The Watermill Center’s annual two-day benefit festival was, as always, a feast for the eyes. Among the many courses: monumental aluminum heads, rope-bound piano players, handmade bent-steel instruments and performance art in several flavors. Perhaps most striking was Under the Milk, a durational performance by the late Pope.L originally staged at The Watermill Center, performed here once again by artist Lydia Grey, nude, barefoot, blindfolded and painted red. This year’s toast to creative impulse in a multitude of interdisciplinary forms was titled SCRIBBLE, and at the center of the celebrations were its honorees—icon, actress, activist, filmmaker and farmer Isabella Rossellini and architect Francis Kéré.
Under the gaze of Ugo Rondinone’s expressive statuary, Friday’s intimate dinner, with its decor that—perhaps unintentionally—foreshadowed Grey’s performance, led into Saturday’s full-force festival of twenty-eight interdisciplinary performances, art installations, live music, dances and inventive installations. Not the least of which was Rossellini’s critically acclaimed and delightfully silly Green Porno series, presented here peep-show style in colorful miniature houses. Other works—sculptural, sonic and otherwise—tackled themes from ancestry to artificial intelligence, emotion and immigration, the body and youth.
The sprawling self-guided event brought more than 700 guests to the art center’s ten-acre grounds, including notables like celebrity skincare guru Iván Pol, influencer Evan Ross Katz, choreographer Benjamin Millepied, and Arden Wohl, Ku-Ling Yurman and Cheryl Henson, president of the Jim Henson Foundation. And of course, the cultural VIPs: artists Brian Belott, Jonah Freeman, Miles Greenberg, Jeremy Dennis, Enric Ruiz-Geli and Rondinone mingled with art industry movers and shakers like Nicola Vassell, Christine Wächter-Cambell, Joe Bradley, Valentina Akerman and Bill Campbell. Also spotted were collectors Jamee and Peter Gregory and billionaire arts patron Katharine Rayner.
As the sun descended, guests—perhaps emboldened by dancer and choreographer Cassiel Gaube’s performance—brought out their daring dance moves for the late-night afterparty, kicked off by an enthralling performance by singer and cellist Kelsey Lu.
Rufus Wainwright
Katia Mead and Diébédo Francis Kéré
Wendy Keys and Kevin Walz
Jeremy Grosvenor
Miles Greenberg
Gina Nanni, Charles Chemin and Elise Herget
Maximilian Eicke and Irina Kro Eicke
Thuthuka Sibisi and Lina Lapelyte
Harris Allen
Anastasiya Siro, Elise Herget and Jorn Weisbrodt
Brian Belott
Michael Borrico, Elisabeth Santana, Anastasia Ganias Gellin, Cleo Ahn and Steven Ahn
Isabella Rossellini in Green Porno
Max Falkenstein, Ugo Rondinone and Douglas Baxter
Simon Davis, Kelsey Lu and Lina Lapelyte
Noah Khoshbin
Christia Di-donna and Emanuel Di-donna
Alba Vinton
Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley
Joe Bradley
Arden Wohl
Sharareh Siadat
Vajra Kingsley
Tatiana Platt
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