ISCP Talk
March 17, 2015

Rethinking Residencies Reflects on Organizational Practice

On March 17th, Rethinking Residencies, a newly initiated working group of eleven New York-based artist residency programs, will present its first public event at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP). Moderated by Martha Wilson, this panel discussion includes Kari Conte, Maia Murphy, Laurel Ptak, and Nicholas Weist.

Panelists will pose significant questions on issues of cultural production and organizational practice as they relate to residency programs. How can modes of collaboration in residency programs adapt to the changing needs of artists, curators and institutions? How do broader political and economic realities impact artist residency programs today? What effect has the changing cultural climate of New York City had on the lives and practice of artists? How can organizations balance growth with sustainability? Pragmatically and programmatically, what are the ramifications or alternatives to expanding? What is the strangest residency program out there?

Rethinking Residencies

Rethinking Residencies is a working group of New York-based artist residency programs. Initiated in March 2014, its members share knowledge and resources, while cultivating critical thinking and discourse about residencies.

Collaborating organizations represent a wide range of models, scales and approaches and include Eyebeam, Fire Island Artist Residency, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), The Laundromat Project, Queens Museum, Recess, the Shandaken Project, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, EFA Project Space’s SHIFT Residency, and Triangle Arts Association.

Upcoming Rethinking Residencies programs include a New York City residency mixer at the Queens Museum in May 2015 and a major conference on residencies during the summer of 2016.

Participant Biographies

Martha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist who during the past four decades has created innovative photographic and performance works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing and “invasions” of other people’s personae. In 1976 she founded Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space in New York that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation and performance art, video and art online.

Kari Conte is a New York-based curator and writer. Since 2010, she has been the Director of Programs and Exhibitions at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), where she leads residencies, exhibitions, and public programs.

Maia Murphy is a curator and writer based in New York. She is currently the Program Director for Recess, a nonprofit artist workspace that is open to the public. At once a studio and exhibition space, Recess presents projects that embrace experimentation and focus on process.

Laurel Ptak is an artist, curator and educator known for creating discursive platforms that allow for dialogue and critical engagement. Named one of 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2014 by Foreign Policy, she currently teaches at The New School and serves as Executive Director of Triangle Arts Association, a 33-year-old artist-founded residency program within an international network of arts organizations around the world.

Nicholas Weist is the founding director of the Shandaken Project, which offers a process-focused residency program now produced in collaboration with Storm King Art Center. Weist has organized presentations by artists internationally, and writes about art and culture for Frieze, Art in America, Interview, Document Journal, and many others.

ISCP Talk
March 10, 2015

Salon: Erik Steffensen

Erik Steffensen works with classic black and white photography that evinces his original background as a painter. He will speak about his current photographs produced in New York City, full of atmospheric effect, and art historical references to the early twentieth-century images by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen of the Flatiron Building. This new body of work was also influenced by the artist’s recollections and impressions of the city when he first visited twenty-five years ago.

Erik Steffensen (born in Valby, Copenhagen) studied Philosophy and Art History at the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen. He lives and works in Copenhagen.

Participating Residents

Offsite Project
February 25–April 16, 2015

Laura F. Gibellini: Notes on a Working Space

El Museo de Los Sures and the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) are pleased to present the residency and exhibition by artist and ISCP alumna Laura F. Gibellini.

Notes on a Working Space is conceived as a residency in which Laura F. Gibellini will explore specific components of her artistic practice in relation to the built environment. Gibellini’s installation in the gallery will reflect the environmental conditions as well as transitional nature of South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Los Sures is located. The residency will be used to explore impermanence, invisibility and the difficulties of representing the fluid nature of a particular place. The work incorporates Gibellini’s writing, drawing and video.Notes on a Working Space reflects on the gaps implicit in representation and on how that which is irrepresentable (the air, the ocean) remains unacknowledged and that which is unacknowledged remains un-thinkable. It is this ‘unthinkability’ and the possibility of imagining the irrepresentable that Gibellini is most interested in documenting.

Laura F. Gibellini’s recently completed DOM (Variations) a permanent public art installation for three subway stations in New York City that inspired the subsequent solo show De Rerum Natura , Slowtrack, Madrid, (2014). Her recent solo and group performative lectures and projects include Constructing a Place, ICI, New York (2013); Muestras de Archivo, Matadero, Madrid (2012); Variations on a Landscape, asm28, Madrid (2011); YANS & RETO, Anthology Film Archives, New York (2011); Night of Festivals 2012, Nottingham (2012); Video Guerrilha, Urban Space Projections, Sao Paolo, (2011). Gibellini’s first book Construyendo un Lugar /Constructing a Place was published by Complutense Universtiy of Madrid in 2012.

El Museo de Los Sures was born by a partnership between Los Sures with Cornell University and Churches United for Fair Housing to preserve the history of the neighborhood’s residents. This exhibition is the fifth collaboration between Los Sures and ISCP.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Speaker Mark-Viverito and Antonio Reynoso, Council Member, 34th District, Int|AR, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and Slowtrack.

El Museo de Los Sures
120 South 1st Street, Brooklyn, NY