In September and October, Triple Canopy will copresent a series of performances at KinoSaito Art Center in Verplanck, New York, as part of the exhibition “Signaling.” The exhibition includes work by a number of artists who have contributed to Triple Canopy (or will soon do so)—Vivian Caccuri, Raven Chacon, Nikita Gale, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste—and is curated by Alexander Provan, the magazine’s editor.
For the opening of “Signaling” on September 10, Toussaint-Baptiste will perform a composition for … and Drive Far Away (2022), a mobile sculpture in the form of an unmarked police car. Toussaint-Baptiste has tinted the windows and painted the exterior of the car—originally used by police in Baton Rouge, where he was born—burgundy with black squares that evoke Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915), famous as the “zero point” of abstract painting (and recently discovered to have been inscribed by an unknown author with a racist statement about a “battle of negroes in a dark cave”). Installing ultra-low-frequency subwoofers in the trunk, Toussaint-Baptiste has appropriated the notorious Crown Vic—a sign of surveillance, and of the intimidation of communities of color through such signs—to amplify rather than police the frequencies of Gulf Coast rap. When performing with the car, Toussaint-Baptiste modifies the sound by opening and closing the windows and doors as if playing the keys on a woodwind instrument. (Visitors are invited to experience the performance from outside the car or by sitting in the passenger seat.) Toussaint-Baptiste’s sculpture also acts as a platform for collaborations with artists who are engaged with musical subcultures characterized by bass (and with the perception of those who define themselves through such subcultures); on this occasion, he’ll be joined by Dreamcrusher, a moniker of the musician Luwayne Glass. After the performances, Toussaint-Baptiste will speak about the history and symbolism of the car, as well as his relationship to bass and car-audio culture.
To conclude the evening, the musician Dawuna will perform with Brian Davenport and Noella Mugerwa Byenkya in KinoSaito’s theater. Dawuna’s debut, the self-produced Glass Lit Dream (2020), balances ambient soundscapes and stirring melodies, industrial artifacts and gospel-inflected meditations on desire and alienation. Shifting between genres and moods while anchored by his delicate, mesmeric voice, Dawuna’s music reflects the pursuit of self-definition without sacrificing the freedom to inhabit multiple styles and personas. The Guardian called Glass Lit Dream a “masterpiece” and Bandcamp Daily hailed the record as an “underground hit” in which “genres pioneered by Black musicians … seamlessly intertwine with darker ambient sounds and liquid synths.”
On October 22, Triple Canopy and KinoSaito will present performances by Chacon, L’Rain, and Toussaint-Baptiste. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the page for that event.
KinoSaito is a five-minute drive from the Peekskill Metro-North station, which is one hour from Grand Central Terminal; shuttles between the Peekskill station and KinoSaito will be available during the events on September 10 and October 22. Beverages for this event are graciously provided by Grimm Ales and Hiatus Tequila.
This public program is made possible through generous support from Jane Hait, a founding member of Triple Canopy Director’s Circle, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
- Dawuna is the alias of Ian Mugerwa Byenkya, a musician raised in Kenya and Virginia and now living in New York City. Dawuna’s first album, Glass Lit Dream (2020), was recorded in Mugerwa Byenkya’s apartment and self-released; after circulating online and being lauded by fans and critics, the record was remastered and rereleased by the London label O___o? to great acclaim. Dawuna has performed at Blank Forms, the Noguchi Museum, Performance Space New York, and Printed Matter, among other venues.
- Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is a New York-based artist, composer, and performer. His work considers errant relations that thrive across subjectivities. He has recently had solo exhibitions at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond), Human Resources (Los Angeles), and Berlin Atonal (Berlin). He is represented by Martos Gallery (New York City). He has presented visual and performance work at MoMA PS1 (New York City); Performance Space New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Kitchen (New York City); Issue Project Room (New York City); the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Toussaint-Baptiste is a founding member of the performance collective Wildcat!. He has been an artist in residence at Issue Project Room, the Bemis Center, the Jerome Foundation Airspace Residency at Abrons Arts Center, and the Rauschenberg Foundation, and has been named a Camargo Foundation Core Program Fellow and received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Music Composition and Sound Design.
- Dreamcrusher is a moniker of the New York City-based musician and artist Luwayne Glass, who describes the project as “nihilist queer revolt musik.” Dreamcrusher’s work is at once personal and abstract, revealing and antagonistic; performances and recordings shift between genres while subjecting the characteristic elements—melodies, beats, instrumentation—to distortion until the point of transformation. Dreamcrusher has released dozens of recordings with labels such as PTP, Fire Talk, and Corpus, as well as on Bandcamp and other online platforms. Dreamcrusher is also a member of the duo Centennial Gardens with King Vision Ultra.
- KinoSaito is an art center in Verplanck, New York, that is rooted in the creation and practice of abstract art and committed to nurturing experimentation in every form and medium. By engaging artist and audience, painting and performance, learning and play, KinoSaito honors the spirit of its founding muse, Kikuo Saito, and furthers his vision for an interdisciplinary art of making and moving, free of borders and definitions.