The Museum of Modern Art Announces Modern Mondays, Kicks off 5/3

Modern Mondays is a weekly program that brings contemporary, innovative film and moving-image works to the public and provides a forum for viewers to engage in dialogue and debate with contemporary filmmakers and artists. Modern Mondays presents new-and newly rediscovered-film and media works with the director in attendance, stimulating discourse, dialogue, and interaction in a social setting.

Organized by the Department of Film and the Department of Media and Performance Art. Modern Mondays is made possible by Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro. Additional support is provided by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art
Modern Mondays
May 2010
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

An Evening with Suzanne Bocanegra
May 3, 7:00 p.m.
Suzanne Bocanegra (American, b. 1957) is a New York-based artist whose recent work involves large-scale performance and installation pieces in which she translates two-dimensional information into three-dimensional scenarios for staging, movement, ballet, and music. For this evening's program, Bocanegra will give an "artist's talk" titled When a Priest Marries a Witch, featuring actor Paul Lazar. Program approx. 90 min.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.

An Evening with Lars Laumann
May 10, 7:00 p.m.
Lars Laumann (Norwegian, b. 1975) has used video as a means to investigate alternative realities and interests, from pop-culture fandom to the Internet to marginal or hidden lifestyles. Laumann's films illuminate these realities from the point of view of an insider, not an outside commentator, capturing the subjective side of experience. This evening's program presents two works about individuals who have formed highly intense and unusual relationships. In Berlinmuren (2008), a Swedish woman named Eija-Riita Berliner-Mauer describes her emotional and sexual attraction to objects, and in particular her love affair with, and marriage to, the Berlin Wall. Shut Up Child, This Ain't Bingo (2009), presented here in its New York premiere, depicts the relationship between the Norwegian artist Kjersti Andvig and Texan death-row inmate Carlton Turner. Andvig collaborated with Turner on a knitted-wool and wood sculpture based on the death row cell in which Turner lived for nine years. Laumann's documentary follows the eighteen-month period prior to Turner's execution, when their relationship turned from intellectual and artistic to romantic. Program approx. 90 min.

Organized by Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film.

An Evening with Jill Magid
May 17, 7:00 p.m.
Jill Magid's (American, b. 1973) performance-based work involves immersing herself in systems of authority, building relationships with police and Secret Service in order to explore issues of vulnerability, observation, and trust. For this evening, Magid will present a performance, The Redacted Manuscript, based on her experiences working with the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD). Commissioned by the AIVD in 2005 to create an artwork for their headquarters, Magid immersed herself in the intelligence agency's methods, using the tactics of the organization to interview and collect personal information on AIVD undercover agents. Surprised by her ability to penetrate the organization to such depths, the agency censored many of the resultant artworks, including redacting a substantial portion of Magid's manuscript for a novel based on her experience. In a dramatic conclusion to the AIVD commission, the original version of her manuscript was confiscated by the Dutch Ministry of Interior while it was on view in her exhibition at Tate Modern in 2009. Magid's performance, The Redacted Manuscript, will be followed by a Q&A with the artist. Program approx. 90 min.

Organized by Cara Starke, Assistant Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art.

An Evening with William E. Jones
May 24, 7:00 p.m.
William E. Jones (American, b. 1962) performs miraculous acts of resurrection and reanimation on forgotten, discarded, or mutilated films and still photographs, including Cold War propaganda, gay porn, New Deal-era documentary images, industrial and science films, and police surveillance footage. His fascination with the politics of image-making extends to an inventive manipulation of analog and digital technologies, from 8mm and 16mm film to videocassette recorders. On May 24, Jones presents the New York premiere of several recent works, including selections from his multipart installation Discrepancy (2008-09), which envisions a 1951 cine-manifesto by Isidore Isou; Killed (2009), a looped moving-image work based on rejected photographs taken by Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and others for the New Deal's Farm Security Administration; A True Cross Section (2008), which dissects a 1939 March of Time newsreel, Science in Business, into ninety-seven parts and randomizes the order in which they are shown; and Youngstown and Steeltown (2008), a double-projection study of industrial progress and failed utopia. Jones will also discuss and present two related earlier works, The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998) and Film Montages (For Peter Roehr) (2006). Program approx. 110 min.

Organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film.

Tickets: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00-8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders.