"At the Intersection: Art, Money and Politics" participants, from left to right: Jan Cohen-Cruz, Randy Martin, Morgan Jenness, moderator Amy Whitaker, series curator Andy Horwitz, Rachel Chavkin. Photo by Whitney Browne.

On April 11, 2012 Jan Cohen-Cruz, Randy Martin, Morgan Jenness , Rachel Chavkin and moderator Amy Whitaker came together at the Broad Street Ballroom of Léman Manhattan Preparatory School near Wall Street for a discussion called “At The Intersection: Art, Money and Politics” as part of LMCC’s Access Restricted series, curated and produced by Culturebot’s Andrew Horwitz. This conversation is available as a podcast at artonair.org.

This is the first of what we hope will be a series of thoughtful conversations and essays about issues related to the intersection of art, money and politics.

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Sometimes I hear about things that just make me crazy with jealousy. One of those things is FutureEverything, which is, like the coolest festival in the universe. Okay, maybe not. But it is pretty darn amazing. I’m definitely a “future” anything nerd and I love it when super-smart people converge to actively envision and shape the future. There are a number of festivals that are exploring this territory right now – the Zero1 Biennial, the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier program, Wayne Ashley’s ongoing project FuturePerfect, and pretty much anywhere you look you’re going to come across Blast Theory.

While so much of the conversation around performance and technology (particularly in American Theater circles) seems to revolve around Twitter and Facebook and vague ideas of “interactivity”, the UK’s Blast Theory has been deeply exploring the aesthetics, challenges and questions of technology-enhanced performance since 1991.  Consistently adventurous, they use interactive media to create groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art that mix audiences across the internet, live performance and digital broadcasting. Led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, Blast Theory does more than merely include video or a live internet feed or comment on the media saturated world we inhabit. Rather they adopt (or created) new technology to build experiences that at once affirm our mediated condition and question our social and political frameworks. They use interactive media to interrogate the received ideologies of the Information Age.

At least, that’s what I’m told they do, because I’ve never had the good fortune to actually experience their work in person! But now is my (and your) chance. Maybe not in person, but to participate from where you are around the world.

Long story short – Blast Theory have frequently been approached by Big Media to create “interactive” content, but when it came down to it, the Big Media guys would balk and ask for it to be pre-recorded. Actual live broadcasting is too expensive, too unwieldy, too threatening and is only reserved for sports and sometimes music. So Blast Theory decided to build their own broadcast platform, which they were able to do through the support of The Space (which deserves an article unto itself – it appears to be a collaboration between BBC and Arts Council England to build a multi-platform channel for the arts).

The first project they are launching for this new platform is a game called I’d Hide You. I’m not sure I totally understand how to play it yet, but the basic idea is that there are three runners on the streets of Manchester trying to film each other without getting filmed.  Online players can watch any given runner’s live video feed and can switch between them. If you see a runner you can take a picture of them. But if the runner you are “with” gets snapped, you lose a life.

Part of the idea is to combine narrative TV (story, character, passive watching) with gaming (non-linearity, active engagement). I’m told you can chat with runners and ask/direct them to do things – visit specific places, talk to specific people. It is hard to say exactly how this will play out or what it might become, because it is just as dependent on the online community to define the experience as it is dependent on the people who are “performing” IRL. It is also exciting because this is a kind of “beta test” of the broadcast-quality technology, essentially launching a new platform for non-location-based interactivity. The possible future applications are limitless.

The game goes live from Manchester at 8M on May 17, 2012, which is 3PM in NYC.

For more information or to play, visit www.idhideyou.com! and/or follow @idhideyou on Twitter.

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Okay so here are some neat things to know about:

LIVING THEATER NEEDS HELP:

We need to save The Living Theatre, period. This month our beloved Lower East Side arts landmark learned that they were facing eviction. Unless we come up with $24,000+ dollars in the next two weeks, the organization will have to close its doors and say good-bye to the Lower East Side forever. With this money The Living Theatre will be able to pay its rent, bring in a consultant to develop a 5-year strategic plan, and turn itself into a financially sustainable arts organization. Bravo.

click here to donate.

