CHAINED TO THE RHYTHM - CATHERINE RYAN

"Chained to the Rhythm" will be a tongue-in cheek performance lecture that uses pop songs about rhythm in order interrogate a tension in the notion of rhythm. Rhythm is, on the one hand, a natural process: our bodies are regulated by heartbeats, regular breaths and circadian clocks. On the other hand, the rhythms of work, of needing to attend jobs and labour, are imposed on us by our present economic order. There is a certain violence to this process: as such, many pop songs about rhythm include a reference to force: for Katy Perry, we are “Chained” to the rhythm; for Grace Jones, we are “slaves” to the rhythm. This violent rhythm is also pleasurable: we bend ourselves to the strictures of neoliberal time demands because we desire the augmented capacities they give us. Like the kick drum that drives a great pop song, there is pleasure in forcing oneself to be a good, productive subject. Samples from ‘lowbrow’ pop songs will be used as serious lessons about the discipline imposed on the subject by the neoliberal order. Is there an escape from the endless demand to labour and produce? Is there an alternative “Rhythm of the Night”, as the early 90s Eurodance group Corona claims? Could rhythm ever be a “dancer”, as Snap! Promises?

SOME DAYS - MELODY PALOMA

"Some Days" is a durational work of poetry, hosted by Stale Objects dePress over the course of 2018. Each day the poet adds to and sporadically edits a public Google Doc, inviting readers to witness the poem being written, to access the work in various states of disorder and disarray, and to engage with the temporality and mess of process. In this performance, Paloma will continue to explore the strain of poetry as ‘work’ under neoliberalism, reaching for positive forms of progress as she reads the ‘completed’ work while running the beep test. Revelling in the dissonance of poetry at the hands of the state, Some Days interrogates and punctures neoliberal tools, pressing for the endurance and perseverance of artistic practice.

THE BRIG (1964) - JONAS MEKAS (PROGRAMMED BY THOMAS RAGNAR)

The play The Brig was first performed by The Living Theatre on May 13, 1963. Written by former US marine Kenneth H. Brown, it draws from Brown's own experience of being held in military prison for thirty days, for being absent without leave while serving in Japan in the 1950s. The Living Theatre's performance embodied the daily routines and degrading rituals of prisoners and guards – in Mekas’s words it was "so precisely acted that it moved with the inevitability of life itself ... it was a real brig, as far as I was concerned." Mekas witnessed the last public performance of the play, undertaken in direct resistance to attempts by the IRS to shut down The Living Theatre's location on 14th Street, that led to many audience and theater members being arrested. Possessed by the idea of documenting The Brig on film – what he saw as equivalent to a news reporter gaining access to a real Marine Corps prison – Mekas instigated a further defiant performance of the play at a temporary location on 42nd Street, the actors performing for the camera over the course of one night. The resulting film, an act of civil disobedience, restricts even further any awareness in the viewer that what is being documented is anything other than the real brutalities and humiliations of military life. The footage is tightly contained and claustrophobic, a precise reconstruction in cinematic terms of the experience of being in the play.

This screening is in honour of the recent passing of filmmaker, poet and artist Jonas Mekas. The Brig (1:06mins) will be screened continuously in Gallery Two from 12–6pm.