Sep 29 2024
Energies | Reactivation of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Rosebush at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
Sun | 2PM
This event will be held at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery (131 E 10th St, New York, NY 10003).
On the occasion of the Energies exhibition, The Poetry Project, Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, and SI are pleased to celebrate the reactivation of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Rosebush.
Matta-Clark, who invested most of his artistic practice in social and community work, installed the Rosebush sculpture in the garden of St. Mark’s Church in the 1970s. For Energies, a new rosebush was planted and a plaque has been installed commemorating and marking Matta-Clark’s work. To celebrate the reactivation of Matta-Clark’s Rosebush, we will host an afternoon of readings along with musical and dance performances by Lou Cornum, Jeannine Otis, Stacy Spence, and Kendra Sullivan. A reception in the West Yard of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery will follow.
Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.
Jeannine Otis is a songwriter, singer, actress and educator. Otis has served as Music Director at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery for over 28 years. She has also served on the Standing Commission for Music and Liturgy for the national church and on the Board of Church Publishing and worked on many projects to explore new ways to approach liturgy. She directed A New York Lamentation, a play by the Rev. Chuck Kramer that explores the history of slavery within the Episcopal Church. She has also recorded dance, classical, and jazz music, and rap and R&B music as “Jahneen.” One recent album is Jeannine Otis and the Strings of the Helsinki Philharmonic, released by Warner Music. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.A. from Emerson College, in Sociology/Musicology and Theater Education respectively.
Lou Cornum is an Arizona-born, New York City-based writer and scholar of Native American and Indigenous Cultural Studies. Currently, they work as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. They are a founding member of the editorial collective for Pinko Magazine and a member of the Navajo Nation.
Kendra Sullivan is a poet, public artist, and activist scholar. She is the Director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she leads the Andrew W. Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research and coleads the NYC Climate Justice Hub. She is the publisher of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and the co-editorial director of Women’s Studies Quarterly. Kendra makes public art addressing waterfront access and equity issues in cities around the world and has published her writing on art, ecology, and engagement widely. Her books include Zero Point Dream Poems (Doublecross Press) and Reps (Ugly Duckling Presse).
Stacy Matthew Spence is a New York City based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. Spenceʼs choreography has been commissioned by The High Line in collaboration with visual artist Ronny Quevedo, Danspace Project, The New School, Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Platform 2012: Parallels for Danspace Project, Tisch School of the Arts and London Contemporary Dance School. Spence has performed in co/motion directed by Margaret Peak as part of Jason Moranʼs Bleed at the Whitney Museum, New York; Deborah Hayʼs Blues as part of Ralph Lemonʼs One Fine Day at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Joanna Kotze’s BIG BEATS. Spence was a dancer in The Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1997-2006, Education Director from 2018-2020, and continues collaborating with the company through teaching and re-staging Brown’s work. He has taught nationally and internationally at institutions such as The New School, Juilliard, Barnard College, Movement Research, Tisch School of the Arts, Manhattan Marymount College, London Contemporary Dance School and Centre National de Danse Contemporaine.
Image courtesy of Will Farris, Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner Gallery.