Kate Bush Dance Troupe, 2008. Courtesy Jennifer Sullivan

Because who doesn’t want to watch a heartfelt, quirky tribute to one of music’s most beloved, haunting eccentrics?

The Kate Bush Dance Troupe (Samara Davis, Erica Magrey, Cassie Thornton, Kate Scherer, Renata Espinosa and Jennifer Sullivan) will be performing as the closing act of choreographer Chase Granoff’s piece in Nancy Garcia/Chase Granoff at The Kitchen, November 5, 6, and 7. In addition, Garcia and Granoff will each be premiering new works inspired by sources ranging from noise and punk music to the writings of Doris Humphrey and Simone Forti.

The Kate Bush Dance Troupe is an ongoing collaborative ensemble of non-dancers who create dance performances inspired by the music and emotive movement stylings of Kate Bush.

Buy Tickets

The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Thursday–Saturday, November 5-7, 8pm
$12
Curated by Matthew Lyons

Tags: Cassie Thornton, Chase Granoff, choreographers, dance, Erica Magrey, Kate Bush Dance Troupe, Kate Scherer, Nancy Garcia, Renata Espinosa and Jennifer Sullivan, Samara Davis, The Kitchen.

Michael McConnell, Slings 1, courtesy of the artist.

Tonight: Group opening at Jancar Jones Gallery in SF- Justin Beal, Lena Daly & Kate Owens. 6-9pm.

Artist Mark Dion presents a lecture about his work around scientific presentation and methodologies. Timken Hall at CCA, SF campus. 7-9pm. Free.

Friday, October 16th: Michael McConnell’s Slings and Arrows opens at Gallery BellJar in SF. 6-9pm. 

HYPERSPACES group opening at Park Life in SF: new works by Sean Mcfarland, Paul Wackers, David Kasprzak, Orion Shepherd, and James Sterling Pitt. 7-10pm

Cutters, an exhibition of international collage curated by James Gallagher, opens at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn. 7-10pm

Saturday October 17th: The newly renovated El Museo del Barrio celebrates its grand reopening with free admission and a day of music and activities. 11am-9pm.

The grand opening of SF’s contemporary art space Southern Exposure in its new location, with an inaugural exhibition, Bellwether. 4-10pm

Sunday, October 18th: artist Tamar Hirschl will hold an open studio event as part of Chelsea’s High Line Open Studios event, featuring tours of more than 100 artists’ workspaces in the center of New York’s gallery district.

Monday, October 19th: The Berkeley Center for New Media and SFMOMA  presents From A to B and Back Again, a photo and video presentation by artist Candice Breitz. 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Berkeley, 7:30-9pm. Free.

Wednesday, October 21st: International curators Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Jens Hoffmann, Hou Hanru, and Dominic Willsdon participate in a panel discussion at the SF Art Institute on Global Art in the Downturn. 7:30pm. Free.

Tags: BellJar, Bellwether, Candice Breitz, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, CCA, Cinders, Cutters, David Kasprzak, Dominic Willsdon, El Museo del Barrio, From A to B and Back Again, Gallery, Global Art in the Downturn, grand opening, High Line, Hou Hanru, James Gallagher, James Sterling Pitt, Jancar Jones, Jens Hoffmann, Justin Beal, Kate Owens, lecture, Lena Daly, Mark Dion, Michael McConnell, open studios, Orion Shepherd, Park Life, Paul Wackers, Sean Mcfarland, SF MoMA, SFAI, Southern Exposure, Tamar Hirschl, UC Berkeley.

TONIGHT, August 20th: Artists’ reception for Trains and Trips from Cement to Cemetery at Heist Gallery, featuring Peter Feigenbaum’s model-railroad-scale depiction of outer-borough NYC in the 1980s, and eerie woodland paintings by Marissa Bluestone.

Friday, August 21st: EAI Project Space at X-Initiative presents a video tribute to the late Merce Cunningham, featuring works by Charles Atlas, Nam June Paik and Shigeto Kubota. Noon-8pm, free.

San Francisco artists Lisa Rybovich Cralle and Jessalyn Aaland’s Good News opens at Painted Bird, with music by Jealousy. 8-10pm. Thru Sept. 11th.

