Something is happening.
Presence leaves a record.
Collect experiences across New York City.
Upcoming Events
Je Tu Il Elle
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 1974 — 16mm
A young woman — played by Akerman herself — passes through three encounters: isolation with sugar and a mattress, a truck driver's muted companionship, an erotic reunion with a former lover. Shot in 16mm over four days. Presented as part of the Metrograph's extended Akerman retrospective.
Objekt
Live — North American Tour
Berlin-based producer T.J. Hertz plays a rare live set at Output. Expect hard-edged, genre-collapsing electronic music that moves between UK hardcore, industrial, and the edge of floor-functional. One of the most disciplined selectors in contemporary club music.
How Not To Be Seen
A lecture by Hito Steyerl
Artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl speaks on machine vision, the aesthetics of resolution, and what it means to disappear in an era of algorithmic surveillance. An extension of her ongoing inquiry into the politics of image-making. Co-presented with The New School.
Simone Leigh: Sovereignty
Survey exhibition
The first comprehensive New York survey of Simone Leigh's practice — sculpture, video, and performance spanning two decades. Centering Black feminine subjectivity, archival knowledge production, and the politics of care. Open through early June.
Stalker
Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979 — 4K restoration
A guide leads two men through a forbidden area known as the Zone, toward a room said to grant one's innermost desires. New 4K restoration from Mosfilm archives. 163 minutes. The Zone has never looked so present. Post-screening discussion with the programmer.
The Rite of Spring
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch
Pina Bausch's monumental Rite of Spring, performed on a stage covered in earth. The bodies that fall and rise from the soil are all that stand between Stravinsky's score and something more ancient. A defining work of the twentieth century, performed by the company Bausch built.
Platform as Publisher
Symposium on digital infrastructure and cultural power
A half-day symposium on the political economy of digital platforms as cultural gatekeepers. Speakers from media criticism, engineering, and independent publishing. What happens to culture when distribution is owned by four companies?
Arca
Kick Tour — Live A/V
Venezuelan producer and performance artist Alejandra Ghersi presents her most visceral live show to date — surround sound, full visual system, and a set that refuses all genre containment. Presented in Knockdown Center's main hall. Support from SHYBOI.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 1975 — DCP restoration
Akerman's three-and-a-half hour portrait of a Brussels housewife — structured around three days of domestic routine and its slow, irreversible unraveling. A newly struck DCP from the Akerman estate. Often cited as the greatest film ever made; consistently underscreened. Post-screening discussion with the programmer.
Grouper
Solo — Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
Liz Harris performs solo — voice, guitar, and tape loops — in National Sawdust's intimate main space. Grouper's live shows are vanishingly rare and function more like séances than concerts. The room holds 200. Expect silence, reverb, and the particular quality of attention that only she produces.
Kara Walker: Hysterical
New works on paper
A new body of works on paper by Kara Walker — silhouette, gouache, and text engaging the psychoanalytic tradition and its colonial inheritance. Walker's first solo presentation at The Drawing Center since 1994. The works circle questions of who gets to claim madness and at what cost.
Jlin
Perspective Tour — Live
Gary, Indiana's Jerrilynn Patton brings her live set to Knockdown Center — footwork rhythms folded through contemporary classical influence, denser and more disorienting than her records suggest. One of the most technically formidable producers working. The floor will move.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974 — 35mm
An elderly German cleaning woman falls in love with a young Moroccan mechanic — Fassbinder's most economical and devastating dissection of racism, class, and the violence of social convention. Shot in eight days. A restored 35mm print from the Fassbinder Foundation. 93 minutes.
Lucy Sante: Low Life
Lecture — on the vanished New York
Author and critic Lucy Sante speaks on the research, writing, and afterlife of Low Life — her 1991 account of the underworld that built lower Manhattan. The talk addresses what it means to document a city that keeps erasing itself, and what the archive can and cannot hold. Moderated by Rachel Kushner.
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Accumulation with Talking — Restaging
The Trisha Brown Dance Company performs a rare restaging of Accumulation (1971) and Accumulation with Talking Plus Watermotor (1978) — two of the foundational works of postmodern dance, performed in the stripped BAM Harvey. A chance to see work that changed what the body on stage could mean.
Eartheater
Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin — Live A/V
Alexandra Drewchin presents the full live A/V production of Phoenix alongside new material. Eartheater's live show is difficult to categorize and easy to remember: operatic in scale, intimate in address. Harp, processed vocals, and fractured pop that refuses to resolve. Support from LSDXOXO.
Cléo from 5 to 7
Dir. Agnès Varda, 1962 — 4K restoration
A singer waits two hours for medical results that may confirm cancer — Varda's masterpiece of real-time filmmaking, shot on location in Paris in the early sixties. A new 4K restoration from Ciné-Tamaris. The film runs 90 minutes; it lasts much longer. Introduction by the programmer.
Meredith Monk: Early Works
Juice, Vessel — Restaged
Meredith Monk performs reconstructions of Juice (1969) and Vessel (1971) — two of her landmark early works, adapted for The Kitchen's main room. The performances involve extended vocal technique, movement, and the layered spatial consciousness that defined Monk's contribution to interdisciplinary performance.
Wolfgang Tillmans: Lighter
Survey exhibition
A comprehensive survey of Wolfgang Tillmans's photographic practice from 1990 to the present — rave culture, portraiture, abstraction, and the political image. Over 200 works from international collections, reinstalled according to Tillmans's characteristic unframed, pinned presentation.
Sun Ra Arkestra
Under the direction of Marshall Allen
The Sun Ra Arkestra — still performing, still costumed, still otherworldly — under the direction of Marshall Allen. The setlist moves through the Arkestra's six-decade catalogue, from Heliocentric Worlds to Lanquidity, and on into the space music beyond. One of the last living connections to this particular American avant-garde.
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
Dir. Dušan Makavejev, 1971 — 35mm
Makavejev weaves documentary footage of Wilhelm Reich with a fictional Yugoslav love story — a formally reckless, politically charged film that got him banned from his own country upon release. A struck 35mm print from Janus Films. Funny, carnal, and still dangerous. 84 minutes.
Adrienne Kennedy: Funnyhouse of a Negro
Revival production — directed by Lila Neugebauer
A new production of Adrienne Kennedy's 1964 surrealist drama — a woman, whose father may be Patrice Lumumba, moves through a fractured, multiplying identity on stage. Directed by Lila Neugebauer for BAM's Next Wave preview series. Kennedy's most performed and least understood work, presented with new design.
Demdike Stare
Testpressing Tour — Live
The Manchester duo — Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker — play a rare live set presenting material from their Testpressing series alongside new unreleased work. Demdike Stare's practice moves between industrial, dub techno, and occult electronics; the live format extends all three into something harder to name.
The Man Who Envied Women
Dir. Yvonne Rainer, 1985 — 16mm
Rainer's most theoretically ambitious film — a male academic navigates feminism, desire, and gentrification in 1980s New York. Shot in 16mm. The film speaks in the language of Lacan and downtown politics, but what it says outlasts both. Post-screening discussion with a film scholar.