Last July, before I started wearing straight-legged jeans, before I started writing for culturebot, my friend Ryan Frank invited me to the first installment of his AdNauseam Lyceum, a collective started by Ryan and his talented friends Rory Sheridan and Deena Selenow, that curates exhibitions of emerging visual and performance artists in NYC. The first AdNauseam took place at Ephemeroptera Art Space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It was great! There were interesting visual and performance art pieces, and nobody threw up on me, blew coke off my compact or started a screaming match about who would in a fist fight: Joanna Newsom or Regina Spektor (although that is something I would like to see). I even took my friend Amanda, and she doesn’t really like anything except Robert Wilson, but she liked AdNauseam. I’m really excited for the next AdNauseum, entitled Vernissage, to be held at chashama‘s theater at 217 East 42nd Street on February 17th at 6PM (I can hear the resounding chorus of oooooooooh). The AdNauseam Lyceum is excited for you to attend their event, and they’re also looking for submissions. For more information about the AdNauseam Lyceum please email info@adnaus.com To learn more about the submissions process, please email submissions@adnaus.com
In all seriousness, events like this are really important to establishing a broader artistic community among emerging artists. They also help engender dialogue about what people are working on and why they are working on a specific project — something I feel that we are all too often wholly reluctant to do. Discussing our creative goals and pursuits allows us to create a vocabularly with which to discuss and define contemporary art and performance, which, I believe, leads to a more validated position in the local and national arts world.