Pew Fellowships in the Arts announced the Philadelphia-area artists who have received $60,000 fellowship awards for 2009—the largest such grant in the country for which individual artists can apply. This year the awards went to artists working in fiction and creative nonfiction, media arts, and works on paper, and were selected from a pool of nearly 400 applicants. The 2009 Pew Fellows are:

Marc Brodzik
media arts
Anthony Campuzano
works on paper
Sarah Gamble
works on paper
Daniel Heyman
works on paper
Ken Kalfus
fiction and creative nonfiction
Jennifer Levonian
media arts
Robert Matthews
works on paper
Frances McElroy
media arts
Ben Peterson
works on paper
Marco Roth
fiction and creative nonfiction
Ryan Trecartin
media arts
Nami Yamamoto
works on paper

This year’s winners have a breadth of talent and accomplishments. Ken Kalfus is a highly accomplished writer of short story collections and novels including A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, which was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award. Frances McElroy makes elegantly crafted documentaries that delve deeply into personal stories, while Ben Peterson is a visual artist who makes large-scale and highly detailed fantastical architectural landscape drawings. Marco Roth, a young essayist, is also a founding editor of a well-known literary journal. Ryan Trecartin’s video narratives plumb multiple layers of social identity.  This represents just a few of the new Pew Fellows. The biographies of all the artists are available here.

“We are very excited about this group of artists and the range of practice they represent,” notes Pew Fellowships in the Arts director, Melissa Franklin. “Along with Ryan Trecartin are three other artists who are first-time applicants to the program—Jennifer Levonian, Ben Peterson and Marco Roth—and represent the exceptional emerging artists in our community.”

“We are delighted that Pew’s support will help these outstanding artists to continue to pursue their professional careers and contribute to the cultural vitality of our city and region,” said Gregory T. Rowe, The Pew Charitable Trusts’ director of Culture Initiatives and deputy director of the Philadelphia Program.

The fellowships are for a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years. Fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis and selections are made through a two-phase peer-review process involving preliminary and final selection panels. The grants provide artists with an economic freedom that presents the opportunity to focus on their individual practices over a considerable period of time – to explore, to experiment, and to develop his or her work more fully.  The program aims to provide such support at moments in artists’ careers when a concentration on artistic growth and exploration is most likely to have the greatest impact on their long-term professional development.  Fellowships may be awarded at any stage of their career, from early to mature.  Up to 12 fellowships are awarded annually.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 1% [?]

from the NY TIMES:

Pina Bausch, the choreographer and exponent of the Neo-Expressionist form of German dance known as Tanztheater, died Tuesday in Wuppertal, Agence France-Presse reported. She was 68. In a review of Ms. Bausch’s “Bamboo Blues” that was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December, Alastair Macaulay wrote that her work could be “strikingly picturesque, always fluid in its comings and goings” as it “switches between episodes of sensual impulsiveness; coy, catwalklike audience-awareness; rushing scenes of harrowing need or anxiety; and diverse aspects of melancholia.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Sarah Cameron Sunde - photo by Geoff Green

Name: Sarah Cameron Sunde
Title/Occupation:Organization:  Freelance Director / Associate Director, New Georges / Co-Artistic Director, Oslo Elsewhere
URL:  www.newgeorges.org / www.osloelsewhere.org and right now,www.amishproject.com!

1. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I grew up in Northern California, in the Bay Area….Somewhere around the age of 16, I decided that I’d move to New York after college, and so that’s what I did! I graduated from UCLA, went traveling, lived in England for 7 months devising work, and then when my work permit ran out, I moved straight to New York.  I had one friend who lived in New York and didn’t know anyone who worked in the theater, but I got lucky. I met Susan who I work with at New Georges during my first week in the city. That was 9+ years ago now.

Somehow I’ve forged a way, directing plays and working with lots of talented folks, and kind of, well, making it happen. For me, it’s about trusting the gut, seeing how this thing can lead to that thing, and being pro-active. And sometimes, it’s about jumping off a cliff. I try to remind myself of that, that I want to keep jumping off the cliffs.

