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Carl Hancock Rux
Carl Hancock Rux (/ˈrʌks/) is an American poet, playwright, singer-songwriter, novelist, and essayist, as well as an installation artist working in diverse multimedia. His work includes sound and image installation, photography, and performative lectures. He is the author of a collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta; a novel, Asphalt; and the play Talk. Rux has been published as a contributing writer in numerous journals, catalogs, anthologies, and magazines, including Interview magazine, Essence magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Iké Udé's aRude Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (founded by fellow art critics Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan) and American Theatre (magazine), among others. Rux's writings and monographs on visual art include essays on the work of conceptual artist Glenn Ligon ( I Stand in My Place With My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Art at The New School, edited by Frances Richards with a foreword by Lydia Matthews and introduction by Silvia Rocciolo and Erik Stark); the introduction for Nick Cave’s Until; and the Guggenheim Museum’s Carrie Mae Weems retrospective.
Rux is also a singer-songwriter who has recorded several albums, singles, and mixed tapes since the release of his Sony 550 cd, Rux Revue. He has collaborated with and appeared on several projects by a wide range of artists including DJ Spooky, Jeff Mills and former Fela Kuti musical director, Tony Allen (musician); as well as British musicians trip-hop composer Geoff Barrow of Portishead, David Holmes (musician) and industrial rock guitarist Rob Marshall (formerly of Exit Calm). His cross-genre collaborations also extend to jazz, having worked with Leroy Jenkins, Brian Jackson, Craig Harris, Deidre Murray, Cooper-Moore, Matthew Shipp, James Brandon Lewis, Gerald Clayton, Randy Weston, Mal Waldron, Marvin Sewell, Etienne Charles, Matthew Garrison, and Lonnie Plaxico among others.
Trained as a visual artist, Rux's mixed media works (with frequent collaborator, visual artist and sculptor, Dianne Smith) have been included in the Uptown Triennale at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery; as well as Park Avenue Armory. He is a recurrent collaborator with artist Carrie Mae Weems on several of her live performance exhibitions, presented at the Spoleto Festival USA, Yale Repertory Theater, London's Serpentine Gallery, the Frieze Art Fair, the Kennedy Center and other venues.
Rux has held faculty positions at notable institutions including Brown University, The New School for Social Research, Yale University, The University of Iowa and is the former Head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at CalArts.
Rux is co-artistic director of Mabou Mines, resident artist at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts where annually he conceives and stages its campus-wide Juneteenth festival, multidisciplinary editor at The Massachusetts Review., and the former associate artistic director at Harlem Stage The Gate House,.
Born Carl Stephen Hancock in East Harlem, Rux's mother, Carol Jean Hancock (1933–2002), was an unwed teenager when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after the birth of her first child (Rux's older brother). While institutionalized in a state-operated long-stay psychiatric hospital for adults with extreme mental health disorders, doctors discovered Rux's mother had once again become pregnant. Due to the severity of her illness, his mother was unable to give anyone information regarding Rux's conception or the identity of his biological father (on Rux's original birth certificate, the names of his biological mother and maternal grandmother, Geneva Hancock née Rux, are the only parental names listed.)
Rux was immediately taken into custody by his grandmother, a divorcee, who lived in a one-bedroom East Harlem pre-war tenement apartment in which she had grown up and, at various times, shared with four younger siblings, her ex-husband, two daughters, and four grandchildren (Rux's grandmother and her siblings had been abandoned by their own mother sometime during the Great Depression). When Rux was still a toddler, police officers discovered Rux alone in the apartment with his grandmother's corpse, already in the early stages of decomposition. Her death was subsequently attributed to cirrhosis of the liver due to acute alcohol poisoning.
Transferred to Foster Care, Rux lived with several families before he eventually became the ward of his granduncle, James Henry Rux (1915–1994), a furrier and decorated World War II veteran, and his wife Arsula Rux (née Cottrell). The couple legally adopted him at the age of 15 and changed his name to Carl S. Hancock Rux, raising him in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.
