Flow Chart Foundation honors John Ashbery with "A Night of Neo-Benshi"

Film, live performance and poetry. Inspired by “Benshi,” the Japanese performers who provided live narration and cultural translation for audiences in the silent film era, Neo-Benshi artists take scenes from popular film or television and replace the sound with their own live spoken works. The result is a new kind of multi-media happening that has taken the experimental performance art world by storm. Curated by Flow Chart Executive Director Jeffrey Lependorf, poet-performers Anselm Berrigan, Shanekia McIntosh, Joan Retallack, and Jasmine Dreame Wagner perform in front of Hudson Hall’s full-stage projection screen.