Constantina Zavitsanos, L&D Motel
September 15 – October 27, 2019

PARTICIPANT INC presents L&D Motel, an exhibition of new work by Constantina Zavitsanos and the artist’s first New York solo exhibition. L&D Motel features an installation of infrasonic sound built into the architecture of the gallery, transmission holograms, and open captions. Zavitsanos’ practice approaches the fundamentals of perception and experience. In these investigations, they use notions of incapacity, debility, and “access” to trouble distinctions between sensing and feeling.

Our world contains things that double, not halve, when cut. Like metonyms or synecdoches, parts open onto wholes. Zavitsanos’ transmission-based holograms are activated by lasers that concentrate the first visible frequency of light on the light spectrum, or the lowest frequency humans can see – also referred to as the color “red.” Unlike a reflection hologram, a transmission hologram creates an image by projecting light through the hologram itself. When you cut a transmission hologram in half, the holographic image does not split; it doubles.

EVENTS:

Thursday, Oct 10, 9–10pm 

Jerron Herman comes to stay at the L&D Motel for one night only, and may never leave as he improvisationally responds to the infrasonic ramp rhythms. This event will have ASL interpretation and AD (Audio Description). Exhibition open until 11pm.   

Jerron Herman is an interdisciplinary artist who has been featured with Heidi Latsky Dance (HLD) at Lincoln Center, American Dance Festival (ADF), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. He has been a principal member of HLD since 2011. Herman serves on the Board of Trustees at Dance/USA. He has shot for Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive, consulted for a Nike-sponsored project, and was profiled in Great Big Story. In 2018, he was a Snug Harbor PASS artist, a finalist for the inaugural Apothetae/Lark Play Development Lab Fellowship, and was nominated for a Fellowship in Dance from United States Artists. His latest solos include Phys. Ed. and Relative–a crip dance party. Jerron studied at Tisch School of the Arts and graduated from The King’s College. 

Thursday, Oct 17, 9–10pm 

Geo Wyeth plays the architecture of the L&D Motel. Space for haptic experience limited. ASL and Audio Description are available by request for this event; please email lia@participantinc.org by October 11 if you would like ASL and/or AD at this event. Exhibition open until 11pm. 

Geo Wyeth (b. 1984, NYC) is an artist and educator, working in the realms of music, performance, narrative sculpture, and video. Their ongoing project Muck Studies Dept. melds black/American music and history, extractive industry survey, and techniques of investigative journalism to trouble the swampy waters of race and memory. Geo has shown work at the New Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, MoMA PS1 (Greater New York 2016), Dutch National Opera, Triangle France, Anthology Film Archives, The Kitchen, Human Resources, The Pyramid Club, Joe’s Pub, and many others. Their work has been written about recently in Tavia Nyong'o’s Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018). They are co-founder of the queer social space Tender Center (Rotterdam, NL). They have composed music for the narrative shorts Happy Birthday, Marsha! and Mary of Ill Fame (both directed by Tourmaline), as well as numerous videos of other contemporary artists. Geo was in residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten for the years 2015-2016 in Amsterdam, and currently teaches at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) where they focus on embodied tactics of performance, storytelling, and remembering. Geo was funded by the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst in 2017, and was recently funded by the Mondriaan Fonds for research on jazz history, oil and gas industry, and swamp studies in New Orleans. They are currently based between Amsterdam & Rotterdam, NL and New York City. 

Sunday, Oct 27, 8pm

Tourmaline & Constantine will close out L&D Motel with another installment of their Weekly Weather forecast. They’ll tell the future (to expect you) and beg the stars to favor us all in these means times. This event will have ASL interpretation.

PARTICIPANT INC is located at 253 East Houston Street between Norfolk and Suffolk Streets. The closest trains are the F (2nd Ave) and the J/M/Z (Essex/Delancey); the closest wheelchair accessible stop is the 4/6 (Bleecker/Lafayette). The entry is on grade and the gallery is barrier free throughout with an all gender, wheelchair accessible bathroom. Service animals are welcome. Visual works in this show are described; sound is captioned and/or experienced through haptics.