Thursday, June 4, 2009, 7-9PM
The powerhouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn
Readings by Jeff Yohai, Ruben Rivera, Mark Baker, & Brantly

Nightlife Connoisseur, Brantly Martin has been working in New York City nightlife for the past eight years, hosting weekly parties at various downtown Manhattan venues. Join New York nightlife heavyweights Mark Baker, Karim Amatullah, Rocco Ancarola, Shaun Rose, Pavan Pardasi, Scott Hockens, Matt Oliver, and DJ David Katz for a reception, reading and book signing to celebrate the release of Brantly Martin’s first novel, Pillage—a brutal yet hilarious look at the lives of Manhattan’s downtown elite at the dawn of the new millennium in Pillage, his first novel. Continue reading “Brantly Martin’s “Pillage”” »

Thursday, April 9, 2009, 7 – 9PM
The powerHouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn
For more information: (718) 666-3049

Dealing with war in any context is always a difficult and often problematic venture. To celebrate the release of I.E.D., acclaimed photographer David Levinthal will be in conversation with noted photography critic Richard B. Woodward at the powerHouse Arena on April 9 to discuss his use of toy soldiers and plastic Humvees to explore and understand the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Why simulate a war with toys when it is already so familiar to us through daily news broadcasts, and so well documented by photojournalists and soldier-generated cell-phone imagery? In part is it because this book is not just a recreation of the war in Iraq; it is also a commentary about our society and how it is imaging and imagining a war through the use of such direct and immediate signifiers. Never before has there been an instance of such a massive production of toys directly related to a current and unresolved conflict. Continue reading “I.E.D. War in Afghanistan and Iraq” »

Thursday February 5th
7 – 9pm
Powerhouse Arena
37 Main Street
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201

In the 1980s, the Burns Archive’s studies of derangement of the mind and body offered photographic histories of medicine and death. Deadly Intent: Crime & Punishment extends that study to crime.

The book is divided into four sections: crime scenes, police action, punishment, and executions. It is concentrated between 1890 and1950, a time when criminals often admitted their crimes and were quickly punished. Until the late 1940s, the period from arrest to execution for a capital offense averaged 33 days. The change in police attitudes and of the punishment prescribed for criminal behavior is documented here in iconic photographs.

Unlike many previous works on the subject, this compilation of crime scenes gives readers a forensic view; offering entire series of images used by detectives and criminologists. Other photographs reveal the evolving standards of the American criminal justice system, from water torture at Sing Sing prison, whipping posts, penitentiary life, and the notorious deadly work camps of the South, to executions: hanging, firing squads, and the electric chair. Only when all the evidence is presented can justice and humanity be properly served. This compilation of images, most published here for the first time, is a valuable new resource for historians and researchers.

Danielle Levitt in Conversation with Claw Money

We Are Experienced
Thursday, Dec 11th 7-9pm
Powerhouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

We Are Experienced includes football stars, tanorexics, wiccans, punks, prom dates, snowboarders, and baton twirlers. Levitt revels in the beauty of the age and its incomparable potential. She also exposes an advanced awareness particular to a generation. The notion of strident youthfulness was invented in the last century; today it is an understood quantity, a streamlined experience. Levitt’s subjects are well-schooled in the expectations, limitations, and developmental strategies of growing up American, and have unparalleled resources to identify in a multitude of ways. We Are Experienced is a lushly stylized archive of the choices they make.

To correspond with the recent release of Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, The powerHouse Arena is pleased to present an exhibition of work by the photographer Ed Kashi. In the form of “film strips,” ranging in sizes of up to 24 inches wide by 168 inches long, this format is a new visual context for examining the impact of oil exploitation in Nigeria.

“I see this format as another way of utilizing the visual language of photography,” Kashi says, “asking the viewer to consider a group of images together in a particular sequence, thereby increasing the authorship of the work and my point of view. I’m quite interested in pushing the boundaries of how still photography is presented and this is just an alternative to the more traditional way of looking at exhibited photography.”

For the exhibit, the images are arranged into six separate series, illustrating the central topics in the Niger Delta which Curse of the Black Gold investigates, including the environment’s degradation, the insurgency against the oil industry, and the human cost. Each grouping of Kashi’s work reveals the ubiquity of oil’s impact since its introduction to the country half a century ago and critiques the network by which the world extracts its natural resources.