Screening Room: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste’s ‘…And Drive (Far Away) With Me’

On the occasion of the exhibition ‘Jason Rhoades. DRIVE II’, curated by Ingrid Schaffner at Hauser & Wirth 22^nd Street, we're thrilled to present a screening of Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste’s ‘…And Drive (Far Away) With Me’ in the amphitheater at our 18^th Street location in Chelsea.

Through forward-facing dashcam footage, this 8-hour video excerpt, captured by Toussaint-Baptiste during a 48-hour drive across the American South in a decommissioned Ford Police Interceptor/Crown Vic, presents a full-frontal view of the durational performance ‘...And Drive (Far Away)’. Without the visual presence of the driver, the resulting footage is an immersion into the road trip that is at once freeing and isolating, bucolic and treacherous––an exercise in depersonalization and anonymity via the vast expanse of the highway that at times meets its limits.

This program follows Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste's live performance of ‘Unmarked Car (S.L.A.B.), pt. 2’ at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles for 'Jason Rhoades. DRIVE'.

‘...AND DRIVE (FAR AWAY) WITH ME’ (2024)
by Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
8 hours 

During the 8-hour screening Russell Salmon, Director of Public Programs, will be available to answer any audience questions about ‘…And Drive (Far Away) With Me’, Toussaint-Baptiste's work, and the connection to ‘Jason Rhoades. DRIVE II’.

This event is free; however, we recommend making a reservation to receive further information about this screening.
 
Click here to register. 

About ‘Jason Rhoades. DRIVE II’
For Jason Rhoades, the car was a vehicle of artistic pursuit and ambition. Starting 5 September, Hauser & Wirth New York presents a major exhibition of his ‘Car Projects,’ including a fleet of different makes of readymade car sculptures. The installation also features a monumental work from 2000 named in tribute to the dada modernist and car collector Francis Picabia. ‘DRIVE II’ runs concurrent to the yearlong exploration of Rhoades’ art and car culture taking place at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles.

‘I spend hours going to my studio, so I established this extension of my studio, or rather this second space, in my Caprice.’  – Jason Rhoades

About Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste 
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is a New York-based artist, composer, and performer. His work considers notions of errant relations that thrive across subjectivities. Toussaint-Baptiste was a 2017 artist in residence at Issue Project Room and received a Bessie Award in 2018 for Outstanding Music Composition and Sound Design. He is represented by Martos Gallery (New York). He has presented visual and performance work at MoMA PS1 (New York); Performance Space New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Kitchen (New York); Issue Project Room (New York); the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Toussaint-Baptiste is a founding member of the performance collective Wildcat! and frequently collaborates with performers and visual artists, including Will Rawls, Yanira Castro/a canary torsi, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and André M. Zachery. Toussaint-Baptiste holds an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Performance and Interactive Media Arts program. 

About ‘…And Drive (Far Away) With Me’ 
‘...And Drive (Far Away)’, a mixed media sound installation and durational performance, approaches a cross-country drive along I-10 and I-95, from Tucson, Arizona to Brooklyn, NY*, through the lens of Gulf South sonority. This phenomenon is deeply tied to the automobile, and generates a context through which history, marronage, sonic pageantry, and physical sensation may all collapse upon one another. Making use of custom car audio and window tint, the performance and installation of sonorous non-instruments looks at—specifically—a decommissioned Ford Police Interceptor/Crown Victoria simultaneously as a sociocultural-audiovisual marker key to Gulf South sonic ecologies; and as a space of potential self-abstraction, fraught with risk and ripe with potential for withholding, disappearance, or even flight, while drawing attention to the oft-dangerous labor required of migration. The performance included stops and activations in Marfa, TX; New Orleans, LA; Atlanta, GA; and Richmond, VA.