NIGHT five

featuring performances by:

NEUROFLORA, straw pipes, and cass yao

STRAW PIPES

Floating along, in, below or South of a small local body of flowing refuse, the Brooklyn-based music/performance collective Straw Pipes has attracted and ejected a broad array of instrumentalists since 2016. Originally formed by Stonie Clark and LeLe Dai, the group is unkempt in the face of the kempt, far from prolific, ultra-inefficient, producing a sort of “un-ready made” art through the efforts of its various rotating members. Existing in an in-between state of preparing, performing, and unraveling or falling apart. Their most recent projects involve the creation of different water-based devices or inventions - designed for collective or participatory interactions.    

Spiritual Liftment Neighborhood Cart Tour Rapid Enlightenment: Hair Cut (2023)by Straw Pipes outside of Essex Flowers Gallery, photo by Ryan Rummel.

NEUROFLORA

pompom pirate is an herbalist, therapist, performance artist, wannabe pirate, and adhd genius. Decocting organ systems, psychological satire, puppet fluids, earth magik, hysteria, microbial spirituality, worms, theatrical voids, folk-punk-cabaret, the horrors, the beauty, hostage situations, crushing garlic, trashing venues, and surprise crowd surfing.

cornbread jimmy comes from some sunny valley that is just beyond those mountains over there. The valley is very hard to find for some reason. We visited the place once, but have never been able to locate it for a second time. When jim is not busy minding his onions he can usually be found down by the bay, where he likes to gaze at the reflections on the water and imagine that those upside down images are in fact the real world. When the season is warm, and there is plenty to eat and the weather is nice, cornbread jim makes little odd drawings/sculptures/effigies/performances, in an effort to illuminate the strange world he comes from. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between jim and a piece of lint.

anti fertility ritual (1), 2023, Photo by Miao Jiaxin. Courtesy of pompom pirate and cornbread jim

CASS YAO X Qiujiang Levi Lu

Cass Yao (b.1998, China) is a sculptor, performance artist based in New York. Their sculptures have been exhibited in Latitude Gallery, and non-profit spaces like New Uncanny Gallery, BRIC Gallery, theBlanc art space, h27 Gallery, etc... They have also directed four sculpture-based multimedia performance projects at various venues in New York and Baltimore and have participated in multiple durational group performances at public spaces.Yao is going to be an artist-in-residence at NARS Foundation 2025.

Yao’s practice explores voluntary bodily modification as a generative process of reimagining identity, resilience, and physical form. Their works portray flexuous morphogenetic processes as a response to the motives behind the construction of an alternative corporeality—whether driven by medical necessity, lust, dysmorphia, or societal imperatives. Through sculpture and performance, they examine how psycho-physical trauma, dysmorphia, medical necessity, and gender transition shape the body as both a site of rupture and a vessel for regeneration.

Qiujiang Levi Lu is a NYC-based performance artist, experimental musician, composer, and educator. Their work transforms the body into a sonic object through interactions with movements and audio technology, exploring identity, sound, and space. Lu designs customized feedback systems with cyborg-like body augmentations inspired by Objectophilia/animism. These include special microphones, speakers placed within bodily orifices, and an augmented amplified laptop. Their resulting performances consist of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations building upon ancient Chinese drumming traditions to manifest body dysmorphia, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality. As the second-prize winner of the International Electronic Music Competition 2023, their works have been featured internationally, including MATA Festival, High Zero Festival, The Poetry Project, E-Flux, IRCAM Forum, and Center for Performance Research. Lu has also been an artist-in-residence at ISSUE Project Room, Harvestworks TIP, Reforesters Laboratory, and Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm. Lu is currently a lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

Grace Exhibition Space welcomes a new spring season in this time of rapid change and accelerated bewilderment, empowering the immediacy of Now. Laughter and rage felt together will not abandon our utopian visions, but become our catalyst through the chaos to reach a better end. Presented on the floor, eliminating the separation of artist over viewer, we will together be pulled into the ideas being presented in an egalitarian, nonhierarchical way.

GES proudly welcomes the 18th spring season Laughter-Rage in Action with diverse, equitable, inclusive and multi-generational works.