Tonight: Ira Cohen - Reading @ the Gershwin
Will Swofford
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Tonight!
Neke Carson and Michael Wiener
Present
"Live from The Gershwin"
The Gershwin Hotel
7 East 27th St.
NYC, NY
Tuesday October 2nd
8pm
Poet Ira Cohen
Ira Cohen
is an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker born in New
York City to deaf parents. During the 1960s, he traveled to Tangier,
where he published the exorcism magazine GNAOUA.
Startling imagery abound as he treats us to new works from dreams that
live on the tail of a lizard....
Admission $10
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Ira Cohen
From the Mylar Chamber
29 November 2007 to 21 January 2008
@ October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
Bloomsbury
LONDON WC1N 3AL
UNITED KINGDOM
Tel. + 44 (0)20 7242 7367
Founded in 1978, the October Gallery is an art gallery dedicated to
the appreciation of art from all cultures around the world. The
Gallery exhibits and promotes art of the transvangarde - or
trans-cultural avant-garde - that is to say, the work of artists who,
whilst working at the forefront of their own respective cultures,
assimilate into their work elements from other cultures as well.
During the past twenty-one years, the Gallery has shown the work of
such transvangarde artists as: Gerald Wilde, El Anatsui, William S.
Burroughs, Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede, Kenji Yoshida, Aubrey Williams,
Ablade Glover and Sokari Douglas Camp amongst many others. As well as
exhibitions by individual artists, the Gallery also mounts group
exhibitions that concentrate on the art produced in one particular
area or culturally continuous region. Amongst these regional
exhibitions have been shows devoted to the art and culture of : Tibet
(1991), Trinidad & Tobago (1992), Mongolia (1993), the Horn of Africa
(1994) Haiti (1995) South Africa (1996) the Yoruba Diasporas (1997)
Oceania (1998) and Peru (1999). Future exhibitions will comprise a
series of shows highlighting the contemporary art coming from
shamanistic societies around the world.
Named after the month in which the Gallery was founded, a season
associated with ripeness and fruition, the October Gallery is a
self-supporting charitable trust that, while it receives no
core-funding still manages to resist the powerful commercial pressures
of the fashionable art world. Support for the project comes from sales
of art, rental of the Gallery's unique facilities, grants from
various funding bodies and the active support of a growing number of
dedicated artists, musicians, writers and many other such friends from
around the world.
In the twenty-one years since opening its doors to the peripatetic
artists, thinkers and scientists of the planet, the Gallery has hosted
more than just exhibitions of the visual arts, holding concert
performances by the Theatre of All Possibilities and the Bauls of
Bengal, performances of Balinese, Indian and Middle Eastern dance,
Dervishes from Pakistan, evenings with writers and thinkers that
include Lawrence Durrell, Brion Gysin, John Allen and John Lilly and
readings by poets such as Christopher Logue, David Gascoyne, Ira
Cohen, Johnny Dolphin, Taiwo Jegede, Kathleen Raine and many others.
The October Gallery
The Gallery is situated in Bloomsbury, just a short walk from the
British Museum and the University of London's School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS) with which it maintains close contacts and
frequently liaises in the production of exhibitions. The Gallery is
within easy walking distance of both the Holborn and Russell Square
tube stations. A major part of the October Gallery's work is to do
with public education at all levels, and to this end the Gallery
maintains an active and flourishing Education Department.
For further information concerning forthcoming exhibitions, events,
sales of paintings and books or the availability of spaces for hire,
please contact the October Gallery.
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Also of note in the Akashic Universe....
COMING SOON FROM ARTHUR:
PARADISE NOW: THE LIVING THEATRE IN AMERIKA DVD
http://www.arthurmag.com/store/dvds.php#paradise
the screams
the unchained soarings of a sincerity which is on its way
to this revolution of the whole body without which nothing can
be changed. -- Antonin Artaud
Arthur Magazine proudly presents our newest release PARADISE NOW: The
Living Theatre in Amerika DVD featuring rare, never-before-distributed
films and a bacchanal of revolutionary multimedia documents from The
Living Theatre's historic and influential '68-'69 American tour. A
fulminating art-meets-life installation brought to you in
collaboration with The Living Theatre, The Ira Cohen Akashic Project
and Saturnalia Media Rites of the Dreamweapon.
DVD INCLUDES
- PARADISE NOW: The Living Theatre in Amerika (1969) a film by Marty
Topp, produced by Ira Cohen for Universal Mutant
- EMERGENCY (1968) a film by Gwen Brown, featuring precious footage of
Living Theatre productions Mysteries and smaller pieces, Paradise Now,
and Frankenstein
- THE MAP OF PARADISE NOW, a 14'' x 19'' double-sided, commemorative
poster + 'zine including texts by Antonin Artaud, Julian Beck, Judith
Malina, Ira Cohen and rare photoDon Snyder
And many additional special features...
LIMITED EDITION OF 1,000 - PRE-ORDER NOW!
CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS, PRE-ORDER INFO and YOUTUBE PREVIEW
http://www.arthurmag.com/store/dvds.php#paradise
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All month in philadelphia ....
The CEREALART Project Room Presents Ira Cohen
Ira Cohen Photoworks - An exhibition of back-lit transparency works
from "The Mylar Chamber"series
and "The Naga" Photographs.
