9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

MONDAY, AUGUST 22

Screening: Dreams Are Colder Than Death at Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art
Arthur Jafa’s 2013 documentary Dreams Are Colder Than Death casts a broad net with its subject, the meaning of blackness in a post–Martin Luther King Jr. America. Working with filmmaker Khalil Joseph, Jafa decided to interview talk to various black artists, among them Kara Walker, Wangechi Mutu, and director Charles Burnett. Told in a lyrical style, the film poses questions without giving too many answers; it’s perfect, then, that a discussion will follow this screening.
Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, 177 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, 6–9 p.m.

Screening: “Surveillance: Short Film Program” at Anthology Film Archives
Part of Anthology Film Archives’s series “Voyeurism, Surveillance, and Identity,” this screening program features three short films about privacy and moving images. The program kicks off with Deborah Stratman‘s In Order Not to Be Here (2002), a “new genre of horror movie,” in the filmmaker’s words, about being watched in suburbia. Sophie Calle‘s Unfinished (2005), a video about money exchanges in the surveillance state, follows. The program concludes with Harun Farocki‘s I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (2000), a single-channel edit of an installation that parallels surveillance footage from a maximum security prison in California.
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue, 7 p.m. Tickets $7–$11

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25

Opening: Jessica Stockholder at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
The fall art season seems to start earlier with every passing year, and this time, it technically begins at the end of summer with this Jessica Stockholder show, her third at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. (An official opening reception follows during the real fall season, on September 15.) On view will be more of the Chicago-based artist’s oddball installations, which typically assemble various colorful, unlike objects. You could easily be tricked into thinking that these are all found objects, and that Stockholder put them all herself, but not so—she often deliberately selects her objects and relies on readymade materials. At stake in these works, some of them called “Assists,” in reference to how her objects are propped against or attached to other ones, are questions of dependence. Can these objects stand on their own, or do they require each other to be whole?
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th Street, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Opening: inHarlem at Marcus Garvey Park
Organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem, this new project will feature four new site-specific projects installed across four Harlem parks. Kevin Beasley, Simone Leigh, Kori Newkirk, and Rudy Shepherd have produced new work for this new initiative; their pieces will remain on view for the coming year. Of particular interest is Leigh’s work, an installation that evokes Zimbabwean clay-and-thatch structures that normally can be entered, but here are presented without doors as a symbol of diaspora and displacement. Likewise, the other three projects will reflect on a rapidly changing Harlem and the nature of blackness in the neighborhood.
Marcus Garvey Park, 5–7 p.m.

Party: A Night at the Museum at MoMA PS1
To celebrate its summer shows (which include an excellent Cao Fei survey and a fascinating Vito Acconci exhibition), MoMA PS1 is throwing a party. Organized by Meriem Bennani, whose installation FLY is also currently on view at the museum, the party will have music by the artist, and food and drinks. According to PS1’s website, the party has 50 hosts. We’re confused about how that could be possible, but head over to the museum’s site for the star-studded list, which includes Spike Jonze, Cindy Sherman, and Mickalene Thomas.
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, 8 p.m.–12 a.m. Tickets $18

FRIDAY, AUGUST 26

Screening: Madonna: Truth or Dare at Metrograph
Alex Keshishian’s 1991 cult favorite Madonna: Truth or Dare will have a theatrical run this week after a recent restoration. This documentary is essentially a concert film, featuring both black-and-white and color cinematography, and showing Madonna both on the road and performing live. What distinguishes the film from others like it is, as would befit its subject, the film’s lax depiction of sexuality. (When it was released in Europe, the film was called In Bed with Madonna.) Among other things, this film is worth seeing for its bizarre cameos, including appearances from Al Pacino, Antonio Banderas, and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar.
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street, screenings at 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., 7 p.m., and 10:15 p.m., and throughout the week

Screening: Amadeus at Film Society of Lincoln Center
In what must be one of the final outdoor screenings of the summer, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is showing Milos Forman’s 1984 masterpiece Amadeus. Starring F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri, the film chronicles one composer’s quest to mentor—and then, ultimately, to be better than—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, played here by Tom Hulce in an excellent performance. This epic, told with a dose of tongue-in-cheek humor, is one of the great films creativity and art. Here, it will screen for free in Lincoln Center’s plaza.
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Plaza, 7:45 p.m.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 27

Opening: Madeline Hollander at Signal
For a new performance called Drill, Madeline Hollander will have somewhere between two and seven performers show visitors how to use evacuation procedures typically found on airplanes and in movie theaters. The performers will continue looping through the gallery, exiting it and entering it over and over again, while aircraft evacuation slides hang above them. Could Hollander’s performance be some kind of institutional critique–style statement about the gallery as temporary entertainment space? A release keeps it vague, and notes that the performance will keep happening throughout the show’s run.
Signal, 260 Johnson Avenue, 7–10 p.m.

Performances: “It’s Already Started” at Artists Space Books & Talks
“Stories stand in for us; they capture us, too. / Stories hold us accountable. / Are other’s stories ever told as they should be?” That’s from the cryptic release for this performance program at Artists Space, organized by No Total. It’s hard to know what to expect here, other than that there will be performances by Jordan Lord with Carissa Rodriguez, Emma Hedditch, and Mariana Valencia throughout the evening. Each performance is accompanied with a brief description—all are available on Artists Space’s website.
Artists Space Books & Talks, 55 Walker Street, 7:30 p.m. RSVP to no.total.here@gmail.com