Right now, I’m in an amazing collaboration with the talented writer/performer Jessica Dickey. She asked me to work on The Amish Project with her in a moment when I was super busy last year, but somehow I knew that this collaboration was something I needed to do….and now it’s at Rattlestick!

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?

There was a piece I saw in England during that year abroad, made by a group called Theater Alibi. It was the most live experience I’ve had in the theater, it was heart-wrenching and funny, imaginative and magical. I had never seen music integrated into a play in a way that felt so cohesive and real and not cheesy. It moved me. I walked out of the theater and started running down the street, literally jumping for joy. I’ll never forget that. I don’t remember the details of the piece, but I think of it often, as the kind of full experience I hope to give my audience.

And then of course, there are the plays of Jon Fosse, which I translate and direct here in New York. His writing has had a huge impact on my directing work as a whole…his work has taught me about silence, space and living in the questions.

3. What skill, talent or attribute do you most wish you had and why?

I wish I had a better sense of time. I’m fascinated by time, and how it expands and contracts, and I use that a lot in my work, actually. But I am, unfortunately, not so skilled at keeping track of time when it’s steady. Still working on that….

Oh, and I wish I could speak at least 5 more languages. That would be ideal.

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day.

There is no “normal” day. I think that one of the best parts about working in the theater is that every day is different. I’ve been lucky enough to somehow make ends meet with my directing, working with New Georges, and doing a few other random jobs here and there. I do the computer work best late at night, so I’m often late to bed, late to rise, but I kinda love it when I have an early morning meeting and have to get up.  I have tunnel vision, so if I’m in rehearsal for a project, that’s what I’m doing. No matter what, I’ll spend to try to half my time focused on my projects every day – either in meetings or research or reading or thinking. And I’m usually at the New Georges office for at least a couple hours every day – unless I’m out of town or in tech!

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

When I came to New York and vowed never to work a full time job, I guess that would have been the moment I chose art over work. I decided I could happily survive on top ramen if it meant that I could work part time to earn money, and spend the other part of my time pursuing my directing career.

Creating art is work. It’s the good kind of work, and we’re lucky to be doing what we love, but it is work. And so often it’s less structured than other jobs, which makes it difficult. We have to be self-disciplined. It’s hard that we all have to stuggle for the money, but I think it toughens us up and makes us stronger. It’s the best part of American theater and the worst part of it. When we create something, it’s a true labor of love, born out of the struggle.

I have this dream that after 10 years of working as an artist, a secret fairy godmother-type should appear to every artist and say, “you have struggled for a decade and now we’re going to make your life easier, here is some money to do what you want! Just don’t tell anyone that this is what happens” Somehow, I doubt my dream will ever come true.  But I do notice that some things seem to be getting easier…

Popularity: 1% [?]

The more I think about it, the more cheesed off I get that the 2009 Aspen Ideas festival is going to host a roundtable called “Is the Curtain Closing on Live Theater in America?”

The discussion is with Michael Eisner, founder, The Tornante Company; former chairman and CEO, the Walt Disney Company; trustee, the Aspen Institute, David Ives, playwright, All in the Timing: Six One-Act Comedies, Anna Deavere Smith, Pulitzer Prize-Nominated playwright and actress; professor, New York University; trustee, The Aspen Institute, and moderated by Dana Gioia, director, Harman-Eisner Program in the Arts, the Aspen Institute; former chairman, National Endowment for the Arts.

First off, it’s the wrong question to be asking. Secondly, these are not the best people to be answering the question anyway. The question isn’t whether live theater in America is over -which cannot be answered through a simple yes or no- but rather, how is live theater changing (or ought to be changing) to attract new audiences and stay relevant in these changing times? And then they should be inviting the people who are changing the theater – or live performance in general –  to talk about what they’re doing.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Ives or Smith, but they’re pretty conventional theater-makers. And I’m not sure what Eisner’s background in live theater is, outside of The Lion King and the rest of the Disney Theatricals properties.

