03 Mar 2017

Call for Application: CITY AS SITE: Performance and Social Interventions

City as Site is a nomadic summer residency that explores the diverse communities that define New York City with the aim of creating context -specific public performative works.

Like a public laboratory, this program brings together artists, scholars and community members to think about the role of socially engaged art in constructing space for civic dialogue. Participants will develop experimental models for an artistic practice that combine methods from the arts, activism, and performance practice in order to cultivate innovative approaches to the construction of social spaces as cultural landscape.

The residency will use the streets of New York City's five boroughs as its classroom. Artists and faculty will rove throughout the city, and engage with its communities, histories and stories, which will become materials for final projects. Interventions may take the form of tours, tactical and site performance, temporal installations, video or sound projections, digital platforms, community involved projects, peer­-to­-peer platforms, print or online publication, or a street event.

This is a unique opportunity to study with a faculty composed of leading artists, thinkers, and social entrepreneurs. Through experiential workshops and one-on-­one sessions, faculty will help artists to originate projects that reflect current social and political issues and guide collaborations with local businesses, art spaces and neighborhoods, as well as cultural and governmental partners.

In the experimental spirit of City as Site, we welcome artists interested in moving from the traditional studio, gallery and theatre space into the urban arena. Visual artists, writers, architects, designers, performance artists, urban planners and social activists are invited to apply.

City as Site faculty: Ofri Cnaani (visual artist; City as Site coordinator), Kendal Henry (artist; curator; Director of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program), Ed Woodham (artist; founder and director, Art in Odd Places)

Guest lecturers have included: Tom Finkelpearl (New York City Department of Cultural Affairs), Todd Shalom (Elastic City), Risë Wilson (The Laundromat Project & Robert Rauschenberg Foundation), Radhika Subramaniam (Parsons The New School for Design), Charlie Todd (Improv Everywhere), Micaela Martegani (More Art), Kameelah Jana Rasheed (artist and educator), Esther Neff (artist, Panoply Performance Laboratory), Sheryl Oring (artist and educator), Rachel Falcone & Michael Premo (Housing as a Human Right), Lisa Kim (Two Trees), Jenny Polak (artist and activist), and Tomashi Jackson (artist).