Apr 08 2018
SI OFFSITE | LUNAR INTERVAL V: WANING GIBBOUS | Sahra Motalebi: Flesh, Format 2 (from Directory of Portrayals)
Sunday, April 8, 7pm
Einstein Auditorium, NYU
Room 105, Barney Building
34 Stuyvesant Street, New York, NY 10003
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/
Co-presented with 80WSE
Swiss Institute announces the fifth event in the Lunar Intervals series, Sahra Motalebi’s Flesh, Format 2, a 45-minute vocal-only performance extends the musical score of Motalebi’s open-form, multi-year opera, Directory of Portrayals. Drawn from an online relationship with her sister in Iran whom Motalebi has never met, this iteration introduces still more from this real-time dialog in the form of spoken text and musical sections, exploring the complicated, often conflicting, autobiographical, geographical, and cultural narratives therein. On the way to a staging that is impossible and unmakeable – this opera continues to explore narrative structures and dramaturgical imperatives that question its very production. The libretto will be published as a work of experimental auto-fiction edited by Annie Godfrey Larmon, in 2019.
Part of Swiss Institute’s OFFSITE program, each Lunar Interval event takes place in a different location in Lower Manhattan, in the lead-up to Swiss Institute’s move to 38 St Marks Pl in the East Village. Drawing a connection with cycles and orbits, each takes place during a different phase of the lunar cycle, from the waxing crescent to the new moon. Each will be also followed by the publication of a 7-inch record.
Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.
For questions about accessibility, please email lou@swissinstitute.net.
Sahra Motalebi (b. 1979) is an artist, composer, vocalist and writer born in Birmingham Alabama. Often formatted as performance-exhibition, her work includes opera, scenographic installation, vocal composition and recordings, painting, sculpture, video and text. She has staged solo projects and performances at The Kitchen (2017), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2017), Watermill Center (2016), the Villa Empain (2016), Hydra School Projects (2015), SculptureCenter (2014), New Museum of Contemporary Art (2008), and MoMA PS1 (2008). She lives in New York.
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