The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:08:39 -0400
From: "Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc." <mail@franklinfurnace.org>
To: mail@franklinfurnace.org
Subject: Special Goings On - one month from today

Franklin Furnace presents a retrospective

The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art

One Night Only - April 27th, 2007

Franklin Furnace, the internationally-acclaimed incubator of the avant-garde, 
is proud to present a one-night only benefit event on Friday, April 27th at 
8:00 PM: The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art, 
to take place at the Harry de Jur Playhouse of Henry Street Settlement (located 
at 466 Grand Street, Manhattan).  For this unique evening, Patron tickets are 
$500 and $100, and are available through Franklin Furnace, 
<http://www.franklinfurnace.org>www.franklinfurnace.org or call 718-398-7255. 
General Admission tickets are $20, and are available through 
<http://www.theatermania.com>www.theatermania.com, or call 212-352-3101

The benefit will be co-curated by C. Carr, critic and author of On Edge; 
RoseLee Goldberg, scholar and author of Live Art: 1909 to the Present; and 
Martha Wilson, Founding Director of Franklin Furnace, and will contain both 
video footage of historical performance works and live performances by some of 
the most influential artists of our time. This program will serve as an 
overview of performance art works which changed art discourse over three 
decades.

The History of the Future will include live performances by Karen Finley, 
Murray Hill, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Tom Murrin, Julie Atlas Muz, Reverend 
Billy, Alba Sanchez, Michael Smith and Martha Wilson.

Artists whose recorded work is represented in the event include Moe Angelos and 
Peggy Healy, Ron Athey, Blue Man Group, Eric Bogosian, Patty Chang, Nicolas 
Dumit Estevez, John Fleck, Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez- Pe�a, Grupo 609, 
Tehching Hsieh, Holly Hughes, John Jesurun, Joshua Kinberg and Yury Gitman, The 
Kipper Kids, Ana Mendieta, Tim Miller, Mouchette, William Pope.L, Martha 
Rosler, Sapphire, Stuart Sherman, Annie Sprinkle, Jack Waters, William Wegman 
and Man Ray, Wooloo Productions, Adrianne Wortzel, X-Cheerleaders and Ricardo 
Miranda Z��iga.

The History of the Future will honor Marina Abramovic, Simone Forti, Claes 
Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainer and Carolee Schneemann for their pioneering 
performance work and Judson Memorial Church for its role as a cradle of 
experiment.

It has been 30 years since Franklin Furnace was founded to present, preserve, 
interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, and 10 years 
since Franklin Furnace "went virtual," taking its website as its public face. 
Here�s an historic outline of seminal FF events:

--February, 1981: Eric Bogosian's first performance in New York, "Men Inside," 
is presented by Franklin Furnace.

--February 1984:  Franklin Furnace is reprimanded by the NEA and dropped by 
several corporate sources for presenting Carnival Knowledge, an exhibition and 
performance extravaganza that questioned if there can be such a thing as 
"feminist pornography."  Annie Sprinkle makes her artist debut in "Deep Inside 
Porn Stars."

--May, 1985:  Franklin Furnace creates its Franklin Furnace Fund for 
Performance Art, which allows emerging artists to produce major work in New 
York. The panel selects three of the "NEA Four" artists before they were so 
identified (Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck) along with many others who 
have gone on to change the world: Papo Colo, Kaylynn Two Trees Sullivan, 
William Pope.L, Jennifer Miller, Andrea Fraser, Peggy Pettitt, Kim Irwin, Keith 
Antar Mason, Murray Hill, Pamela Sneed, Tanya Barfield, Deborah Edmeades, Patty 
Chang, and Stanya Kahn, among others.

--February, 1988:  Franklin Furnace and Thought Music produce Teenytown, a 
multimedia performance by Jessica Hagedorn, Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley 
with film by John Woo and choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zolar, which examines 
how racism is embedded in popular culture and entertainment.

--May - August, 1990:  Franklin Furnace's performance space is closed by the 
New York City Fire Department for being an "illegal social club," and the 
organization is demonized for presenting Karen Finley's installation, "A 
Woman's Life Isn't Worth Much." Inquiries and audits are conducted by the 
Internal Revenue Service, the New York State Comptroller and at the request of 
Senator Jesse Helms, the General Accounting Office.  Cathy Simmons is the first 
artist in Franklin Furnace's performance program "in exile," at the Kitchen.

--January, 1992:  Franklin Furnace's Visual Artists Organizations grant from 
the NEA is rescinded by the National Council because of the sexually explicit 
content of a 1991 performance by Scarlet O. The Peter Norton Family Foundation 
replaces this $25,000 grant.

--November, 1993:  The Museum of Modern Art acquires Franklin Furnace's 
collection of artists' books published internationally after 1960, the largest 
in the United States, forming the Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace/Artist 
Book Collection.

--February, 1997:  Franklin Furnace launches its website, 
<http://www.franklinfurnace.org>www.franklinfurnace.org, as the Board 
determines that access to freedom of expression and a broader audience for 
emerging artists through new media will be a prime program focus.

--January, 1998:  Franklin Furnace's first netcasting season of ten artists 
including Lenora Champagne, Alvin Eng, and Patricia Hoffbauer is mounted in 
collaboration with Pseudo.com.

--January - December, 2000:  The Future of the Present 2000 is redesigned as a 
residency program in collaboration with Parsons School of Design in order to 
give artists access to the full range of digital tools, and to exploit the 
Internet as an art medium and venue.

--May, 2006:  Franklin Furnace receives notification of $124,030 from the 
National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year grant to digitize and 
publish on the Internet records of performances, installations, exhibits and 
other events produced by the organization during its first ten years. This 
project will create electronic access to what are now the only remaining 
artifacts of these singular works of social, political and cultural expression.

--June, 2006:  ARTstor and Franklin Furnace announce a collaboration agreement, 
ARTstor's first with an "alternative space." Digital images are fast replacing 
slides and slide projectors in the teaching of art and art history. To respond 
to these changes, Franklin Furnace is working with ARTstor to digitize and 
distribute images and documentation of events presented and produced by 
Franklin Furnace, with the goal of embedding the value of ephemeral practice 
into art and cultural history.


~~end~~


--
Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
80 Arts - The James E. Davis Arts Building
80 Hanson Place, #301
Brooklyn, NY 11217-1506
T 718 398 7255
F 718 398 7256
http://www.franklinfurnace.org
mail@franklinfurnace.org
JOIN TODAY!  http://www.franklinfurnace.org/about/memb2006_07/index.html

Martha Wilson, Founding Director
Michael Katchen, Senior Archivist
Harley Spiller, Administrator
Dolores Zorreguieta, Program Coordinato