TWO DAYS ON MIKE KELLEY
Featuring the US premiere of documentation of three performances by Mike Kelley at Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY, 1981:
The Monitor and the Merrimac, The Big Tent, and My Space
Screenings and events:
Sunday, November 15, 3-7pm
Monday, November 16, 7pm-midnight
Free, no RSVP required
Join us for Drum of Reversal, a two-day festival celebrating Mike Kelley, organized with the support of the Mike Kelley Foundation For The Arts. The program features the US premiere of documentation of three performances by Mike Kelley at Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY, 1981: The Monitor and the Merrimac, The Big Tent, and My Space. Like many performance artists of his generation, Kelley was resistant to documentation. As Tony Oursler recalls, "many of Mike’s early performances are documented only in photo and script form, if at all. He refused to allow them to be filmed, stating that they should exist only in the moment." The footage was never screened during Kelley's lifetime, and a recently restored version now makes its way to Artists Space.
Performed in succession over forty-five uninterrupted minutes, the three pieces find Kelley engaged in a relentless play of language and objects, spinning associative tangents while continuously twisting, undoing, and reversing his own linguistic formulations in real time. The performance also features Kelley's longtime friends and collaborators Tony Oursler and Tony Conrad, who beat drums, play violin, and take on speaking roles.
Taking this extraordinary documentation as a point of departure, Drum of Reversal brings together an intergenerational group of artists, critics, and scholars whose work shares affinities with Kelley's in spirit or form. The following evening, November 16th, continues with a special Mike Kelley-inspired edition of Abasement, headlined by Paul McCarthy, Rick Potts, Alex Stevens, and John Weise. An accompanying zine will gather archival materials alongside personal recollections and reflections by Ericka Beckman, Dorit Cypis, Kim Gordon, John Miller, Matt Mullican, Tony Oursler, Lee Ranaldo, Valerie Smith, Dan Walworth, Johanna Went, Christopher Williams, and others.