I guess I would just expect more from Aspen Ideas than a recapitulation of the discussions being had at most traditional theater conferences these days. I would expect more talk of innovation, more attention paid to the cutting edge, the forward thinking and adventurous.  Playwright-focused theater-making in the regional theater model is so hopelessly outdated that it is hard to imagine any other answer than, “Yes, the curtain is closing on Live Theater.”  But live performance - that’s a different story entirely.

Not to mention that whether something is dying or not – the real question is whether it should be allowed to die or not. There is something inherently important in people gathering together, in groups, live, to engage with ideas and issues of consequence. Merely being a member of a throng at a Monster Truck Rally or a Corporate Sporting Event is h ardly sufficient. Live performance is a vital component of civic life and must be maintained. If it is not “theater” that’s not the worst thing in the world. But why start with such a negatively phrased question? And why limit your discussion to the narrowest possible understanding of theater? Even the whole “curtain” metaphor is hoary and creaky and outmoded.

Let’s hope the discussion rises above the quality of the question.

Or they could just hire CULTUREBOT to curate and moderate the panel!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Two top theater companies – France’s Le Théâtre du Soleil and Hungary’s Katona József Theatre – share opening night honors at Lincoln Center Festival 09, which runs from July 7 through July 26, 2009 and offers 56 performances by artists and ensembles from 14 countries. The three-week Lincoln Center Festival 09–boasting 14 North American, U.S., and New York premieres and debuts—will unfold at six venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus, and Park Avenue Armory, where the Festival returns for a second summer.  Other festival presentations (July 7 through 26) include:

· Chekhov International Theatre Festival production of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, directed by Declan Donnellan— presented in association with Park Avenue Armory

· U.S. debuts by Algerian music icon Idir and Moroccan Chaabi singer Najat Aatabou

· Shen Wei Dance Arts’ Re – (I, II, III), the first New York performance of the complete three-part work—a special Lincoln Center 50^th Anniversary commission

· Piccolo Teatro di Milano/Teatri Uniti di Napoli’s production of Goldoni’s comedy Trilogia della villeggiatura

· Poland’s Narodowy Stary Teatr with Krystian Lupa’s production of Thomas Bernhard’s Kalkwerk (The Lime Works)

· Two by Four with the Ruhr, four-hand and two-piano works with Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa, to include the North American premiere of a work by Philip Glass

· North American premiere of St. Petersburg’s Maly Drama Theatre production of Life and Fate, adapted and directed by Lev Dodin

· U.S. premiere of Béla Pintér and Company’s Peasant Opera

· Afro-Blues for the 21^st Century—a double bill with Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara, and Issa Bagayogo

· Emanuel Gat Dance with Winter Variations and Silent Ballet—two premieres, both Lincoln Center 50^th Anniversary commissions

· A Tribute to Wardell Quezergue, celebrated New Orleans songwriter, featuring a roster of noted musical artists from that city’s annual Ponderosa Stomp music festival

Popularity: 1% [?]

An initiative of Eyebeam’s Summer School program, the Curatorial Masterclass will be led by Eyebeam research partner Sarah Cook from CRUMB, the online resource for curators working with media art. The series will be an opportunity for emerging and established curators of art to get together within a focused period of time to learn from each other’s practice, and to develop a greater understanding of curating, open source methods, and working in the public domain.

Through filmed discussions with guests such as Hans and Liz Bernhard, Steve Dietz, Patrick Lichty, and Eyebeam executive director Amanda McDonald Crowley, the Curatorial Masterclass will examine the following themes:

Day 1: Tues., July 7, 3–5PM
What open source is and what it means for art
Guests: Curator, Scott Burnham (Creative Director, Montreal Biennial 2009); Dominic Smith (co-founder, Polytechnic, UK)

Day 2: Thur., July 9, 3–5PM
Fair use, copyright, and the role of publication and documentation in curatorial practice

Day 3: Tues., July 14, 3–5PM
How to manage collaborations and networks effectively with new media tools
Guests: Eyebeam Executive Director, Amanda McDonald Crowley; curator and artist Patrick Lichty

Day 4: Thur., July 16, 3–5PM
Working in the public domain
Guest: Curator, Steve Dietz

Day 5: Tues., July 21, 3–5PM
Getting to know your audiences and useful evaluation

Series Format: The first hour of each day will be a formal conversation modeled on CRUMB’s tea-time chats, and will feature established curators and artists. The second hour will be a rigorous participant driven discussion, building upon the first hours themes and insights. Following each presentation and workshop, participants will have the opportunity to stick around for beer o’clock and conversation with presenters and fellow masterclass participants, as well as participants from other Eyebeam Summer School programs.

