Among Other Things: An Evening with Tony Cokes and Rindon Johnson
Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7pm
SculptureCenter
This screening brings together two recent video works by Tony Cokes and Rindon Johnson. Cokes’ Testament A: mf fka k-p x ke rip (2019), against a background of solid colors and beats, reads writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun’s “Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture” (2018). Johnson's Among other things... (2019) is a video poem with original and found footage with closed captioning. Different in methodology and structure, both pieces speak to “the work of mourning,” as Cokes quotes Derrida, the “practice of joy” à la Eshun, and the labor of making common particular indignations for the wellbeing of all.
The screenings will be followed by a conversation between Tony Cokes, Rindon Johnson, and Sohrab Mohebbi. The program is organized in conjunction with Searching the Sky for Rain, on view at SculptureCenter through December 16, 2019. SculptureCenter will be open at 6pm for those who wish to view the exhibition before the program. This program is free and open to the public but RSVP is required.
Screenings:
Rindon Johnson, Among other things (nearby occasions or 8 acts for Jeremy): What should we call this form of existence: a constant vista where from one view one can see the cage of one binding state and from another view, another binding state? Come here and have a taste (play to be played). Hadi writes: All night I dreamed of these lines and couldn’t help it other than believing that dreaming these lines mean I should send them to you; it is coming from an old poem that made sense to me when I saw the cage inside the cage / Birds are free of cages, and cages are free of birds / Where have you came from that causes you to be so free / Although every birds voice is a kind of crying for end of the day / You must sing more since your cry more sounds like the beginning of the day. / I think birds are standing for people, but I’m not sure what the cage stands for. You must know. (I don’t.) Maybe there are things that we should become accustomed to not seeing or knowing (I entered the tunnel of my own will) I play the song over and over; without beginning and without end., 2019
26:34 minutes
Tony Cokes, Testament A: mf fka k-p x ke rip, 2019
35:22 minutes
This program is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required.