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PECULIAR WORKS CALL FOR ARTISTS

The Peculiar Works Project has issued a call for installation artists to design contemporary recreations of classic erotic pillow books. Yowza! Here’s the message they sent me:

Site-specific performance producers, Peculiar Works Project, are seeking a variety of daring, boundary-crossing artists to create immersive installations for a live performance featuring contemporary recreations of classic erotic pillow books. Each artist will be given a room, material resources and stipend as well as a team of collaborators to realize an 8-minute, repeating, performed installation. All together, Spring Pictures of the Floating World will perform June 28 – July 1 in a large site in NYC’s East Village where audiences will move from space to space, charting their own performance experiences throughout the exhibition hours.

Asian pillow books thrived in a time and place beyond western religion and original sin (Google “shunga” for details). This project is open to all types of artists interested in creating one part of a fantastical pleasure palace, utilizing design, paint, sculpture, costumes, puppets, prosthetics, and more. It’s a fun and informative way to explore cultural difference, the western gaze and sexual boundaries. More information can be found at www.peculiarworks.org/pillow.html. If you’re interested and available in June, contact pillow@peculiarworks.org by May 18^th with a resume or bio, and let us know your interest and questions.

Sounds fun!

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HELP ERIK EHN COME TO LAMAMA

Erik Ehn’s  practical and ideological commitment to weaving theater, teaching and social justice has inspired many people in the theater community. Currently head of Playwriting at Brown, his upcoming project, Soulographie: Our Genocides is a performance cycle of 17 plays currently being produced around the country and in Uganda that will converge at La MaMa in NYC this fall. It is a vital project and they are asking the community at large to help support it with a donation of $10.

From the email I received:

Since 2010, independent companies and artists throughout the nation and in Uganda have been producing readings and workshops of these plays, featuring 16 directors across 10 cities. In November 2012, the 17 productions converge at La MaMa in New York for two weeks of marathon performances, workshops, teach-ins, panel discussions, and education-installations.

Soulographie is Theatre of Genocide – an engaged art, intended to bring audiences closer to historical periods of violence through the dynamics of performance, creating a frame for loss and remembrance.  It is a communal activity in socio-political and self-recognition.  In order to free people, to free memories, to free ideas, we must give them voice.  It asks the question: whose voice are you willing to carry?

Click here to contribute.

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Down In the Ground (D.I.G.) – Performance and Sandhogs Together Again!

Down In the Ground (D.I.G.) is a performance installation in which participants uncover the invisible infrastructure of New York City by means of interactive video, sound, and movement. Devised by interdisciplinary artists Liza Wade Green, Will Orzo, Emily Rea, and Lígia Teixeira, the performance begins with a dance around theAcconci Studio-designed fountain in the Visitor Center at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and transitions into an interactive exploration of underground New York City. The piece is created and performed in collaboration with Local 147 Sandhogs, MTA engineers, Newtown Creek’s wastewater treatment workers and FDNY explosives experts.

The artists developed D.I.G. through a dialogue with the hidden workers of subterranean New York City– those who spend their lives surveying, engineering, building, blasting and rebuilding our city. Through extensive interviews, underground meetings, and an exchange of artistic ideas, these collaborators have helped the artists explore the incredible infrastructure of daily life and bring this performance installation to life.

About the Artists: 

The Local 147 Sandhogs are New York City’s Tunnel Diggers. The Sandhogs have worked major construction projects including the Brooklyn Bridge, Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown and Brooklyn Battery Tunnels, as well as most of New York City’s subways, waterways, and sewers. Current major projects include Water Tunnel Number Three, MTA’s Second Avenue Subway Line and East Side Access Project, and the Croton Water Filtration Plant.

Liza Wade Green, Will Orzo, Emily Rea, and Lígia Teixeira are a collaborative team with backgrounds in writing, music, computing, physical theater and dance. Bringing together public research processes, design, interactive programming, composition, and movement techniques, they create contextual performance and installation works.

