Pioneer Works hosting "Grand Ole Opera" w/ Sleep, Wolf Eyes, Lightning Bolt, more

Decibel Metal and Beer Fest 2017
Sleep at Decibel Metal and Beer Fest (more by Kassandra Carmona)

Pioneer Works, the non-profit arts space run out of a former ironworks warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, will present a “performative exhibition” called “Grand Ole Opera” from June 9 through July 30. “The truly singular project combines art with musical performances,” and there are some very impressive artists lined up to take part in this. The lineup and schedule looks like this:

6/11: Angel Deradoorian (free)
6/23: Lightning Bolt
7/7: Wolf Eyes, Circuit des Yeux performing as Jackie Lynn, Dreamcrusher
7/14 & 7/15: Sleep
7/19 & 7/20: Fushitsusha (co-presented by Blank Forms)
7/21: Hank Wood and the Hammerheads
7/28: Bob Bellerue, Pedestrian Deposit
7/29: The Body, Author & Punisher, Moor Mother

The project was put together by Willie Stewart (who, among other things, has played guitar with Yoko Ono) and Brent Stewart. Here’s more info:

‘Grand Ole Opera’ is inspired by a 1944 incident in which country star Bob Wills appalled traditionalists when he performed with a drum kit on the Grand Ole Opry, and a marks the Stewarts’ institutional debut in the United States. With Willis’ iconoclastic break with tradition in mind, The Stewarts’ ‘Grand Ole Opera’ stages immersive theatrical installations that recreate their Southern heritage and childhood experiences, paying homage while complicating and transgressing the clichés of the American South.

Within ‘Grand Ole Opera,’ cinematic tableaus reveal a scorched truck tuned to AM radio, a nomadic biker bar, an endless burning sun projected inside a Revival tent, flickering television monitors and bizarre trailer-homes containing surreal sculptural landscapes and visual ephemera of both artists’ works. Adopting the role of twin brothers Romulus and Remus from the Roman Myth, the Stewarts are subjects of a video piece staged as a bar fight that casts Southern alienation in a mythological light. Finally, by transforming a traditional Southern evangelical revival tent into a venue for noise, metal and rock music performances, ‘Grand Ole Opera’ evokes Dan Graham’s influential film ‘Rock My Religion’ (1982-84).

Together, these installations and musical performances evoke an America that is both violent and sublime, defined less by prescribed decorum but is rather constantly mutating through a simultaneous appropriation and dissemination of culture. Objects and movements resonate with a peculiar tone and timbre: a U.S. toy soldier manufactured in China for children abroad who may later kill or be killed; relief agencies making air-drops in Haiti of Guns N’ Roses T-shirts supplied by a sweatshop in Manila; psychics selling fantasies roadside or on TV; millions of bottles of Coca-Cola floating in the trash gyre of the Pacific Northwest. The soundtrack of this America is Doom and Sludge Metal, Japanese noise music, rock and psychedelic punk.

Ticket info HERE.