About

In New York, there once was a vibrant culture artist's bar – these places such as the Cedar Bar, Ninth Circle, Max's Kansas City, and The Liquor Store Bar were where artists, writers, critics, curators, musicians, dancers, etc. met to talk shop, argue politics and trade gossip. Though these bars were public spaces and open to all, their patrons represented a somewhat exclusive club of the producers of critical culture. Critical Practices Inc. (CPI) believes that such physical sites are necessary to advance and sustain critical, theoretical, and artistic practices. To address this situation, CPI is launching The Culture Club, with the objective of creating a site for the producers of critical culture to meet face-to-face, to share experiences, to exchange views, ideas resources and talk shop not market and real estate. CPI sees this initiative as putting into practice our mission of building new models and platforms "beside” existing ones by which to promote the types of associations and exchanges that define a community of critical producers.

TCC Presents: Studio Visits Featuring Angela Fraleigh, Derek Fordjour, and Narcissister

Tuesday, June 26, 2018
7:30 PM; 20 Jay Street (7th Floor) Brooklyn NY 11201

Join us for the closing of the Spring 2018 Season!

TCC will visit the studios of Angela Fraleigh, Derek Fordjour, and Narcissister at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, 20 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY. Please, arrive on time and meet us on the 7th Floor! From there, at 8:30 PM, we will come together for a social hour at our usual address, at the 68 Jay Street Bar. The studio tour will be led by Monika Fabijanska.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Angela Fraleigh explores narratives of women and marginalized female figures in art history. In her monumental paintings, she has incorporated women painted by Baroque and Rococo painters such as Francois Boucher and Francois Lemoyne: posed odalisques, goddesses, nymphs, and allegories, now free from their assigned, often ambiguous roles sit together reassembled by Fraleigh in imagined circles of shared-knowledge, which has been passed down to us in sanitized fairy tales. Currently, Fraleigh is working on a series of site-specific paintings for Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, NY, inspired by the work and relationship of Edward and Jo Hopper, and addressing the role of muses in male artists’ lives.

Fraleigh earned her MFA from Yale University. Her solo exhibitions include those at the Vanderbilt Mansion, Hyde Park, NY (2015), Inman Gallery, Houston, TX (2014), and University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2011). She has also exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, P.P.O.W Gallery and Massimo Audiello Gallery, NYC. Fraleigh is a professor and the department chairperson of the Moravian College art department and is represented by Inman Gallery in Houston.
 
Derek Fordjour’s images draw upon a variety of sources, including sporting imagery, board and card games, carnival motifs, and the circus, to explore ideas of vulnerability. He uses the economic, political and psychosocial implications of games to discuss the power structure that exists around rewards and sanctions, merit and punishment, both within the game and as an allegory for the broader human experience.

Fordjour was born in Memphis, TN to parents of Ghanaian heritage. He earned his MA in Art Education from Harvard University and MFA in painting from Hunter College CUNY. His works have been exhibited at Galerie Lelong, New York, NY, The Taubman Museum, Roanoke, VA, and Galleria Monica DeCardenas in Switzerland, among others. Fordjour was awarded an MTA commission for permanent art for the 145th Street station in Harlem. He is represented by Night Gallery in Los Angeles and Josh Lilley Gallery in London, which will present his solo installation at Art Basel Miami 2018.
 
Narcissister employs a spectacle-rich approach to explorations of gender, racial identity, and sexuality. Humor, pop songs, elaborate costumes, contemporary dance, and her trademark mask are her tools in deconstructing stereotypical representations. By opening and turning against themselves what Stuart Hall calls "fixed and closed stereotypical representations” Narcissister exposes in live performance, video and photography, the practice of representation itself, and challenges the audience to question its own attraction and repulsion.

Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Wearing a mask and merkin, she works at the intersection of performance, dance, art, and activism. She has presented her work at The New Museum, MoMA PS 1, The Kitchen, Abrons Art Center, and at many nightclubs, galleries, and alternative art spaces. Questioning the divide between popular entertainment and experimental art, she appeared on America’s Got Talent in 2011. Narcissister is a 2015 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2015 Theo Westenberger Grantee, and a 2015 United States Artists Fellow.

