Brooklyn NY 11205
USA
This February, we are pleased to host programs that examine network aesthetics; the fragmentary complexity of the current moment; everyday materials as musical conduits for tenderness; the body as a medium of expression and articulation; present tense sound; trajectories from innovation to self-effacing hagiography; and audio recording made by visual artists.
Featuring Steven Henry Madoff with Barry Schwabsky; Piper Marshall, Dara Birnbaum; Isobel Waller-Bridge; Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki; Ka Baird; Keith Sanborn, Esfir’ Shub; Adrian Rew with Bob Nickas, Jutta Koether, and John Miller.
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Steven Henry Madoff, Unseparate: Modernism, Interdisciplinary Art, and Network Aesthetics
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Join us for a discussion with Steven Henry Madoff about his new book Unseparate: Modernism, Interdisciplinary Art, and Network Aesthetics (Stanford University Press, 2025). In Unseparate, Madoff proposes that at the root of contemporary installation art and performance, the practices of early Modernists, ranging from Wagner and Cézanne to Hugo Ball, Duchamp, and Gropius’s Bauhaus, can be thought of as proto-networks and give rise to a network aesthetics. Madoff will be in discussion with Barry Schwabsky. Read more here.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Launch of e-flux Index #8 with Piper Marshall and a tribute to Dara Birnbaum
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Join us for the launch of e-flux Index #8, featuring Piper Marshall and a tribute to Dara Birnbaum. Marshall will read from her remembrance of Dara Birnbaum, published in e-flux Notes on the occasion of Birnbaum's passing and re-published in e-flux Index #8. The reading will be followed by a screening of selected works from Birnbaum's seminal oeuvre. Read more here.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Bar Laika presents Playback 0026 with Isobel Waller-Bridge
Join us at Bar Laika from 6pm for the twenty-sixth edition of Playback with Isobel Waller-Bridge. Isobel Waller-Bridge is an award-winning composer known for her scores for film, television, ballet, and theatre, alongside her work in electronic and contemporary classical music. She works in a wide range of genres, extending across large-scale orchestral music, electronic sound design, experimental music, and songwriting. Read more here.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Cinema of the Body: Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki
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Known in Greece for their drawings and illustrations, stage productions, and writing on theatre, Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki became active in France from the mid-1970s, where they introduced their concept of “cinema of the body” (cinéma corporel). Influenced by the body art movement of the period, their practice treats the body as a medium of expression and articulation. Across years of collaboration, they developed a number of feminist and subversive Super 8 films on the relationship between camera and body, on sexuality and the unconscious, and on androgynous and gender-fluid identities. Join us for a rare screening of three short works made between 1970 and 2016, and their foundational feature Double Labyrinthe (1975–1976). Read more here.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Bar Laika presents Playback 0027 with Ka Baird
Join us at Bar Laika from 6pm for the twenty-seventh edition of Playback with Ka Baird. Ka Baird is a performer, sound artist, musician and composer based in New York City. They are known for their live performances which include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds. They create a present tense sound with a vigorous, ritualistic delivery that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. They have worked/collaborated with many other musicians, artists, filmmakers and choreographers, both in structured compositions and in their dedicated practice of improvisation and interdisciplinary work. Read more here.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Esfir’ Shub: From Inspiration to Abjection
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This screening and book presentation with Keith Sanborn will attempt to reveal something of the trajectory of Esfir’ Shub from Leninist true believer to Stalinist conformist, from innovator in the “non-acted” film to self-effacing hagiographer. The course will be charted via two films, bookending her career: Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) and With Heartfelt Sincerity (1949). The evening will be introduced by Keith Sanborn, who has recently finished the first extensive English translation of Shub's writings: My Life is the Cinema, published by Sticking Place Books. Read more here.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
Art Sound & Song #3 with XXX Macarena
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Join us for a listening session and discussion about artists’ records with Adrian Rew and Bob Nickas in a live segment of their radio show Art Sound & Song hosted by Montez Press Radio. They will be exploring the twin poles of "sound" and "song" as categories of audio recordings made by artists who primarily work in the visual realm. The evening will include a special live set by XXX Macarena, the duo of artist-musicians Jutta Koether and John Miller. Read more here.
Stay tuned to upcoming programs on our website, or subscribe to our Events mailing list here.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
