Thanks to Rachel Messer & Pilar Ortiz for shooting!

The Integrated Media Arts Program of the Department of Film & Media Studies, Hunter College presents
Thesis Exhibition * Integrated Media Arts

FRIDAY DECEMBER 18th, 2009 5:00 – 8: 30PM
Black Box, Hunter North 543

Presentations 5-7pm
Samara Smith Union Square: A Public Place
Ariana Souzis: Curb Exchange
Suyin Looui: Hey Baby
Sarah Nelson Wright: Brooklyn Makes (around 6pm)
Vandana Sood: The Taxi Takes on Terror

Open Gallery and Reception 7-8:30pm

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19th, 2009 5:30-8:30
Film and Media Screening Room, Hunter North 502
Robin Locke-Monda: Sounds Like Staten Island
Jonas Pariente: Next Year in Bombay

Reception to follow, both nights.
Please Join Us.

Acme Fish from Brooklyn Makes (photo by Johnny Lowe)

Many things and people cooperated and/or offered their generous support, both temporal and financial, to make it happen — technology, police, neighbors and rain not the least of them — and I have a lot of thanks to give.

I will update with documentation & appreciation in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you would like to kept posted on this project or my work, please shoot me an email at sarahnw {ATT] gmail [DOT} com

BROOKLYN MAKES is a site-specific video installation in the Williamsburg Greenpoint Industrial Zone, revealing the work of manufacturers in North Brooklyn today.

Video projections by Sarah Nelson Wright will light up the industrial facades of three manufacturers, with evocative sound by Jennifer Stock. Captured inside each business, the videos and sounds bring North Brooklyn’s hidden labor onto the public streets.

Directions: Take the G to Nassau or L to Bedford Ave (also near the B61 and B48 buses). See the map below or pick up a map at Space on Dobbin, 50-52 Dobbin Street between Nassau & Norman Avenues in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

FAQ: Videos will loop at each location, and will play simultaneously throughout the night. In case of rain, start at Space on Dobbin. Please respect the few cars and residents in the area by staying on the sidewalks and keeping your voice down outside residential buildings.

Part of openhousenewyork weekend and Space on Dobbin’s events for Williamsburg Gallery Association’s Every 2:nd Fridays.

Check out my post about Brooklyn Makes on Urban Omnibus.

Urban Omnibus is an online project of the Architectural League to create a new kind of conversation about design and New York City. We commission, gather and deliver the insights of journalists, architects, planners, designers, artists, activists, scholars and citizens. The Omnibus features multi-media content to showcase design innovation, critical analysis and local expertise across a broad range of topics and locales, creating bridges between various communities of interest. Urban Omnibus makes vivid the processes and possibilities shaping New York. Our goal is to increase understanding of the city we have and encourage ideas that can lead to a more inclusive, more sustainable, more beautiful city that could be.

1. BROOKLYN MAKES
2. ATTACHMENT (extended)
3. GREENPOINT OPEN STUDIOS
4. FEAST
5. RED HOOK FILM FESTIVAL

1.

BROOKLYN MAKES
Friday & Saturday
October 9+10
7:30-10pm
Part of Williamsburg Gallery Association’s Every 2:nd Friday and openhousenewyork

Brooklyn Makes is a site-specific video installation in the Greenpoint Williamsburg Industrial Business Zone. Large projections of videos by Sarah Nelson Wright will light up the industrial facades of three manufacturers, with evocative sound designed by Jennifer Stock. The videos and sounds, all captured inside the businesses, bring the hidden labor that takes place during the day onto the public streets at night, providing a window into the unique and skilled work of North Brooklyn manufacturers.
www.brooklynmakes.org

***I added a second night, and need to raise more funds.  To make a contribution (every bit helps!), visit my kickstarter page.

2.
ATTACHMENT
every day until October 8
10am-10pm M-F / 11am-11pm Sat / 11am-9p Sun

My installation with Nathaniel Lieb in the Then and Now show at The Center (208 West 13th Street, NYC, near 7th Ave, second floor) has been extended!  Check it out & participate.  (Tip: near The High Line Park.)

photo by Megan Cronin

3.
GREENPOINT OPEN STUDIOS
Saturday
September 26
3-6pm
My studio (Heidi Boisvert, Francisca Caporali, Laura Chipley, Mary Jeys, Suyin Looui, Pilar Ortiz & I) will be participating.  Come check out our digs and see what we’ve been working on at 233 Norman Ave, #201 (between Russell and North Henry).  G to Nassau.

4.
FEAST
Saturday
October 3
5-8pm
A sliding scale monthly dinner where artists present projects and attendees vote on which projects to fund.  As a grantee from the last Feast, I will be presenting a preview of BROOKLYN MAKES. G to Nassau.

5.
RED HOOK FILM FESTIVAL
Sunday
October 4
4-6pm

I will present an excerpt from the videos I made for BROOKLYN MAKES.

Best wishes for a creative and healthy fall! Please spread the word.

Thanks to everyone who voted for my project! Hope to see you at Brooklyn Makes on Friday, October 9th.

Additionally, as a grantee I will be presenting at the next FEAST on October 3rd. Come by to support more emerging artists and to get a sneak peak at Brooklyn Makes.

photo by Rachel Rampleman

I recently watched a great 2006 documentary called Marti Gras: Made in China. Director David Redmond traveled to China to meet the women who make the plastic mardi gras beads for which women in New Orleans famously show their ta-tas.  The film engages with the disconnect of the women’s reality, working for two dollars a day in unsafe conditions to make beads that end up in the trash after being part of a celebration the women cannot comprehend.  There’s also a great short in the extras about Emen Levy, an artist who make mosaics with beads he collects off the streets of New Orleans.

Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary about renown photographer Edward Burtynsky, who went to China to photograph giant factories,opened my eyes to how many products in Chinese factories are made by hand, rather than machine.  This film literally blew my mind and  forever transformed my concept of the word “handmade” and the way I look at manufactured objects.

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard provides a great explanation of modern production and consumption.  The narrator bugged me enough that it took twice to get engaged, but the animations a great and the research is solid.

The How Stuff Is Made wiki, a project led by Natalie Jeremijencho at NYU, encourages people to investigate everyday objects and share how they are made on the internet.

Johanna Unzueta, who I discovered through my friend Pilar, is an artist who makes handmade felt sculptures of industrial buildings, part of a body of work on the dignity of labor.  The relationship between the handmade movement and manufacturing is something I find both problematic and essential to our understanding of material culture, and Johanna’s projects seem to open up room for dialog.

The film that originally inspired my project is a documentary by my boss Isabel Hill from the early 1990s called Made in Brooklyn.  The film is simultaneously a fascinating argument about the vital role of urban manufacturing in a city that constantly undermines it and a beautiful tribute to the meaningful work provided by manufacturers on the North Brooklyn waterfront before the rezoning that forced many to close.

And finally, two books I’m in the middle of and can also recommend: The Craftsman by Richard Sennett and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.