Art F City

Dear friends,

Don’t let this chance pass you by. Today is the last day to make a tax deductible donation for the 2011 year. Your gifts, large and small, help keep us publishing through out the year.

In 2011, that meant we published nearly 800 posts. You probably didn’t read every one of those posts (we salute you if you did!), but when we covered issues that mattered to you, we did it well. Often, we did it for free.  

Your donations support that effort, so this year we’ve made it especially easy for readers to give. 

• Donate $20, $50, $200, or $1000 to Art Fag City at 20x200 and get the Teach 4 America school bus limo print from 20x200. (For a limited time only purchasing a $200 dollar print will gain you admission into our February Benefit, The Art Fag City Rob Pruitt Art Awards* Not affiliated with Rob Pruitt (date and place TBA). Purchase the print at the $1000 print size and get the GOLDEN FAG VIP PASS, which includes four benefit tickets.) http://www.20x200.com/artworks/4011-bruce-high-quality-foundation-teach-4-amerika-school-bus

• Want to skip the print and make your donation 100 percent tax deductible? No problem. Donate directly to the blog. $25, $50, $75 or $150 and you’ll ensure we have heat and can eat a hamburger while we post. We are a NYFA sponsored organization. http://www.artfagcity.com/support/donate-to-art-fag-city/

• Really just want to get ticket for the Art Fag City Rob Pruitt Awards* Not Affiliated with Rob Pruitt this February. This too is easy. Individuals pay $100, artists $50. Get an early start on the mayhem. http://www.artfagcity.com/support/2012-benefit/

May I see you all this February,

Paddy Johnson



IMAGE CREDIT: From Bruce High Quality Foundation’s Teach 4 Amerika series.

Anyone else remember Pee In the Pangate? Ann Liv Young will be performing for audiences once more. Louis B. James gallery doesn’t have has a website which strangely doesn’t come up on google, so I’m posting the full press release below.

Ann Liv Young: Sherry is Present Featuring A Very Sherry Christmas Performances

December 5, 2011 – January 7, 2012

Opening Reception: December 7, 6-8PM

Full performance schedule below Louis B. James is pleased to present Ann Liv Young’s first gallery solo exhibition. The show will function as a mid-career retrospective of the artist’s work as Sherry, touching on the major performances, controversies, and triumphs of her tumultuous existence.

Sherry emerged on the scene in 2006, borne out of Young’s desire to create an economically sustainable performance model that “always succeeds. ” W eaving within and around Young’ s formal, choreographed spectacles, Sherry engages directly with audience members around issues of sexuality, psychology, art making and performance. She is confrontationally honest, defiant of expectation, and revelatory in her deft handling of the desires of both individuals and crowds.

Sherry is Present will feature vignettes from Sherry’s history, including performance relics, video clips, and a selection of the critical corpus surrounding her work. As such Sherry, already an institution, enters the canon of the history of performance art. Also on view will be a recorded session of Sherapy between Sherry and Young and a roped-off replica of Sherry’s sitting room. The gallery’s basement will function as Sherry’s Christmas bazaar and gift shop, Sherapy space, and video lounge.

Above all, Sherry will be present, offering Sherapy sessions for individuals and couples (with complimentary DVD), photographs with Sherry in her sitting room, handmade sculptures, Sherry calendars, Sherry DVDs, Sherry t-shirts, Sherry tote bags, glittering pink popcorn, purple lattes, masturbation workshops, arts and crafts sessions, lectures on coping with holiday stress, and much more.

A full schedule of events follows; for tickets to ticketed events please email info@louisbjames.com or call (212) 533 4670. Space is limited.

