The exhibition We’ve got the Numbers was scheduled to open March 19, 2020. The work was being installed, posters were printed, performers were rehearsing and then New York City went into lockdown. Instead of waiting for some future date to re-book the show, we found another way.

Songs for Presidents is very pleased to announce that we are producing a full color book of the work. A book will have a longer life than an exhibition, possibly reach more people, and is affordable and accessible to all.

Hand printed in collaboration with PrintCache in Detroit, you can order the book here. Books are printing now and ship in January 2021.

The Risograph is a duplicator manufactured by Riso Kagaku Corporation in Japan. Risographs are a direct descendent of the mimeograph,
though they are often referred to as an intersection of screen printing, photocopying, and offset printing. For this book, each plate is printed in 4-5 unique colors on Mohawk paper.

Available for order:
We’ve Got the Numbers
with
Nikki Johnson
Zero
Dirty Churches

Place your order here, books are $22 and will begin to ship in January 2021. 100% of the proceeds go towards printing costs and directly to the artists.

In pictures that are unexpected, fresh and loaded with detail, Nikki Johnson and Zero worked in places where photographs were private exchanges in places fundamentally public: the city’s streets and nightclubs.
In Nikki Johnson’s photographs, made between 1999 - 2010, the underground is very much alive. A self-described “social explorer”, Johnson’s images lead viewers through places we’ve all been or, perhaps, would never go; dank bars in neon-lit after-hours, cluttered apartments, occupied beds, dungeons. Before the undead became trendy, Johnson covered the vampire parties in NYC where Hip Hop mingled freely with Goth, and fashions were a mashup of victorian, fetish, and street wear. She covered Peepshow and the BDSM scene, publishing in Screw and Hustler. She documented bloodstained sidewalks throughout the city, scars and black eyes. Working as a forensic photographer in NYC Johnson cannot be rattled, and her work conveys a sense of empathy for all the ways that people live in the world. The young vampire couple she photographs, or the stripper after a show, they are self-conscious but greet the photographer with familiarity, they are not presenting themselves to an outsider.
    Zero found her images (made between 2015 and early 2020) by walking, sometimes all night, the streets of the Lower East Side she has known all her life. It is an archaeology, a search for vestiges of a lost history, a constant hunt for “moments that are alive and electric and real. I love these things. They feel like home.” They are everywhere just hard to find in the whirlwind, lost because everyone is looking at their phones. Having experienced the neighborhood through the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, the living history of the tenement buildings and the storefronts and bodegas are like bodily memories. She follows ghosts around, fascinated by the things people do and leave behind, the endlessly creative ways they find to exist in the city. Nowhere is this more evident than in her payphone series. A fire extinguisher, mysterious stacks of pennies, books, a wide assortment of containers for urine, every item opaque, an unanswered question. Phone booths are repurposed as small sanctuaries, impromptu offices, a welcome private space on the rushing street, and the recipients of every type of baffling vandalism. “People still use them for calls. I see it all the time” she says.
Rumples is a new performance video by Dirty Churches, filmed at Songs for Presidents on Sepember 12, 2020, featuring Alexandra Jacob and Rachel Blackwell, music by Jesse Gelaznik. Alienation, fear of contagion, and the decline and death of the body haunt Rumples. The imagery and horror film soundtrack is a reflection of the dark thoughts that Dirty Churches has felt during this time of COVID. This video is also a sign of the times for performance art in general, what is it if it’s not live?

Nikki Johnson is based in Harlem, NY and has exhibited portraits and documentary photography widely in the US and Europe. She holds a MFA degree in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology as well as a Bachelors of Fine Art degree from Mississippi University for Women. Her photographs included in the show Back to Haunt the Hell Out of You were described as “disturbing and moving” by New York Times writer Holland Cotter. She is also a forensic photographer in New York City. Johnson has produced two monographs: Natural History (2010) and We Buy Gold (2014). Her work was showcased in 2019’s Black Jelly, a book of poetry by Melanie Maria Goodreaux, and her photographs from the pandemic were recently reviewed in Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art.

Born on the Lower East Side and raised in that neighborhood’s hip hop and punk community, Zero finds her images by walking (sometimes all night) fascinated by the things people do and leave behind and the endlessly creative ways they find to exist in the city. She is self taught, her early sensibilities formed by 80’s graffiti and hip hop, the Ramones, Black Flag, The Damned, and her mother’s salsa and Supremes records. Her work has been shown in NYC at Theater for the New City, The Clemente, Rivington Music Rehearsal Studios, and featured in Brooklyn vs. Hackney at Hackney Picture House, London. She is currently enrolled at LaGuardia Community College pursuing a Photography degree.

Dirty Churches (formed by Jesse Gelaznik and Rachel Blackwell) is a NYC-based performance art collective that explores the intersection of myth, ritual and music through theatrical performances. Their opera Era of Good Feelings conjured an ethereal world of magical genies, dancing witches and shape-shifting cockroaches for a three night run at La MaMa Galleria in June of 2019. They have also collaborated with the choreographer and dancer Alexandra Jacob and her partner Constantine Alexis to create the radical ballet Eater of Hearts at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in 2018. In addition to large collaborative performances, Dirty Churches have also presented performances as a duo for Protection Circle at Gavin Brown’s enterprise in 2018.