Adele Bertei opens her new memoir with a powerful assertion that No Wave—the multifaceted eruption of noise, image, performance, and ecstatic refusal that surged through late-1970s and early-1980s New York—did not simply include extraordinary women, but was driven by them in ways rarely acknowledged. This event celebrates the stories of women like Bertei, a former member of The Contortions and star of Lizzie Borden’s film Born in Flames, while bringing together artists across generations around noise, collaboration, rage, experimentation, and the enduring creative force of saying “NO.”

The program features the iconic downtown women-led band BUSH TETRAS, alongside a live set by No Wave icon Ikue Mori of DNA revisiting her experimental collaboration with the hypnotic Julianna Barwick, originally recorded at the storied New York alternative art space White Columns in 2010. In addition to performing with her trio MITH (Mothers in the House), with Adee Roberson and Anna Luisa Petrisko. Bertei leads The Maria Schneider Guitar Army, a roaming collective of guitar-wielding noisemakers paying tribute to women’s rage and resilience across history. Amid these performances, a lineup of contributors, listed below, will gather for pop-up offerings of words and sounds.

Together, these artists revisit, reformat, and extend the spirit of No Wave. Not as a fixed historical style, but as an attitude and artistic provocation that continues to reverberate through creative communities today.

SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES

3pm: The Maria Schneider Guitar Army
4pm: MITH on the Garden Terrace
4:30pm: Words and Sounds on the Garden Terrace (Ft: Julia Heyward, Zoe Hansen, Tammy Faye Starlight, Felice Rosser, and Eszter Balint)
6pm: Ikue Mori + Julianna Barwick on the Courtyard Stage
7pm: BUSH TETRAS on the Courtyard Stage

Reserve tickets at getty.edu

Pat Place, Kiki Smith, and Adele Bertei, New York, 1977. Photo courtesy of Adele Bertei.