A Very Sherry Christmas Performance and Event Schedule

ONGOING: Sherapy for couples and individuals available

Tuesdays (walk-in or appointment) 1-5PM,

Saturdays 12-6 (by appointment only), $50/individual session; $75/couples session, DVD of session included December 5– 7, hours vary:

Open For Installation, Louis B. James gallery directors and Sherry curate and install Sherry is Present Wednesday, December 7, 6-9PM:

Opening Reception, hosted by Sherry, FREE Thursday, December 8, 7-9PM: Holiday masturbation workshop for women, $25 with free audiotape

Sunday, December 11, 11AM-6PM: Arts and Crafts, hosted by Sherry, FREE Create holiday ornaments to take home or for use at our Tree Trimming event!

Friday, December 16: Coping With Christmas Stress, lecture and performance by Sherry, 7PM, $25

Sunday, December 18, 11AM-4PM: Tree Trimming, hosted by Sherry. Trim the tree and then trim your bush, FREE.

Thursday, December 22, 7PM: Sherry’s Christmas Show, lecture and performance by Sherry, $25

Saturday, January 7, 7PM: Sherry’s Post-Christmas Counseling and Gift Exchange, $25

Followed by closing Sherr-aoke party, location TBA For tickets and more information please email info@louisbjames.com or call (212) 533 4670.

Occupy Museums to protest the anti-democratic policies of Lincoln Center and Bloomberg on the last performance of Satyagraha Thursday December 1, 2011 at 10:30PM.

It is no doubt timely that Philip Glass’ opera ‘Satyagraha’—which depicts Gandhi’s early struggle against colonial oppression in South Africa—should be revived by the Metropolitan Opera in 2011, a year which has seen popular revolutions in North Africa, mass uprisings in Europe, and the emergence of Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States.

Yet we see a glaring contradiction in ‘Satyagraha’ being performed at the Lincoln Center where in recent weeks protestors from Occupy Wall Street have been arrested and forcibly removed for exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceful public assembly.

It’s also a striking irony that Bloomberg L.P is one of the Lincoln Center’s leading corporate sponsors. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stifled free speech, free press, and freedom of assembly in an aggressive campaign against Occupy Wall Street protestors in New York City that has influenced a crackdown on the protests nationally. The juxtaposition is stark: while Bloomberg funds the representation of Gandhi’s pioneering tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience in the Metropolitan Opera House, he simultaneously orders a paramilitary-style raid of the peaceful public occupation of Liberty Park, blacking out the media, while protestors are beaten, tear-gassed, and violently arrested.

Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word meaning “truth-force,” and we at Occupy Wall Street, by exercising tactics of nonviolent direct action inspired by those championed by Gandhi, have insisted that the truth be told:

Our commons have been stolen from us to profit the wealthiest 1%. We have lost homes, jobs, affordable education, natural resources, and access to public space. Our culture has been co-opted by a corporate elite. Many suffer so a few may thrive. 

Previously, Occupy Museums and other OWS groups came to Lincoln Center to protest the “generous philanthropy” of David H. Koch, the funder of the Tea Party and of anti-global warming research, who uses philanthropic contributions to the former New York State Theater to whitewash his misanthropic reputation and write off his taxes. We will return again to Lincoln Center, where ‘Satyagraha’ has inspired us to once again challenge the ruthless nexus of power and wealth and reclaim our public space and common dignity.

We would like to announce two actions:

✔A General Assembly at 10:30 PM at Lincoln Center. Join us in an open conversation about the effects of increased privatization and corporatization of all aspects of society, and the use of nonviolent civil disobedience around the world to reclaim the commons.

* Composer Philip Glass will join the general assembly and mic-check a statement.

✔If permission is not granted to protest on Lincoln Center plaza by Thursday evening, some members of Occupy Wall Street will enact a hunger strike. They will not end this strike until their demands are met, starting with the demand that Lincoln Center and the City of New York guarantee the freedoms of speech and assembly on the city-owned plazas and walkways of Lincoln Center.   Occupy Museums stand in solidarity with these hunger strikers and offer support for this courageous form of protest.

The symbolic opening of this space for protest stands for the spaces all over the city and country that we vow to liberate from the control of the 1% for the full use of the public.