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!
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.
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.
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
Nathaniel Lieb and I are gearing up to present another new project this weekend at CONFLUX 2010, a festival for contemporary psychogeography (right after the exciting whirlwind of OCULUS at Bring to Light NYC last weekend).

Six Degrees of Attachment is a re-purposing of our hand-cast, plaster heart sculptures from ATTACHMENT.
Nathaniel Lieb and Sarah Nelson Wright will make 33 anatomically correct hand-cast plaster hearts. (Thirty-three is the average number in a person’s circle of friends, according to one study). We will leave the hearts in public places around the East Village, hidden at points of interest in the built environment. Some of the color-coded hearts will be given away at headquarters as well.
Each heart has six removable tags with instructions to give it away and a website where you can join in our project by recording the time and place of transfer and/or uploading a photo.
We will record reported hearts’ movements on a map as they come in, updating paths periodically, to see where the hearts travel, how they intersect and where they end up.
Check out our website & CONFLUX page and hope to see you at CONFLUX this weekend! Please email me if you would like to be involved with this project.
As part of Bring to Light, NYC’s own version Nuit Blanche (the global all-night public space & art festival), Nathaniel Lieb and I will be placing Oculus, our video sculpture of a waterfront sunset, at the end of Noble Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
I hope you can join us on Saturday to see site-specific installations, projections and performance by more than 50 artists around the Greenpoint Terminal Market Buildings (off Franklin Street, between Oak, Noble and Milton). Ours will be at the end of Noble near West Street.
BRING TO LIGHT
Saturday, October 2, 2010
7PM-Midnight
“A nighttime festival of LIGHT AND PROJECTION ART on the industrial waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn”

Bring to Light is partnered with Greenpoint Open Studios, which I will be participating in on Sunday 12-6pm with my studiomates in #201 and several other artists at 233 Norman Avenue between Russell & North Henry.
We will be having a film night at Common Ground this coming Friday showing three documentaries about abandonment, development and habitation in North Brooklyn.
All three are excellent films (see descriptions below) and will be followed by a short discussion about housing and development in North Brooklyn with the filmmakers and a representative from St. Nicks Alliance.
Also, if you haven’t gotten to see the show, come by a little early (the gallery is open from 3pm) to check out the 20 participating artists’ works in this unique new space. We had a great time at the opening, the work looks wonderful and it generated many interesting conversations.
DREAM HOUSE/OPEN HOUSE/OUR HOUSE
Friday, Oct. 1
7:30-9:30pm
Arts@Renaissance
2 Kingsland Avenue, Garden Level (C)
Brooklyn, NY (L train to Graham Ave.)
http://renaissancenbk.org/
DREAM HOUSE by Laura Grace Chipley
13 minutes, 2008

Dream House is an experimental documentary about desire, memory and loss. After happening upon a derelict Victorian house in Williamsburg, a young couple becomes obsessed with moving in and starting a life there. After unsuccessful attempts to gather information about the property from city agencies, they break into the house only to find a drug-addicted man and woman already living inside, among the abandoned possessions of the house’s former owners. Mutual alarm soon gives way to a shared sense of awe, as the squatters give the young couple a tour of the house.
OPEN HOUSE by Diane Nerwen
31 minutes, 2009

“Readily visible under the thin veneer of real estate ads pushing Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s future as a destination for the moneyed, yet “hip”, classes is an urban renewal project on a scale not seen since Robert Moses’ “slum” clearance of the 1960’s. Documenting the brutal nature of the development spree which occurred as a result of the neighborhood’s re-zoning from light manufacturing/residential to the loosening of codes that allowed for forty story towers on the waterfront, Nerwen’s video offers stark evidence against the cheerful notion that the unrestricted laws of free markets are “good for everyone”. With images of a neighborhood being literally torn apart by outside developers capitalizing on a frenzied housing market, and locals under pressure to “sell out” while the price is right, this work documents aspects of an incredible drama that has been woefully underreported in the mainstream media.” — Peter Scott
OUR HOUSE by Greg King & David Teague
56 minutes, 2010

On Dan Taylor’s first day out of prison he had nowhere to go, and faced one of the most important choices of his life: to return to his past of drug addiction or to try for something better. Through a chance encounter the next day, he met Derek, a young Christian anarchist, who invited him to move into a new and very unusual community. Called “Our House,” it was an alternative to the impersonal shelter system, providing the homeless a safe place where everyone lived communally (and illegally) in an abandoned warehouse. Besides a roof and healthy food, Dan also found new friends, a spiritual haven in a makeshift ‘prayer tent,’ and the hope of putting his life back together. But when the building is set for demolition to make way for luxury condos, Dan and the other residents must confront the inevitable end of their community and what that will mean for their futures.
I curated this show about North Brooklyn at an exciting new arts space in Williamsburg run by St. Nick’s Alliance, a great community organization. I am very excited about the work and hope you’ll join us for the opening.

There will be special programming on Fridays through Oct. 15, as well as open gallery hour TBD.
Nathaniel Lieb and I will be presenting our installation ATTACHMENT this summer at a new art space in Williamsburg on Kingsland & Masbeth. It is in the garden level of 2 Kingsland Ave, one of the buildings in the former Greenpoint Hospital complex, which was recently given to St. Nick’s, a local nonprofit.
The show, NORTH BROOKLYN, is the inaugural show in the space, and showcases artists living in Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint.
ATTACHMENT is a participatory sculpture. If you didn’t get to see it at The Center last summer (or even if you did), come help create the piece at the opening next Friday, July 9th 6-9pm!

Feel free to spread the word!
Happy new year to everyone. I will be showing my project LOCATIONS & DISLOCATION in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA). Looking forward to it!

detail from installation plan for LOCATIONS & DISLOCATION
“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks”
Curated by Dexter Wimberly
February 4, 2010 – May 16, 2010
Opening Reception
Thursday, February 4, 2010
6-9 PM
at MoCADA
80 Hanson Place
Brooklyn, NY 11217
This reception will include a public art performance, a musical set by Brooklyn-based author and DJ, Rich Burroughs, the opportunity to meet the featured artists and a presentation by the exhibition’s curator Dexter Wimberly. Free to the public.
Artists: Josh Bricker (Installation), Oasa DuVerney (Drawing), Zachary Fabri (Video), Irondale Ensemble (Theater Performance), Nathan Kensinger (Photography), Jess Levey (Photography / Video Installation), Christina Massey (Painting), Musa (Sculpture), Tim Okamura (Painting), Kip Omalade (Painting), John Perry (Painting), Michael Premo / Rachel Falcone (Photography / Multimedia), Adele Pham (Video), Marie Roberts (Painting), Gabriel Reese (Painting), Ali Santana (Music Video), Monique Schubert (Mixed-media), Alexandria Smith (Painting) and Sarah Nelson Wright (Installation).
The Artists Speak Out*
Saturday, February 6, 2010
2:00pm – 4:30pm
Several of the exhibiting artists will speak out about their work and the effects of Gentrification on their creative process. Exhibition curator Dexter Wimberly will lead a “straight talk” discussion on the exhibition theme and the curatorial process. Free to the public.
* I will take six new participants for LOCATIONS & DISLOCATION during this event. Ideal participants will have lived at six or more locations in Brooklyn. Please contact me if you are interested in participating:
sarahnw {ATT} gmail [DOT] com
You can read about the show, including my project, in this New York Daily News Article.