Saturday, August 22nd: The 8th annual San Francisco Zine Fest celebrates small-press and DIY publications from the Bay Area and beyond this weekend. At the SF County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park thru Sunday, August 23rd, 11am-6pm, free.

Sunday, August 23rd:  One of our favorite storytellers, Juliet Wayne, is spinning a 40-minute tale, “The Moron Years,” about her life which is already the stuff of legend. If you haven’t seen her at various performance events around NYC or Philadelphia, don’t miss your chance this weekend. 6pm, Cornelia Street Cafe, $10. (via Jeff Simmermon)

Monday, August 24th: Your last week to catch I Don’t Believe in Miracles, a group exhibition focusing on the natural elements curated by Alana Celii at Space Womb gallery in Long Island City. Open Thursday-Monday.

Tags: Alana Celii, Cornelia Street Cafe, EAI, Good News, Heist Gallery, I Don't Believe In Miracles, Jeff Simmermon, Jessalyn Aaland, Juliet Wayne, Lisa Rybovich Cralle, Marissa Bluestone, Merce Cunningham, Painted Bird, paintings, Peter Feigenbaum, railroad model, SF Zine Fest, Space Womb, storyteller, storytelling, The Moron Years, Trains and Trips from Cement to Cemetery, video, X Initiative.

TONIGHT: San Francisco-based artist Chris Lux’s solo exhibition Give Me Some Peppermint Freedom opens at Jancar Jones Gallery. Lux’s work was accorded this week’s SFBG Pick for his “new rave sensibility.” 6-9pm, free. Through July 18th.

OMG Gallery Aferro Benefit preview, see below for additional details. 6-8pm

Saturday, June 20th: OMG Aferro Art Party Benefit. Gallery Aferro founders Evonne Davis and Emma Wilcox have been consistently supporting and producing some of the strongest emerging artists’ projects that The Totam has come across in recent years. Funds from the sale of artist-donated artworks and crafts at this inaugural benefit event will be used to cover the costs of finalizing Aferro’s status as a non-profit organization. We strongly urge tri-state residents to enjoy an entertaining evening and buy some fantastic work to support an organization promoting a thriving community of artists in and beyond the Newark area.

Everything is Terrible: The Movie premieres at The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles. This full-length feature by the group of friends responsible for the popular Everything is Terrible website and YouTube channel promises to be a comic videoclip mashup of weird and epic proportions. One night only. Accompanied by a screening of the 1994 softcore classic, Dinosaur Island. 10:30pm, $10. Tickets here.

Monday, June 22nd: catch Afternoon, the solo project of singer-songwriter Krista Warden at the new Williamsburg music venue Bruar Falls, with Drew Victor. Warden’s accordion, guitar, and bittersweet honky-tonk-tinged vocal sensibility has graced collaborations with fellow Brooklyn notables Drew Victor, Beastheart and Sharon van Etten. 9pm, free.

Tuesday, June 23rd: The opening of X-Initiative’s No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents. X has invited more than 30 international nonprofit art spaces to travel to New York City to present themselves, their programs and the artists they support. 1-9pm, RSVP here. Through June 28th.

In conjunction with No Soul For Sale, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) will be unveiling a temporary video project space on X’s ground floor which will be open to the public, bringing new works by emerging artists into dialogue with rarely seen historical treasures from the EAI archives for the summer. Character Witness, the launch program for EAI’s project space, includes works by Kalup Linzy, Alex Bag, Michael Smith, MICA-TV, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, and Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. 6pm, free. Through September 2009.

Tags: Aferro, Afternoon, Beastheart, Bruar Falls, Chris Lux, clips, Dinosaur Island, Drew Victor, EAI, emerging artists, Emma Wilcox, Everything Is Terrible, Evonne Davis, Gallery, Give Me Some Peppermint Freedom, Jancar Jones, Krista Warden, movie, Newark, No Soul for Sale, non-profit, OMG, SFBG, Sharon Van Etten, Silent Theater, summer, temporary, video, Williamsburg, X Initiative.

