Photo: Andrew Hallinan
Kunsthall Trondheim and DansiT are inviting you to experience Barnett Cohen's performance anyyywayyy whatever, at Kunsthall Trondheim Friday 25 October at 7 pm.
Get your tickets here!
anyyywayyy whatever is an hour long work of performance by New York-based artist Barnett Cohen. Slipping between the genres of poetry and dance, anyyywayyy whatever explores the dialogic, through the cadence of exchange, as a vehicle for meaning making. The performance disperses a singular authorial voice into two, injecting velocity into the text-based score, giving it trot, bounce, and pulsion. What Cohen proposes in anyyywayyy whatever is a kaleidoscopic queer contemporary, an intentionally illegible–often outlawed–opposition to the increasing demand that queer bodies must arrive in language intact, that we must be coded, that we must be known, even to ourselves. With anyyywayyy whatever, Cohen advocates instead for figureless existence, disturbances of identity, that subvert, sabotage, and disavow the violences in prevailing dominant ideologies.
The text-based score for anyyywayyy whatever originates out of Cohen’s long-standing practice of composing epic poems that they later configure into arrangements for performance. The score hybridizes Cohen’s writing with found language that they accumulate from personal conversations, and what they read, overhear, or encounter online (all of which are footnoted.) anyyywayyy whatever will further engage in precise yet deconstructed choreographic sequences while increasing the pace and rhythm of existing movement in Cohen’s recent performances such as as im a pause im a fiction im a pervert im a dream at Canal Projects for Performa 2023 and whisper economies of blackmarket thought at Judson Church. The choreography will deepen and expand on current inputs in their work that range from subconscious physical impulses to quotidian pedestrian gestures to dance videos on tiktok. As with all previous performances, Cohen will make a chapbook of the score for the performance to be freely distributed to the audience so that they may further engage with the writing in their own time.
For anyyywayyy whatever, Cohen is collaborating with New York-based poet and artist Leslie Olivio.
About:
Barnett Cohen shapeshifts between poet, performance maker, object fabricator, and political activist. Born in South Africa, Cohen now lives in New York. Throughout their anti-disciplinary practice, Cohen proposes a kaleidoscopic queer surrealism of futuristic theoretical concepts, engaging bodily shapes, and calls for subversive action. Frequently collapsing borders between genres and mediums, Cohen documents and synthesizes our current reality of ruined meaning, anxious forces, and unremitting violence within dominant ideologies. Their work mirrors a frenetic sense of ever-present discord. Cohen has staged performances, exhibited, and held readings at Canal Projects as part of Performa 2023, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center For Performance Research, The Exponential Festival, International Objects, The International Center of Photography, JDJ, The Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, JOAN, LAXART, Human Resources, The Box, and REDCAT, City Limits, Rupert, and The Onassis Foundation. In 2021, Open Space/SFMOMA published a collection of their poems alongside those of artist and collaborator Simone Forti. Cohen has been in-residence at Skowhegan, MacDowell, NARS, Rupert, and Denniston Hill. They are a grant recipient from The Foundation For Contemporary Arts. Their work has been reviewed and featured in BOMB, The New Yorker, The New York Times, T Magazine, Artforum, hyperallergic, Cultured, The Financial Times, and Riting among others. In 2017, Cohen founded and still operates the Mutual Aid Immigration Network (MAIN), a trilingual free assistance hotline for people detained in immigration detention centers across the United States. MAIN connects people who call with bond funds and legal services that can accelerate their freedom from incarceration.
Maddie Hopfield is a New York City-based dancer, performer, choreographer, writer, and taiko drummer. She has shown work at Kestrels, LifeWorld, the MAAS building, Urban Movement Arts, The Art Room Studio, Vox Populi, and The Window Room. She has collaborated with Kayla Bobalek and Julia Bryck, and makes work with Marin Day under the name PEPTALK. She has performed in the works of Barnett Cohen, Amelia Heintzelman, Paris Cullen & Sarah Zucchero, Lindsey Jennings, Maya Lee-Parritz, Amalia Colón-Nava, Leah Stein Dance Company, Philly Kerplop (Vince Johnson), Jillian Jeatton, Chelsea Murphy, Amalia Raye Wiatr Lewis, Lily Kind, Lillian Ransijn, and Concept Kinetics ("Cricket" / James Colter). She currently performs taiko with Casual Fifth (Philadelphia) and Taikoza (NYC), and dances with Christina Reaves’ company, The Creature (NYC). She graduated from Bard College in 2017 with a BA in Dance and Written Arts.
Ray Tsung Jui Tsou is a Taiwanese multidisciplinary artist. She holds a B.F.A in Acting from Taipei National University of the Arts. As a performer, she had worked with companies including Voleur du Feu Theatre, Anarchy dance theatre, BIU theatre, Thatalright Art Space, and Godot Art Association. Tsou has previously collaborated with Barnett Cohen on im a pause im a fiction im a pervert im a dream at Canal Projects as part of Performa 2023 and whisper economies of blackmarket thought in Movement Research at Judson Church. Recently, Tsou taught I care more about why you move instead of how you move, a movement workshop for Open Movement at Performance Space New York.
Important information:
Kunsthall Trondheim has a stair-free entrance from street level, is wheelchair accessible and has a lift. Public disability parking is available right outside our entrance. Upon arrival, you will be greeted by our host at the reception. At street level, there is an accessible restroom, and another restroom is located on our lower floor.
If you have any special requirements, please send us an email to office@kunsthalltrondheim.no or call us at (+47) 485 00 100, and we will be more than happy to help make your visit as easy and rewarding as possible.