art Work

Real Talk/KipTalk is a serial live talk show about the state of contemporary performance in New York City. Risa, Geoffrey Jackson Scott, Sheetal Prajapti, Lucy Sexton, George Sanchez, and Amy Khoshbin talk about artists, activists, administrators, and when (and if) they collide in this not-so-unique point of our history.', '7. Real Talk/Kip Talk with Geoffrey Jackson Scott, Sheetal Prajapti, Lucy Sexton, George Sanchez, and Amy Khoshbin

Associate Producers: Risa Shoup and Denise Shu MeiAudio Engineer: Timothy McAleer

In the 5th episode of art Work, we look back at PS122xLoisaida's Long Table discussion on Cultural Equity back in November 2016. Associate Producer Denise plays stage manager and runs some clips from the discussion as special guest Maura Cuffie and Risa Shoup dig deeper into the undercurrents and current currents stemming from that evening. What are we really talking about when we talk about "cultural equity"? Also, dear leaders in organizations, some things for you to think about as you move forward in this work. Get a recap of the evening in tweets here. You can connect with Risa at @The_Risa (twitter) and @risar (instagram) and Denise at @publiclydee.

 

Maura Cuffie is one of three co-founders of the collective The Free Breakfast Program (FBP)—a platform for artful interactions and new ways of being inspired by the work of the Black Panther Party. Most recently FBP has exhibited with the No Longer Empty Curatorial Lab, NYU’s Department of Art and Politics, and the Painted Bride Art Center. Recent projects include A Lot More Beautiful, Ernest Cole Cultural Exchange, and Breakfast for Dinner concerning the topics reclaiming space, identity politics, artful protest, and more. She comes out of Drexel University with a degree in sociology focusing on the sociology of images and identity politics. By day she works as the Program Manager at EmcArts.

Associate Producers: Risa Shoup and Denise Shu MeiAudio Engineer: Timothy McAleer

In the 4th episode of art Work, we are privileged and excited to have Sarita Covington guest host in honor of Black History Month! Together with her guests, Ebony Noelle Golden and Paloma McGregor, the trio talk about art, resistance, and liberation. Are you just joining the party? Are you chasing the thing? What IS Liberation? This conversation will lead you through art-making, lessons in collectivity, visions of resistance... ultimately, to be FREE. Learn more about Sarita, Ebony, and Paloma below. Many thanks once again to Nova Mandarke for sharing his music.

Sarita Covington is a multi-disciplinary artist/ activist from Harlem. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. She is co-founder of Company Cypher, an arts organization dedicated to transforming the conversation about race and skin tone prejudice by using theatre and hip-hop education to build community. She co-founded ACRE (Artists Co-Creating Real Equity), an organizing body that works closely with grassroots community organizers the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond to provide Understanding & Undoing Racism/ Community Organizing Workshops for artists and cultural workers. She is also a collaborating artist with social impact organization B3W Performance Group, who are currently working on an international project called Forgiveness.\r\n \r\nHer work has received support from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Open Meadows Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Jerome Foundation. and BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange). Sarita has facilitated workshops for Fishkill Correctional Facility, Yale Schools of Divinity and Drama, Artspace’s City Wide Open Studios, NYC Public Schools, Philadelphia Charter School students, Danish High School students, Mexican youth in a Tijuana orphanage and the 59th Street Project.Website: www.saritacovington.comCypher: www.facebook.com/CompanyCypher

Ebony Noelle Golden, native of Houston, Texas currently residing in the Bronx, serves as principal engagement strategist at Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative and the artistic director of Body Ecology Womanist Performance Project. BDAC is a cultural arts direct action group that works to inspire, instigate, and incite transformation, radical expressiveness, and progressive social change through community-designed, culturally-relevant, engagement initiatives, and creative projects. \r\n\r\nAs a strategist, Golden consults, co-creates, designs, implements, and evaluates impact-driven projects and initiatives that push for social transformation.  As an artist-scholar, Golden stages site-specific rituals + live art productions that profoundly explore the complexities of freedom in the time of now. In 2016, she developed a seminar course, served as a lecturer of Womanist and Black Feminist performance art at The New School, and co-edited an anthology of experimental womanist writing published by Obsidian Journal of Literature and Arts. \r\n\r\nGolden is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU where she is developing125th and Freedom, a performance art installation of ten choreopoetic rituals along 125th street between the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. The work explores home, migration, displacement, and the eradication of black space due to cultural, spiritual, and political gentrification.Website: www.bettysdaughterarts.com

In the 3rd episode of art Work, we gather round with Geoffrey Jackson Scott, Betty Yu, and Megan Marshall to talk about generosity! Generous labor? Laborious generosity? We talk Thank You emails, listening, compensation... and so much more! We have our first segment of "+1/-1", a lightning round segment where our guests get to literally '+1' or '-1' a statement (caveats a plenty). Pizza Rat, anyone?