Performance, Installation and Opening Reception
Saturday May 19, 7pm at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Visitor Center
329 Greenpoint Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222

Ongoing Installation May 19th through May 31st - check Visitor Center website for open hours and directions:http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/environmental_education/newtown_visitors_center.shtml

To schedule an appointment contact: wellwaternyc@gmail.com

D.I.G. is sponsored by BIG!NYC www.bignyc.org

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During Under The Radar in January we got to talking with Fusebox‘s Ron Berry and told him some of the ideas we were working on. Ever-enthusiastic and up for new things, he invited us down to Austin to try some stuff out as part of the festival’s “Hybrid Arts Summit”. We just got back and boy, howdy, did we have a good time! We did three programs: a panel on performance and context, a community conversation based on the “Long Table” idea and a re-imagination of the artist talkback called “The Impersonation Game”. Not only did all three programs o better than we could have hoped, but we got to meet lots of cool folks, see some shows, eat, drink and just generally have a grand time! We hope we can come back next year for some more…and if you’ve never been, schedule your vacation now for Fusebox 2013! It is hard to beat the combination of laid-back hospitality and good energy with a creative community and a diverse and a thoughtful, well-balanced program of cutting-edge performance.

We arrived in Austin Thursday evening and headed over to sometime-Culturebot contributor Tim Braun‘s place, who was kind enough to put us up and play host for the weekend. I met Tim back when he was in NYC working at HERE Arts Center and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. He has been living, teaching and writing in Austin and now heads up the Fusebox writing/blogging/social media efforts. Every bit the man-about-town, he kept us busy and introduced us to tons of wonderful people and places. Thanks Tim!!

We put our stuff in Tim’s apartment, met is dog Dusty and headed over to the Fusebox Festival Hub, which would serve as homebase for the next few days. There we met up with Ron and the rest of his team – Elle, Natalie, Brad and more – to get oriented. The Hub was in the TOPS building, a former office supply warehouse. They tricked it out with a nice stage set-up, a bar and a gallery space, including a big red swing. Outside at the Hub they had a beer garden/hang out area, with these sustainable eco-chair thingies:

And really cool inflatable seating modules designed by San Francisco’s Rebar Studio. Here’s a pic from a different installation of the same furniture:

This furniture and other production aspects of the festival were being included in a parallel investigation of sustainability conducted by Ian Garrett of the Center for Sustainable Practice In The Arts. Not sure when they’re going to post their findings/research, stay tuned for more information.

After getting the lay of the land we headed over to the Buenos Aires Cafe Este for a delicious Argentine-inflected dinner before heading off to the Salvage Vanguard Theater to see Phil Soltanoff’s new show “An Evening With William Shatner Asterisk”. Working from a thoughtful script by Joe Diebes and in collaboration with designer/programmer Rob Ramirez, Soltanoff has staged a lecture performed by a digital William Shatner puppet. Taking snippets of dialogue from classic Star Trek footage and editing them together, Captain Kirk delivers a speech on art, science and the binaries that we have come to accept as defining experience. The monitor from which Kirk speaks is moved around stage by an actor, in this case a Japanese woman, who at one point breaks the flow by delivering a monologue, in Japanese, about moving to Austin and becoming fascinated by drag culture.

The show raises some interesting questions, the script is thoughtful and entertaining. At one point the Shatner puppet starts talking about “phenomenon” and I went into an internal loop of contemplation about the limitations of language, the residue and transformation of meaning over time, modes of cognition, embodied vs. virtual presence, etc. The night I saw it there were a few technical glitches – surprisingly not in the software but in the connection between input cables – that broke up the flow. In general the Shatner dialogue is very choppy and there’s something at once hypnotic and distancing about a voice constructed entirely of one-word snippets. It reinforces the falsity and computerized construction of the character, while also opening the question of what this would be like if it were smoothed out to appear more “natural”. Still, very cool stuff and a good start to things.

After Phil’s show we headed back to the Festival Hub to hang out, drink and mingle while chowing down on a late night snack of delicious sandwiches from Lucky’s Puccias. (Hey Lucky! Bring your truck to NYC!!). We saw lots of pals from NYC (Hey Eliza Bent!) and met new folks from Austin (Hey Graham Schmidt!) and from other places as well. Good times, good times.

Friday morning we managed to rally from a late night and make it over to The Hub a little after 11AM to catch the second half of a conversation between Wayne Ashley and Ron Berry. Wayne has been curating and producing high-tech performance for years and is partnering with Fusebox on an ongoing basis to bring work to Austin. They talked about some of the projects Wayne has going (Verdensteatret, ERS/Ben Rubin collaboration “Shuffle”, Kurt Hentschlager’s Zee, etc.) and talked a bit about what is to come.