TCC Presents: ‘Speaking While Reading’ 
Experimental, language-based performance by Barbarita Polster

Tuesday, June 19, 2018
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

‘Speaking While Reading’ will revolve around a series of still images that set up a relationship between ornamental patterning (open work), industrial patterns (expanded metal), and natural crystalline structures (rocks and geodes). Using resin and laser-cut acrylic, each element (an intricate 1920s radiator cover, an expanded metal grate, and an amethyst cluster) is recreated in clear form, disrupting surrounding space with its edges, but merging with the background, as well.

This TCC event will debut a 30-minute video and a performance of the same duration, created by Barbarita Polster. Layered onto the footage will be subtitled text, reflecting on the objects in the images and their implications. A similar text will be read live, at times diverging from the subtitles, asking the viewer to balance between the two.

BIOGRAPHY

Barbarita Polster (b. Cleveland, OH (1987); l. Chicago, IL) is an artist who loosely draws upon her own multiracial background to inform questions of the unassimilable and ontologically complex, using speculations of physical space as a model for these concerns. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include: Sharp Window, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2018), GLASSBOX gallery, Seattle, WA (2016); Forum Artspace, Cleveland, OH (2016); and William Busta Gallery, Cleveland, OH (2014; 2013). In addition, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions all through-out the U.S.

TCC Presents: Semiotics of Race and Health: Process
A talk by Damien Davis.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

Join us this Tuesday for an intimate artist talk with Damien Davis, where he will discuss the myriad elements of his work as they relate to concepts of “race” and “health.” This talk will also serve as the first open dialogue on the themes in his current exhibition, WAITING ROOM: Sickle Cell Study, on view in the Broadway Windows of 80WSE Gallery.

BIOGRAPHY:

Damien Davis is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared at The Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art, as well as METHOD Gallery in Seattle, and Biagiotti Progetto Arte in Italy. He is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Community Engagement Grant and has been awarded residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Pilchuck Glass School. His work has been mentioned in the New York Times, Frieze Magazine, The Guardian, Hyperallergic and Vulture. Davis holds a BFA in Studio Art and an MA in Visual Arts Administration from New York University.
 
Click here for more!

TCC Presents: Social Ritual A Conversation with Kristen Racaniello

Tuesday, June 5, 2018
OLYMPIA WINE BAR 54 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

As an artist, writer, academic and medievalist, Kristen Racaniello is invested in social performance and ritual.  Bacchanalian drinking, Hammurabian 4Chan trolls, and the paradisiac hell of American coastal bro culture set the scene for her painting.  Paint is a tool that condenses the process of time-labor, self-making and social-fashioning; she sees it as a choice medium of communication in a distracted world. 

As an art historian, Racaniello’s interest in social performance has led to research on the history of bodily interaction with shrines and cult objects, and a Master’s thesis entitled The Shrine System, which examined medieval shrines through the materiality of cult statues and votive objects, the body as a performative tool and institutional motivations as components that generate the shrine phenomena.  Across mediums, Racaniello probes the space of the body as a membrane between self/ /other and as a permeable border for the intersubjective. What better critical-social-space to discuss her work and the roots of American public spectacle than a bar in Brooklyn? 

TCC Presents: Screenings of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Tuesday, March 27, 2018
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

Join us for an intimate screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky's lesser known films La Cravate (1957) and Fando Y Lis (1968). Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French director, actor, writer, artist, mystic, and producer whose avant-garde films have earned him the title "Father of the Midnight Movie". This screening event pairs two of his earlier films wherein Jodorowsky's obsession with rituals, gendered power dynamics, and the theatrically grotesque collide to produce dynamic and fantastical cinematic imagery.
Films Screened:
La Cravate (1957) 20 mins
Fando Y Lis (1968) 1hr 33mins

TCC Presents: Elena Berriolo and Art Hirahara in Sewing Machine and Piano Jazz

Tuesday, March 20, 2018
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

Sewing Machine and Piano Jazz is a live performance by artist Elena Berriolo and pianist Art Hirahara. The collaborators will feed off each other, combining the working of a sewing machine with playing jazz improvisations. This interplay will produce two outcomes: the melded sounds of the machine’s percussive beat with the piano music, and a visual one; a unique 16-page book.

Previous performances include:

The Sound of Silence, (2017) with violinist Rosi Hertlein, The Children Museum of the Arts.