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Carl Hancock Rux
Carl Hancock Rux (/ˈrʌks/) is an American poet, playwright, singer-songwriter, novelist, and essayist, as well as an installation artist working in diverse multimedia. His work includes sound and image installation, photography, and performative lectures. He is the author of a collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta; a novel, Asphalt; and the play Talk. Rux has been published as a contributing writer in numerous journals, catalogs, anthologies, and magazines, including Interview magazine, Essence magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Iké Udé's aRude Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (founded by fellow art critics Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan) and American Theatre (magazine), among others. Rux's writings and monographs on visual art include essays on the work of conceptual artist Glenn Ligon ( I Stand in My Place With My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Art at The New School, edited by Frances Richards with a foreword by Lydia Matthews and introduction by Silvia Rocciolo and Erik Stark); the introduction for Nick Cave’s Until; and the Guggenheim Museum’s Carrie Mae Weems retrospective.
Rux is also a singer-songwriter who has recorded several albums, singles, and mixed tapes since the release of his Sony 550 cd, Rux Revue. He has collaborated with and appeared on several projects by a wide range of artists including DJ Spooky, Jeff Mills and former Fela Kuti musical director, Tony Allen (musician); as well as British musicians trip-hop composer Geoff Barrow of Portishead, David Holmes (musician) and industrial rock guitarist Rob Marshall (formerly of Exit Calm). His cross-genre collaborations also extend to jazz, having worked with Leroy Jenkins, Brian Jackson, Craig Harris, Deidre Murray, Cooper-Moore, Matthew Shipp, James Brandon Lewis, Gerald Clayton, Randy Weston, Mal Waldron, Marvin Sewell, Etienne Charles, Matthew Garrison, and Lonnie Plaxico among others.
Trained as a visual artist, Rux's mixed media works (with frequent collaborator, visual artist and sculptor, Dianne Smith) have been included in the Uptown Triennale at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery; as well as Park Avenue Armory. He is a recurrent collaborator with artist Carrie Mae Weems on several of her live performance exhibitions, presented at the Spoleto Festival USA, Yale Repertory Theater, London's Serpentine Gallery, the Frieze Art Fair, the Kennedy Center and other venues.
Rux has held faculty positions at notable institutions including Brown University, The New School for Social Research, Yale University, The University of Iowa and is the former Head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at CalArts.
Rux is co-artistic director of Mabou Mines, resident artist at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts where annually he conceives and stages its campus-wide Juneteenth festival, multidisciplinary editor at The Massachusetts Review., and the former associate artistic director at Harlem Stage The Gate House,.
Born Carl Stephen Hancock in East Harlem, Rux's mother, Carol Jean Hancock (1933–2002), was an unwed teenager when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after the birth of her first child (Rux's older brother). While institutionalized in a state-operated long-stay psychiatric hospital for adults with extreme mental health disorders, doctors discovered Rux's mother had once again become pregnant. Due to the severity of her illness, his mother was unable to give anyone information regarding Rux's conception or the identity of his biological father (on Rux's original birth certificate, the names of his biological mother and maternal grandmother, Geneva Hancock née Rux, are the only parental names listed.)
Rux was immediately taken into custody by his grandmother, a divorcee, who lived in a one-bedroom East Harlem pre-war tenement apartment in which she had grown up and, at various times, shared with four younger siblings, her ex-husband, two daughters, and four grandchildren (Rux's grandmother and her siblings had been abandoned by their own mother sometime during the Great Depression). When Rux was still a toddler, police officers discovered Rux alone in the apartment with his grandmother's corpse, already in the early stages of decomposition. Her death was subsequently attributed to cirrhosis of the liver due to acute alcohol poisoning.
Transferred to Foster Care, Rux lived with several families before he eventually became the ward of his granduncle, James Henry Rux (1915–1994), a furrier and decorated World War II veteran, and his wife Arsula Rux (née Cottrell). The couple legally adopted him at the age of 15 and changed his name to Carl S. Hancock Rux, raising him in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.