After that was the first Culturebot program – I led a panel on “Performance and Context”. Originally this was going to revisit the conversation that we did at Under The Radar, but between then and now, even in a few short months, it seemed like the conversation has shifted. Especially in a town like Austin and the way Ron has curated his festival, the “binary” if you will, of visual art vs. performance seemed less pressing than a wider discussion of how context relates to creative practice and how that informs the work. So I invited Austin-based artists Wura-Natasha Ogunji and Michael Smith, Phil Soltanoff and curator Hilary Graves from Austin’s Lora Reynolds Gallery to talk. It was a wide-ranging and thoughtful conversation. It was streamed on NewPlayTv but they missed the first half. Here’s what they captured:

Next we went outside and joined Meredith Powell from Art Alliance Austin and Shea Little from Big Medium for an open discussion on collaboration and community-building in the arts. It was a very engaged conversation with a number of representatives of different parts of Austin’s arts scene. I got to bring in some of my experience from my other job and share thoughts/ideas around artist engagement with urban planning and development, cross-disciplinary (and cross-sector) collaboration, introducing the artist’s voice into community engagement strategies, etc. It was also really helpful in that this discussion set the stage for the next day’s “Hair of the Dog Performance Potlatch” long-table discussion on creativity, community and place.

With a few hours open and no specific plans on a hot, beautiful sunshine-y day, we headed down to the Yellow Jacket Social Club for some conversation y cervezas. There was a whole contingent of kids from Minneapolis who had road-tripped down and they joined Jeremy, Tim, Meredith and myself and we whiled away the afternoon talking art until finally it was time to take our leave and see a show.

Jeremy and I headed over to The Long Center to see the Dutch company Wunderbaum’s Songs At The End Of The World. I first saw Wunderbaum back in March 2006 when I flew out to REDCAT to see their show Lost Chord Radio and have thought about them a lot over the past few years. They are one of the few theater groups that really integrate music seamlessly into performance; they have a quirky sense of humor that balances well with their musical aesthetic and are all quite talented performers. Songs At The End Of The World is a series of vignettes loosely based around the idea of a group of people in Antarctica, a kind of last stop on the road to nowhere, a place where people go to think about what might have been if only, if only… I really enjoyed the show, it wasn’t quite as evocative as I remember Lost Chord Radio being, the stories are more personal and less mythic/fantastic, but it is fun and well-done, also in a music town like Austin, this is definitely the kind of crossover work that will attract new audiences that might not normally go to theater/performance. If you find yourself in the same place as Wunderbaum, don’t miss the chance to check them out!

After Songs At The End Of The World we headed over to Lucky Lady Bingo to see 600 Highwaymen‘s new show This Great Country, a re-constructed staging of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. 600 Highwaymen’s Abby and Michael are based in Brooklyn, but the piece was built over the course of several months in residence in Austin. Set in a sad Bingo Parlor that reeks of ancient cigarette smoke, futility and desperation, you couldn’t find a more evocative site for Death of Salesman than perhaps a rundown casino on seedy end of The Strip in Vegas. Using a combination of Big Dance Theater-style movement theater with Richard Maxwell-style affectless acting, the 600 Highwaymen production strips away all the fake pathos of method acting and “naturalism” to let the words and the situation stand out in stark relief. It seems like Miller over-wrote the original and this version is strategically edited. While still long (clocking in at about two hours with no intermission) it still clips along faster than the original.

One of the real innovations of this production is cross-casting, having multiple actors play multiple roles across age, race and gender. The cast was all local and ranged in age from 7-70 with a wide variety of experience levels. The scene where Howard, Willy’s boss, fires him was played entirely by kids – a young boy playing Howard, fired a teenage/early 20′s (boyish) girl in a suit. It was effective and affecting. Willy’s wife Linda was played alternately by an age-appropriate older actress with a physical handicap and a girl who must have been no older than 12 years old, but who acted with a professionalism, grace and focus you rarely see in actors twice, three times her age.

