Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project hosts an evening of performances celebrating the launch of SPUNKT ART NOW. Highlighting the affiliations between contemporary art and the legacy of the punk movement, SPUNKT ART NOW  is a boldly formatted hybrid of newspaper, art book, collectable object, and two-dimensional exhibition space. It features the work of 24 artists and writers, including our namesake and inspiration Arturo Vega, as well as Scooter LaForge and Brett De Palma, all of whom have had major exhibitions at Howl.

Performances by contributors in SPUNKT ART NOW include:

Oli Sorenson Video Pistoletto: A piece inspired by the works of Arte Povera artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, who aimed to realign art with the preoccupations of everyday life. Sorenson revisited Pistoletto’s mirror-breaking performance by replacing his mirrors with video screens.

Sébastien Pesot Selfeed: A neologism combining the words “selfie” and “feedback,” Selfeed is the ironic staging of a selfie amplified by streaming live audio and video feedback on the artist’s self-representation. In this performance Pesot meets Narcissus in FaceTime. This series of actions plays with the “society of spectacle” and our egos to mirror our digital psychogeography.

B.L.U.S.H. The Litany of Curfews: A multidisciplinary female collective from Canada. Their performances are profane and politically charged rituals in which hybrid characters evolve to challenge our understanding of gender. By embodying a primitive state, the collective explores an identity constructed without regard for institutions and conventions, with an openness to the unexpected and the unlikely.

Bringing together contributions by American and international authors and artists, the content includes essays, manifestos, and other literary offerings, as well as photography, painting, and performance documentation. SPUNKT ART NOW surveys current artist practices that further the understanding of the relationship between activism and cultural programming.

SPUNKT is a neologism created by the meeting of the English words spunk and punk, and the German word punkt. SPUNK: Showing spirit, courage, determination, audacity, and grit + PUNK: Counterculture movement, DIY aesthetics, and attitude + PUNKT: Point, punctuation, meeting point. Point in time. Making a point.