2015 IN FILM
Season Five: Year In Review
It was Basilica’s fourth season of bringing unique and exceptional films to the region through Basilica Screenings. The season emphasized expansive documentary practices, with selections from Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986, formerly presented at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and hosting guest programmer Jake Perlin and filmmaker Charles Hobson. Additional highlights included screenings with filmmakers Kevin Jerome Everson and Wu Tsang in person, and a program co-presented with the HQTBD art collective that featured Peggy Ahwesh, Ephraim Asili and Takeshi Murata. And, the launch of our Sci-Fi Summer Nights Series included the community success Blade Runner Noodle Night! Our big annual events also featured crossover cinematic programming; 24-HOUR DRONE screened an all-female video program from the collection of Second Ward Foundation along with Bill Stone’s Pensato Clock. At Basilica SoundScape, Kiln Films presented Direct-to-Video, a program of films dedicated to eliciting dialogue between artists and challenge spectatorship, which was joined by Chris Bower’s We Won’t Bow Down along with several other Friday screenings in the North Hall.
2015 IN ART
Season Five: Year In Review
This season in art was our fifth and one of our most expansive yet – we welcomed artist/poet/character Jack Walls to Hudson in his exhibition “Paintings, Et. Cetera” – an incredibly talented man who has served as a source of inspiration for a generation of young artists including Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, and the late Dash Snow. Dan Colen also joined us for this year’s Basilica SoundScape, when he spent a week in residence in our factory to create his Tar and Feather paintings to adorn the space. Also opening that weekend, curators Michael St. John, Javier Magri, Carol McCranie, and Tyler Moore presented a smart, reflexive group exhibition entitled The Now Forever. Curated by Daniel Peterson, Psychic Green Trailer was a site-specific installation by Bard MFA sculpture candidate Alan Danielson housed in our very own former Hudson Handling trailer. CATCH, the rough-and-ready performance series headed up the river to conquer Hudson and possibly America. And, we were proud to incubate the first iteration of HQTBD, an innovative roving art project that showcased the work of local artists. (more…)
4TH ANNUAL (FREAK) FLAG DAY
Flag Day! Fireworks! Freaks!
LIGHT ASYLUM first live performance in 2 years
NEON MUSIC dj set + YOUWHO
Sat. June 13 | 8 PM – 2 AM | $15 advance tickets
SATURDAY JUNE 13 | 8 PM – 2 AM | $15 ADVANCE, $20 AT DOOR
with LIGHT ASYLUM (first live show in 2 years)
NEON MUSIC dj set
YOUWHO (India Salvor Menuez + Brian Close of Georgia Sounds NYC)
FREAK FLAGS FOR SALE to BENEFIT BASILICA PROGRAMS – raising flags and funds! Fall in love with the freak flag of your dreams, and take it home for a sliding scale donation.
Prepare for the annual Flag Day celebrations in Hudson, a David Lynch-Americana-Wet- Dream. For the 4th year in a row, on Saturday June 13, Basilica Hudson hosts the after-dark (FREAK) FLAG DAY party as a ritual recognition of the beloved Flag Day tradition in Hudson, NY.
This year, Basilica invited our community to participate in a “Freak Accident” by creating representations of their “inner flag”. Thanks to Traditions Linens and Sketch for supporting this celebration of expression, and to Green Mountain Energy for their continued support of all things Basilica! Two drop-in flag making workshops open to the public will be held in Basilica’s Back Gallery space during the correlating HQTBD exhibition, prior to the event on the dates below:
Sunday, May 31 from 2-7 PM
Tuesday, June 2 from 2-7 PM
Flag makers are free to use supplies provided by Basilica or bring their own. Event organizers encourage potential flag makers to visit the factory on the river to produce their artwork within the community (where music will be blasting, pizza will be eaten, and beverages will be flowing!) Those interested in making flags from the comfort of their home may contact us at info@basilicahudson.org.
No matter who made the flag, all flags will be equal and anonymous — an exercise in democracy and the opposite of a typical art auction. Event attendees will be invited to a Freak Accident Art Experiment where they may fall in love with any flag and take it home with a modest donation to Basilica to help keep our nonprofit arts and community programming afloat!
These crafty flags will be on display in the Basilica Main Hall this Saturday, June 13 and available for sale prior to the start of the event from 7 – 8 PM. Fall in love with the freak flag of your dreams, and take it home for a sliding scale donation of $100-$500 or beyond to help raise flags and funds for future Basilica Arts programming!
The evening kicks off at sundown with the best seat in town for Hudson’s spectacular fireworks display (one of the largest in the Hudson River Valley launched from Basilica parking lot!), and the freaky festivities take off from there.
LIGHT ASYLUM fronted by Shannon F. will perform a musical set (their first performance in 2 years!) followed by a heavy DJ set by NEON MUSIC and new additions YOUWHO – all set in the raw, gloriously industrial Basilica space.
After a couple of high profile international artist residencies and collaborations with artists such as The Knife (Stockholm, Sweden) and ADULT (Detroit, USA), Shannon Funchess – the LIGHT ASYLUM founder, producer and frontwoman – returns to her New York stomping grounds to celebrate Basilica’s dark and colorful Freak Flag Day benefit as part of her three-year collaborative efforts with Basilica Co-Founder, Melissa Auf der Maur.
Neon Music is a multimedia artist, musician, and fashion designer based in NYC. S/he is the singer and guitarist for power pop / glam-punk supergroup Youthquake and bassist/producer for industrial-space-rock group Sphinx. In addition, Neon is also a celebrity headwear designer making cutting edge headpieces with his millinery house Triviál.