Sewing Music into Visual Art, (2015) with classical pianist Edith Hirshtal and Rosi Hertlein, Fiterman Art Center.

Two-Sided Concerto, (2012) Bravin Lee Programs with Pianist Edith Hirshtal.

BIOGRAPHIES

Elena Berriolo
Berriolo is a New York based artist committed to working within the book format and performing with the sewing machine. Since 2012, she has engaged in collaborative projects with musicians and writers. In 2016 she started a series of performances as acts of resistance to the Trump's administration policies.Her work has been acquired by a number of institutions, including: Biblioteque National de France; Smith College Northampton, MA; University of Delaware Library, Newark, DE; Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, Germany; Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla, CA.For more info click here.

Art Hirahara
Hirahara is a New York-based jazz keyboardist and composer. From the traditional to the avant-garde, Art has found a sound of his own that cuts across genres and boundaries. He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and continued his graduate studies at California Institute of the Arts. He has performed around the world in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East and extensively around North America. Art has had the privilege to perform with Stacey Kent, Freddy Cole, Akira Tana, Don Braden, and Dave Douglas, among many others. For more info click here.

TCC Presents: Season 3 Kick-off and Artist Talks!
Featuring: Eleni Giannopoulou and Marina Leybishkis

Tuesday, March 13, 2018
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

Join us as TCC celebrates our 1-year anniversary of programming! This Tuesday, we’ll host two incredibly talented artists: Eleni Giannopoulou and Marina Leybishkis at 68 Jay St Bar. Stop by, grab yourself a drink, and find out about their fascinating, individual projects!

BIOGRAPHIES

Marina Leybishkis  
American, b. 1980, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Born and raised in Uzbekistan – a Muslim country with troubled ethnic history and totalitarian regime, Leybishkis’ sense of identity is complex. Her text accompanying documentary photographs, ‘108km in Exile’, 2013-2017, lists people deported to Uzbekistan by Stalin: Tatars, Germans, Chechens, Jews, Koreans, Russians – most to labor camps: “I grew up thinking it’s natural to see many nationalities and religions under the same national roof, but I was unaware of how they got there […], physical, psychological and spiritual deportation none of them has ever really recovered from…” MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2017. Exhibitions: Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, 2017; President’s Gallery, John Jay College, NYC, 2015 (solo: 108km in Exile); International Center of Photography, NYC, 2013; and ICP-Bard Studios, NYC, 2012.

Eleni Giannopoulou
Greek, b. 1994, Thessaloniki, Greece. Lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in Tribeca, NY. Giannopoulou trained at the Angel Academy of Art in Italy before receiving an MFA at the New York Academy of Art. In 2014, she won first prize in the Art Renewal Center International Scholarship competition. She is a three-time recipient of the Elisabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and a recipient of the Panepinto Family Foundation Scholarship and the David Kratz and Gregory Unis Scholarship. 
She has exhibited in Florence, Toronto and New York.

TCC Presents: Call For Entry, Spring 2018:
The Culture Club Wants To Hear From You

We are now reviewing proposals for our Spring 2018 season. We are looking for poets, sound artists, painters, musicians, video artists interested in presenting their body of work.
The Culture Club is a site for the producers of critical culture to meet face-to-face, to share experiences, to exchange views, ideas and resources.

TCC meets every Tuesday night at 68 Jay St. Bar, Brooklyn. We view this space as an incubator for a more intimate and organic dialogue and therefore it is not a white cube space by design. Some of our most successful participants embrace the atmosphere of our setting.

We want to promote the types of associations and exchanges that define a community of critical producers. Join us!

Deadline: February 9, 2018
 
http://www.criticalpractices.org/the-culture-club/
 
Questions may be directed to: tccopencall@gmail.com
 
To apply click below:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYBGvnaz_tNyLigxE5AM3w7KSbSoCgj9ZfbnIqDjdoCWrn2w/viewform?usp=sf_link

TCC Presents: Social Night!

Let’s Get Social.
Join us this Tuesday as TCC ends the fall season at 68 Jay St Bar! Stop by, grab yourself a drink, and meet other creatives as we celebrate another immersive series of screenings, exhibitions, and panels.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

Art and Economics Laboratory at TCC Presents: Art Trivia Night

Art & Economics Laboratory are back at it for the final installment of Art (World) Trivia in 2017. Test your knowledge of recent events and meet fellow misanthropes of cultural production.

