K48 at The Kitchen 4/24

You don't want to miss this awesome FREE event of artists from the new Prizn Break issue... featuring Roxy Pain, Christophe Chemin, Martha Colburn, Annika Larsson and Tobias Bernstrup. See press release below for more info...


(Tobias Bernstrup performing at the Duolon MoMA in Shanghai)

New York, NY, April 16, 2007—The celebration of the sixth issue of K48 will be an arresting affair. The megazine and this evening will explore themes of imprisonment by presenting the work of four artists and one band. In Lockdown We Bite! takes place at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street) on Tuesday, April 24 at 7pm. Admission is FREE.

Brooklyn group Roxy Pain will perform a live set including a track especially made for the new edition of K48—Prisoner’s Pain. The whole performance can best be described if you picture Amanda Lear as an Egyptian Lover in a place where Middle East meets Chinatown.

Martha Colburn will screen her special K48 project Waschdrang Mama with a soundtrack by electronic/pop musician Felix Kubin from Hamburg. Waschdrang Mama has the effect of being a hyperactive Gauguin or Matisse painting, but set in prison. It is floral and beautiful, and verging on garish, in contrast to its explicit material and actions of the jail inhabitants, as acted out by cut-outs and collages inspired by the imagery of Jean Genet.

French artist, Christophe Chemin will screen his new film, L’homme au gant. Since the age of 13, Chemin is obsessed by a painting called “L’homme au gant” by Titien. The painting deals with getting older and presents a strong link between the passing of time, teenagers, and death. Chemin used to visit The Louvre and masturbate in front of that painting, once a week for years. The video is very religious, desperate, and nervous. The climax of the movie is the artist masturbating, shaking, and crying in front of a postcard of L’homme au gant, with Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder as a soundtrack.

Annika Larson will present the video Fire, which will be the New York premiere of this recent work. Fire focuses on the spectacle of the violent act and the power of a violent image, but also the power of the familiar image and its symbolic use. The video’s point of departure lies in activism and riots. Homemade weapons, common brands, and ordinary clothes shape the aesthetics of the activist. Filmed in a dark hangar environment, the video uses the structure of what could be a training situation for a violent act. The suspense is underscored by an electro-acoustic soundtrack by the artist and Tobias Bernstrup, a paraphrase of Stockhausen’s opera Freitag aus Licht. Close-ups of flames, bodies in tracksuits, faces covered with bandannas, lighters, and bottles. Although the video displays a threat or the possibility of violence, its voyeuristic gaze and abstraction is suggesting a situation that is more seductive than violent.-

The evening will close with a special performance by Tobias Bernstrup who will perform his new material; songs like “Enemies of The Earth” which sounds as Miami Vice meets Fritz Lang—an Italo Disco Noir anthem accompanied by new animations and costume creations. Computers unite against man!