MFASO Lecture

Canal Street Research Association

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Flex Space / 205 Hudson

7:00pm - 9:00pm

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Called “a hilarious, finely tuned absurdist” (Theatre Jones) and “an East Village relic” (Vogue), Alex Tatarsky experienced fleeting fame as Andy Kaufman’s daughter and often performs as a mound of dirt. Their performances reside in the unfortunate in-between zone of dance-theater, comedy, performance art and deluded rant--sometimes with songs. Venues include theaters (La MaMa, The Kitchen, PSNY, Abrons Arts Center, Gibney), galleries (Maccarone, Metro Pictures, Bronx Art Space), museums (New Museum, MoMA PS1, City Reliquary), comedy clubs (Gotham, The Improv), bars (KGB, Zinc, C'mon Everybody) and brave people’s living rooms. Writing on such topics as spambot poetics and mime politics appear in New Inquiry, Vulture, Garlands, Hypocrite Reader, and ArtReview Asia. Tatarsky is grateful to have been a Movement Research artist-in-residence, an Independence Fellow, and a Pew Fellow. They teach on masks, holy fools, and rot at School of Making and Thinking. Research interests include bootlegs and compost.

Canal Street Research Association is a temporary center of operations for poetic research unit Shanzhai Lyric who repurpose vacant real estate as a space for gathering ephemeral histories, mapping local lore, and tracing the flows and fissures of global capital. A microcosm of global trade routes, Canal Street has held allure for generations of artists to occupy this zone of exchange where high meets low, art meets commerce, and original meets copy. In the midst of the current retail apocalypse, Canal Street Research Association revisits projects both massive and minute that have transpired on the storied block, speculating new modes of inhabiting this complex interplay of hustles.

This is an in-person event happening in the 2nd floor flex space at 205 Hudson.