Production Dates & Times
Thursday, May 29th at 7:30 pm
Friday, May 30th at 7:30 pm
Saturday, May 31st at 7:00 pm
Saturday, May 31st at 9:00 pm

Performance Note
This is a participatory performance where food and beverages will be provided and may be consumed. Audiences can pour themselves alcoholic drinks at any time during the performance. All guests will also receive a bottle of water and a non-alcoholic beverage at their seats.

Location
20 Putnam Avenue in Brooklyn, C or G train to Clinton-Washington. Accessible station at Franklin Avenue C/Shuttle train.

Asia Stewart: any experience with men and alcohol

Created and Performed by Asia Stewart
Lighting Design by Vittoria Orlando
Production Assistant: Darrell Ledeux Grissum 

Offering a well-stocked bar and multiple orders of food, any experience with men and alcohol is an hour-long performance that examines consumption. Inspired in part by Asia Stewart’s time working in hospitality, the piece draws on her encounters with affluent men in the restaurants and lounges where she has worked. After countless shifts spent observing tables and the conversations, transactions, and exchanges that unfold around them, Stewart transforms her own body into a table, becoming an object of service for the audience.

The performance title references a line from Ben Lerner’s novel 10:04, which meditates, at times, on discursive power and dominance. Stewart extends this inquiry by asking, “Who holds the power to shape an experience, and for how long?”

The poses Stewart adopts throughout the evening echo those in British artist Allen Jones’s 1969 “Women as Furniture” series: Hatstand, Table, and Chair. These sculptural works feature white eroticized mannequins in positions of subservience: on their hands, knees, and backs, with limbs outstretched. While Jones has insisted that his Chair was never meant to be sat on, Stewart invites guests to grab seats at her table.

any experience with men and alcohol was previously included in the Sight/Geist performance series at The 8th Floor in 2024. Development was made possible through the support of Anjuli Nanda, Charles de Agustin, and George Bolster.

About the Artists
Asia Stewart is a performance artist whose conceptual work centers her body as a living archive. Based in the United States, she devises rituals that reflect the way she weathers life in a deeply extractive society. Many of her performances unfold as social experiments that negotiate terms of agency and power with audiences. Stewart’s performances have been supported by organizations that include The Bronx Museum, The Shed, Franklin Furnace, A.I.R. Gallery, Marc Straus Gallery, Marble House Project, GALLIM, The Watermill Center, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Stewart routinely questions how live art can be documented and represented across multiple mediums. Her photographs and videos have been exhibited at venues across the United States, including the Mercury Store, Untitled Space, NARS Foundation, Goodyear Arts, A.I.R. Gallery, Kellen Gallery, and Anthology Film Archives. Her first series of prints is also held in the permanent collection of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC.

Vittoria Orlando is a designer, assistant designer, and collaborator based in NYC. She gravitates toward creating work that explores the real, the fantastical, and a conversation between the two. Art that speaks to her most puts a hyperbole on life and escapes from it, while inciting meaningful conversation in its audience. Vittoria is interested in creating art that challenges conventional methods of storytelling and uses imaginative solutions to achieve a design. She is passionate about sustainable and equitable labor practices in our industry. Her work has been shown at The Public - Under the Radar, Ars Nova, Repertorio Español, NYU, ART/NY, Brooklyn Children's Museum, Culture Lab LIC, Fordham University, the Ailey CitiGroup Theater, Dixon Place, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the UK. Vittoria holds a BA in Theatre Design and Production and a BA in Visual Art from Fordham University. She also has experience as an Electrics Apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera.

Darrell Ledeux Grissum is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist who uses sculpture, projection mapping, and video to make social commentary. Each work engages the senses to create spaces for contemplation, pleasure, and spirituality. He describes his aesthetic as a “Wholistic” development of Postmodern Pluralism. He received a B.A. in the Arts from Arizona State University. Formally trained in the disciplines of architecture and set design, his work is deeply interested in the politics of both physical and emotional space. He is currently participating in a residency with The New York Arts Program.