Artists Unite Issue

Peter Walsh fights for artists rights

Peter Ferko — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:08:22 +0000

I’m doing a series of portrait exchanges with professional portrait drawers in Manhattan’s Central Park.

The City of New York and the NYC Parks Commission are proposing that most of the artists working in Central Park and in other NYC parks be shut down. Part of the way they intend to do this is by insinuating that these artists aren’t actually artists and don’t deserve full First Amendment rights. One way to challenge this assertion is to create an art project that highlights the quality of the work created by professional artists working in the parks.

And so, the Central Park Portrait Exchange is born.

Portrait Exchange Session One:
Time: Wednesday, May 12th, 2010, 9:30am – 12:30pm
Artists: Li Qun, Peter Walsh, Xiang Yue Chuan, Dario Zapata
Location: On Northwest corner of 59th Street and East Drive, directly across from Grand Army Plaza. This location is near the Plaza Hotel.

Go to the blog for details (including a map), weather-related schedule changes and other updates:

http://centralparkportraitexchange.blogspot.com/

Your Voice as Art

Stephen — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:20:59 +0000

Join us April 7th at Caerleon Isle for the opening of Through the Virtual Looking Glass and the premiere of the Your Voice as Art, Field of Voices. Slurl, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/113/85/41

Collaborators Dekka Raymaker, Misprint Thursday, Penumbra Carter, Selavy Oh, and Aequitas have encapsulated the theme of the Real life / Second Life crossover exhibition with their Networked Collaboration, Field of Voices previously mentioned in New World Notes January 21, 2010.

The idea was to illuminate the shift of perception from outside to inside the virtual world. The visitor is presented with a beautiful expanse of white columns not unlike a circuit board or a graveyard. Jumping down in to the field we are treated to the voices of a diverse group of real people belaying the sterile perception of Second Life, and social media in general by reminding us there are people behind the virtual avatar on the screen. The effect is quite touching and before you know it the visitor falls through the floor and is treated to a soothing light show as they walk through the amusing, touching, and clever proximity activated voices in the poles.

This is all part of Virtual Art Initiative and the the RL/SL crossover exhibition Through the Virtual Looking Glass opening April 7th in five real world galleries and other spaces in as many countries, specifically, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and the United States.

Australia will also participate in the April events virtually, while hosting a real world exhibition at a time later this year.

Organizers of the exhibition in each country will choose its content and methods of display which will include interactive artworks from the virtual worlds Second Life and OpenSim, images and machinimas (virtual world videos) shown on plasma screens and digital frames, prints of virtual artworks, physical sculptures and paintings inspired by virtual art, some with embedded electronic components, and literary readings and musical performances occurring in the real world exhibition spaces and streamed live into Second Life and OpenSim.

Through the Virtual Looking Glass is organized and presented by a network of international groups, all of them leaders in the field of virtual art, including the Caerleon Sims/Virtual Art Initiative, Cybernetic Art Research Project/Diablous, Museo del Metaverso/Uqbar, Pirats, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Western Australia.

It’s never too late to share your voice and participate! more info here. http://arsactual.com

Voices Soar

Stephen — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:08:24 +0000

If you haven’t had a chance to contribute your voice to the project we open simultaneously in six countries: Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Brazil, and the USA this April 7th. Students seem to be the most creative at this point and we have an overwhelming majority from the US with Australia a close second. Is your country represented? I made a new video showing a tease of what the visitors experience is withholding a few surprises for the opening. I contacted William Powhida about adding the project to his #class extravaganza. If your in NYC and went to the Whitney instead of this, shame on you. Here’s a chance to make your voice heard in new media art throughout the world.

Call for Art

Peter Ferko — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:12:02 +0000

¡DEADLINE EXTENDED!

MTA –Artists Unite Subway Elevator Poster Project
CALL FOR ARTWORK: Phase 2
Northern Manhattan Artists
Deadline: Friday, March 19, 2010 Midnight

Dear Artists, Friends and Community Members,

The MTA-Artists Unite Subway Elevator Poster Project, a long standing effort by the community is happy to announce this second call for artwork to be placed in the subway elevators at the A-Line 184h St (181st. Subway Stop) & 190th St. Subway Stations.

The first phase (6 posters for six months) has been successfully completed acknowledging the uniqueness of our community and fulfilling Artists Unite Mission to bring art to the public in creative new venues. The first set of posters can still be seen in the elevators.

We are looking for six (6) original artworks by artists residing in CB 12* to be produced as posters and placed, one in each of the 3 elevators per station. Work will be seen by thousands of residents and tourists en route to the Cloisters Museum. See Instructions below.

* CB 12 covers Manhattan north of 155th street, river to river.

