Michelle Levy: She is Alone (Prague variation)
May 31. 2018 from 6.30 till 8.00PM
a performative lecture given by Michelle Levy presented in conjunction with the exhibition Apparatus 2.0: The Unreliable Library
While Michelle Levy was traveling in the Czech Republic near Poland, she was haunted by a déjà vu memory about her grandmother, sending Michelle on a genealogical quest across the ocean, time, cyberspace and the astral plane, to learn what may be uncovered from spaces left unavailable to us. She found herself, one day, in an archive in Warsaw, holding the World War II witness testimony of an unknown ancestor in her hands. She had been looking for something else when this woman’s story found her.
Michelle Levy is a New York city based artist and curator. She uses performance, images, storytelling and collective ritual to investigate the mediated spaces where identity is constructed. Her subjects exist out of place and time, mined from nostalgia, loss, cultural fragments, hope, and a little bit of magic. Levy is the creator and Director of EFA Project Space Program, a interdisciplinary art venue that is part of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) in Manhattan. She is co-curator of Apparatus 2.0: The Unreliable Library at the Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, the result of a collaboration which got its start in 2013, when Levy was granted a travel fellowship from the Czech Center in NY to conduct curatorial research in Prague. She is alone; is possible thanks to the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), Asylum Arts + POLIN
Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw), NURTUREart, Patrycja Dołowy, Clarinda Mac Low, Bartek Remisko, Elisabeth Smolarz, Sarah Cameron Sunde, and Paulina, Salomea, and Rae (of blessed memory).
The precursor to this work, Ruins of Achelach; was presented by Dixon Place and Theaterlab in 2016 and 2017 in New York City. An early iteration, Before Poland (Achelachl) was presented at Theaterlab in 2016.
The project is made possible through the support of Trust for Mutual Understanding
Many thanks: Petrohradská kolektiv and Aron Antik
The exhibition program of the CCA is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7
Media support: ArtMap, jlbjlt, UMA Audioguide
