On view: Saturday June 7 and Sunday June 8, 2025 | 11:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday, June 7, 2025 | 3:00 PM, 1st floor of the house – Performance “LA CASA BONITA” by CONSUELA DEL VALLE GRANDE
Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island (map)
Ferry information | Video directions
A weekend of artistic interventions by Milena Keller, Noah Reusser, and Daniela Ruocco at the RU House on Governors Island. Curated by Data Chigholashvili, “Island Daydreaming” is the second edition of “Living Room Portfolio” – an experimental exhibition format, which reflects on residencies as experiences of exchange. Milena Keller, Noah Reusser, and Daniela Ruocco become temporary “hosts” over the weekend, and showcase works in the unique context of this exhibition venue – a former residential house on a multilayered island, parts of which are now used as exhibition spaces and artists’ studios. It might feel a bit dreamy when one leaves busy NYC on a ferry and, in a few minutes, walks on the island among former forts, houses where nobody lives anymore, rustling trees, breeze from the water, and noise and silence often rapidly replacing each other. The living rooms of the house, temporarily transformed by the artists, offer moments of island daydreaming.
The living room atmosphere is brought back but with an eerie or magical touch, depending on how you choose to look at it, just like at the house itself. Noah Reusser presents drawings, texts, and sound, which are fragments from a work in progress. As he puts it, “on the island, these unequal parts gather to reform, be it a wishlist, a prescription, or all the muted group chats which you never left combined.” With views of green grass and trees outside the windows, Milena Keller’s video installation takes a direction of gallows humor. Presenting two works that explore the notions of “nature” and “natural,” she asks, “where do plants belong and what are people supposed to do?”
Daniela Ruocco’s CONSUELA DEL VALLE GRANDE is a temporary host in another living room. She fills the walls with photographs of a character exploring identity in flux, different versions of herself on the stage, fictionalizing on purpose to detach, to create a field of tension, and overcome comfort zones to explore gender and identity.
CONSUELA DEL VALLE GRANDE will perform “LA CASA BONITA” on June 7 at 3:00 pm!
Referencing Madonna’s hit from the 1980s, “La Isla Bonita” (“The Beautiful Island”), CONSUELA interprets it through the idea of longing while also questioning the stereotypical representation of Latinx culture. At the house on the island, she will have a DJ set, share spoken words, and sing. Experience “poesía perreadora” – where the works of Latinx poets are transformed into feminist reggaeton songs by CONSUELA. Surrounded by the images of searching for the fictional character, she addresses Latinx topics that the artist further explored in the context of NYC. CONSUELA offers autofiction and elements from drag culture for exploring gender binaries, and beyond.
Performance production assistants: RU interns Danny Valera and Hortense Lévy
Short bios of artists (for more information, please follow the links to RU profiles):
Milena Keller started in theater, then went to dance school (CDNC Angers, France) and worked with Cosima Grand, Marco Berrettini, and others. Together with Valerie Keller they created their own work in theater and film. Later, she started playing drums and joined the group ‘Prix Garanti‘. While working with this fairly successful combo, Milena continued organizing small events, such as performances in apartments, concerts in the small venue ‘Cafe Kairo’ and the space ‘Anstadt,’ and parties everywhere. In 2023, she started building a club together with Noah Reusser. She is still active in all these fields, mostly in Bern, Switzerland.
While studying and living in Basel, Noah Reusser became involved in a band project called ‘Prix Garanti.’ His interest in music and sound expanded beyond the band, wanting to develop a deep understanding of sound, its mechanics, and editing possibilities. This led him to get involved in the Sound Arts program at the HKB in Bern, where he gained both theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Alongside his ongoing development of ‘Prix Garanti’ as a producer and lyricist, he gained additional experience as a booker, such as organizing the Nullkultur event series, which took place at Dachstock (Bern) and Zentralwäscherei (Zürich).
Daniela Ruocco works plurilingual (de/es/en/fr/it) and across disciplines in various constellations as a performing artist and director. Recurring motifs in Daniela’s work revolve around intersectional feminism, multilingualism, identity politics, and body norms. She regularly works solo as CONSUELA DEL VALLE GRANDE, as a duo with the performance label fisting*sisters, and in a team with the Basel (CH) based theater collective helium x. In 2020, she developed “polyglot dreams” – her first short play which led into a long-term study on the subject of multilingualism and democratic representation. In 2022, she created her first full-length solo “EN MI IMPERIO PERREO SOLA,” which counters the sexist reggaeton music world with a glamorous, queerfeminist alternative and gives birth to the artistic persona CONSUELA DEL VALLE GRANDE.
This program is supported by Canton of Berne Office of Culture / Cultural Promotion.
RU is grateful for the partnership with Governors Island Arts.
