Events Calendar

BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn presents an evening of readings organized by Hawley Hussey and Greg Fuchs, featuring three influential artist writers from BRIC's 30-year contemporary art exhibition history responding to the landscape of Brooklyn—Alan Gilbert, Tracie Morris and Jen Bervin.

The event includes musical performances by the members of “downtown” band, Strange Farm: Bill Brovold, Billy Ficca, Peter Zummo and Ernie Brooks, and projections by visual artist Larry Racioppo.

The name Ripple comes from our process: a curator invites a participant, that participant invites another, and so on. The artists and writers will present work in response to the question: How are the geographical boundaries of Brooklyn significant to your work? Each poet will perform for 15 minutes. Following a short break for refreshments, Strange Farm will perform accompanied by photographic projections by Racioppo.

Ripple: A Brooklyn Salon, is a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends Event!

CURATOR BIOGRAPHIES

Greg Fuchs is the author of numerous poetry books including Moving Pictures (Lew Gallery), Metropolitan Transit (Isabel Lettre), Board of Education (Narrow House), and Temporary (Unarmed).  His poems have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Exquisite Corpse, and other publications; Fuchs' also writes on art and culture. He is a member of the subpress publishing collective as well as the editor of Open 24 Hours, a small press in New York.

Hawley Hussey, Director of Contemporary Art Education at BRIC | Arts | Media | Bklyn, is also an artist, writer, and performer. Her work has been exhibited, published, performed and collected internationally. Her limited-edition print Blue and Lonesome (the healing of Little Walter) was recently published as a cover of VOLT literary magazine, Sonoma State University; it will be featured in the 14^th edition of Drunken Boat, an online literary and arts journal. Her World Famous Coney Island Break Up Letters was produced in 2010 on the CD Beauty Keeps Laying It's Sharp Knife Against Me, a compilation of work by New York poets. 

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES

Jen Bervin is a poet and visual artist. She brings together text and textile in a practice that encompasses artist books and large-scale art works, poetry, and archival research. Her most recent poetry/artist books include The Dickinson Composites (Granary Books 2010), The Silver Book (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), and The Desert (Granary Books, 2008.

Bervin's work has been shown at the Walker Art Center and is included in such special collections as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the J. Paul Getty Museum; Stanford University; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France; and the British Library. She is editor-at-large for jubilat and teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Alan Gilbert is the author of the poetry book, Late in the Antenna Fields (Futurepoem), and a collection of essays and articles entitled Another Future: Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight (Wesleyan University Press). His poems have appeared in BOMB, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and The Nation, among other places. His writings on poetry and art have appeared in such publications as Aperture, Artforum, The Believer, Cabinet, Modern Painters, Parkett, and The Village Voice.

Tracie Morris, a performer, writer, and scholar, has been a staple of the Nuyorican poetry scene since the early 1990s. In 1996, she began to focus on experimental poetry, particularly sound poetry. During this period she performed and recorded with such avant-garde musicians as Melvin Gibbs, Marvin Sewell, Elliott Sharp and Val Jeanty. She is a fellow of the prestigious African American poetry foundation, Cave Canem, and has served on its Board of Directors. Morris received an MA and PhD in Performance Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her poetry and critical essays have been anthologized extensively in such publications as kulturo, Chain, Callalo, Brooklyn Rail and boundary 2. Morris teaches at Pratt Institute

Photographer Larry Racioppo began working with the camera after returning to Brooklyn in 1970 after two years as a VISTA volunteer. His career began in a rented storefront where he set up a darkroom.  His early subjects included family, working-class Italian American neighborhoods in South Brooklyn and Sunset Park, street life, religious rituals, and domestic interiors.  In 1978 Racioppo became a photographer for the New York Cultural Foundation’s CETA Artists Project. In 1980, Scribner’s published his first book of photographs, HALLOWEEN.

In 1989 Racioppo began his present position as Staff Photographer for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. In 1997 he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for a series of urban landscapes. He currently works with an 8x10 view to photograph interiors of abandoned buildings, especially movie theaters and churches.

THE MUSICIANS

Strange Farm
For over thirty years the members of Strange Farm have performed in many of the same groups and criss-crossed throughout the so-called Downtown New York scene. A common thread has been the music of Arthur Russell, whom the members have all collaborated with. His compositions and influence were an inspiration behind the forming of Strange Farm and still plays a role.

Billy Ficca was a founding member of the seminal band Television in 1973; he remains an active member. His work includes drumming with Nona Hendryx, The Waitresses, and Gary Lucas' Gods and Monsters among many others.

Bill Brovold received his degree from the School of Visual Arts in 1982. He was working with sound at the same time, collaborating with various artists from Belgium performance artist Jan Fabre to composer Rhys Chatham. Bill joined on as a member of the Rhys Chatham’s Ensemble.  He has many releases on the Knitting Factory,  Tzadik and Cuneiform labels.  He is an active teaching artist, working both visually and with sound.

Peter Zummo pursues the evolving boundary of music making and brass culture via compositions for interactive ensemble. His musical pieces and performances evoke the influences and methodologies of the minimalist, rock, jazz, and world music styles. His production credits include Indian Ocean’s Treehouse/School Bell with Arthur Russell on Sleeping Bag; H*E*R, by Yvette Perez, on Persian Cardinal; and Zummo With an X on Loris Records and New World. Zummo received a Bessie award for Trisha Brown’s Lateral Pass and has been commissioned by choreographers including David Dorfman, Risa Jarsolow, and Irene Hultman.  His compositions have been performed by the Downtown Ensemble, NextWorks, the Flexible Orchestra, the Guy De Bievre Ensemble, the Love of Life Orchestra, Baby Birdbrain, Tilt Brass, and Gamelan Son of Lion.

Ernie Brooks was a founding member of the seminal rock band The Modern Lovers. His work includes collaborating and/or performing with Arthur Russell, Rhys Chatham, Ned Sublette, Bill Brovold, Gary Lucas/Gods and Monsters and as a producer for Talking Head, Jerry Harrison’s solo projects.