2010 Spring Benefit

Please join Art in General’s patrons and supporters for an evening of art, drinks, dinner and dancing at Skylight One Hanson, a spectacular new venue located in the former Williamsburg Savings Bank. The 2010 benefit celebrates an exciting 29th year at Art in General, one that includes six New Commissions, three international resident artists and numerous artist projects and events. All proceeds will support Art in General exhibitions, commissions, residencies, public programs, and educational initiatives.

The 5th annual spring benefit will feature the Canadian artist collaborative, FASTWÜRMS’ U.S. debut of Skry-Pod, an intimate social exchange performance with a team of artist card readers using traditional Tarot cards and custom Skry-Pod iTouch and iPhone Tarot applications. “Skry” is a traditional term used to describe divination or clairvoyance by gazing into water, candle flames, and unique to Skry-Pod, touch LCD screens. Drawing on the artists’ exploration of the subversive “otherness” of Witch culture and its relationship to acts of resistance, Skry-Pod engages the public in a contained spectacle and tableaux of mediated and direct intimacy as participants take part in Skry-Pod Tarot readings and divination scenarios.

Formed in 1979, FASTWÜRMS is the trademark and joint authorship of Toronto/Creemore- based multidisciplinary artists Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse. Working in film, installation, performance, drawing, and sculpture, FASTWÜRMS’ artwork melds high and popular cultures, bent identity politics, social exchange and a Witch-positive DIY cinematic sensibility. Throughout their work, FASTWÜRMS’ respond to the unreal construction of Witch stereotypes with an aesthetic that is humorous, relational, and inclusive with a bent toward working class, craft collaborations, and queer alliance. The name FASTWÜRMS is based on the artist’s “perverse respect” for Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and a fast intercut ‘punk’ style of film editing, that Kozzi had developed the late 1970’s, called “the wurm technique.”

FASTWÜRMS has exhibited and created public commissions and installations, performance, video and film projects, across Canada and in the United States, Europe, Korea, and Japan. Exhibitions include Anacowda- happy to feed the world, for Rococo Tattoo at the Power Plant, Superstition at Gallery TPW, Red of Tooth and Kaw at the Mendel Art Gallery, Toronto, BLOOD & SWASH 3 at Parlour Projects, Brooklyn, N.Y. and the 27th Bienale de Sao Paulo, as well as Donky@Ninja@Witch at the Art Gallery of York University, North York, the Contemporary Art Galley, Vancouver, and Plug In ICI, Winnipeg. They recently performed Krummi Krunkar: Tarot+Tattoo in Reykjavik as part of the SEQUENCES Festival.

Skry-Pod readers: Brooklyn 2010

FASTWÜRMS: Kim Kozzi & Dai Skuse
Bradley Vladimer Benedetti
Elinor Galbraith
Jacob Ireland
Shelley Marlow
Scott McGovern
Jenn E. Norton

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

7 PM
Cocktails
FASTWÜRMS: Skry-Pod

8 PM
Dinner

Skylight One Hanson
One Hanson Place
Brooklyn, New York

To purchase tickets online use the PayPal buttons below. Please note there is a 4.5% fee for online purchase.
no longer available online
For more details or to purchase tickets by phone, please contact Anna Starling at 212-219-0473, ext. 25 or anna@artingeneral.org

Music by Rob Kelley of Entrance NYC.

Co-Chairs: Alexander Gorlin and Franklin Sirmans.

Patrons: Bloomberg, General Tools Manufacturing, MSW Studio.

Supporters: Anne Delaney, Alexander Gorlin, Steven T. Incontro, Jeffery Larsen and Joseph Bolduc, Melinda Wang, Martin Weinstein and Teresa Liszka.

Committee Members: Pamela Averick; Joe and Sue Berland; Claudia Baez; M. Franklin Boyd; Henry Buhl; Layla Diba; Anne Edgar; Robert Ferguson; Elizabeth Fiore; Darius Grant; Sean Johnson; Christina H. Kang; Nicole Klagsbrun; Anna Kustera; Mary Lapides; Steven Learner; Florence Lynch, Florence Lynch Gallery; Sara Meltzer, Sara Meltzer Gallery; Thomas Morris; Penny Pilkington; Charles Renfro; Benjamin Salazar; Jack Shainman, Jack Shainman Gallery; Ken and Joyce Siegel; Ken Miller and Lybess Sweezy; Bunsie Vasvani; Madeline Weinrib; Edward Winkleman and Murat Orozobekov; Miyako Yoshinaga, MIYAKO YOSHINAGA art prospects.