I put together this short list for my documentary and experimental video students.  It’s a list of smaller movie theaters in New York City where you can see documentary, experimental and independent film and video or other innovative film programming.  For the most part, it doesn’t list festivals.  I’m sure it’s not exhaustive, so feel free to add other theaters/spaces you know in the comments.

I’m posting here in case anyone else is interested.  Please feel free to share with your NY friends or use as a resource if you live here or plan to visit.  (Thanks to Nathan Kensinger for helping me put this together.)

Angelika - Village

Anthology Film Archive  – East Village

BAM Cinema - Downtown Brooklyn/Ft. Greene

Film Forum - West Village

Film Society of Lincoln Center - Upper West Side

IndieScreen - Williamsburg

IFC (Stranger than Fiction Monthly documentary series) – West Village

Japan Society - Midtown East

Light Industry - Greenpoint

Maysles Films - Harlem

MoMA - midtown

Museum of the Moving Image - Long Island City

Nighthawk Cinema - Williamsbug

ReRun Theater - DUMBO

Rooftop Films - various locations

Spectacle - Williamsbug

Sunshine Cinema - Lower East Side

Union Docs - Williamsbug

92Y Tribeca - TriBeCa

We were awarded $800 for The Newtown Creek Armada at FEAST on Saturday! Thanks to all for coming and supporting the project. Now to get back to boat building…

If you are local to Brooklyn, I’d love to see you tomorrow night at FEAST Brooklyn to support The Newtown Creek Armada.

FEAST is a unique event that combines a delicious community dinner with grassroots support for local art projects. From their website:

FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics) is a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging art makers. At each FEAST, patrons give a $20 donation for which they receive supper and a ballot. Diners spend the evening reviewing a series of project proposals and conversing with the artists behind each idea. Attendees cast a vote for their favorite proposal, and by the end of the night, the artist who garners the most votes is awarded a grant comprised of that evening’s door money. Since 2009, FEAST Brooklyn has produced 11 dinners, funded numerous projects and awarded over $17,000. Meanwhile, similar models have emerged all over the country, resulting in a network of organizations committed to rethinking how art is financed and communally experienced.

Also, check out the other wonderful proposals.

Hope to see you there!

[Like FEAST on Facebook]

I am honored that Locations & Dislocation was selected for Curate NYC 2011, a Juried Exhibition of New York City Visual Artists at Rush Arts Gallery in Chelsea.

Today is the official announcement of my next project, The Newtown Creek Armada, a collaboration with Laura Chipley and Nathan Kensinger!  This project will be presented by the North Brookyn Public Art Coalition (nbART).

Join us tonight for the announcement at the nbART’s Autumn Fundraiser, and keep posted on the project, set for Spring 2012, on our website.

From the press release:

On November 8th, 2011, The North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition (nbART) announced the selection of its sixth public art project, The Newtown Creek Armada, an interactive installation in which a model boat pond will be created on the Newtown Creek, one of America’s most polluted waterways. The Newtown Creek Armada is a collaboration between three Brooklyn artists – Laura Chipley, Nathan Kensinger, and Sarah Nelson Wright – whose individual work creatively investigates industry, ecology, and change in urban spaces. The project was commissioned by nbART through nbECO 2012, an open call seeking environmentally and sustainability-conscious art installations.

As part of The Newtown Creek Armada, visitors will be invited to pilot a fleet of artist-created, miniature, radio-controlled boats along the creek’s surface while at the same time documenting the world hidden beneath the water. Each boat in The Armada will be equipped with an underwater camera and lights, allowing participants to record a unique voyage on the creek. Video from these underwater explorations will be on view at the project location, giving visitors a chance to virtually immerse themselves in the toxic waters of this Superfund site. The Newtown Creek Armada will be launched in Spring 2012 from the Newtown Creek Nature Walk in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The archive of voyages from The Armada will be presented in a gallery installation in Fall 2012.

The Red Hook Film Festival, in its fifth year, is this weekend at BWAC in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  I served as the programming advisor this year and I’m very excited about our lineup.

