The Dominican-American, Berlin-based artist Isabel Lewis has been commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation to organise a series of “occasions”, a term the artist uses for performance and installation-based events in which she typically plays host and DJ. Over the course of four consecutive weekends between 24 June and 17 July, Lewis is due to organise 12 happenings in Dia’s space in Chelsea, New York, upstate in a park near Dia: Beacon, and on the Metro-North train connecting them. She is hoping to narrate the journey as the alternative voice of the train conductor, she told The New York Times. The DJ set-cum-lecture-cum-party will feature dancers performing to music that originated in Angola, and partly takes place in specially furnished “decorated environments”. An occasion is “a composed situation that addresses all five senses”, Lewis says.