Ashley Kaye Johnson - photo by Will Hollis Photography

Abby and Michael used a variety of “post-modern” techniques to open up the text and the story in powerful ways. At the end of the show when Linda is sitting in the empty bingo hall after Willy’s funeral talking to herself she refers to the fact that she just made the last payment on their house and says, “We’re free” and it just feels like a knife in the gut. It is an indictment of our times – we think we’re free but we’re not, we give over our lives to an American Dream predicated on material wealth, on the meaningless social interactions of buying and selling, we deceive ourselves into thinking that these interpersonal transactions have meaning and connection, we delude ourselves and in the end of the day we’re not free at all, we have played a rigged game in which there are no winners. Here we are in a bingo parlor with a bunch of losing cards and an empty wallet, kids vanished into their own unrealizable dreams, in a house we spent a lifetime trying to hold onto through mortgages and threat of repossession, a dream all too quickly fading from view.

Apart from appreciating the work in and of itself, I was also thinking about this show in light of earlier discussion about visual arts, community, collaboration and sustainability.

From a visual arts perspective I think you can look at how 600 Highwaymen built this show as using the methodologies of social practice to construct the performance. They embedded themselves as artists in the community, chose a text/idea that would be resonant, they locally sourced the performers, doing outreach over time (more than 6 weeks) to identify participants and engage them in the creative process. They built a community and leveraged its resources to implement the project in an affordable, sustainable way. It is a great arts production model that touches on so many relevant issues of the moment. If it wasn’t so late and I wasn’t so tired I would investigate further. Maybe at some point in the near future. But I think this show, like Aaron Landsman’s City Council Meeting, is pointing to an exciting direction for theater/performance.

This Great Country ran pretty late and by the time we got back to The Hub we had already missed a performance by Christeene, which was supposed to be both shocking and enthralling. We managed to stay there talking and chatting til nigh on 2:30AM when we headed back to Tim’s for some rest before returning to The Hub the next day at 10AM.

Saturday started with the Culturebot Hair of the Dog Performance Potlatch where we used the “Long Table” format as the basis for a conversation around art and place. Some of the folks at the table besides me and Jeremy included Caroline Reck of Glass Half Full Theatre and Graham Schmidt of Breaking String, Brian Osborne, Abby and Michael from 600 Highwaymen and a bunch of other folks:

The conversation picked up on a lot of topics we had started the day before: collaboration, community engagement, tour-ability, scalability, sustainable practices.  What really characterized the conversation was a sense of possibility and “can-do” attitude, as opposed to the normal, defeatist, “There’s no money, there’s no audience” litany of complaints so many arts conversations devolve into. We talked about the role art can play in urban development and planning, about the need to be involved in the community at large and be an engaged citizen, about how traditional “marketing” doesn’t really seem to be relevant so much anymore, and a lot more. There seems to be a confluence between artistic practices for creating work and other social/political values.

One thing we talked about is an idea that’s been around for awhile but seems really viable now.  We were talking about the challenges of creating work in places like Austin, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia -  touring them and also building awareness of that work in bigger cities like NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles. Some of the Austinites were talking about how, since there was a large student population, people would engage deeply for 4-8 years and then move on to other places. We started trying to flesh out the idea of what it would look like if we put some intentionality behind that, thinking about “incubator cities” and leveraging the unique resources of a given city to develop projects. Maybe some cities have a lot of space, others have a certain focus on technology or a certain population… how can we create a development network that lowers creation costs by building a project in the most fertile place? And then having a mechanism to tour. Or how do we build shows that are shows that are designed to tour. This also kind of tapped into idea of cultural biodiversity and how does work  reflect the region in which it is made but retain relevance on a national/international level?

We talked about resource and information sharing – what if there was a web-based clearing house for information on, say, how to build a raft that floats down a river and doesn’t fall apart? Or best practices for community engagement? Some way for artists to share experience and creative practice?

We also had a lively discussion about changing the framework around how we talk about our work, trying to move away from the entertainment/commodity model and associated language and move into something more meaningful. One big thing we talked about for a while was growing audiences and how do we make the case for what we do? It was suggested that what live performance does, ideally, is to provoke not just emotions but thought and critical evaluation of self and society. It opens us up to possibility. In a culture where that is not necessarily highly valued, how do we advocate for mindfulness and thoughtfulness as a cultural value and propose the arts as an agent of that change?

