Lumen Video and Performance Festival 2013
If you aren’t going to make it to the Venice Biennale this year (I knew I should have reserved that hotel room 18 months ago), on June 15 you can see a piece of it on Staten Island at Lumen, one of New York City’s most anticipated art events of the summer.
Among the fifty artists exhibiting video and performance art projected in and around Lyons Pool is Jose Carlos Casado, whose Off was shown in May for the opening of the Biennale. Also of note at Lumen this year, Scott Van Campen’s Cicada Machine, work by Margaret Cogswell, , Yorgo Alexopoulos, the amazing Jonathan Ehrenberg, DD’s re-animation of It Came From Beneath the Sea.
Curated this year by David C. Terry and Esther Neff, Lumen is a chance to see an eclectic collection of video and performance art from around the world in the magical atmosphere that is Staten Island By Night.
Any excuse to take the Staten Island Ferry is fine with me valium abuse, whose battered steel and pale-blue fiberglass interiors affords the opportunity to revisit childhood memories of amorous mosquitoes and burnt hot-dogs and marshmallows, not to mention a quick spin on one of the swivel chairs in the mirrored foyer of the women’s bathroom. And for what glamour of a Broadway first night or cinq à sept are we preparing ourselves for in the middle of New York Bay?
Staten Island is home to not only Lumen, but some of the city’s most intriguing museums, such as the Alice Austen House and the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. The first is a house that is a museum, the second is a museum in a house designed to resemble a Tibetan monastery.
Enter at the lower level of the Staten Island Ferry if you are coming by bike. Bike valet parking is available at Lumen. For directions, and an overview of some of the other cultural destinations on Staten Island, click on the map below to download the printable pdf.