Betty Yu is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, educator and activist. She is a co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective telling stories of Chinatown tenants fighting gentrification through public projections. Her documentary “Resilience” about her garment worker mother fighting against sweatshop conditions, screened at national and international film festivals including the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival. Yu’s multi-media installation, “The Garment Worker” was featured at Tribeca Film Institute’s Interactive. She co-created "Monument to Anti-Displacement Organizing" in the Agitprop! show at Brooklyn Museum. Betty was a 2012 Public Artist-in-Resident with the Laundromat Project and is a 2015 Cultural Agent with the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) a people-powered social justice and art network. Ms. Yu is currently on the Board of Directors of Working Films, Deep Dish TV and Third World Newsreel, progressive media and film organizations.\r\n\r\nBetty received the 2016 SOAPBOX Artist Award from the Laundromat Project. She holds a BFA from NYU\'s TSOA and a MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College. Betty is a 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow for Socially Engaged Art for her project with Chinatown Art Brigade. Ms. Yu\'s organizing recognitions include being the recipient of the Union Square Award for grassroots activism and a semi-finalist of the National Brick “Do Something” Award for community leadership in Chinatown.Website: www.bettyyu.netTwitter: @bettyyu21, @CtownArtBrigadeChinatown Art Brigade: www.chinatownartbrigade.org

Geoffrey Jackson Scott is a Brooklyn-based creative producer, independent curator, engagement strategist, and cultural organizer. He is Co-Founder and Creative Director of the communications and engagement strategy firm Peoplmovr. Geoffrey is also often seen at the Public Theater and Museum of Moving Image, as part of his work with Peoplmovr.Instagram / Twitter; @peoplmovr

Megan Marshall serves as the Director of Internal Operations at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW).  Prior to NYTW, Ms. Marshall served as the Controller at New York City Opera (NYCO) under George Steel and was on the team to through NYCO’s bankruptcy.  Previously, she served as Payroll Manager for The Public Theater. Ms. Marshall has also worked in various capacities for Vineyard Arts Project on Martha’s Vineyard, Theatre for One with Tony-Award-Winning Set Designer Christine Jones, artist Soibhan Cronin who works/performs in San Francisco, Santa Fe, and New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music, P.S.122, and O&M Press Company. She received her MA in Performing Arts Administration from New York University and her BA in Theater Management from College of Santa Fe in New Mexico.Twitter: @meganemarshallNYTW:

In our second episode of art Work, Kay Takeda and Shaun Leonardo join Risa to share what leadership looks like in their work and ways to share power and be creative as administrators. Also, we get to have a closing round of "In First Place", a segment celebrating place-based projects either past or to-come. Learn more about our guests Kayand Shaun on Episode 2 of art Work and our guest musician, Public Access T.V., below:

Kay Takeda has worked for over 20 years to advance artists and the arts in the areas of grantmaking, programming and capacity-building. She is currently the Vice President of Grants & Services at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) where she develops and oversees its grantmaking and professional development programs, and community initiatives including Arts East River Waterfront focusing on community partnerships to activate new public waterfront space in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Prior to LMCC, she worked with Arts International, where she oversaw a roster of national grant programs providing support for visual and performing artists working internationally; and with the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor, where she managed a contemporary exhibition program, international residencies, and a studio program for visual artists in a 15,000 sq. ft historic space. She has served on the boards of the artist-run Goliath Visual Space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Tickle the Sleeping Giant, Inc./Trajal Harrell. She is a member of the selection committee for the New York Dance & Performance Awards (The Bessies) and lectures widely on professional issues affecting artists.Twitter: @KayTakedaLMCC: www.lmcc.net

