ALISON KNOWLES IN COLLABORATION WITH JESSICA HIGGINS, JOSHUA SELMAN, AND CLARA SELMAN: BEANS ALL DAY

CURATED BY INGRID CHU AND SAVANNAH GORTON

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011, 12-7PM (FREE) PERFORMANCES AT 3:00PM & 3:30PM (SEE FULL SCHEDULE BELOW)

FEATURING PERFORMANCES, INSTALLATION, FOOD, BOOKS, & A FREE LIMITED EDITION BY KNOWLES

Forever & Today, Inc. presents Beans All Day by New York-based artist Alison Knowles, in collaboration with artists Jessica Higgins, Joshua Selman, and Clara Selman, as part of the Performa 11 New Visual Art Performance Biennial Fluxus Weekend.

Knowles is a founding member of Fluxus, a movement that began in the 1960s. Fluxus artists encouraged experimentation, often combining everyday items, activities, and gestures to make art. Many of their events and performances featured food and sound, and historically took place in the Chinatown area.

During Beans All Day, two performance scores from Knowles’ repertoire, Shoes Of Your Choice and Loose Pages, are performed at Forever & Today, Inc.’s Chinatown/Lower East Side storefront space. These performances are among her seminal works, and in the spirit of Fluxus, Knowles considers the performances to be unique each time, allowing for randomness and chance to occur.

In Shoes Of Your Choice, Knowles and her granddaughter Clara Selman engage the audience and passersby to discuss their shoes. For Loose Pages, Knowles dresses her daughter Jessica Higgins, the primary performer of the work, in handmade flax paper garments. The sounds of the paper are amplified by her son-in-law Joshua Selman, who also plays his abstract musical compositions periodically during the day.

Also on view in Forever & Today, Inc.’s exhibition space is a new wall-sized text installation from sounds created by Knowles’ “bean turners,” abstract sound sculptures of handmade flax pulp paper that encase dried adzuki and ceci beans. Several bean turners will be on view and featured alongside a selection of her artist books and editions spanning from the 1960s to the present. Knowles cooks beans that are served to the public, along with refreshments. A free, limited edition bookmark, specially commissioned for the occasion, is also available to the public.

BEANS ALL DAY SCHEDULE 12:00-7:00PM: Installation and books on view, and free limited edition (as quantities last) 2:00-3:00PM: Music by Joshua Selman 3:00-3:30PM: Shoes Of Your Choice performance by Alison Knowles with Clara Selman 3:30-4:00PM: Loose Pages performance by Alison Knowles with Jessica Higgins and Joshua Selman 4:00-5:00PM: Music by Joshua Selman 5:00-7:00PM: Beans and refreshments served

ABOUT FOREVER & TODAY, INC. Forever & Today, Inc., a non-profit founded in 2008 that is a sponsored organization of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501©(3), curates and commissions projects in collaboration with a single artist, collective, or collaborative entity. The organization extends unique opportunities for artists to create new work and engage diverse audiences through exhibitions, site-specific installations, performances, publications, and educational and public programs. www.foreverandtoday.org

ABOUT PERFORMA 11 Performa 11 (November 1–21, 2011) is the fourth edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, the leading organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth-century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. Performa launched New York’s first performance biennial, Performa 05, in 2005, followed by Performa 07 (2007), and Performa 09 (2009). www.performa-arts.org

Forever & Today, Inc. is a non-profit Consortium Member of Performa.

SPECIAL THANKS to Esa Nickle, Dougal Phillips, and Ashley Tickle of Performa, and Richard Jochum.