In collaboration with the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA)

Participants: Liene Bosque, Peekskill Project 6 artist; Saskia Janssen (ISCP resident) and George Korsmit, Peekskill Project 6 artists; Emilie Nilsson, Organizer and head curator, Peekskill Project 6; Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, Executive Director, No Longer Empty; Todd Shalom, Founder and Director, Elastic City; Mishiba Taylor, Bohlmann Tower Resident, beautician and participant in Welcome Stranger.

This panel discussion will focus on community-based art projects, investigating the role that artists, communities and organizations play in socially-driven work. Panel participants will discuss the critical and reflexive potential of public projects, while questioning the capacity, obstacles and impact of participatory and socially engaged works today. The talk will use Peekskill, New York as a point of departure in a broader conversation addressing the role of contemporary art in everyday life and the value of integrating art within urban communities in meaningful ways.

Taking Up Space, a nomadic series of four panel discussions, is organized to coincide with the 6^th edition of the Peekskill Project, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art’s citywide public art festival devoted to bringing contemporary art out of the museum and into the community. This series of talks will run throughout the duration of the festival, September through December 2015, and will be hosted by several institutions in New York City and Peekskill, including ISCP, HVCCA and The Clemente/Artists Alliance Inc.