Exhibitions — past

As part of the group exhibition Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down! Special Special hosted a series of performances, “Tie Me Up! Cam Shows,” in collaboration with Wildman Clab. 

“Tie Me Up! Cam Shows” twists internet broadcast culture into an art form, playing with notions of spectatorship and voyeurism. The series consisted of several artist performances inspired by the themes in Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down!, including imagined psychic space, the composite nature of selfhood, and virtual/actual spectatorship. Special Special set up multiple cameras within the space, and the live streamed across Instagram and YouTube.

This was the fifth project in the poetry/performance series The Frontiers Conference, organized by Wildman Clab at Special Special.

Performances:

January 25, 2020

12:00 pm—ASMR Chinese Banquet Mukbang
The Special Special staff and friends consumed 100 dumplings as we celebrated the new year of the rat.

6:00–7:00 pm—Mia Kerin
Mia Kerin performed Number 1, a site-specific piece taking place in the world of Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down!, mediating on the art of being prepared. 

January 26, 2020

4:00–5:00 pm—Kristen Lee
Kristen Lee’s demonstrated shibari, a decorative knot-tying practice associated with erotic bondage. 

6:00–7:00 pm—Taj
Taj’s performance assessed relationships with past lovers while seeking solace in the pleasure found in loving oneself through movement and the luxuriousness of chocolate.

For the release of Yi Xin Tong’s NYC Fishing Journal from Gong Press at Special Special, artist and fisherman Yi Xin Tong will hold an informative and possibly useful workshop on fishing in NYC. Participants will learn about the various fish species traveling through the city, effective methods of meeting them, the advantages of fishing, and the inevitable disasters that arise. Gain hands-on experience making fishing rigs that you can take home. With air conditioning and cold drinks provided, this workshop is perfect for those who can’t make it to the beach on this hot summer day. 

This workshop is part of the poetry/performance series, The Frontiers Conference, organized by Wildman Clab at Special Special for their year long residency.

Yi Xin Tong is a nowhere-based artist and fisherman. He enthusiastically appropriates studio time for fishing, which brings him to urban peripheries where ruins fill in for buildings, social order becomes unstable, and wildness returns at a surprisingly fast clip. Fishing is an unusual exploration of the environment that leads to peculiar experiences. Casting in the scorching sun and engulfing fog along the shores, he searches for fish who feed with the ocean’s tides, at times disremembering what era it is.

Founded by Lu Zhang in 2017, Wildman Clab is a lab and club for researching and proving the existence of primitive individuals by providing activities and experiences. Wildman Clab currently resides in Special Special, organizing The Frontiers Conference (TFC) as their year-long residency. TFC is a series of experiences created in collaboration with pioneers at the frontiers of art, such as poets, musicians, and artists, in search of new forms of poetry readings and performances.

Lu Zhang, Tim Simonds, and Aaron Lehman perform a public reading of Peter Handke's play Kaspar (1967), collaboratively reconceived and read through a single translucent paper copy. Playing at reading. Excerpt from Kaspar: “They speak a text that is not theirs. They do not speak to make sense but to show that they are playing at speaking, and do so with great exertion of their voices even when they speak softly... He utters a single sentence over and over: I want to be a person like somebody else was once.”

The Frontiers Conference is a continuous series of performances that joins and highlights artists on the fringe of various artistic movements. Organized by Wildman Clab as part of their year-long events residency at Special Special.

For Talks to Me, Special Special hosts two editioned works by Tim Simonds: manna, a set of small rose leaf sculptures and Talks to Me, a scratch-game printed on a translucent paper. The two editions are presented amidst some trappings—a set of screens and guides. Talks to Me is made in collaboration with Seokhoon Choi, printed by Eric López, and released as Special Special Edition No. 31, part of a series of editioned works produced by an artist in partnership with Special Special.

Photo credits:
# 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 by Dario Lasagni
# 5, 9 by Wen-You Cai