The Watermill Center Hosts Artistic Celebration With SCRIBBLE Benefit

The Watermill Center, an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts and humanities located in Water Mill, hosted SCRIBBLE, the 2025 Watermill Summer Benefit, on Friday, July 25, and Saturday, July 26.

Presented by Van Cleef & Arpels, SCRIBBLE welcomed over 700 guests to experience the primal creative impulse expressed through interdisciplinary performances, art installations, live music, and dancing. The Benefit honored the internationally renowned actress, ethologist, and conservationist Isabella Rossellini and visionary architect Francis Kéré, in recognition of their transformative contributions to global culture. 

Set amidst the 10-acre grounds of The Watermill Center, SCRIBBLE opened on Friday, July 25, with an Artist Dinner, an intimate gathering among artists-in-residence, benefactors, and cultural figures. Saturday, July 26, expanded the benefit into a full-evening Festival, beginning with 28 performances and installations, followed by a late-night After-Party featuring an ethereal musical performance by the classically trained cellist and multidisciplinary artist Kelsey Lu, along with a DJ set and dancing. For both evenings, culinary direction was led by Chef Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske Valtierra, co-founders of Contra and Wildair.

The evening benefited Watermill’s International Summer Program and year-round Artist Residency Program, which support the work of over 120 artists from more than 35 countries annually, as well as Education Programming, providing over 1,000 students and community members annually with opportunities to engage in hands-on workshops with arts professionals. Over 700 guests attended to celebrate with the honorees, including Cleo Ahn, Valentina Akerman and Joe Bradley, Stretch Armstrong, Brian Belott, Karolina Blaberg, Bill Campbell, Pietro Cicognani, Jeremy Dennis, Roger Ferris, Jonah Freeman, Jamee & Peter Gregory, Miles Greenberg, Cheryl Henson, Daniella Kallmeyer, Evan Ross Katz, Noah Khoshbin, Helen King, Serge Laurent, Kelsey Lu, SK Lyons, Katia Mead, Benjamin Millepied, Iván Pol, Katharine Rayner, Charles Renfro, Ugo Rondinone, Enric Ruiz-Geli, Elaina Scotto and Brett Yormark, Anastasyia Siro, Oliver Schultz, Annabel Thompson and Jed Walentas, Nicola Vassell, Christine Wächter-Cambell, Rufus Wainwright and Jörn Weisbrodt, Kevin Walz, John Wrazej, Arden Wohl, and Ku-Ling Yurman. 

SCRIBBLE featured installations and performances, including sunrise. east. by Ugo Rondinone: twelve towering heads, each representing a month of the year. Cast in silver-toned aluminum, the sculptures feature distinct faces and expressions ranging from the comic to the macabre and blending references to ritual masks, emoticons, and cartoons. Installed on the gravel terrace of The Watermill Center, they form an open-air calendar, inviting guests to reflect on the cyclical passage of time and the broad spectrum of human emotion. On view from dawn till dusk until February, this marks the first public, outdoor showing of all twelve sculptures in the United States.

Under the Milk, a durational performance by the late Pope.L, featuring Lydia Grey, powerfully unfolded over the course of the evening. Grey – barefoot, blindfolded, and painted in red – walked slowly across the grounds to the stark white stage and, moving between chairs, poured glasses of milk over her body. Unique within Pope.L’s practice, this work stands as one of the few performances the artist directed but did not perform himself. Originally staged with Grey at The Watermill Center in 2007, this performance marked the first official presentation of a Pope.L performance work since his passing in 2023.

The lush south lawn was home to Abetare (House) by Petrit Halilaj. Halilaj’s Abetare series transforms children’s desk scribbles from Balkan schools into expansive metal sculptures, capturing the whimsical essence of youthful imagination amidst conflict. Drawing from his own experiences during the Kosovo War, Halilaj’s work intertwines personal and collective memories, highlighting the resilience and dreams of children. The phrase “return to kukes,” seen inside the house, is a reference to the refugee camp where Halilaj and his family were displaced. 

Isabella Rossellini’s film series Green Porno was presented peep show-style inside a series of small, colorful houses in the woods. The short films bring the mysteries of animal mating to life with humor, imagination, and scientific precision. Through hand-crafted costumes and playful interpretation, Rossellini becomes the creatures she portrays—blurring the lines between human and animal, instinct and art.

Additional highlights from the event included: the moving Children’s Games by Lina Lapelytė and Thuthuka Sibisi, a duet performance of original songs composed from three distinct sources – a song by Dasha, written on the first day of the war in Ukraine in 2022; a traditional Zulu funeral hymn; and Children’s Games, a poem by William Carlos Williams – in which the performers, situated amidst the blueberry bushes, sang with their torsos were bound to one another by rope; Moteur (prélude), a new meditative solo in-progress by choreographer and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Fellow Cassiel Gaube drawing on ballet, postmodern, and contemporary traditions, as well as house dance and a rhizome of other social dances; two new large-scale works, Watermill and Louse Point by painter Pam Evelyn, Visual Arts Fellow at The Watermill Center in partnership with Pace Gallery; Picture Microphone by Brian Belott and Tara Khozein, a durational vocal performance of yowls, yodels, jabbers, and chatter performed from the roof of a shed building; BLOW UP: images and physical embodiment of the stages of immigration by Olga Rabetskaya, a dynamic performance by seven dancers with inflatable boats reflecting on themes of the body, gender, and international borders; AKULAHLWA IMBELEKO NGOKUFELW (The child’s sack is not thrown away after the death of one child) by Thuthuka Sibisi, a sonic meditation in the woods by the South African artist featuring vibrations from above and below and exploring themes of ritual, ancestry, healing, and spirituality; Klank by Mylan Hoezen, in which the eerily-masked artist played a series handmade instruments sculpted from bent steel, gathering and layering sounds to create an echoing drone; and UnPhobia by Christiana Kosiari, a solo movement performance exploring fear in the body and the intersection between human impulse and the draw of artificial intelligence. For the evening’s finale, artist and musician Kelsey Lu guided the crowd to the lawn for a mesmerizing musical performance, which transitioned into an energetic dance party with DJ Alima Lee. 

The Watermill Center will host a summer open house on Thursday, July 31, from 4 to 7 PM. Experience some of the works that premiered at SCRIBBLE, along with new in-progress works from International Summer Program artists. Visit watermillcenter.org.