I wish we had recorded the conversation because it was really great – I think people had a good time. I know that we sparked ideas because as we walked away from the table people gathered together in small groups to keep the conversation going. Next time we’ll take better notes and aim to make this an iterative process!

After the Hair of the Dog Performance Potlatch we went into the Hub to see Jaime Salvador Castillo interview Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz about her work, particularly her “Ask Chuleta” project. See below:

It was a really fun conversation with an artist I previously hadn’t known about.

Immediately after that was Culturebot’s final public program of the festival, The Impersonation Game. This is a concept we got from the European collective Everybodys and we were excited to try it out. Basically the idea is simple – you invite Artist A to see the work of Artist B without any pre-knowledge or relationship. Then you do an artist talkback where Artist A pretends to be Artist B. The idea is to open up the possibility for new interpretations of the work and also to give the audience a bit of distance from the artist, hopefully to liberate them to ask questions they might not otherwise broach.

In this case we got three Austin artists – Allison Orr, Graham Schmidt and Kirk Lynn – to pretend to be Gob Squad and answer questions about Super Night Shot. This would have been awesome in and of itself BUT was made even better by the fact that, unbeknownst to us, Kirk Lynn had actually sent his friend Aron to pretend to be him. So Aron pretended to be Kirk pretending to be Gob Squad. Even better than that was that three of the members of Gob Squad were in the audience and even asked their impersonators questions! Jeremy started out interviewing them all and then turned it over to the audience for Q&A. It was very funny but it was also very revealing. We were a little nervous about it at first, but everyone had a great time and thought the conversation was not just fun and funny, but relevant. New Play TV livestreamed it but apparently without audio. Bummer! But here’s a picture of Gob Squad and Impersonators after the fact:

Oh boy oh boy! On the heels of our triumph Team Culturebot went and grabbed some beers and BBQ to pass the time ’til dinner, when we met Tim Braun and Mark (?) and went to Contigo where we stumbled on a crawfish boil:

And then over to some other restaurant for spicy margaritas and delicious melt-y queso.

Thoroughly stuffed and maybe a little bit tipsy, we headed over to The Off Center to check out Brian Osborne’s The WORD: A House Party For Jesus. Brian portrays a down-on-his-luck preacher who got the call as a young boy and knows no other life. Dogged by his past and struggling to keep solvent or at least marginally above abject poverty (both spiritual and material) he wrestles with himself, his God and you. The show really does travel light – a tent, a suitcase and a few props – and it seemed to speak to so many of the ideas and issues we had been discussing all weekend. Osborne was funny even as he inspired pathos as the all-too-human preacher, getting us caught up in the action and singing along to Jesus. Good times! Hallelujah!

Not yet ready to let the good times end, we headed from The Off Center back to the Hub in time to catch the last few songs of Holcombe Waller‘s set. More hanging out, drinking, joking & mingling… and then a crack and a crash and the skies opened up and by gum if it wasn’t a downpour like we hadn’t seen in ages! Everyone headed from the beer garden into the Hub proper just in time for a funky festive freak-out with Foot Patrol, a band led by TJ Wade – a blind singer and keyboard virtuoso who happens to have a strong attraction to feet. Think I’m kidding? Oh no, check it out:

Finally around 3AM it was time to call it a night. We bid adieu to all our friends old and new and braved the downpour to drive pack to Tim’s house for a quick bit of sleep before heading to the airport the next day and back to NYC. Team Culturebot took it to Fusebox and rocked it. Big shout-out to Ron for having us, Tim for hosting us and all the artists, audiences and Austinites for making our trip such a resounding success and funky good time!!

Until next year – stay classy Austin!

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NewPlayTV is livestreaming the Hybrid Art Summit from Fusebox! Check it out here:

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You know, the NEA gets a lot of flack. The Right Wing of American politics thinks it is a waste of money and the Left Wing thinks it is too conservative. Even the arts and culture sector has heated debates about what the NEA is doing, what it is funding and what kind of impact it can make. I’ve mostly sat these arguments out other than the occasional post about how underfunded they are.But in the face of all of the disagreement and fiscal challenges they are doing some great work, a lot of it we don’t hear about.