Shaun Leonardo’s artwork negotiates societal expectations of gender and sex, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and the experience of failure. In his work as an educator, Leonardo promotes the political potential of attention, self-reflection, and discomfort as a means to create awareness, disrupt meaning, and shift perspective. He is currently Manager of School, Youth Community Programs at the New Museum and has worked as an educator at the Fortune Society, Socrates Sculpture Park, Cooper Union's Outreach program and The Point (Bronx). Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has received awards from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; The New York Studio School; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Art Matters; New York Foundation for the Arts; McColl Center for Visual Art; Franklin Furnace; and The Jerome Foundation. His work has been presented in galleries and institutions, nationally and internationally, and was recently featured in the exhibitions Crossing Brooklyn at Brooklyn Museum, Radical Presence at Studio Museum in Harlem, and Between History and the Body at 8th Floor Gallery. Leonardo’s current collaborative work, Mirror / Echo / Tilt, is funded by Creative Capital.Website: www.elcleonardo.comFacebook / Instagram: @elcleonardoNew Museum: www.newmuseum.orgAssembly:

In our very first episode of art Work, we welcome to the table Marýa Wethers, Dan Fishback, and Rasu Jilani to talk about curatorial practices! If curation is community service, what is a “good” curator? Our guests weigh in and discuss just what are the right questions, how to fail within the context of curation, and reflect on how they bring their full selves to their work. Learn more about our guests, Marya, Dan, & Rasu on Episode 1 of art Work and our guest musician, Nova Mandarke!

 

Marýa Wethers is an Independent Manager, Producer & Curator based in NYC since 1997. Marýa is currently the Director of International Initiatives at Movement Research and Project Manager for Angela's Pulse/Dancing While Black, David Thomson and others. From 2007-2014, she worked in the Programming Department at New York Live Arts (formerly Dance Theater Workshop/DTW) as the International Project Director of the Suitcase Fund program, where she developed a cultural exchange program with contemporary dance artists in the USA and Africa, and managed the program activities in Eastern/Central Europe.

Marýa is a Guest Curator of the Queer New York International Arts Festival (2016 & 2015 editions) and curated the Out of Space @ BRIC Studio series for Danspace Project (2003-2007) with a particular focus on work representing the perspectives and experiences of artists who are of color, queer, and/or female. She has served on selection panels for several presenting and funding organizations in NY and nationally, including the NEA, LMCC, Brooklyn Arts Council, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and as an Advisor to NEFA's National Dance Project program. She has served as a guest lecturer for presenting/service organizations and college/university dance programs in the tristate area. Marýa is a core member of the Movement Research Artists of Color Council and was a member of the New York Dance & Performance/Bessie Award Committee (2006-07).

Her writing has appeared in the Configurations in Motion: Curating and Communities of Color publication, organized by Thomas DeFrantz at Duke University (2016 & 2015), and her essay UnCHARTed Legacies: women of color in post-modern dance, was published in the 25th Anniversary Movement Research Performance Journal #27/28 (2004). Marýa has been featured in interviews/articles in the MRPJ #47 (Fall 2015) and Gay City News (June 2006).

Marýa is a recipient of a National Performance Network Mentorship & Leadership award and two APAP Cultural Exchange Fund grants. Marýa graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1997 with a BA in Dance and a Minor in African-American Studies.

 

Dan Fishback is a playwright, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. Previous work includes “The Material World” (Top 10 Plays of 2012 - Time Out New York) and “thirtynothing” (2011), which were both developed at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange and performed at Dixon Place, and “You Will Experience Silence” (2009), which the Village Voice called “sassier and more fun than ‘Angels in America.’” As a singer songwriter, and with his band Cheese On Bread, Fishback has toured Europe and North America, and has released five full-length albums. As Helix director, he teaches workshops, organizes public events, and curates and produces a variety of festivals and series, including "La MaMa's Squirts." He is currently working on a new play, “Rubble Rubble,&rdq

art Work is a monthly, roundtable-format podcast that celebrates the work (see: labor, skill, thoughtfulness) of artists and cultural workers in New York City, with a particular focus on performance as well as community engagement. Hosted by FABnyc’s Executive Director Risa Shoup, each episode features 2 to 3 guests from the arts and culture sector reflecting upon a weekly theme. With this podcast, we want to celebrate contemporary performance and art bring to the table arts and cultural leaders from the Lower East Side and beyond, and elevate the performance lens as a powerful way of navigating the world have a means of expression to talk about difficult issues and political discourse as it manifests in the contemporary art realm debunk the myth that the creation and production of art and culture functions only as a form of entertainment and does not consist of “real work” We’re also excited to feature a range of LES-based / LES-grown musicians who will be graciously providing some sweet tunes to bring us into and out of each episode.

Associate Producers: Risa Shoup and Denise Shu Mei

Audio Engineer: Timothy McAleer