News from the Culture Push corner!
+ Open Call from Friends of CP
Just in case, you missed this last week — save the Date for our upcoming Benefit!
Join us on Sunday, June 9th from 6-8pm at the Francis Kite Club for an evening of inspiring performances by talented artists from our community to support the important work of the Culture Push organization.
Mark your calendars now for this can't-miss cultural event on June 9th!
Culture Push Fellow Alicia Morales invites you to join the CROWNING community hub!
This space is also a community building initiative, an experiment in cooperative economics, and a way to decentralize arts funding!
I'm trying a (very experimental) thing, and hoping you'll join me by becoming a CROWNING community hub member.
CROWNING community hub is an online community–and support model–for CROWNING, or how to change shape while remembering your name.
It is:
1) a way to support the development of CROWNING at truly whatever level works for you
2) a community building tool, if you choose to use it that way, and
3) a lil cooperative economics experiment!
Memberships start at $1 a month (up to as high as you wanna go) and there’s no tiered access.
You get access to a member network, a forum where you can respond to creative prompts–or give them. ask for and offer resources, find your next collaborator, boo, etc., an event calendar, a chat function and platform for online courses, which I may offer down the line.
I know your money is hard earned, so thank you for considering using some of it to support this wild, queer, boricua beast of a piece–CROWNING.
You can read more about CROWNING here, and hear me talking about money models here.
Your invite to the opening of Feeble Transmitters, a two-person exhibition of works by Culture Push Fellows Tara Aliya Kesavan and Indranil Choudhury.
Feeble Transmitters With Indranil Choudhury and Tara Aliya Kesavan
May 3, 2024 at 7:00 pm | UnionDocs 352 Onderdonk Ave Ridgewood, NY
FREE RSVP
We’re delighted to invite you to the opening of Feeble Transmitters, a two-person exhibition of works by Tara Aliya Kesavan and Indranil Choudhury.
The show features paintings, ceramic sculptures, and hybrid objects punctuated with speakers, screens, and projections. The artists invite the viewer into a world filled with feeble transmitters – devices studded with diminutive portals, gently dispatching sounds and images from other places.
Note: The week-long show will also feature two live events, programmed around the themes explored in the show. RESONANT CHAMBERS will present an evening of live sound performances on a quadraphonic sound system, featuring artists that investigate the materiality of sound as central to their practice. LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE features a screening of two films exploring the origins of cinema by Zoe Beloff that are shot on 3D B/W 16mm film. Come through!
Exhibition Note
In this series of paintings, Kesavan chronicles the emergence of the image of the urban, working woman in India. They feature subjects who are absorbed in their daily tasks, at times interacting with apparatus common to laboratory and office environments. Kesavan freezes these passing moments using loose, diaphanous layers of paint. Their swimming surfaces throw these ordinary vignettes into more enchanted territory. The figures seem to occupy a moment suspended in time, their interiority taking precedence over a steady grounding in time and space.
She draws from public and personal records to access this visual imaginary. This includes state sponsored documentary films from the 1950’s – 1970’s modeling the image of the “modern Indian working woman” in a newly independent India; accounts about the life of Saeeda Bano, the first professional female news broadcaster in India; feature films like Mahanagar by Satyajit Ray; as well as stories of her grandmother’s working life as an acoustical engineer at All India Radio, India’s public radio broadcaster.
Kesavan’s sculptures present forms that mix soft curves and lines that evoke the body with the precise cuts and openings of technological devices. Embedded with small, glimmering openings of light and moving images, they stand with one foot in sculptural space and one foot in media space.
The acoustic horn is a motif in Choudhury’s sculptures. Perhaps the most universal sign of sound, the simple yet inviting form beckons viewers to peer into openings that rupture the logic of physical space. Soft trails of sound emanate out of these forms, drawing our attention back to the clay bodies that hold them, literally shaping the sound as it emerges.
Choudhury will also present a series of acrylic pieces that occupy a space between manufactured objects and organic forms. He draws on the material culture of industrial design in audio, and explores the relationships and rituals that people have with consumer technology.
An Open Call, spearheaded by Culture Push Fellow Immanuel Oni - NYCHA Artist-in-Residence
Dear Community Members and Artists,
We are thrilled to announce an exciting opportunity for artists passionate about community engagement and public art. The Public Housing Community Fund (PHCF), in collaboration with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), NYC Public Design Commission, and the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development and its funded Cornerstone programs, and NYCHA residents, is seeking talented artists for the From Roots to Arts: Celebrating NYCHA’s Cultural Heritage artist-in-residency program. The program is generously funded by the Mellon Foundation.
This Open Call invites up to five artists to join us in a groundbreaking pilot program to enrich the cultural landscape of NYCHA communities across all five boroughs of New York City. Artists will be placed in one of the following NYCHA communities, working alongside residents and DYCD Cornerstone Programs:
Bronx River Houses, Bronx
Bushwick Houses, Brooklyn
King Towers Houses, Manhattan
Astoria Houses, Queens
Richmond Terrace Houses, Staten Island
Residency Details
Duration: July 2024 to March 2026 (20 months)
Compensation: $70,000 per year plus benefits
Additional Support: Up to $155,000 for programming and fabrication per site
Program Highlights
Engage directly with community members through workshops, talks, and collaborative public art projects.
Develop a deep connection with residents and help tell their stories through your art.
Work in dedicated program spaces within NYCHA community centers and NYCHA open spaces.
Receive professional support and networking opportunities.
Application Requirements
Statement of Interest (250 words)
Artist Statement (250 words)
Resume or CV
References (3 contacts)
Work Samples (visual, audio, or literary)
Important Dates
Application Deadline: May 19, 2024, 11:59 p.m. EST
Virtual Info Session: April 30, 2024, 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. EST
In-person Interviews: June 24-28, 2024
Anticipated Residency Start Date: Early July 2024
♾️ From our Friends 👇
Open Call: The Bandung 2024-25 Residency - Fostering Solidarity between AAPI + Black Communities
DEADLINE: Tuesday, May 14, 2024
BANDUNG 2024-25 RESIDENCY INFORMATION SESSION RSVP
Tuesday, April 23, 2024 12 – 1PM / Virtual, Zoom
A4 and MoCADA are pleased to present The Bandung 2024-25 Residency, a year-long Residency program designed to uplift the work of artists, organizers, educators, and waymakers interested in engaging in social justice discourse, restorative healing, place-based cultural practices, expanding the narrative and deepening understanding between communities, and promoting cross-community allyship, whether for personal transformation and/or in service to the AAPI and Black communities.