Free
RSVP encouraged
***This event is AT CAPACITY. Only those who have RSVP’d will gain entry. Please vote, stay safe, and take care of one another!
On Election Night, CPR will open its doors to screen the televised election returns in its theater, providing a space to be in community as this historic and consequential presidential election unfolds.
The evening will feature ‘live political commentary’ from performance artist, viral ambush interviewer, and political dilettante Crackhead Barney. Additional performances and activations throughout the night by Maho Ogawa, Bob Bellerue, The KLUTZ C🙂LT (Alex Romania, Stacy Lynn Smith, and Shane Jones), and Kris Lee will punctuate the drone of the endless news cycle, offering space for reflection, distraction, and care.
Bring a pillow, some snacks, and camp out at CPR amongst artists and friends.
The program also marks the culmination of Exorcism = Liberation, a public art project by Yanira Castro / a canary torsi on view in the window of CPR, with all three of the project’s banners and slogans on view.
For information about how, when, and where to vote, visit vote.gov.
Special thanks to Vine Wine and Creative Time.
View tonight’s program here.
PROGRAM
Crackhead Barney: Live Political Commentary
7:00 PM – 12:00 AM
Maho Ogawa: Japanese Tea and Ritual Room
7:30 PM and 11:30 PM
An introspective and immersive journey over Japanese tea, the Japanese Tea and Ritual Room immerses guests in a peaceful ambiance and meditative mindset as collective ritual – accepting our strength and tenderness in the community and envisioning the best for the US and the world. Performed by Maho Ogawa, Carolyn Hall, and Annie MingHao Wang.
Bob Bellerue: Physical Circuits
8:30 PM
A sonic improvisation including junk metal, bullhorn feedback, and resonating drums.
The KLUTZ C🙂LT (Alex Romania, Stacy Lynn Smith, Shane Jones): Triniverse
9:30 PM
The KLUTZ C🙂LT invites you to come on down to a relaxing noise retreat and join in multimedia chaos meditation as they lead the audience in summoning a new and exciting ending to The End.
Kris Lee: Doing my black job
10:30 PM
Yanira Castro / a canary torsi: Exorcism = Liberation
On view
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Crackhead Barney was born in Jamaica, Queens to strict religious parents who immigrated to America from Northern Nigeria. She was raised in a one bedroom apartment with her siblings in an era before wokeness and identity politics ruled the cultural landscape and was always taunted for her immigrant African roots and dark complexion. She studied Fine Arts and Media at Hunter College and was told her artwork wasn't shit. Rejected from museums and galleries, she decided to take matters into her own hands and use the streets of NYC as her canvas, painting pictures with her body across the landscape without the need to satisfy the desires of the cultural institutions. Her street performances garnered attention and she began to go viral all over the Internet with people reacting in confusion, laughter, anger, pity, concern, and all the other emotions available to humans. Rejecting any hierarchies that didn't feature her at the very pinnacle, she naturally was attracted to social media where she could form a universe centered on her performance art. She began a “Crackhead Barney and Friends” account on Instagram and TikTok where she’s developed a cult of personality supportive of her creative practice.
Bob Bellerue is a sound artist, experimental musician, sound/video curator, and A/V technician based in Ridgewood NY. Over the last 30+ years he has been involved in creating and presenting a wide range of sonic activities – experimental music, sound art, noise, junk metal percussion ensembles, soundtracks for dance / theater / video / performance art, and sound / video installations. Bob’s electronic sound work is focused on resonant feedback systems, using amplified instruments, objects, recordings, and spaces, in combination with electronics and software written in the Supercollider audio synthesis programming language.
Shane Jones is a musician whose work centers intentional dissonance as a natural phenomena, utilizing continuous glissando. Their anti-capitalistic visual art practice activates found objects into such things as cartoons, animation, nunchucks, cassette tapes, T-shirts, paintings, and sculpture. Shane has been in a bunch of different bands as well as having had stints as a farmer, a cook, a union organizer, and a factory worker/impromptu noise artist in a teddy bear sweatshop.
Kris Lee (she/they) is a New York-based dancer, performer, and home chef.