It’s the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and I just found this very interesting post from artist Michael Mandiberg about his request to a number of reproduction painters in Shenzhen to copy Jeff Widener’s iconic photo of a man in front of PLA tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests.

Courtesy Michael Mandiberg

Mandiberg posted images of some of the finished paintings, all done in an almost uniform, bland illustration style, along with a quote from the negotiations for the making of the works. The suggestions about composition were funny, but it was most compelling to find that at least one painter outright refused to recreate the image:

Courtesy Michael Mandiberg

I remember going to rallies with my dad in support of the student demonstrations at Portsmouth Square in San Francisco’s Chinatown as a kid, and the ubiquity of the tank image in the newspapers and on TV at the time. To Chinese around the world, it seemed the tank photo and reproductions of the Goddess of Democracy were cherished symbols of a freedom worth defending. It was surprising to learn from Mandiberg’s post that this photo has been virtually eliminated from the Chinese media, but not surprising that the Chinese government continues to censor any hint of negativity in all incoming and outgoing communications. I wonder if this will ever improve.

Twenty years have passed since that violent government crack down on the twenty-something college students occupying the public square in pro-democracy protest. Enough time for the protestors’ children to grow up without ever seeing this famous image that was eradicated by the media. It lies cloaked lies cloaked in Google searches, behind the Great Firewall of China.

This famous image did not exist. This was one manifestation of China’s pattern of Internet censorship. Another pattern was that if a scandals breaks out in China, all webpages outside of China are temporarily disabled. During my month there, two regional politicians were caught in corruptions investigations. One of them was sentenced to death, and the other killed himself. The official reports glossed over the details, and focused on the new appointee. The New York Times, on the other hand, did an in-depth analysis, which I happened to read, as I was up at a strange jet-lagged hour. It was gone the next day.

Just yesterday the New York Times published a small series of editorials about the anniversary. And just now they are reporting on extensive shutdowns of most major communications platforms, from the NYTimes.com to Twitter. Ironically, that article will not make it through the firewall either.

Michael Mandiberg is an Eyebeam Senior Fellow and an Assistant Professor at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. Drawing Contemporaries, an exhibit curated by Mandiberg and featuring some of his laser drawings, is on view at Eyebeam until June 9th.

Mandiberg.com

Tags: 1989, censorship, China, Eyebeam, internet, Jeff Widener, June 4th, media, Michael Mandiberg, painting village, paintings, photograph, reproductions, Shenzhen, student demonstrations, tanks, Tiananmen Square.

Daniel Salemi, Ikea vs. Beuer, 2009, c-print. Courtesy of Kris Graves Projects.

Not able to see Swoon’s Swimming Cities, or Bruce Nauman’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale in person this year? Well, you could opt to visit what is being touted as the Biennale’s “largest pavilion” here, or just take advantage of an abundance of homegrown activities this weekend and beyond:

TONIGHT: Honey Space hosts a benefit and celebration for Swoon’s Swimming Cities of Serenissima, with a silent auction that includes works by many of the artists on the boats’ crew, and a raffle for original artwork by Swoon and Thomas Beale. 7-9pm, $10 admission.

Artists Daniel Salemi and Austin Thomas have concurrent openings of their work tonight in the main and project spaces of Kris Graves Projects. Salemi’s photographs and Thomas’ drawings and collages share an affinity for architectural forms. 6-9pm

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF presents Big Idea Night, featuring the delicious stylings of Mission Street Food. 9pm-3am. FREE, RSVP recommended.

Friday June 5th: Varnish Gallery hosts a party to raise awareness about eminent domain issues with guests Jello Biafra, Matt Gonzalez, etc. The gallery is one of over 30 local businesses and residences being evicted by a San Francisco city agency under the property law. 7-Midnight, 21+. Free.

Saturday June 6th: As part of Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman’s The University of Trash at Sculpture Center in Long Island City, guest artists McKendree Key and the neuroTransmitter collective have been invited to give public courses at the museum. Key will teach a family workshop on making recycled paper and paper-pulp sculptures, and neuroTransmitter will lead a radio transmitter building workshop. 1pm. Courses available with $5 admission to museum. ($25 materials fee and a reservation for the transmitter class is recommended.)

