Monday, February 1, 2016 at 6:00 pm
(New York, N.Y.) January 21, 2016 – Times Square Arts, the public art division of the Times Square Alliance, presents the first Residency Artist Talk, Artists At The Crossroads on February 1, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. at The TimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street, New York, NY 10036. The event is free and open to the public. To learn more and RSVP: http://www.timessquarenyc.org/ArtistsAtTheCrossroads
Kate Crawford, professor, author and founding member of Deep Lab, New York - a collaborative group of cyberfeminist researchers, artists, writers, engineers, and cultural producers - will serve as the moderator with artists R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili, the first two Residency At The Crossroads artists. DuBois and Okpokwasili will both discuss their own residencies over the past year. From their vastly different practices, each will explore how the unique environment and culturally diverse audience intersects with the business improvement district infrastructure and stakeholder data to help them support their work in Times Square, the world's most iconic public space frequented by 215,000 - 420,000 people a day.
Artist R. Luke DuBois is Co-Director of Integrated Digital Media at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering and the first Residency At The Crossroads Artist. During his residency, DuBois created a continuous video portrait of Times Square, relying on a matrix of webcams that already existed onsite, to create an accelerated video of 90 days’ worth of activity compressed into video art. As part of the piece, he worked with artists who performed simple, repetitive acts designed to be recognized within the accelerated video and contrast with the fast-paced bustle of Times Square all around them. More information about his residency can be found here.
During the Fall of 2015, Okwui Okpokwasili worked with Peter Born to engage with visitors in Times Square to capture their voices and create a song based on the idea that the Crossroads of the World can serve as a global commons, not only as a transactional hub for capital, but also a stage and a shared public space that is an open resource for creative dialogue and exchange. By asking people to tell her what they’ve always wanted to share with the world, she explored whether a common cry, idea or desire emerged. More information about this residency can be found here.
Sherry Dobbin, Times Square Arts Director, said, “In a time of Creative Placemaking becoming a commonly-accepted practice, it is necessary to allow artists the opportunity to learn in the environments in which they are deployed. Times Square Arts has made a commitment to ensure the process of developing a residency program of this kind is openly evaluated and evolving in response to artist work, so that others can learn alongside us.”
Residency At The Crossroads began in 2015 as one of the only residencies allowing artists to conduct practice-based research to intersect with the public realm in a commercially successful district. Financial support has been provided by the NEA ArtWorks program, Times Square Alliance and Eyebeam. Additional Partnerships with NYFA and Viacom. Alliance of Artist Communities immediately included this program into their special concentration on 'Residencies in the Public Realm' to act as a laboratory for this type of unique residency experience. It is included along with National Park Service and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
The Residency Selection Committee consists of: Ellen Albert, Viacom, Cora Cahan, The New 42nd Street, Susan Chin, Design Trust for Public Space, Marvin Davis, Davis Realty; Chair, Art Advisory Committee, Dean DiSimone, Designer, Wendy Feuer, DOT Art, NYC Department of Transportation, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Kemi Ilesanmi, The Laundromat Project, Julia Kaganskiy, New Inc, Jennifer Lantzas, NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, Marisa Mazria Katz, Creative Time Reports, Eric Rudin, Rudin Management, Brad Samuels, SITU STUDIO, Roddy Schrock, Eyebeam, Brian Tate, MAPP International Productions, David Terry, New York Foundation for the Arts, David van der Leer, Van Alen Institute and Willy Wong, School of Visual Arts - selected the artists from curated partnerships, questioning risk, uniqueness and robust practice.
At the end of the talk, the new resident artists Joshue Ott and Kenneth Kirschner will join the discussion to hint at their “virtual” public forum.
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided by ArtPlace America and ArtWorks. Visit TimesSquareNYC.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @TSqArts.
R. Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Todd Reynolds, Jamie Jewett, Bora Yoon, Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Maya Lin, Bang on a Can, Engine 27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season.
Stemming from his investigations of “time-lapse phonography,” his work is a sonic and encyclopedic relative to time-lapse photography. Just as a long camera exposure fuses motion into a single image, his projects reveal the average sonority, visual language, and vocabulary in music, film, text, or cultural information. Exhibitions of his work include: the Insitut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain; 2008 Democratic National Convention, Denver; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; San Jose Museum of Art; National Constitution Center, Philadelphia; Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul; 2007 Sundance Film Festival; the Sydney Film Festival; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; PROSPECT.2 New Orleans; and the Aspen Institute. His work and writing has appeared in print and online in the New York Times, National Geographic, and Esquire Magazine. A major survey of his work, NOW, received its premiere at the Ringling Museum of Art in 2014, with a catalogue published by Scala Art & Heritage Publishers.
An active visual and musical collaborator, DuBois is the co-author of Jitter, a software suite for the real-time manipulation of matrix data developed by San Francisco-based software company Cycling'74. He appears on nearly twenty-five albums both individually and as part of the avant-garde electronic group The Freight Elevator Quartet. He currently performs as part of Bioluminescence, a duo with vocalist Lesley Flanigan that explores the modality of the human voice, and in Fair Use, a trio with Zach Layton and Matthew Ostrowski, that looks at our accelerating culture through electronic performance and remixing of cinema.
DuBois has lived for the last twenty-two years in New York City. He is the director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, and is on the Board of Directors of the ISSUE Project Room. His records are available on Caipirinha/Sire, Liquid Sky, C74, and Cantaloupe Music. His artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City
Okwui Okpokwasili is a New York-based writer, performer and choreographer. In partnership with collaborator Peter Born, Okpokwasili creates multidisciplinary projects. Their first New York production, Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance premiered at Performance Space 122 and received a 2010 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production; an immersive installation version was featured in the 2008 Prelude Festival. Their second collaboration, Bronx Gothic, won a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production and continues to tour nationally and internationally. In June of 2014, they presented an installation entitled Bronx Gothic: The Oval as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival. Their current project in development is Poor People’s TV Room, an early iteration of which was presented by Lincoln Center in the David Rubinstein Atrium in June 2014.
As a performer, Okpokwasili frequently collaborates with award-winning director Ralph Lemon, including How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?; Come home Charley Patton (for which she also won a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award); a duet performed at The Museum of Modern Art as part of On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century; and, most recently, Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room. She has appeared as an actor in many productions, including Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam; Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Kristin Marting’s Sounding; Young Jean Lee’s LEAR; Richard Foreman’s Maria del Bosco; Richard Maxwell’s Cowboys and Indians; and Joan Dark (The Goodman Theater/The Linz European Capital of Culture). Film credits include Malorie’s Final Score, Knut Åsdam’s Abyss, The Interpreter, The Hoax and I Am Legend.
Okpokwasili‘s residencies and awards include The French American Cultural Exchange (2006-2007); Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Choreographic Fellowship (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist-in-Residence (2013), NewYork Live Arts Studio Series (2013); Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory (2013); New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship in Choreography (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Program (2014-15); The Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ artist grant in dance (2014), BRIClab (2015), Columbia University (2015), the Rauschenberg Residency (2015) and has been named the New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist (2015).
@TSqArts @RLukeDuBois @KateCrawford @nyfacurrent #ResidencyTSq
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Media Contacts:
For Times Square Arts:
TJ Witham
212.452.5234 | TJWitham@TimesSquareNYC.org
Marisa Wayne
212.843.9216 | MWayne@Rubenstein.com