September 7 - October 30, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, September 7th
6 - 9pm
http://www.cerealart.com/projectroom.asp
The "Naga" photographs are a group of extraordinary portraits of
Indian sadhus by legendary New York artist Ira Cohen, taken during
filming of his historic documentary, "Kings With Straw Mats" in
Haridwar, India in 1986 and in 1977 at Allahabad Kumba Mela. The
Kumbha Mela is a pilgrimage into the heart of India's greatest sacred
celebration, which takes place every 144 years and also at 12 year
intervals. The Kumbha Mela takes its name from the Hindu legend, which
tells how four drops of the gods' holy elixir fell to the earth from a
"kumbh" or pitcher during a struggle with jealous demons fighting in
the heavens. The celebrations take place where those drops fell to the
earth.
Defying all preconceptions of human endurance in their quest for
higher liberation, these ash-dusted swamis form an unbroken lineage
between the millennia-old birth of yoga and its contemporary
expression. Often accompanied by itinerant beggars, hunchbacks, snake
charmers, and rebel musicians wailing their songs in the tradition of
Mirabai, the Kumbha Mela sadhus are not to be taken lightly.
"Following a path of insight and devotion, they are brides of the
earth moving from camp to camp, intoxicated on the divine, evoking the
mythic, silencing themselves in poverty and solitude to reach the
unlimited world of shamanistic ecstasy."
"Apart from all the drugs used to induce ecstasy and vision, some of
the highest yogis and fakirs had their own time-honored ascetic
techniques for getting even higher through meditation and the practice
of austerities. In search of mystic union with Reality and the
acquisition of special powers, they defied all ideas of human
endurance, like standing on one leg for 12 years or more, even
sleeping while standing with the aid of a hanging swing."
"Even in your wildest dreams you could never imagine such a circus of
high madness, true devotion and showbiz savvy as the Kumbh Mela, which
could have absorbed the whole Woodstock nation as if under a single
tent. The naked Nagas marching to the river, like sparks from some
primordial fire, the people of dust with arms held high. There is a
pleasure of being mad that only the madman knows."
Cerealart is also proud to announce the exhibition of Ira Cohen's
backlit transparencies from his legendary series "From the Mylar
Chamber". Celebrated internationally for more than 38 years,
Cerealart's exhibition is the first to present Cohen's images in 20 x
30 light boxes.
Mr. Cohen began working in the 1960's when he built a room in his New
York loft lined with large panels of Mylar plastic, a sort of bendable
mirror that causes images to crackle and swirl in hypnotic, sometimes
beautiful patterns. After a few years experimenting with the technique
in photographs, he invited his friends from the downtown scene - like
Beverly Grant, Vali Myers, Jim Hendrix, William Burroughs, Angus
MacLise and Tony Conrad to have their photos taken. This body of work
is known as "Works from the Mylar Chamber." Two examples of these
works are currently included in the Whitney Museum's "Summer of Love"
exhibition. "It's like going on an ecstatic journey to another planet,
full of magical beings, animals and plants," Cohen said. "It's a
hallucinatory, almost trance-inducing experience."
As Ian MacFayden has written, "Cohen's color photographs are
reflections in sheets of Mylar, images of reversal and transformation,
the human form in fluid metamorphosis. These images split and coalesce
and vibrate in phantasmagoric configurations, suggesting both the flux
of psychedelic consciousness and the reconstitution of physical matter
at the atomic level. Henri Michaux, in The Major Ordeals of the Mind,
writes of this "disorganizing flux, the frenzied surge which overflows
in every direction, which cannot be controlled, retained or
contained..." Cohen's photographs do in fact frame and fix this
delirium to an extent, which Michaux saw as the function of the artist
who has been there, and brought back evidence: "For someone who knows
how to deal with it...there exists a possibility of transforming the
scattering, dissipating, dislocating, devastating, breaking, tearing,
disco-ordinating convulsiveness into an ally, into the prop, the
support of a future radiance and illumination, the very springboard of
transcendence..."
The poet, photographer, and filmmaker, Ira Cohen was born In The
Bronx, New York on February the 3rd, 1935. In 1961 Cohen took a
Yugoslavian freighter to Tangier where he lived for 4 years and
published Gnaoua, a magazine devoted to exorcism introducing the work
of Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Harold Norse and other members of
the interzone mob. He also produced Jilala, a mythic recording of
trance music by a sect of dervishes, which was recorded by Paul
Bowles. He also published The Hashish Cookbook under the name of
Panama Rose. In 1970 He went to the Himalayas where he started the
starstream poetry series under the Bardo matrix imprint in Katmandu,
publishing the work of Paul Bowles, Charles Henri Ford, Gregory Corso
and Angus Maclise and developing his art of bookmaking working with
native craftsmen. In 1972 he spent a year in San Francisco reading and
performing and then returned to New York mounting photographic shows.
He currently resides in New York.
Mr Cohen's work is included in "Summer of Love" currently at the
Whitney Museum in New York organized by Tate Modern Liverpool and
recently exhibited at The Swiss Institute in New York and included in
the 2006 Whitney Biennial. He has an upcoming exhibition at the
October Gallery in London in November.
Cerealart designs, develops, manufactures, and exhibits artist's
editions. Blurring the boundaries between high and low culture, the
multiples are designed by critically acclaimed, internationally
recognized, museum-exhibiting contemporary artists who are fascinated
by consumer culture. The Cerealart project room is a program organized
to introduce new Ideas and add additional visual cohesiveness to our
multiples program.
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http://www.cerealart.com/projectroom.asp
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