We will be screening a great selection of short films from Brooklyn and beyond. As usual, all of our screenings are free, and we will have free popcorn and free Steve’s Key Lime Pies, and our Festival Party will be on Saturday evening at 6pm at historic Sunny’s Bar (253 Conover Street, right near BWAC).

Our final schedule of films (3 programs Saturday afternoon and 2 programs Sunday afternoon) is online at our website:
www.redhookfilmfest.com

Our 5th annual festival includes stories from Brooklyn and beyond, with films about barges, bike races, artists and students in Red Hook, kite battles in Dyker Park, doomsayers in Bushwick, street protests in Bed-Stuy, Christmas trees on the Newtown Creek, canoeing on the Gowanus Canal, Urban Explorers climbing the Williamsburg Bridge, the Wall Street occupation and the mysterious Masstransiscope underneath Downtown Brooklyn. We will be presenting films from the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, the Meerkat Media Collective, Urban Omnibus, Chow.com, Dance Theatre Etc, and the NYC Transit Museum.

5th annual Red Hook Film Festival
October 15th and 16th, 2011
1pm to 6pm at the
BWAC screening room
499 Van Brunt Street
Red Hook, Brooklyn
(across from the Fairway Supermarket)

Please join us during Bushwick Open Studios, this Saturday & Sunday, June 4 & 5.

Our studio has relocated to Bushwick as of March 1. We’ve also had some comings and goings. The current crew is Laura Chipley, Jennifer Jacobs, Mary Jeys, Laurie Sumiye and myself. Megan Sperry will be joining us this summer. (We dig the IMA connection.)

Come check out our new spot this Saturday (12-7pm) and Sunday (12-5pm). It would be lovely to see you!

Here’s our info:

http://artsinbushwick.org/bos2011/directory/?listing=1300

We’re at 119 Ingraham (@ Porter) #411.

Unfortunately the L won’t be running to the closest stop (Morgan) but there is a shuttle from Lorimer L/Metropolitan G. The JMZ to Myrtle is accessible with a walk and you could hit some other BOS studios and events on your way.

Here’s a couple pictures of Locations & Dislocation at ACVIC in Spain.  Special thanks to Laia Solé, Maral Mikirditsian, Ramon Parramon, Eli Wenceslao and everyone else at ACVIC!  I am very happy with the installation and it sounds like the opening was very well attended.

I am very excited to be showing LOCATIONS & DISLOCATION in a group show on mapping and the politics of space at ACVIC in Vic, Catalonia, Spain.  It opens this Thursday.  Description and info below.

APAMAR. CHARTS, METRICS AND POLITICS OF SPACE
24.03.2011 – 05.06.2011

Exhibition by: Mona Fawaz -Ahmad Gharbieh -Mona Harb / Sarah Nelson Wright / Torolab / Isaki Lacuesta – Isa Campo / Stalker – Primavera Romana / Guifi.net / Hackitectura / Iconoclasistas

Opening 24.03.2011 at 19.30h

Apamar. Charts, metrics and politics of space brings together a selection of proposals that intervene in the city through artistic practices,architecture, design or activism. The projects intersect through proposing alternatives to the representation of space, its interpretation and how to live in it. In some cases they reveal latent conflict situations in the territory by generating maps and interpreting them. In others, they relate to self-managed social processes that activate collective strategies, by creating networks and seeking alternative systems for the citizens.

“Apamar”, in catalan, means to measure a field but also to know something very well. Measuring with one’s palms and being in control of a circumstance or situation supposes a subjective knowledge about the context. The exploration of the territory, critical cartography, the selection and display of data, processing of information or collective creation are issues that relate to subjectivity and socialization of space.
The participating projects in the exhibition, some finished while others still in process, work with the many underlying qualities of geographical maps. Experimenting with this seemingly conventional medium, while staying faithful to some of its main attributes such as accuracy, factuality and intentional objectivity, they create new models from a critical perspective and with the objective of proposing alternative strategies. They are born as a reaction to various situations that represent a need for reflection and active response, and they are materialized in various formats. Together, they come forth as tools that are clearly political and serve for pointing out and making visible spaces in conflict situations; in some cases, they activate collective processes while experimenting with new strategies that allow citizens to intervene in the organization of social space.