Hudson’s annual Flag Day is coming up on June 13th, but here at Basilica, we have our own way of celebrating, and we need volunteers! Not only will you have the best seat in the house for the fireworks (the display goes off in the parking lot of Basilica), you will help us to ensure our arts and community programming will grow in the future! If you’re interested, please email summer@basilicahudson.org with your first and last name and your availability this weekend. We greatly appreciate your help! We cannot do it without you and appreciate y’all, endlessly!
This event is made possible in part by generous support by local businesses Inn at Hudson, Traditions Linens and SKETCH. Ongoing support of our Back Gallery events including the flag making workshops with HQTBD is made possible in part with support by Green Mountain Energy.
FLAG MAKING WORKSHOPS
RAISE FLAGS TO SUPPORT BASILICA ARTS!
Sun. May 31 | Tues. June 2 | Tues. June 9 | 2- 7 PM
BASILICA HUDSON wants YOU to create a unique FLAG to represent your YOU-ness to be flown during our 4th annual (FREAK) FLAG DAY fundraiser/dance party on SATURDAY JUNE 13 at 8 PM, a ritual recognition of Hudson’s own Flag Day parade and fireworks tradition.
We hope this project will be an engaging, out-of-the-ordinary way to raise funds for Basilica. Make a flag to donate to the cause: flags will be flown and sold to support future programming at Basilica Hudson!
WHAT DOES YOUR FLAG LOOK LIKE?
COLLAGE with FOUND MATERIALS
EMBELLISH with PAINTS
WRITE with MARKERS
ATTACH with GLUE
SEW with FABRIC
WHERE/WHEN CAN YOU MAKE YOUR FLAG?
Two flag-making workshops will be held in Basilica’s Back Gallery during HQTBD’s exhibition. Traditions Linens and Sketch have generously donated fabric and craft supplies for all to use, but feel free to bring your own stuff too! Special thanks to Green Mountain Energy and Inn at Hudson for additional support.
FLAG MAKING WORKSHOPS AT BASILICA’S BACK GALLERY:
Sunday, May 31 from 2-7 PM
Tuesday, June 2 from 2-7 PM
Tuesday, June 9 from 2-7 PM
(FREAK) FLAG DAY PARTY AT BASILICA HUDSON
Saturday, June 13 at 8 PM, more info here.
BASILICA SCREENINGS: MAY 2015
Many Thousands Gone | Kissing Point | Lessons of War | OM Rider | co-presented by HQTBD
The fifth annual season of BASILICA SCREENINGS kicks off on Thursday, May 22 at 8 PM coinciding with the launch of the HQTBD exhibition Still//Life in Basilica’s Back Gallery.
HQTBD (Headquarters To Be Determined) is a parasite art project that will serve as a container for an exhibition and a series of events, performances, screenings, talks, and food and will inhabit the Basilica Back Gallery from May 22 – June 14. The full schedule of HQTBD events is posted here.
HQTBD SCREENING PROGRAM
Friday, May 22, 8 PM
Work by Peggy Ahwesh, Ephraim Asili and Takeshi Murata
co-presented by HQTBD Still/Life exhibition
Filmmakers Ahwesh, Asili and Murata will all be present to discuss their work!
MANY THOUSANDS GONE, Ephraim Asili, 2015, 8 min
Filmed on location in Salvador, Brazil (the last city in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery) and Harlem, New York (an international stronghold of the African Diaspora), Many Thousands Gone draws parallels between a summer afternoon on the streets of the two cities. A silent version of the film was given to jazz multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee to use as an interpretive score. The final film is the combination of the images and a modified version of McPhee’s real time “sight reading” of the score. – EA
KISSING POINT, Peggy Ahwesh, 2014, 15 min
Playing on the sexual implications of the term “kissing point”—the geographical location where two enemy territories touch—this split-screen video pairs footage from inside and around West Bank tunnels with an Israeli bypass road and its environs. – Art of the Real
The nighttime skies and landscapes on the physical and political edges of the territory are empty, haunted, and surreal…one’s expansive sense of wanderlust is controlled by the limitations of division… – PA
LESSONS OF WAR, Peggy Ahwesh, 2014, 5 min
Five little narratives, ‘newsworthy’ stories from the most recent war in Gaza–retold to not forget the details, to reenact the trauma and to honor the dead. The footage is lifted from a Youtube channel that renders the news in animation, fantastic and imaginative and several protective layers away from reality. The footage is re-purposed here to critique that safe distance from the violence, the antiseptic nature of the virtual narrative. – PA
OM RIDER, Takeshi Murata, 2014, 11 min
TRAILER
In OM Rider, Takeshi Murata deftly weaves the aesthetics of retro-noir, video games, and Italian giallo film into a cinematic exercise in cool, narrative minimalism and distilled rebellion. In a vast desert bathed in neon hues, a misfit lycanthrope blasts syncopated techno rhythms into the night.
At once opaque and thrilling, OM Rider expands upon Murata’s previous 3D character-based animation and references to horror cinema, benefiting from the integral collaboration of longtime composer Robert Beatty, here joined by musicians Devin Flynn and C. Spencer Yeh. – Electronic Arts Intermix
Prior iterations of Basilica Screenings have brought filmmakers including Albert Maysles, who showed and discussed many of his rarely seen works from the 50s and 70s, essential cinematic works such as Susan Sontag’s Promised Lands, Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, internationally renown contemporary directors including Jem Cohen, Deborah Stratman, and Denis Côté, and rare radical documentary forms such as Yumen produced by Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab.
HQTBD
Still/Life Exhibition + Programs
HQTBD | Still//Life
May 22 – June 14, 2015
Opening Night – May 22, 6-10 PM
Back Gallery, Basilica Hudson
110 S. Front Street, Hudson, NY
Hours Sunday – Friday 12-4 PM / or by appointment