On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 8pm, The Poetry Project will host its annual Spring fundraiser, Spring Thing, featuring readings and performances by John Giorno, Dia Felix, Miguel Gutierrez, and David Grubbs. This event will be held in the Sanctuary of St. Mark’s Church, with a reception to follow the performances. Tickets are $12 in advance and will be available at the door for $15.
John Giorno was born in New York and graduated from Columbia University in 1958. Four yearslater, he met Andy Warhol, who became an important influence for Giorno’s developments on poetry, performance and recordings. He was the “star” of Warhol’s film Sleep. He has collaborated with William Burroughs, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe, and the decade of the 2000’s, with Rirkirt Tirvanija, Pierre Huyge, Elizabeth Peyton, and Ugo Rondinone, who is his partner. He is the author of ten books, including You Got to Burn to Shine, Cancer in my Left Ball, Grasping at Emptiness, Suicide Sutra, and has produced 59 LPs, CDs, tapes cassettes, videopaks and DVDs for Giorno Poetry Systems. He founded the AIDS Treatment Project and has an important force in the development of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
Dia Felix is a writer and filmmaker who’s screened films at independent festivals (Frameline, Outfest, San Francisco Film Festival), and performed literary work a lot too (Segue Series, Radar, Dixon Place). She is the author of the novel Nochita (City Lights/Sister Spit, 2014).
Miguel Gutierrez, a dance and music artist based in Brooklyn, has been called “one of our most provocative and necessary artistic voices” by Dance Magazine. He makes solo and group pieces under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. His work has toured internationally and received support from many prestegious foundations. He is the winner of three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards. WHEN YOU RISE UP, a book of his performance texts, is available from 53rd State Press. He also invented DEEP AEROBICS, an absurdist workout for the radical in all of us.
David Grubbs has released twelve solo albums and appeared on more than 150 commercially-released recordings. He is known for his cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers Susan Howe and Rick Moody, visual artists Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, and Stephen Prina, and choreographer Jonah Bokaer. He is the author of Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (Duke University Press). Grubbs was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and he has performed with the Red Krayola, Will Oldham, Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, and Loren Connors, among many others.