Guidelines:

Material must be sensitive to and respectful of the diversity of the community.
Materials may (but need not) reflect icons associated with the surrounding neighborhood (by way of example, local parks, places of interest, etc.); they may not include depictions of commercial establishments or photographs of individuals, pets, or private residences.
Materials shall not include written or printed text.
Materials shall not include messages that might reasonably be interpreted as an endorsement or advocacy of any political, religious, social or ethnic organization, cause, or belief nor contain logos or other symbols of same.
The transit system is used by a diverse population, and accordingly, the materials shall be appropriate for viewing by persons of all ages and varying backgrounds. They shall not include content or references which might be reasonably construed as being of a sexual or violent nature.
Proposed art must lend itself to reproduction as a two-dimensional poster, no more than 29.5 inches wide by 45 inches long, printed on standard paper stock.
Allow room for a seven-inch strip running across the bottom of the poster on which will appear the text, “New York City Transit Celebrates Washington Heights” and the MTA New York City Transit logo.

Deadline for submissions: March 19, 2010, 12:00 Midnight.

Projected Exhibition Dates: April 1, 2010 - October 1, 2010

Submission Format: Original work may be in any medium: painting, collage, sculpture, photography.

Instructions:

Please submit no more than 4 images in JPG format for viewing. JPG files should be no more than 1000 pixels in any direction (e.g., 700 by 1000, or 1000 x 700 pixels). Include artist’s last name in the filename for each image (e.g., Rodriguez-landscape1.jpg).

Selected artists will be contacted regarding image specifications
for reproduction.

Send Images by e-mail to: rosa@artistsunite-ny.org

For More Information:
Contact rosa@artistsunite-ny.org or call: 212.740-9378

Judging:
Artists Unite will convene a 5-7-person panel to select artwork. Final approval by the MTA in accordance with listed guidelines.

We look forward to your entries. This is an exciting opportunity to further develop a model for an MTA- community based arts program for our city’s subway system.

Thank you,
Rosa Naparstek,
Co-Director, Artists Unite

Through the Virtual Looking Glass

Stephen — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:53:06 +0000

I am working on a project which is kind of snowballing lately and was wondering if anyone knows a gallery that wants to get in on this. I have pasted part of a letter below which explains it a wee bit. There is a website forthcoming. I will be placing embedded electronic components and am leading a virtual collaboration which you can see a trailer of and participate in here.

http://arsactual.com/collab/

> I am writing to invite you to participate in a series of international

> exhibitions in the month of April, 2010 the purpose of which is to introduce

> the art currently being made in such Virtual Worlds as Second Life, OpenSim,

> and VastPark to real life audiences. The project originated at my university,

> the University of Massachusetts at Boston. The art gallery on our campus, the

> Harbor Gallery, will be hosting a month-long exhibition of virtual art this

> April, mostly presented with large scale computer screens, digital projectors,

> and digital frames, though we will also show prints of virtual work as well as

> physical sculptures inspired by virtual art, some with embedded electronic

> components. I organized the exhibition to coincide with an online course I am

> teaching next term titled, Art and Philosophy in Second Life and Other Virtual

> Worlds.

> Recently a number of galleries located in different countries have asked me if

> they could host similar exhibitions in April under the title we are using in

> Boston, Through the Virtual Looking Glass, as part of a connected set of

> international exhibitions. We now have galleries in France and Holland

> committed to hosting exhibitions in those countries, as well venues in Germany

> that will host real life literary events that will be streamed into a virtual

> literary cafe in Second Life. Key figures in the virtual art world are now

> exploring the possibility of holding similar exhibitions in Italy, Brazil, and

> Mexico.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

> Best,

> Gary Zabel

> Department of Philosophy

> University of Massachusetts at Boston

scoring performa

Peter Ferko — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:38:39 +0000

Artist Peter Walsh is a writing fellow for Performa ‘09. He just let me know about the project Scoring Performa, which has a number of writers, well, scoring the annual performance art festival. The resulting document is a wide variety of takes on what the assessment of art can be: critique, summary, reaction, etc.

From Peter’s own post (an excerpt):

“Some Notes on Liveness: Part One”

By PETER WALSH

I’m addicted to the privilege of “being there.” In a society where the eyewitness testimony of one person can put another person behind bars – or set them free, it’s hard not to be. We honor the power of the witness. As a sensing person, my being shaped by a constant bodily flow of information, I prefer, for example, a well-made meal to simple calories. I also prefer theater to cinema, a big movie premiere to stuttering YouTube videos, the passion of a lover to the secondhand “sexiness” of pop culture….

Tabula Lunar by Hector Canonge

Peter Ferko — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:17:07 +0000

Washington Heights artist Hector Canonge’s work Tabula Lunar was the subject of the second in a series of projected exhibitions staged by Artists Unite in 2009. Canonge’s work serves as a public intervention and was a perfect match with the Projection Show series attempt to bring the experience of art directly to the public rather than through the venue of gallery or other specialized location.
Canonge worked with a custom video mixer to combine his collected footage of things “lunar,” including animation, classic film, and stills with live images of people in the street. The work effectively places the public into the artwork. From Canonge’s artists statement:

Public Intervention Projection explores the universal fascination of people with the moon while evoking mythical, romantic, fantastic, and obscure attributes of the celestial body. TABULA LUNAR is an ephemeral surface on which people’s street presence is incorporated into visuals of and narratives about the lunar landscape appropriated from popular cinematic culture. Poetic and intrusive, familiar yet out of this world, intimate yet made into a public collaborative performance, the project prompts a possible dialogue of our connection to the night sky and what can be seen of it in an urban setting.