Things you should know:

• Trivia is played in teams - debate is encouraged - questions will get weird.
• Trivia is unregulated, cheating is acceptable - so even if you're not a Russian oligarch or Larry Gagosian you have a good shot at winning if you leave your ethics at the door.
• There will be prizes!

ABOUT

rt & Economics Laboratory began as an idea in 2014, and was founded in earnest in 2015 as a means to facilitate and expand economic literacy, employability, and meaningful participation in creative communities; and to reframe the definition of success for arts professionals. AEL was founded by Natasha Bunten, Ian Cofre, and Daniel Johnson.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

TCC Presents Ellen Levy ‘Meme Machines’ An Artist Presentation

Join us as artist Ellen Levy presents on her recent exhibition,‘Meme Machines’, concerning the transmission of ideas. ‘My aim is to have the viewer think about how libraries, like minds, breed ideas. To suggest this, I have designed a number ofexisting libraries whose structures visually reflect the urgent circumstances surrounding their origins. I conceive library collections and the memories they hold as activating the exterior shape of the architecture.’ The project will be the focus of her residency at the American Academy in Rome as a Visiting Artist this coming March.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Ellen K. Levy, PhD, is a NY-based media artist who co-chairs the NY Art and Science LASER program. Her practice encompasses experiential mixed-media installations, innovative forums, art/sci curatorial projects, and writing in the interface between art, science, and technology. She has exhibited widely in the US and abroad and was represented by Associated American Artists and Michael Steinberg Fine Arts. She was Past President of the College Art Association and former Special Advisor on the Arts and Sciences at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA). She has taught and lectured widely on art and neuroscience, including at the New School, the Banff Centre, Scripps institute (Jupiter), and Williams College.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

TCC Presents Going for the Hat Trick: A discussion on Professional Development in the Arts

The Culture Club presents: Going for the Hat Trick, an intimate discussion reflecting on the topic of professional development for those pursuing a career in the arts. A diverse group of artists, curators, and educators will discuss their personal journeys through the art world; where they have been, where they are now, and what do they envision for the future. Speakers and participants alike will be prompted to consider how a contemporary art practice requires an entrepreneurial drive and the need to wear multiple hats at any given time. Throughout the evening the group will address methodologies of time management and question various markers of "success". Please join us on Tuesday to listen, meditate, and discuss what it means to cultivate a career in the arts.

TCC Presents Dan Bainbridge performance curated by Monika Fabijanska

The performance will start at 7:45 PM.
Please join us for the performance followed by a discussion in a lively bar atmosphere.
 
Tampering with childhood fantasies, Western mythology and Eastern spirituality, Dan Bainbridge creates mixed-media objects, installations, assemblages, and performances employing his animated objects, music, and collaboration with other artists.

He makes toy-like animals that on a closer examination appear increasingly bizarre. His menagerie reminds of a medieval bestiary where no distinction was made between species native to Europe, exotic animals, and imaginary beings. For his most recent, 2017 solo exhibition at ART3, Bainbridge created sculptural works that were interactive and meant to be played with the help of unitars. The audience could stroke and pluck the instruments’ primitive single strings attached to the animal sculptures by electrical umbilical cords. The suspended whale, the hyena bust, the pig drum – these musical sculptures set the stage for a performance.

BIOGRAPHIES

Dan Bainbridge, b. 1976 in Dubuque, IA, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated with MFA in Studio Art from the Illinois State University in Normal, IL (2006), where he had several exhibitions. Bainbridge had two solo shows at the ART3 gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2015, 2017) and presented three elaborate performances there.  He co-founded collectives Monkey Mop Boy and French Neon.

Monika fabijanska is an art historian with over 15 years’ experience in curating, producing, and managing arts. Based in New York City, she specializes in international contemporary art and has special interest in women's art and feminist art. 

Tuesday, November 7, 2017
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

TCC Presents Hudson Valley Murder & Mayhem A reading by author Andrew Amelinckx

Join award-winning crime reporter, freelance journalist and visual artist Andrew K. F. Amelinckx Halloween night as he reads from his newest historical true-crime book, "Hudson Valley Murder & Mayhem." Learn about Lizzie Halliday, one of America's first known female serial killers, and the last days of Jack "Legs" Diamond, a ruthless bootlegger who left Manhattan to consolidate control of the Catskills and ended up dead on a blood-soaked bed in an Albany rooming house.