Most of you are probably familiar with ArtPlace, the NEA’s much-touted new initiative for place-making through the arts, but you may not know about some of the other projects they are working on. This week has been Art and Science week over at the NEA’s blog, and in addition to posts by  Bill O’Brien, the NEA’s Senior Advisor for Program Innovation,  they’re featuring posts by art/science enthusiasts Roger Malina, Andrea Grover, Marina McDougal and Whitney Dail. From what I understand they’re looking to support art/science projects in the future – so if you’re working in that area, you should email artandscience@arts.gov   To get info on the application process and to get on the list for an upcoming webinar to support applications for art/science projects.

They also announced the three winners of the Knight/NEA Community Arts Journalism Challenge. Applications to the Knight/NEA Community Arts Journalism Challenge were accepted in August 2011 from eight communities where Knight Foundation invests; five finalists announced in October 2011 received $20,000 to create an Idea to Action plan detailing their business development strategy. The three winners’ plans held the greatest promise for delivering a sustainable arts journalism model that both uses community assets and can be adapted in other cities. Read the release (linked above) and review the finalists, let us know what you think, loyal readers!

Also the NEA has started a program of “healing arts” using expressive writing to help returning vets deal with PTSD. This made me think of an email I got a while back from a colleague about a TCG project to develop connections between TCG member theatres and military families in their communities.  The email I received was neutral in tone, but I thought I detected a level of suspicion. While I was and remain personally opposed to the American military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think that arts outreach to military families is important. The arts are valuable tools in helping people to tell their stories, to become expressive, to unlearn violence, model new behaviors, develop interpersonal skills, learn new viewpoints, etc. And we know that a lot of military families are middle class or struggling, they volunteered out of patriotism but also out of a desire for opportunity and social mobility. They might not have grown up with access to the arts or in a community where the arts were central to their education. Here is an opportunity for the arts and culture world to help people in need while developing new audiences and providing access. I don’t see the downside in that.

If you want to see a full list of all the things the NEA just funded, check out the press release here. It is a really wide variety for a diverse and complex country.  I just started digging in – so let’s crowd source this a bit. Dig in and look for projects that you either give thumbs-up or thumbs-down and put it in the comments!

I’m planning an interview with some folks in the NEA soon and will pass along your comments!!

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Ian Daniel is organizing an event on Thursday, April 26th (7pm-12am) called Apocalyptic Shift that combines music, video, technology and performance to create a digital landscape of dystopia. This is going to happen at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (540 W 21st St.) where artist Mary Mattingly has been in residence, literally, living there as part of her Flock House Project.

There are a bunch of great artists involved incuding Yoshi Sodeoka, Sabrina Ratte, Max Hattler, Sara Ludy and Daniel Givens as well as the bands Young Magic, Warm Ghost, Chrome Canyon, and DJs Saheer Umar/BLVCK AMERICA.

Here’s some words that Ian sent me that I cut and pasted together and I’m not sure if they make sense:

In order to survive in a hyper-mediated and delirious world, mobility, reuse, and appropriation are essential. Apocalyptic Shift is inspired by Mary Mattingly’s Flock House project, a microsphere of orbiting habitats that move around massive urban architecture. This night reimagines urban geographies and repurposes the Happening. Apocalyptic Shift turns Eyebeam into an immersive environment and creates new visions for a post-industrial landscape, combining music, video, technology and performance to create a digital landscape of dystopia.

More info? check out eyebeam.org or facebook

Sounds like fun! We’re going to try and be there. Also, Flock House will be touring the city this summer with two stops in Manhattan as part of the River To River Festival! So even if you can’t make the party, make a donation!

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“Giant Yves Klein All Out Attack” – Dan Safer, Mike Mikos wrestling in paint at Exit Art as part of Culturebot’s “Ephemeral Evidence” project.

Giant Yves Klein All Out Attack from Andy Horwitz on Vimeo.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Foundry Theatre is bringing people to NYC from all over the world – people who are living and working within alternative practices of economics, safety, media/ communications, politics and more.

Join them for a kind of ‘there-are-other-ways-to-do-things’ show & tell featuring these remarkable local, national and international innovators.

Reservations/tickets available here.

Here’s the email I got from Melanie:

To my beloved friends and colleagues who make things,

I write to ask that you come to all or part of this weekend-long event we’re hosting at Cooper Union over the weekend of April 20-22 (Fri night and Sat & Sun afternoons). If nothing else, don’t miss Fri night/Grace Lee Boggs!