More information about the artist can be found at www.hectorcanonge.net.

More photos from the event are available at http://artistsunite.ning.com/photo/albums/tabula-lunar.

Watch for the next in the Projection Show series in late November/early December.

Creative Venues/Projection Show is made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities and the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, both supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Artists Unite LIVE! is funded in part by a discretionary grant from Councilmember Robert Jackson. Artists Unite receives support from the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone.

Rirkrit Tiravanijas

Peter Ferko — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:25:38 +0000

A nice interview from Studio Banana TV

did you ever want it to be real?

Stephen — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:48:46 +0000

Dear Stephen,

As an assistant to an artist representative and curator based in New York
City, I am always looking for wonderful artists. After seeing some of your
works, I am very motivated to assign a writer to review your works.

I think you work is very strong,
wonderful compositions and lovely use of color.

We wish to start our collaboration by giving your works immediate
international exposure in prestigious publications. Please check below to
see the list of opportunities we are able to give you.

We hope to work together on other great projects in the near future such
as group shows in New York and our artist residency programs Beijing.

the following page collects these scams and should be checked regularly

http://www.atelier-rc.com/Atelier.RC/Art_Alarm.html

Poets in the Galleries v3: Amir Parsa

Stephen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:50:24 +0000

The Poets in the Galleries series utilizes the Museum’s exhibition space as an invigorating site for exploration, interactive readings and discussions. Each Sunday in September, a different poet will conduct a lively presentation in response to the Museum’s current exhibition, Tarjama/Translation. These gifted participants, all distinguished and emerging voices in the local, national and international literary scene, have been asked to devise an original presentation in response to the works on view. The current exhibition lends itself especially well to the series, by creating an open-ended forum in which the poets and visitors alike can explore the related themes of how poetry is translated across languages and cultures. Join us for a cocktail hour followed by the interactive gallery tour & readings by a different poet each week. Participating poets include Amir Parsa, Ali Husain Mir, Ammiel Alcalay, and Sinan Antoon.

An internationally acclaimed writer and poet, Amir Parsa is the author of over ten literary books, including Kobolierrot, Tractatüus Philosophiká-Poeticüus, Feu L’encre - Fable, Divan, Drive-by Cannibalism in the Baroque Tradition, Erre and the multilingual L’opéra minora. An uncategorizable body of work, Mr. Parsa’s literary oeuvre - written in English, French and Persian - constitutes a radical polyphonic enterprise that puts into question national, cultural and aesthetic attachments and discourses while fashioning new genres, forms and even species of literary artifacts. His work has been read and debated in galleries and museums, in streets and on rooftops, in broad daylight and in hiding, and at various festivals, events and curated venues. Books and photographs have been exhibited in both group and solo shows, most recently at the Uncomun Festival ‘08 and Engendered Festival ‘09 in New York. He was included in the anthology of new French and Francophone poets (Ed. Huguet 2004). Born in Tehran, Mr. Parsa was educated at Princeton and Columbia universities. He is Lecturer, Educator and currently the Manager of the Alzheimer’s Project at the Museum of Modern Art, and teaches at Pratt Institute.

Tarjama / Translation
Reshuffling the pertinence of geographical boundaries through the multivalent practices of translation, this unprecedented exhibition features artists from the Middle East, Central Asia and its diasporas. The exhibition examines the different ways with which artists engage with people, objects, images, and ideas traveling across geographic spaces, media forms, histories, and personal contexts. Encompassing a variety of media and artistic strategies, Tarjama / Translation treats the multiple processes of translation as dynamic and complex, from linguistic and textual maneuvers, to the transformation of consciousness engendered by the increasingly globalized world.

The Queens Museum of Art

New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens NY 11368
Telephone: (718) 592-9700
info@queensmuseum.org

Subway

Via #7 Flushing IRT. Exit Willets Point/Shea Stadium and follow the yellow signs on a ten-minute walk through the park to the museum, which is located next to the Unisphere. Alternatively, exit at 111th Street Station. Walk south on 111th Street past the New York Hall of Science. Left on 49th Avenue into the Park. Continue past fountain over the Grand Central Parkway bridge. Museum is on right, next to Unisphere.
Please Note: If you plan on taking the subway to the museum during the weekend, check the MTA Service Advisory Postings before leaving home.
Bus

48 to Roosevelt Ave and 111th Street.
Walk south through park (toward Unisphere)

Q23, Q58 to Corona Ave and 51st Ave.
Walk east through park.
Car

From West and midtown Manhattan: Take the Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway. Use Exit 22B, Grand Central Parkway West toward the Triboro Bridge. Exit the Grand Central at the first exit, Tennis Center (9P), turn right and follow signs to Museum.

From Brooklyn: via Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) to LIE Eastbound, to exit 22B exit 22B (Grand Central Parkway/Triboro Bridge), then exit GCP at Tennis Center (9P) and turn right to the Museum.

From North and Triboro Bridge: via Grand Central Parkway, exit at 9E or 9W and follow signs to Museum.

From East and Long Island: via LIE to GCP West, exit GCP at Tennis Center (9P) and follow signs to Museum. Free parking.