Gates, Borders, Barriers: Closing Celebration
Who is looking in? Who is looking out? Who is free? Who is trapped? Who has the power to decide who has the freedom to be inside and outside?
A performance by Jonathan González with Katrina Reid
*DATE CHANGED to THURSDAY, JUNE 29TH*
Date and time: Thursday, June 29th 2023, 6-8pm*
Location: Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn (see below for full location details)
Find the event schedule below:
6 PM: The performance by Jonathan Gonzalez and Katrina Reid begins, alongside the deinstallation of the work by AJ Iron Works.
6:30 to 7:30 PM: Light snacks and beverages by Drive Change.
8 PM: The performance will end followed by closing remarks by Micaela Martegani and Fred Wilson.
*This event has been postponed to Thursday, June 29th due to rain!*
Join us in celebration on Thursday, June 29*, from 6-8 pm at Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn for a movement-based performance by Jonathan González and Katrina Reid to mark the closing of Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. The performance will be followed by a community celebration with refreshments from Drive Change, a food truck and hospitality-centered fellowship program that supports formerly incarcerated young people and creates quality employment pathways to ensure their economic and emotional wellbeing.
More Art has commissioned a captivating and thought-provoking performance by Jonathan González, exploring the complex questions of visibility, confinement, and authority in our society.
Through a dynamic collaboration between the performers—Jonathan González and Katrina Reid—and the AJ Iron Works fabrication team, who was responsible for originally constructing the welded steel gates that form the very structure of Wilson’s artwork, the audience will witness a mesmerizing display of improvised movements.
The performance will take place in the midst of the de-installation process, symbolically representing the desired collapse of gates and barriers that hinder our freedom. As the de-installation crew actively dismantles the artwork, González and Reid will seamlessly interface with their actions. This interactive element will allow the audience to witness the transformative power of dismantling obstacles, both metaphorically and literally.
Jonathan González’s performance invites reflection on societal boundaries, power dynamics, and the liberation that comes from breaking down barriers. Through the seamless integration of movement, sculpture, and de-installation, the audience will be immersed in a visually striking and intellectually stimulating exploration of freedom and visibility in our world.
Presented in partnership with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, this event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is produced in part through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a grant that funds projects that serve to enhance public space, increase access to cultural programming, and connect the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo. The grant is part of the New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative.
Jonathan González
Image: Jonathan González, image by Shawn Poynter.
Jonathan González is an artist based in Philadelphia and Queens, NY. Their practice emerges through the prisms of black study, the site, the plot and the choreographic. Unfolding at the intersections of performance, these works occur as live art, video, text, sound and platforms for collaborative study activated within theatrical spaces, galleries and museums, virtual locations, site-specificity and printed matter. Their writings have been published by EAR | WAVE | EVENT, Contemporaryand, Cultured Magazine, deem journal, Angela’s Pulse, among others.
Their creative and pedagogical works, collectively, seek to engender nuanced conceptions of Black imaging, Black movement, and Black narrativizing in relation to the built environment, libidinal economies of the flesh and the longue durée of coloniality. González has received generous support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Art Matters Foundation, Jerome Hill Foundation as well as residencies with Loghaven Artist Residency, Center for Afro-futurist Studies, MANCC, The Kitchen/American Academy of Arts and Letters and Trinidad Performance Institute.
Katrina Reid
Image: Katrina Reid, image by Kiya Marie Schnorr.
Katrina Reid is a dancer, choreographer, and storyteller. She collaborates with a range of artists who explore performance across dance, theater, ritual, music, and film. Select presentations include: Queens Museum, ISSUE Project Room, the Knockdown Center, Current Sessions, AUNTS is Dance, the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) as 2016-2017 Dancing While Black Fellow with Angela’s Pulse. Learn more at katrina-reid.com
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This event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is produced in part through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a grant that funds projects that serve to enhance public space, increase access to cultural programming, and connect the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo. The grant is part of the New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative.
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is made possible by a grant from the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a partnership with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Dumbo Improvement District as part of New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This project is supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, Pace, The David Rockefeller Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and commissioning sponsor VIA Art Fund. Additional support for educational programming has been provided by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Thank you to our partners, NYC Parks and the Center for Court Innovation.
location.
The sculpture site is located in the plaza inside of Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn, which is situated close to the Borough Hall subway station and near the Kings County Supreme Court. You can enter the plaza from the North at Johnson Street and Cadman Plaza, or from the south at Court St and Montague Street. It is close to where the Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket is held.
Click here for Google Map directions.
By Subway: Take the 4/5 or the 2/3 to Borough Hall, or the A/C/F to Jay St, MetroTech.
By Bus: Take the B38, B41, B25, B52, B26 to Cadman Plaza West/Montague St.
accessibility.
The closest accessible subway station is the 4/5 2/3 Borough Hall Subway Station (Manhattan and Bronx-bound only).
The Jay St-MetroTech Subway Station is also an accessible station, however, it is a 7-minute walk away.
The sculpture site and plaza is paved and single-level with bench seating nearby.
Accessible public restrooms are available until 6pm on Wednesday evenings at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, located one block away at 286 Cadman Plaza W, Brooklyn, NY 11201. For hours, visit the BPL website.
Please contact info@moreart.org with any accessibility needs or inquiries.