BIOGRAPHY

Amelinckx grew up in Louisiana before making his home in New York. He holds an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Amelinckx writes for Men’s Journal and Modern Farmer and is the former crime and courts reporter for The Berkshire Eagle newspaper. He's also the co-founder of Fellow Well Met, an online shop specializing in vintage, handcrafted & fine men’s accessories.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

TCC FIELDTRIP
Media as Mediation
A 30-person round table discussion.

Presented by The Scheimpflug Lecture Series and hosted by Critical Practices Inc.

The MFA Photo, Video and Related Media Dept. at SVA is collaborating with Saul Ostrow, Founder and Director of Critical Practices INC. to host a roundtable discussion on the topic of Media as Mediation as part of the Department's Scheimpflug Lecture Series on the evening of Tuesday, October 24th, from 6:30-9:30 pm in the Department Big Room. For time’s sake, TCC members are welcome to witness this discussion and participate in conversation after the round table has concluded.
 
A moderator will create a framework for the topic and subsequently will open the discussion to the invited panel of concerned people in our community to anonymously and openly express their ideas and opinions. After the discussion, the participants will be identified to the audience who will be free to mingle and to discuss further thoughts or questions over refreshments.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017
6:30- 9:30pm
School of Visual Arts - MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media.
Big Room 120; 214 E 21st St. New York, NY

TCC Presents: LET'S TALK ABOUT RAPE with Monika Fabijanska

Curator Monika Fabijanska will discuss her upcoming exhibition The Un-Heroic Act. Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women’s Art in the US, scheduled September-October 2018 at the Shiva Gallery at John Jay College for Criminal Justice, CUNY.
 
The exhibition proposes a concentrated survey of works devoted to rape, by three generations of women artists including Roya Amigh, Andrea Bowers, Angela Fraleigh, Natalie Frank, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jenny Holzer, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Mendieta, Senga Nengudi, Yoko Ono, Carolee Thea, and Kara Walker. It will demonstrate that rape constitutes one of central themes in women’s art and analyze its rich iconography in all mediums.
 
The Un-Heroic Act is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts through which you can make a tax-deductible donation to support the exhibition and the catalog.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017
7:30 PM; 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

The Culture Club Rules of the Game

1. The Culture Club (TCC) has been initiated by Critical Practices Inc. (CPI)

2. CPI’s role in TCC is to serve as facilitators in the realms of: Structure,Programming and the building of TCC’s Core

3.  CPI does not administer nor fund TCC

4.   CPI’s support of TCC consists of the networking of resources and the promotion of the organization .

5. CPI understands that the primary activity of The Culture Club is to facilitate in the generation of a public site at which the producers of critical culture can meet face to face, to share experiences, and exchange views and ideas on issues effecting cultural practices and discourse.

6.  TCC is not a service organization – it is a social organization based on democratic principles.

7.  TCC is heterotopian and inclusive.

8.  While meetings of the TCC may be initiated with a reading, lecture, screening, concert etc.  the initiation of conversation and discussion are TCC’s essential objective.

9.  TCC_WU (Work Unit) is self-selecting and consists of a coordinator, a Secretary and members of the Core

10.   TCC-Core consists of those participants who volunteer to create programming and facilitate interactions.  

11.  Core membership is open to all who seek to contribute time, effort and ideas to the development of the TCC community.

12.  Programming is by the invitation of TCC_WU (Work Unit).  Anyone and everyone may propose and facilitate the realization of TCC’s programming.

13. TCC_WU’s authority resides in its responsiveness, intelligence and relevance to its community.

14.  New voices are crucial are to be encouraged in this manner we intend to keep it messy.

15.  Participants are encouraged to invite others to participate – this is how TCC will build its Core.

16.  Central to maintaining TCC’s horizontal structure is that the necessity for limited institutional restraints relative to form, organization, content, and setting.

17. Programming may be videoed, streamed, or broadcast on a need to basis and is dependent on the permission of the presenters.

18. TCC meetings are weekly. Business meetings as needed.

19. We ask all participants to respect The Rules of the Game.