Kelly
September 16, 2015–January 10, 2016
Working across video and performance, Wynne Greenwood explores constructions of the self, tracing how subjectivities are formed in public and private spaces and always in relation to others—be they imagined or real-life personae. Greenwood is widely known for her work as Tracy + the Plastics, in which she plays all three members of an all-girl band. As Tracy + the Plastics, Greenwood performed live as lead singer Tracy, accompanied by videos of herself portraying keyboardist Nikki and drummer Cola, and toured across the country from 1999 until the project’s end in 2006.
Naming a new, yet-to-be-imagined character orbiting beyond the Plastics’ cosmology, Kelly is an exhibition and a six-month residency at the New Museum in which Greenwood premieres the now complete, re-performed, and mastered archive of Tracy + the Plastics’ performances. Over the last two years, Greenwood has worked to produce videos of the band’s historical, but, until now, largely undocumented, performances. Her approach generates an unusual archival object—original footage of Nikki and Cola accompanied by newly taped performances, made a decade or more later, of the “live” vocalist, Tracy. Bringing this archive into dialogue with more recent work exploring the artist’s interest in what she calls “culture healing,” this exhibition presents new work from Greenwood’s ongoing “More Heads” series—a body of sculptures and videos that represents characters in symbolic and deconstructed forms. Together, these works consider the poetics of the pause while mining electric gaps of meaning in conversation and offering possibilities for feminist, queer, and experimental models of collaboration and dialogue.
Greenwood’s residency will feature readings, panels, and performances, including a music series entitled “Temporary Arrangements” in which artists are invited to create and perform as one-night-only bands, as well as a series of panels that explores queer archives, legacies of feminist video production, and the potentiality of performing and disrupting different kinds of scripts. Please check the New Museum’s website for a full schedule of programs.
Music series: “Temporary Arrangements”
“Temporary Arrangements” is a unique concert series that invites artists to form one-night-only bands and stage their premiere—and, by definition, also final—performances at the New Museum. Curated by Wynne Greenwood, the program emerges out of the DIY ethos of Greenwood’s legendary feminist band. “Temporary Arrangements” proposes a collaborative model that is makeshift and provisional from the outset, asking what can happen when a group is formed without future expectations in mind.
September 18, 7pm: Temporary Arrangement by Anna Oxygen
November 13, 7pm: Temporary Arrangement by Sacha Yanow
December 11, 7pm: Temporary Arrangement by Wynne Greenwood
Public programs
September 19, 3pm: “Let’s piece our knowing together”
A conversation on queer archives with Lisa Darms, Reina Gossett, Wynne Greenwood, and Sasha Wortzel, moderated by exhibition curators Johanna Burton and Stephanie Snyder
November 14, 3pm: “Hall Pass”
A conversation on legacies of feminist video production with Cecilia Dougherty, Cheryl Dunye, and Tara Mateik
December 12, 3pm: “Can you take it from ‘Hey, Tracy…’”
A conversation on language, scripts, and performance with Gregg Bordowitz, Erin Markey, and Elisabeth Subrin
December 13, 3pm: Release party: Wynne Greenwood and Friends
Book launch with performances by Morgan Bassichis, Joe DeNardo, K8 Hardy, Sara Jaffe, Fawn Krieger, and Emily Roysdon
Kelly is co-curated by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement, the New Museum, and Stephanie Snyder, John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director, the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, with Sara O’Keeffe, Assistant Curator, the New Museum. An earlier iteration of this project, Stacy, was presented at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery in the summer and fall of 2014 and was curated by Snyder.
