"Don't Fetishize our Post-Fordism:

We still go to cocktail parties with communists"

Nick Paparone: Rent Time

Julia Brown: L'Entartage

Ryan Daley: Reasons against lighting up for Mother Theresa, and other poems

Arlen Austin with the Nail Workers Chorus: Song of the United Front

Curated by David Everitt Howe

Performance Date: Thursday, September 2, 2010, 6:30 - 8:00 PM

Manicures begin at 6:30, performances at 7:00

Scaramouche is delighted to introduce an interdisciplinary event to kick off the Fall season early. “Don't Fetishize Our Post-Fordism” features manicures, Communist party songs, anarchy, speeches, and German opera, among other absurdities. Repurposing political agency, “Don't Fetishize Our Post-Fordism” posits: might subjectivity, colonized by late-capitalism, still be a perversely retooled site for Leftist agitation?

Nick Paparone begins the evening with a persuasive motivational speech; Julia Brown presents a video compilation of anarchists hurling pies at political targets; poet Ryan Daley muses on Mother Theresa, the Empire State Building, and other strange conflations of the sacred and profane; trained opera singer Arlen Austin and a chorus of beauticians conclude the program with a musical paean to the legacy of Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht's lesser-known collaborator, also known as "the Karl Marx of music."

About the artists:

Nick Paparone received his BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and is currently working on his MFA at Columbia University. His work has been included in exhibitions at X Initiative, New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Julia Brown received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and recently completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Her work has been included in exhibitions at The Kitchen and LMAK Projects, both in New York. Ryan Daley received his MFA in poetry from Brown University. His writing has been published by Greying Ghost press and BlazeVOX books. Arlen Austin received his BA and MFA from Columbia University. His work has been included in exhibitions at White Box, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, and Scaramouche, all in New York.

Image: Julia Brown, still from L'Entartage, color video, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.