As most of you all know, we’re always experimenting with different sorts of events where artists might find meaningful exchange with people outside of our own community and practice – both as a way to assert our presence and significance in building the world AND hopefully to widen our access as a community to some of the amazing things going on outside our rehearsal rooms.

This time we’ve invited some insanely creative people to come to NYC from all over the world — South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, the USA etc — for a kind of Tedtalks/there-are-other-ways-of-making-the-world show & tell about the ways they are creating/living/working in innovative, alternative systems that change the way the world works. While these practices are proliferating widely across the globe, there’s barely a language for what they are or how they’re connected. They’re primarily framed as a kind of ‘visionary activism’, distinct from or even instead of protest politics (academics refer to them as “prefigurative’ practices.) I think ‘activism’ is only one of its frames; on a deeper level it’s simply people who are creating and experimenting with new forms of transformation, which is why I’m inviting you to be part of this conversation. This is another community of makers with whom we might share some interesting perspectives.

There’s an interesting language to be developed between those of us who create art and those who are creating these innovative structures. We both live in the ambiguity of creation, of not knowing but proceeding anyway. I wonder if we might be a kind of first circle’ to engage the depth and complexity of these processes. In fact I think many of the guests who are coming decided to do so because a theatre company invited them, because they want to speak about their work with other people who are creatively engaged with making things. So we’ve structured the breakout sessions on Sat and Sun to include artists as respondents and we’ve left lots of space for our ensuing conversations.

Finally, because we, as community of artists, are ultimately driven and inspired by each other, and because we’re so rarely together as a community, it would be a pleasure to share this experience with you all. I hope to see you there – thousands of you. Please pass this invite along to everyone I’ve never met. All info is below

Yours in love and inquiry,

xMelanie

Popularity: 2% [?]

So maybe two years ago Yoshiko Chuma told me about the project she was working on. She’d be invited (or somehow put in touch with) the Palestinian Dance Troupe El-Funoun from Ramallah and wanted to go work with them, make a piece and bring it back. She couldn’t find funding – as far as I know – but went ahead anyway. Over the past few years she has been there, working with the company and making material, experiencing life in Ramallah and building relationships.

From May 9-12, 2012, for 5 performances, she will present that work at LaMama FOR FREE.

From the release:

Intentionally confusing documentation with history, Chuma tasks El-Funoun members Sari Husseini and Ana Abu Oun and NYC-based talents Miriam Parker, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Saori Tsukada-—three performers who have never been to Palestine—with re-creating segments from her own documented works and experiences in Ramallah, Palestine. Chuma assembles a mosaic of images and interviews which pertain to pain and longing, as if framing theater with barbed wire. Traditional dance is juxtaposed with contemporary movement, video projection and spoken text in a borderless environment constantly reshaped by sculptural objects. Yoshiko Chuma herself performs on the backdrop of Robert Flynt’s photography.

I’ve long been a fan of Chuma’s work – it is a mix of highly structured and totally chaotic, a frenzy of media and dance, always challenging the audience to engage in an overwhelm of information and imagery. I imagine this will be a very compelling project.

All performances are free, but require reservations which you can make here.

SHOW INFO:

Love Story, Palestine
Concept, Design, and Choreography by Yoshiko Chuma

May 9-12, 2012
Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Ave and Bowery)
Part of La MaMa Moves! Festival/ 50th Anniversary Season

Featuring members of Palestinian Dance Troupe El-Funoun from Ramallah
In association with ROOT CULTURE in Kamakura, Japan.

Dance by Miriam Parker, Saori Tsukada, Tatyana Tenenbaum,
Ryuji Yamaguchi, Sari Husseini, Anas Abu Oun and Yoshiko Chuma
Music by Sizzle Ohtaka, Aska Kaneko with Robert Black
Photography by Robert Flynt

Text excerpts from “Sayonara, Gangsters” by Genichiro Takahashi
Sound Design excerpts from “6 Seconds in Ramallah” by Koji Setoh
‘Dabke’ Choreography by El-Funoun Dance Troupe
5 monitors perform video documentation
5 moveable panels and 30′x30′ tarps fill the space

Popularity: 3% [?]