Your last chance to see Sophie Calle (and 107 other women)’s collaborative breakdown of a breakup, Take Care of Yourself at Paula Cooper Gallery.

Saturday & Sunday, June 6th & 7th: Oakland’s Pro Arts Gallery presents the 2009 East Bay Open Studios. Over 400 artists exhibit their work this weekend and the weekend of June 14th-15th. Visit site for more info.

Sunday June 7: The Exploratorium hosts a talk, reception and book signing by scholar Edward Shanken, author of the new book Art and Electronic Media, interviewed by arts commentator Dorka Keehn. Innovative Bay Area electronics artists Lynn Hershman Leeson, Paul DeMarinis, Ken Goldberg, Jim Campbell, Survival Research Labs, and Alan Rath are among the over 200 artists featured in Shanken’s book. 3pm. Free with Exploratorium admission.

Monday June 8th: David Byrne will perform a selection of music created with Brian Eno at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of BRIC Art’s Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. Other performers this summer include Femi Kuti, Blonde Redhead, Big Daddy Kane and They Might Be Giants. 8pm, gates open at 6:30pm. FREE, first come first served.

Tags: Alan Rath, artists, auction, Austin Thomas, benefit, Big Idea Night, Brian Eno, BRIC Arts, Bruce Nauman, Celebrate Brooklyn!, Daniel Salemi, David Byrne, Dorka Keehn, East Bay Open Studios, Edward Shanken, eminent domain, Exploratorium, festival, Honey Space, Internet Pavilion, Jello Biafra, Jim Campbell, Ken Goldberg, Kris Graves Projects, Matt Gonzalez, McKendree Key, Michael Cataldi, Miltos Manetas, Mission Street Food, Nils Norman, Oakland, paper, Paul DeMarinis, Paula Cooper Gallery, Prospect Park Bandshell, radio transmitter, Rafael Rozendaal, recycled, Sculpture Center, Sophie Calle, Survival Research Labs, Swimming Cities of Serenissima, Swoon, Take Care of Yourself, University of Trash, Varnish Gallery, Venice Biennale, workshop, Yerba Buena Center,  Art and Electronic Media,  Lynn Hershman Leeson,  neuroTransmitter.

Emma Wilcox, Eminent Domain No. 5, 2006, silver gelatin print, 20x24". Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Aferro

TONIGHT Friday, April 24th: The Secret of the Ninth Planet opens concurrently at at Queens Nails Projects and Photo Epicenter in San Francisco. The group exhibit of sixteen artists whose works deal with space, time or travel is presented by graduate students in the Curatorial Practice program at California College of the Arts. 7-11pm, thru May 24, 2009

Saturday, April 25th: Symposium on the Super-8 films of Derek Jarman at the new nonprofit X Initiative (the former Dia space) in Chelsea, with Ed Halter, Chrissie Iles, Gerald Incandela and James Mackay. Moderated by Stuart Comer. 5pm, free, RSVP required.

Wednesday, April 29th: The Guggenheim presents a reception with artist Julieta Aranda in conjunction with her new camera obscura installation, part of the museum’s new Intervals emerging artists series. 6:30-8pm, $5 tickets or free for students/members with RSVP. 

Thursday, April 30th: DON’T MISS: Artist talk with Emma Wilcox as part of her solo exhibition Salvage Rights at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. Long shadows in Wilcox’s carefully considered, desolate aerial photographs of rooftops and vacant lots seem a literal manifestation of the dark, gray area surrounding land rights issues. Mysterious text-marks upon her landscapes add to a general feeling that the artist is an archaeologist who has discovered evidence of the death-rite of a fallen civilization. Catalog available. 6pm, $3 suggested donation.

Tags: California College of the Arts, Chrissie Iles, curatorial studies, Derek Jarman, Ed Halter, emerging artists, Emma Wilcox, Gerald Incandela, graduate, Guggenheim, Intervals, James Mackay, Julieta Aranda, Photo Epicenter, photographs, Queens Nails Projects, Real Art Ways, Salvage Rights, Stuart Comer, symposium, The Secret of the Ninth Planet, X Initiative.