinary artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue in the broader community. ISSUE serves as a leading cultural incubator, facilitating the commission and premiere of innovative new works.  

In 2021, ISSUE Project Room created the With Womens Work Series in response to the suspension of in-person programming during the onset of the pandemic. With Womens Work engaged fifteen artists to create new works inspired by performance scores included in Womens Work, a magazine edited and self-published by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood in NYC. Originally published in 1975, Womens Work sought to highlight the overlooked work of female artists working at the cusp of visual arts, music, and performance. The historic publication offers an invaluable counterpoint to the male avant-garde canon, evidencing a network of diverse artists relating their score-based practices to the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Womens Work was republished as a facsimile edition by Primary Information in 2019 edited by James Hoff and Irene Revell. As highlighted by Primary Information, the original editors of the magazine were and remain adamant that the works should be performed; that they not remain static as an artifact.

Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.

ISSUE Project Room programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Annabelle Playe's Ad Astra was made possible through Jazz & New Music, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation, in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States with support from the French Ministry of Culture, Institut français, SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique) and the CNM (Centre National de la Musique).

Additional support for ISSUE Project Room's 2025 season is provided by Metabolic Studio.

Related

With Womens Work

ISSUE is pleased to present With Womens Work, an online series commissioning artists to create new works inspired by scores included in Womens Work, a magazine edited and self-published by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood in the 1970s.

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