Six Degrees of Attachment, my most recent collaboration with Nathaniel Lieb, has taken off! After launching at CONFLUX this October, we now have hearts in Chicago, IL, Oakland, CA, Nags Head, NC, Boone, IA, Takoma Park, MD, and all over the greater New York City area.
Check out our map to see where our 33 hearts are traveling.
You can see pictures and stories on our photo page. Here’s a preview:
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.
Thanks to everyone who came out to Bring to Light and saw Oculus, a video sculpture by Nathaniel Lieb and me.
Special thanks to Morgen Stevens-Garmon, who fabricated and installed with us, and to David Spritzler and Nathan Kensinger for participating in installation and de-installation. Thanks also to Nathan Kensinger and Ed Watkins for taking beautiful photographs of the piece.
For those of you who missed it, Oculus is a large sculpture of an eye made of coroplast plastic, with a video of the sunset view on the Greenpoint waterfront projected into it. It was installed at the end of Noble Street near West Street in Brooklyn as part of the Bring to Light NYC festival on October 2, 2010.
Enjoy these photos!
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 spring, everyone! I’m finally sorting through all the documentation of Brooklyn Makes. I’m very excited to share this video, especially for those who could not attend. It both documents the event and includes short clips from each of the videos, as well as a description of what went down. Please enjoy and feel free to pass it around.
Thanks to Rachel Messer & Pilar Ortiz for shooting!
The Gentrification of Brooklyn show at MoCADA is up until May 16, with additional special events in the coming weeks. BRIC Community Media (coincidentally the same folks with whom I will soon begin a teaching artist residency) created this news segment at the opening. You can get a taste of the show and see me, other artists, MoCADA director Laurie Cumbo and curator Dexter Wimberly talk about the show. Enjoy!
The Gentrification of Brooklyn
@ MoCADA
80 Hanson Place // Brooklyn, NY
Wednesday-Sunday, 11am-6pm, until May 16
Trains:
The 2, 3, 4, 5, B, and Q stop at Atlantic Avenue.
The D, M, N, and R stop at Pacific Avenue.
The C stops at Lafayette Avenue.
The G stops at Fulton Street.
Thanks to everyone who came out for the opening and artist talks for The Gentrification of Brooklyn at MoCADA. The response has been overwhelming and I am inspired by all the conversations about gentrification the show is generating. For those who haven’t seen it yet, it will be up until May 16. You can see a list of future events here.
The show has received some great press, including this NY1 piece.
Enjoy these pics from the opening!
Crowd at MoCADA
in front of Locations & Dislocation
Locations & Dislocation on the windows of MoCADA
Special thanks to Laurie Cumbo (director of MoCADA), Dexter Wimberly (curator) and LaShaya Howie (awesome MoCADA intern who installed with me for 5 hours!), everyone at MoCADA and the other artists.
