Doors at 7, event starts at 7:30
Admission $18
June 9, 2026, 7pm
Brooklyn NY 11205
USA
Join us at e-flux on Tuesday, June 9 at 7pm for an event celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Harvestworks with a screening of Volcano Saga (1989) by Joan Jonas, and a performance by Justin Allen, a current Harvestworks resident. The program will be followed by a discussion between Harvestworks interim director Ivana Dama, e-flux Performance Curator Sanna Almajedi, and artist Toni Dove who was a Harvestworks resident in 1989 and 1990. The discussion will lead us through different decades spanned by the 661 total Harvestworks residents and the notable artworks that have been created there.
Program
Joan Jonas, Volcano Saga (1989, 28 minutes)
Searching for new narrative methods, Joan Jonas first developed Volcano Saga in 1985 after visiting Iceland with video artist Steina Vasulka. The performance reinterprets the Laxdæla Saga, a thirteenth-century Icelandic tale centered on a woman and her four dreams. In 1989, Jonas adapted the work into a video featuring Tilda Swinton and Ron Vawter. Throughout the piece, the performers appear superimposed over expansive landscapes that become a presence of their own within the narrative. Jonas partly developed this work at Harvestworks, where she joined as a Studio PASS resident in 1984. This residency gave artists equitable access to professional tools for creating sound and media art for just $4 an hour. Jonas was also featured in TELLUS #21 (1988), Harvestworks' subscription audio cassette magazine that featured many visual artists, promoting them to create sound art.
Justin Allen, Rot (Video and live performance, 17 minutes)
Rot is a lyrical essay on classism, social conformity, and the Black bourgeoisie, performed as an experimental play off karaoke. Building on Allen’s previous works Karaoke (2024) and Untitled (2021), the performance combines writing, tap dance, and video. Allen performs alongside a silent karaoke-style video featuring original song lyrics, poetry, and onomatopoeic phrases inspired by jazz scatting. As the performance unfolds, he sings a cappella, reads the poetry aloud, and interprets the onomatopoeic text through live tap dance, translating language into rhythm and movement.
As part of Allen’s 2026 residency at Harvestworks, he is developing a new experimental performance instrument with Harvestworks technologist Yonatan Rozin. The project explores responsive systems that translate live tap rhythms into text in real time, creating new connections between movement, sound, language, and performance. Currently in development, this research informs Allen’s broader artistic practice and future performance work.
About Harvestworks:
Founded as a not-for-profit organization by artists in 1977, Harvestworks has helped generations of artists create new works using technology. Our mission is to support the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies. Our goals are to create an environment where artists can make work inspired and achieved by electronic media; to create a responsive public context for the appreciation of new work by presenting and disseminating the finished works; to advance the art community’s and the public’s “agenda” for the use of technology in art; and to bring together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts collaborating in the use of electronic media. We assist with commissions and residencies, production services, education and information programs, and the presentation and distribution of their work.
The program of sound performances at e-flux is curated by Sanna Almajedi.
For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.
Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.