In this sense, “Beirut: Mapping Security” by Mona Fawaz, Ahmad Gharbieh and Mona Harb, depicts the numerous types of security measures that have been established in municipal Beirut as a result to the armed conflicts the country has witnessed since the 70’s. Sarah Nelson Wright’s visual mapping of six individuals’ travels in Brooklyn, Locations and Dislocation, is a reflection on the effects of gentrification and urban expansion. In LRPT (La región de los pantalones tranfronterizos), the Tijuana-based collective Torolab makes visible the transnational mobility of the inhabitants of the twin cities of Tijuana and San Diego. Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo visit Places that do not exist, and provide us with an account of the reality of these places that have desappeared from google earth for being protected areas. Geografie dell’Oltrecittà and Agroculture nomadi by Stalker/Primavera Romana are common design projects that generate and share social knowledge and awareness on urban changes, while Guifi.net in Catalunya, Mapeo Colectivo from Iconoclasistas in Buenos Aires and Mapping the Commons, Athens by Hackitectura.net all spur us into participation with the aim of creating common resources.

“Apamar. Charts, metrics and politics of space” is a project of ACVic curated by Maral Mikirditsian, Ramon Parramon and Laia Solé.

For more information:
T. 00 34 93 885 37 04
info@acvic.org
www.acvic.org

I will be showing twenty postcards from Locations & Dislocation for the next three months as part of a group show at Art for Change.  The postcards are a selection from the last three years, including people from Conflux in NYC, SESC in Sao Paulo, Brasil, and MoCADA in Brooklyn.  I included two previews below.

There will be intriguing events throughout, including a workshop on how to make your own inflatable shelter, so check back for updates!  There will be a closing event on April 2.

(dis)located

January 14 – April 2, 2011

Art for Change
1699 Lexington Avenue, between 106th & 107th Streets
(6 train to 103rd St or 110th St)

Opening Reception: Friday, January 14, 7:00 – 11:00pm
Live Performance by Hector Canonge & Guest DJ Sabine Blazin!

“Candace” from LOCATIONS & DISLOCATION at The Gentrification of Brooklyn at MoCADA.

Art for Change is pleased to present “(dis)located,” a group art exhibition featuring artworks by Hector Canonge, Helen Dennis, Cecilia Givens, Jocelyn M. Goode, Marissa A. Gutiérrez-Vicario, Harry Jean-Pierre, Miatta Kawinzi, Caitlin Masley, Cecilia Moreno-Yaghoubi, Jasmine Murrell, Ibou Ndoye, Sarah Nelson Wright, Heather M. O’Brien, Sa’dia Rehman, and Christina Stahr, with LGBT homeless youth art projects presented by The Create Collective. The exhibition focuses on the concept of displacement as it functions locally to exclude various groups of people. Being physically apart or away, being disrespected through criticism, being dislocated emotionally by existing social structures, or being removed from zones of familiar location all reflect situations of dislocation. “(dis)located” explores psychological and emotional trauma created by the constraints of exclusion as a product of homelessness, sexual orientation, immigration, economic status, political affiliation, religion, gentrification, and ethnic or racial identity. Residents forced out of their neighborhoods due to gentrification and rising rents, LGBT cut off from their own cultural, disparate generations segregated from each other by violence and drug epidemics, Muslims isolated by rising anti-Islamic sentiment, and political refugees negotiating a new home space all highlight common threads of moving and exile. Highlighting the similarities between the experiences of “exiles” in order to foster connections between seemingly disparate people, the ultimate aim of this exhibition is to open a dialogue to collectively empower newly built coalitions and lead to further activism.

Art for Change is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that provides a forum for creating innovative art and media programs that inspire people to take an active role in social justice. For more information, visit: www.artforchange.org.

“Roberto” from LOCATIONS & DISLOCATION at SESC Mostra de Artes in Sao Paulo, Brasil.