Franklin Furnace presents a retrospective

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, www.franklinfurnace.org or call 718-398-7255. General Admission tickets are $20, and are available through 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- Pena, 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 Zuniga.

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,
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.


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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
[email protected]
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 Coordinator