The Watermill Center Newsletter
Fall 2011
Dear Friends of The Watermill Center,
Following a great summer season with record numbers at our gala, open house, lectures and successful collaboration with Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, we are looking forward to entering the fall and winter seasons with a full agenda of programming. The Watermill Center is open year-round with wider accessibility, and its virtual presence permeates NYC and beyond. Our summer workshop Art and Science: Insights into Consciousness, supported by the Mortimer D. Sackler Family Foundation, continues this fall in Moscow with Neuroscience Experiment I: Measuring the Magic of Mutual Gaze.
This week we begin our sixth annual Fall / Spring Residency Program
, bringing artists from as far as Indonesia, Iceland, Russia, Iran, and Australia as well as artists from the US. The first residencies, featured with Performa 11, demonstrate the breadth of experience: Shirin Neshat will workshop her commissioned work for the NY performance-art festival and Abbas Akhavan will give a talk as part of the ArteEast / Performa / Watermill partnership.The Directors Lab at Lincoln Center has partnered to support their alumni in residence at Watermill with both an international directors symposium and a workshop showing of Untitled – An Opera based upon Milli Vanilli (Spring 2011 residency). We have renewed our collaboration with
CPR - Center for Performance Research, Jonah Bokaer’s venue in Brooklyn, to show four Watermill residencies after their time at the Center. New York Theater Workshop will also showcase Allie Avital Typsin’s Hyperfable. In November, we shall circulate an eblast with all NYC events this Fall & Spring.
These residencies also include a young Russian opera troupe, Krymov Lab; Indie artist, Daniel Knox; experimental musician, Tristan Perich; singer of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, Samita Sinha; and UK ‘melodramatists’, Theo Adams Company - all exploring projects with music at the core. The Australian Wet Weather Ensemble, Swiss artists Shahryar Nashat & Adam Linder, German artist Katharina Schmidt, and US choreographer Christopher Williams test our boundaries of performance. Costumer Anna Telcs and performance artist Melati Suryodarmo break down the ‘psychology’ of objects or textile sculptures. Halldór Úlfarsson, Davyde Wachell, Davíð Brynjar Franzson develop a site-specific opera reconstructing the failed attempt at revolution in Iceland.
This weekend we start a partnership with Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) with a screening of legendary photography David Bailey’s film of Cecil Beaton with a talk moderated by Bruce Weber. In November, we will announce a lecture series by contributors of our new 420-page book, The Watermill Center – A Laboratory for Performance: Robert Wilson's Legacy
, which chronicles the first twenty years from its initial vision to today as told by Bob, us, legendary artists and scholars, and young artists as early as 10 years old. Copies will be available for sale in early November. This spring Columbia University School of the Arts' Arts Collaboration Lab will return for a residency at The Center this time in collaboration with Serge von Arx’s Norwegian Theater Academy. Keil Borrman continues his Market project with community growers.
In addition to the open rehearsals and lectures, we are now posting public open hours for tours and our library
. Volunteers are working with us to help general public and visiting artists access the special collection of books encompassing global artifacts, fine art monographs, special editions and general research for the years of Bob’s creative work. Visiting artists and scholars add to this library, which compliments the collection and archives.
We have just begun working with NYU, the Dean of Library Services and her team of resource specialists towards a vision of an Inspirational Library that will enable unprecedented, flexible ways of exploring, using, and sharing materials through new technologies. This new library will merge holdings of art, artifacts, archives, books, and digital media that will inform any future development and expansion. The Watermill Study Library will officially open on October 25.
The Hayground School (middle school) Apprentice Program is in its fourth year in residence at the Center where they have assisted across collection, library, events and arts administration. We will begin our third partnership with the Southampton Intermediate School’s dual language program, which brings 30-40 children from over 14 different cultures to Watermill.
Help support us to inspire and nurture creative experimentation across all disciplines, through our Membership Program. We also welcome volunteers in the library and to assist with our events or to be active audience, and of course your support as audience. All details are on our website
, and always check our home page for the latest events and images of the life at The Center.
Thank you to those who were able to help us celebrate Bob’s 70th birthday in Milan, Berlin and NYC, with one more opportunity in Paris. It was a wonderful week to welcome The Threepenny Opera, an exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery and talks at New York Public Library and BAM. All of these events just remind us of Bob’s incredible vision for this Center.
See you this Fall,
Sherry Dobbin & Jorn Weisbrodt
Directors, The Watermill Center
Image credit: Shirin Neshat with Sussan Deyhim, Logic of the Birds, 2001
Produced by RoseLee Goldberg
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