Nicolás Guagnini and Jeff Preiss

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An Evening with Nicolás Guagnini and Jeff Preiss

Featuring Discharge (2005)

Thursday, Nov 19

6pm

Online, Zoom

Register in advance for this event: tinyurl.com/y5fxbzg7

Mishkin Gallery and ISLA (Baruch's Initiative for the Study of Latin America) present an evening of art and film featuring the co-authored Discharge (2005) by Nicolás Guagnini and Jeff Preiss. Discharge came about when Guagnini and Preiss were both shareholders in the Orchard Gallery co-op, an artist-run gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side active from 2005 until 2008. In the first year of Orchard, Discharge was performed and filmed in the front of the gallery during closed hours, collapsing the gallery as a site of exhibiting and a site of production. At the time, both Guagnini and Preiss were undergoing and studying Reichian therapy; developed by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, this form of therapy is used to attenuate tension (and therefore, trauma) through very quick breath and eye movements. Preiss's sharp editing is key in embodying Reichian techniques through film, while much of the repressed trauma informing Guagnini’s performance references a history of the dictatorship in his native Argentina in the 1970s and 80s. Discharge will be screened and the two artists will discuss their role and share reflections on in its production. This event is in conjunction with the upcoming Mishkin Gallery exhibition Nicolás Guagnini: Theatre of the Self.

Nicolás Guagnini is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and curator born in Buenos Aires and based in New York.

Jeff Preiss is filmmaker, cinematographer, director and producer born and based in New York.