OFF BLACK
Jasminfire
Jasminfire
OFF BLACK, 2020, short film, 4:50 min
OFF BLACK
is a short film about
things that need to change
and things that led us to this point.
OFF BLACK portrays an emotional dance of meta-reality told through authentic perspectives of recent protests sparked by the unlawful killings of Black Americans by the police, and the violent persecution and lack of protection of the Trans Community in their daily lives. With the help of Zoë Wolkoff’s ability to blend moving paintings with video, the film is narrated through the poetic lyrics and distorted violin composition produced, performed, and recorded by Jasminfire.
As serious as the message reads, OFF BLACK is laced with humor and hope. It is inspired by the Black content creators who call attention to the absurdity of life through their creating and sharing memes, comedy skits, and other forms of artistic expression in reaction to the times.
The film—named after the calamity surrounding a designer’s controversial and petty response to such protests—tells the story (almost chronologically) of millennials’ ability to organize and document the immense impact of today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Fueled by the viral content engine that is social media, millennials are able to force lawmakers to see their administrative logic and capitalist greed for what it has become: terrifying and narrow-minded.
Everything from this video was sourced directly from Twitter in an effort to demonstrate the duality of such real-time platforms. Platforms which give light to the violent effects of police brutality while simultaneously offer healing therapy via meme culture.
Collaborators include: Zoe Wolkoff (video), David Plowman (sound design)
Created with the support of Catinca Tabacaru Gallery
#blacklivesmatter
#translivesmatter
#blackdisabledlivesmatter
#allblacklivesmatter
Jasminfire
OFF BLACK
July 4 – August 30, 2020
As we’ve spent the past three months processing and contemplating the state of the world today, it’s time to shift our focus from Reaction to Response. In this pursuit, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery presents the third and final part of of our trilogy video exhibition: OFF BLACK, a new video work by Jasminfire created and launched in the midst of what is clearly a global cultural revolution.
Jasminfire, previously known as Jasmin Charles, and Catinca Tabacaru have been collaborating since the first day the Gallery opened its doors at 250 Broome Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Jasminfire’s paintings made part of the Gallery’s inaugural exhibition Make It Big, Make It Red, Put A Crown On It, May- June, 2014. Over the past six years, Jasminfire has presented numerous performances in the Gallery, initially as Chargaux, a duo violin/viola project with Margaux Whitney; then as Jasmin Charles solo, during her first solo gallery exhibition (Charly & Chill, April-May 2016); and most recently in March 2020 as the viola/trumpet ensamble Mango Y Flaca, at our short-lived, but beautifully bright Harlem space: CTG Harlem.
It seems only appropriate that we close our New York City stay with Jasminfire’s show, coming full circle, both in form and concept. We could not be more proud to bring you her voice during these critical times of revolution and change.
Thank you for all the love and support over the past six years. As we plan our move to Europe, and prepare for the second chapter of the Gallery’s programming, we look forward to sharing our evolved self with you.
JUNE 21, 2020
Maria Lucia Cruz Correia: Guardian of Nature
Performative Ritual via Zoom
During the summer solstice, Sunday. June 21st, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia invited us to join her on Zoom for a performative ritual to become a Guardian of Nature, i.e. a human able to act as representative to a nature entity, like a river or a mountain, which is granted personhood in a court of law. This falls within Correia’s practice of offering utopian public services as alternatives for the current capitalistic system.
Through the use of performative rituals and animistic dialogues we must go beyond the “imagined disaffection.” We need to understand the sublimity of nature and search for the quality of greatness beyond human eye. Maria Lucia Cruz Correia proposes a contract with nature and considers its central challenge: What language do things of the world speak that might allow humans to reach an understanding with them, contractually?
May 28, 2020
In conversation with Sanja Latinovic
Hosted by Catinca Tabacaru
May 21, 2020
Artist Talk with Anne Duk Hee Jordan
Co-hosted by Catinca Tabacaru and Rachel Monosov
MAY 15, 2020
TRAILER: Hope There’s Someone (To Touch)
Created by Benjamin Verhoeven
MAY 9, 2020
Silence, Conversation, and Movement
A discussion springboarding from Marie Jose Burki’s A film.
On May May 9th, co-curators Rachel Monosov and Catinca Tabacaru invited Sarah Zürcher (curator, writer, documentary filmmaker), Emiliano Battista (philosopher), and Caroline Daish (actress and voice performer) to join artist Marie José Burki, whose work A Film, is the final installment of The Far Away Is Here, to speak with us about life, film, and curating.
Sarah Zürcher is currently an editor, art writer, freelance curator and documentarian. Since the 1990’s, she has organised exhibitions and festivals in London, Cairo, Delhi, São Paulo, Paris, Marseille, Tallinn and has lectured in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe (Slovakia, Belgium, United Kingdom, Lebanon, France and Switzerland)
She served as Director of Museum Langmatt, Baden, Switzerland (2014–2016), Director of the Art School esba TALM, Tours, France (2009–2013) and Director of Fri-Art, the contemporary art centre in Fribourg, Switzerland (2002–2007). She has also worked at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; MAMCO (Musée d’art moderne et contemporain), Geneva and Cabinet des estampes (Print Room), Geneva. For the cities of Baden and Zurich, she participated in the creation of a number of projects in public spaces, including Infolge: Kunstprojekt Bahnhof Baden (2000).
Zürcher has regularly published articles and essays on contemporary art, and she has edited catalogues for Sharjah Art Foundation and previously for the Biennial of the Image in Movement, among others. She is also a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Emiliano Battista is a translator (mostly but not exclusively of French philosophy and theory), a researcher when time permits (on those occasions he works on a project about the place and function of the book in the world of contemporary art), and a Sunday author and lecturer.
He has worked on books with Aglaia Konrad, Mitja Tušek, Herman Asselberghs, and Sophie Whettnall; he conceived and produced Daan van Golden Photo Book(s) (Koenig 2014), which is something of a study of repetition. In partnership with theTomorrow, he conceived and animated a program of discussions and screenings at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), whose participants included Alexander Kluge, John Akomfrah, Maurizio Lazzarato and Jacques Rancière.
Caroline Daish is intrigued by the way we listen and what happens to the sense of self when our listening is displaced. In 2016 she received a Vlaamse Overheid grant to study ‘spatial sound and empathy’, her research created a trilogy of live binaural performances of conversations with her brother about his psychosis and artistic practice. Her early career began as co-director and choreographer for Australia’s leading disability youth company, Restless Dance. With collaborators, Michel Yang and Justine Maxelon she developed a body voice practice ‘oracle’: an eyes-closed body-voice improvisation practice that reads diverse spaces: train stations, parks, institutions, forests, public libraries, urban gardens and private living spaces.
During the COVID-19 lockdown she and her colleagues has been conducting telepathic oracle practices with artists in different countries. She has a long time collaboration with Australian film director and composer Jason Sweeney. In 2014 she was awarded Best Actress from Melbourne Underground Film Festival for the leading role in Sweeney’s feature film “The Dead Speak Back”. Caroline has a Bachelor in Education (BA) and a Graduate Diploma of Arts Management and has completed post-graduate studies in performance research with a.pass and documentary film with SoundImageCulture.
APRIL 16, 2020
TRAILER: The Far Away Is Here
Created by Axel Korban, Commissioned by Rachel Monosov and Catinca Tabacaru