Registration will be strictly limited.
Please register online here:

https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/528/t/9265/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=664

Popularity: 1% [?]

goeth before a fall, they say. so a few notes on sexual liberation in honor of pride. remember the vagaries and extraordinary demands of desire. remember harry hay. remember the cockettes.

Harry Hay

remember the dream of freedom – not mere equality. remember that the real mob at stonewall were mostly, “…teenagers from Queens, Long Island and New Jersey, with a few young drag queens and homeless youths who squatted in abandoned tenements on the Lower East Side.” it wasn’t the corporate, button-down assimilationists who started it all. remember sexual fluidity and the culture wars over the appropriation of sex in the interest of power. remember that desire can and does change over time. there are no absolutes, there is no finality, that the oppositional dyadic model of human sexuality is a construct designed to enforce strict gender and sexual roles in the interest of moral and political power – not a move towards individual freedom in a civilized society.  remember the people who came before, who fought and died, remember the millions of oppressed, tortured, punished, exiled, humiliated and persecuted queers of all kinds all over the world who dream of living as freely as you do. remember those who will come later who will need to be reminded of the journey from slavery to freedom. remember that you are responsible for what is yet to come and as you drink and dance and celebrate how proud you are – look closely at what you truly can be proud of , what you have done to earn your pride in who you are. What have you done to help others? What have you done to help those who are to follow?  And if you can point to nothing than take a moment and think about what you might want to do, after the parades, after the parties, after the dancing and drinking and drugging and fucking – what are you going to do are you ready to do to help change the world?

Popularity: 1% [?]

So I just spent a week at the Airlie Conference Center as part of HERE Arts Center’s “innovation team.”

It was very intense and very productive – I gained a lot of knowledge and I think we made some amazing progress as a team. For discretion’s sake, I will wait for HERE to start talking about their upcoming innovations, but I will say that there were a lot of great ideas generated and the future of the project looks very exciting.

A little bit about the program: supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF), the Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts was created by EmcArts with producing and presenting organizations in theatre, dance, and jazz in mind, to help them design and prototype innovative strategies that address major opportunities and challenges. The partnership with DDCF has provided funding for three Lab Cohorts, each made up of four participating organizations. The four organizations comprising the third round of grantees are Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, COCA—Center of Creative Arts, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, and University Musical Society (UMS). For Round 3 grantee project descriptions, as well as information about the Lab, click here. The organizations comprising the first and second rounds of grantees are The Civilians, MAPP International Productions, Roadside Theater/Appalshop, STREB, Children’s Theatre Company, HERE Arts Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. For Round 1 grantee project descriptions, click here , for Round 2 grantee project descriptions, click here.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to be a member of the HERE innovation team by Kristin and Kim. Knowing my background with the interwebs and my work at PS122, PRELUDE, Culturebot and other places, I reckon they figured I’d be a good voice to have at the table. I think it worked out pretty well, if I do say so myself, and it was a powerful, transformative experience for all involved. Basically we had five days of intensive planning sessions, reviewing the proposed organizational innovation and digging deep into the organizational DNA to figure out what change would look like, how to implement it, prototype it and test it. I know this sounds pretty abstract – but that’s because the information of the actual task at hand is pretty much confidential at this point. But I think it is safe to say we found some pretty major points of difference in the way that HERE works with and presents its artists and those differences will be made more obvious moving forward. (In a good way).

Apart from the exciting organizational transformations and innovations we worked on, we also did some really interesting work with this guy Phil McArthur of ActionDesign who used this idea of the “ladder of inference” to talk about the ways people frequently miscommunicate or communicate less optimally than they could by moving up and down this ladder of inference.

