WhiteBox and Elliott Sharp are responding to a dynamic changing landscape in NYC - the opera scene within an encroaching real estate gentrification. Staging this work in an untraditional, street-bound, enduring alternative art venue enables us to host an insightful, essential panel discussion on the affinities and divergences between the multifarious Bohemian East Village neighborhood art-scene’s culture and what today’s acutely ‘professionalized’ Lower East Side art district stands for. Discussions will be open to general art audiences as well as to local, variegated LES/Chinatown communities.
The work itself draws upon Sharp's compositional and performance innovations developed during the time of these events with ties to punk, No Wave, noise, dance, industrial and exotic sounds. An East Village denizen friendly with the staff at the Binibon, Sharp was leaving just as Abbott and his entourage entered that fateful night, and the events that followed affected him greatly. Jack Womack is famed for his "Dryco Series" of novels portraying a post-Apocalypse NYC and was also a resident of Alphabet City when the events took place. Together, they set out to tell this story.
According to Zachary Woolfe of the NY Times, a vital part of WhiteBox Lower East Side Opera series programming that began with R.B. Schlather's Handel project’s “Orlando” and “Alcina”, is demystifying opera and its creation. Broadcasting rehearsals over the Internet, WhiteBox also opened them to passersby and the public came. Yoko Ono was among those who wandered in off Broome Street to watch some of the live rehearsal of Orlando, Handel’s glorious 1733 tragicomedy of competing loves.
What We Need & What You Get
We need to raise a minimum of $6,000 but hopefully more in order to cover the costs of the production – including fees for the singer/actors, the sound mixing, building the stage, renting lighting and sound equipment, transportation and cartage costs. With that minimal budget, we are going to transform the WhiteBox exhibition space into a new form of opera house.
In exchange, we are offering a variety of rewards to thank you for your support.
The Impact
As a laboratory, WhiteBoxLab>>SoundLounge, will continue its tradition of opening musical and staging rehearsals free of charge to the public preceding the final performances in October. A wide-ranging talk with Elliott Sharp and special guests moderated by Juan Puntes will take place after the final performance. We envision Binibon in many ways: as entertainment, as radical musical theater, and as a powerful direct engagement with the public. Past reactions to Binibon in performance and recording have been wildly enthusiastic, with The Whole Note saying "Theatrically gripping and sonically sophisticated . . . Binibon is a momentous achievement, because Sharp and Womack have not only recreated a particular time and place, but also recast it in the form of top-flight musical drama." It is not often that a new or recent opera gets a hearing in New York City today, but WhiteBox is proving to be one of the champions in this area.
Risks & Challenges
The main risks and challenge we must overcome are mounting a fairly complex work of musical theater in a limited amount of time. The solution is the high level of talent that we are bringing in to realize this work. The desired cast is composed of seasoned professionals who are used to working under pressure. But using great freelance actors and singers presents its own risk: their schedules might be unpredictable. Having reliable funding will allow us to get solid commitments from the cast.
Finally, there will be the post-production challenge of helping the work to take on an enduring life of its own. Creating a fully-realized production that is powerful and appealing will go far toward addressing this issue by attracting appreciative audiences as well as producers, curators, and promoters.
Other Ways You Can Help
Some people can't contribute but that doesn't mean they can't help: Ask folks to get the word out and make some noise about your campaign. Remind them to use the Indiegogo share tools!
WhiteBox is a non-profit art space that serves as a platform for contemporary artists to develop and showcase new site-specific work, and is a laboratory for unique commissions, exhibitions, special events, salon series, and arts education programs.
WhiteBox offers free and diverse programs for its surrounding communities including Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and encourages international cultural tourism to experience artists’ work in a meaningful manner.
WhiteBox’s artistic vision is to provide artists with sustained exposure while creating the environment for sustained in-depth interaction between audiences and artists’ practices. As a non-profit art space, WhiteBox aims to be a space for invention. It achieves this by inviting emerging and established artists to respond to its exhibition space with interventions, performances, and long-term programming that allows them to develop projects and engage with audiences.
Elliott Sharp A central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City for over thirty years, Elliott Sharp leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane, and has pioneered the application of fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition. Winner of the 2015 Berlin Prize in Music and a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship, Sharp has has been featured in the Darmstadt and Donaueschingen festivals, New Music Stockholm, Au Printemps-Paris, Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale, and the Venice Biennale. His Storm of the Eye, composed for Hilary Hahn, appeared on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces. His opera Port Bou premiered in NYC in 2014 and in Berlin in 2015. Sharp's range of collaborators have included Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Ensemble Modern; Debbie Harry; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; RadioSinfonie Frankfurt; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette and Sonny Sharrock; JACK Quartet; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka, Morocco. His work is the subject of the documentary Doing The Don't and he has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Installations include Foliage, Fluvial, Chromatine, and Tag. His Cryptid Fragments was included in the Bitstreams show at the Whitney Museum.
Jack Womack is an American playwright and author of fiction and speculative fiction. He moved to New York City in 1977 where he lives with his wife and daughter. His oeuvre consists of Random Acts of Senseless Violence (1993), Heathern (1990), Ambient (1987), Terraplane (1988), Elvissey (1993, Going, Going, Gone (2000), Let's Put the Future Behind Us (1996), Lying to Children (2004) “Womack's fiction may be determinedly non-cyber, but, with its commitment to using Science Fiction as a vehicle for social critique, it definitely has a punky edge.” - William Gibson