Maho Ogawa (水素co.) is a Japanese born multidisciplinary movement artist working in NY. She uses body, video, text, installation, and audience-participatory methods to discover how relationships and the environment affect individual bodies consciously and subconsciously. Her recent works partly decontextualize and research the minimum movement in Japanese tea culture. She crafts public events inspired by Japanese tea rituals to build new thinking methods about "silence," providing a quiet but active mindset to heal and unite the community. Her aim is to empower erased cultures by dismantling oppressed body gestures and their context as choreography, fighting for cultural equality in nonviolent ways. Maho's works have been presented in Asia at Korea & Japan Dance Festival (Seoul), Za Koenji (Tokyo), Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo), and in the US including Princeton University, Invisible Dog Art Center, JACK, Movement Research at Judson Church, and CPR – Center for Performance Research to name a few. Ogawa has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and creation support from Culture Push, Emily Harvey Foundation, LEIMAY, and New Dance Alliance. She is a 2024-2026 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. www.suisoco.com @suisomaho
Carolyn Hall is a Bessie award winning freelance dancer/performer, historical marine ecologist, and scientific communication coach. She can often be found along shorelines hatching plans for creative public engagement projects around fish, water, and climate change. Some current engagements: Maho Ogawa’s Japanese Tea Ceremony series of performance investigations, the speculative future climate change project Sunk Shore with Clarinda Mac Low, and Carrie Ahern’s intimate performances examining female sexuality and society. Other hats: co-directs science communication programs for the American Fisheries Society, co-founder of Exact Communication, and Creative Programs Consultant for Genspace. Deep thanks to Maho and Annie for this continued journey together. carolynjhall.com
Annie MingHao Wang is a dancer/choreographer based in New York. She is a 2024 LMCC Manhattan Arts Grantee, a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2024-2025 Topaz Arts Artist-in-Residence, and a 2024 Marble House Project Artist-in-Residence. She has also had residencies at LEIMAY, BRIC, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work has been presented by Pioneers Go East Collective at Out-FRONT!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Leimay OUTSIGHT, Five Myles, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Exponential Festival, and BRIC. Annie is an active company member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and also dances with Sugar Vendil, 水素co. (suisoco.), and Same As Sister. Much gratitude for Maho and Carolyn for their power and grounding energy in this work.
Alex Romania is a multidisciplinary performing artist, improviser, and filmmaker. Romania is a current Franklin Furnace Fund recipient, a 2024 Djerassi resident artist, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, a 2023 CPR – Center for Performance Research AiR, and a 2018-2020 Movement Research AiR. Some of Romania’s current projects include co-directing the film RECKONING with Stacy Lynn Smith, the multidisciplinary opera Face Eaters (Chocolate Factory Theater, May 2024), co-directorship of the experimental documentary Patch the Sky with Five Colored Stones conceived by choreographer Daria Faïn, and a collaborative short film entitled Mira, Mira, Mira! with Daniela Fabrizi and the Re Hecho community in the LES. Romania has performed in various works by Kathy Westwater since 2013, and in works by artists Simone Forti, Éva Mag, Eddie Peake, Andy de Groat, and Catherine Galasso. As a video collaborator and designer, Romania has had video designs featured within works by Antonio Ramos, and has worked on film projects with Marin Media Labs, TAAMAS/Sarah Riggs, Trixie Films/Therese Shechter, Christopher Unpezverde Nuñez, Martita Abril, and Sarah White-Ayòn. Romania is excited about how experimentation in live performance may feed developing script based films and plays, which include a budding memoir, and character based extensions of previous work.
Stacy Lynn Smith is a neurodivergent, Black mixed-race performing artist and improviser, choreographer/director, filmmaker and Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water, a restorative justice organization by and for those affected by childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Smith’s practice synthesizes various lineages of improvisational forms, somatics, experimental theater, and butoh alongside embodied trauma research. Smith creates, devises, improvises, and performs across disciplines and genres with an array of talented artists including: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Thaddeus O’Neil, Rakia Seaborn, Vangeline Theater (2008-2017), Michael Freeman, Saints of an Unnamed Country, Salome Asega, GENG, Donna Costello, Bradley Bailey, Michele Beck, Jasmine Hearn, mayfield brooks, Josephine Decker, and most recently with Kathy Westwater, Jill Sigman, Emily Johnson, Joan Jonas, Peter Born, and Okwui Okpokwasili. As Psychic Wormhole (with Alex Romania), recent work includes producing and choreographing Face Eaters at The Chocolate Factory Theater. Psychic Wormhole is working towards completing their debut film, RECKONING, a visceral abstract memoir which grapples with Smith’s experiences of CSA and Complex-PTSD. Smith is a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, Glasshouse Art.Life.Lab 2024 AIR, a 2024 Djerassi AIR, and a 2025 Dance and Process (DAP) artist at The Kitchen.