It it sounds pretty corporate, it is. I think that arts organizations could probably benefit from some of this corporate organizational psychology stuff. So often arts organizations are run as scrappy DIY enterprises that even the people who move up through the system to work at big institutions have deeply engrained and dysfunctional management styles. It makes for profoundly fucked up work environments which leads to stagnation, negativity and a general “scarcity consciousness.” People wear their dysfunction like a badge of honor – but in this day and age I think that being a whack job is nothing to be proud of. You can support totally cool art, and be totally cool as a person, while still being a responsible, conscious, conscientious leader.

Not everyone can afford to do these kind of intensives and its a shame because I think so many arts organizations – and other cultural organizations – could really benefit from this kind of deep organizational psychological work. It would help with growth, contraction, resource management, mission drift, innovation, vision, human resources, etc. etc. etc.  And its not just psychological! As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a HUGE process geek – I love mapping workflow and user experience, finding points of engagement, redefining and recontextualizing the role of the organization in creating art + culture…. so to get to dig deep into the meta meta and then have to find practical, implementable solutions? That’s just badass, wicked fun. ‘Cause that’s just how I roll – nerd-style. (Yes, I’ve read some Tufte and some Jakbo Nielsen)….Hmmmmmmm…..

So in conclusion, for now, I want to give a big shout-out to my peeps at HERE for inviting me to participate and contribute = it was awesome. And another big shout-out to my new friends at The Yerb (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) who are just a rocking group of fantastic, positive people. I mean, everyone was cool, but it was HERE and YBCA that were mostly holding down the “drinking by the poolside at midnight” fort.

I’m happy to discuss this in more detail offline!

xoAndy

Popularity: 1% [?]

wonder what I’ve been doing? well it looks kinda like this:

zoinks! it looks insane but it actually makes sense. plus I love organization and flow. i’m a nerd like that.

more info to come…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Going to France this summer? You might want to check this out!

OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES
28th May – 30th September 2009

Outings in 43 contemporary art centres across France
http://www.dca-art.com

For its second edition, OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES is providing a large range of art exhibitions and events in 43 French art centres. Throughout the whole summer, from 28th May to 30th September, this event will highlight the dynamism and engagement of art centres which focus on the production and diffusion of contemporary art, their continuous work with artists and their firm commitment to the development of public awareness.

43 art centres, 100 exhibitions, 200 artists

OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES is offering more than 100 exhibitions curated by the art centres’ directors or by guest curators, showing 200 artists. Amongst them: Kader Attia, Orla Barry, Cornelius Cardew, Hubert Czerepok, Dora Garcia, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Yona Friedman, Ayse Erkmen, Ryan Gander, Vidya Gastaldon, Camille Henrot, Lina Jabbour, Jochen Lempert, Claude Lévêque, Rivane Neuenschwander, Mark Raidpere, Nora Schultz, Paul Sharits, Samon Takahashi, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Raphaël Zarka….

d.c.a, a strong network of art centres in France

OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES was initiated by d.c.a, the French Association for the Development of Art Centres, a non-profit association set up in 1992, which values art centre activities and federates them by means of collective projects. Leading institutions which are true talent spotters in terms of art, they bring together contemporary art and new audiences through the discovery of up and coming talent and the production of original work accompanied by works of reference. The first art centres made their appearance in France in the ’70s as civil initiatives for the making and dissemination of contemporary art. They’ve had a special relationship with living artists and have kept in close touch with the current scene. Originally venues for experimentation and production, they diversified into annual programmes of exhibitions, publishing and outreach towards the broadest possible public.

Creative outings across the country

OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES 2009 is offering a panorama combining tourism and creativity at the heart of each art centre and in its local surroundings. Original itineraries dreamt up by each art centre allow new audiences to discover locally other places dedicated to contemporary art but also public commissions, innovative architecture and gardens, as well as the addresses of restaurant and hotel owners who instigate new trends.

More information on:
http://www.dca-art.com
http://www.flowersway.com/pleinsoleil2009

Popularity: 1% [?]