Artistsmeeting

Whitney Highline Proposal Leesa and Nicole Abahuni, Daniel Blochwitz, Chris Borkowski, Eliza Fernbach, G.H. Hovagimyan, Bill Dolson, Thomas Hutchinson, Jerome Joy, Lara Star Martini, Alan W. Moore, Maria Joao Salema, Paul Sangster, Raphaele Shirley, Nsumi, Lee Wells 2007

Index

INDEX/tbd
Intro.2 Proposals...3 Bios........45 What is Artistsmeeting by Artistsmeeting........48 Contact..........50

PROPOSALS
Codex Chris Borkowksi HD & SD video/ Jitter/ mac mini/ 24 Flat Screen Codex is a clearing house of video clips, audio sound bytes and textual pieces created but never finished since I moved to NYC in 2003. Through the use of a semi-random algorithm the narrative body flows through sorted sets and grouping of ideas, images and sounds that deal with fictional and non-fictional mini-narratives. The mini-narratives range from subjects concerning geography, technology, capitalism, socialism, political history, spiritualism, the occult, multiplicity, and direct observations of urban life on both broad and micro levels. Its a movie that is never complete, never ending and never the same twice. Its about me, you and everything around us past present and future. Call it artful dodging by computational power, call it laziness, call it a hopeless but beautiful mess because who has time to sort out interrelated ideas, who has time for anything longer than 30 seconds? I dont, but the codex or rather algorithm does and can neatly sort it all out for us.

Uninhabitable Structure Bill Dolson Proposal for the Future Site of the New Whitney Museum Prelude Relational Aesthetics has merely served as an excuse to legitimize the incestuous and parasitic social structures which seem to adorn and encircle the art world like baroque friezes. Collaborative and artist group models only serve to finally propel the art-making process into the industrial revolution, corporatizing art production, removing it from the realm of the inspired individual and making it just another collective endeavor, not dependent on a single, unreliable individual, but rather making it like any other corporate production activity. This guarantees the distribution process uninterrupted production, a requirement for stable markets. Proposal Uninhabitable Structure The structure at 820 Washington Street and 555 West Street is to be sealed and flooded with nitrogen gas. This inert, invisible gas will displace all of the air in the building, thus depriving it of oxygen and making occupancy lethal. Any person walking into the building would be asphyxiated. The building would be prominently placarded warning against entry and all entryways would have 24 hour security personnel to prevent entry. The duration of the piece would be determined by how long it would take for a breathable air mixture to diffuse back into the space. The technique of replacing air with the inert gas nitrogen is routinely used by utilities to displace moisture and prevent oxidation in underground tunnels and chase-ways which carry cables. Sadly, every so often a utility worker is killed by inadvertently entering such a space before the nitrogen has been purged. While they are still able to breath normally, their breath carries no oxygen, and they asphyxiate. For this piece the structure would be as near as possible hermetically sealed. All the doors, windows, and exterior openings taped or otherwise closed. The nitrogen would be introduced into the structure from above. Being heavier than air, nitrogen sinks to the bottom of any containing space. Oxygen monitors would be installed in the building to determine when the nitrogen had dissipated sufficiently to allow normal breathing and reentry. A rough estimate of the duration of the piece is a week. The effect of the piece is to make the structure uninhabitable except by someone wearing a breathing apparatus. The artist would very much like to effect such entry during the course of the piece, donning a firemans breathing gear and traversing the interior of the building from a ground level entrance up to the top of the building. No other person, except someone similarly equipped, would be able to enter the building. Any possibility of constructive, social use of the space would be impossible.

Proposal for a multimedia Installation of Sunken City by Raphaele Shirley Sunken City 2007 mixed media (sound, stobe lights, laser lights, spots, smoke machine, sequencers. Infrared motion sensors, Mylar, silicone, Styrofoam) Scale variable As a sequel to the Artists meeting performance in Dumbo arts festival 2007. I propose this site-specific installation, which is interactive and immersive. Sunken City is an imaginary world and metaphor for an architectural environment of the future. Composed of multiple lights and atmospheric effects the piece cycles through its elements with the use of timers and motion sensors, which pick up the presence of the audience and microphones, which pick up and distort ambient surrounding sounds. These are transformed into signals and impulses, which trigger atmospheric temperaments within the piece, referring to a sort of fictive microclimate and adding to the impression of environment and space. The sounds and lights alternate between peaceful zones to more turbulent moments cousin to a bad thunderstorm or a hurricane, passing through different moods this way. The sculptural element of the piece Styrofoam structures covered with silicone or wax refer to fictional architectures all reminding of future or past constructions, temples and mega structures created by man throughout the ages.

LEGO Robotics Highline Graffiti Leesa and Nicole Abahuni Materials: LEGO NXT / RCX robots, mirror tiles, platform, markers, video camera Abstract: Community based initiative focusing on artists and artwork in an homage to the New York graffiti art found in the Highline. The local community and artists are invited to draw and graffiti using Lego Robotics, markers and mirrored tiles, in an effort to reflect and connect the street art found on the highline to the new artistic developments through collaborative drawings. Project Proposal: Initiated by artists Leesa and Nicole Abahuni, who have been creating installations and performing with mechanical counterparts since 2000 in New York and abroad in Copenhagen, London, Tokyo, and Sharjah, UAE. We wish to invite each team involved to use a LEGO robot which they have built. The LEGO robots are equipped with a remote control to modify direction and movement. Attached to the robot chassis are markers or spray cans which can enable the LEGO robots to draw. The robots are placed on a platform covered with numerous 1'x1' tiles of mirrors. It is on this reconfigurable canvas that each team can direct the LEGO robot and create drawings/graffiti simultaneously on a series of mirrors. The process of graffiting, drawing, and rearranging pixel tiles can be documented with an overhead camera, then archived and made available as a video download. The participants can walk away with a mirrored pixel tile of this collaborative artistic endeavor created between artists, the public and LEGO robots. We wish to foster an exchange between the local community and artists using accessible technology and interactive art as a vehicle of communication.

Dead Maria Joao Salema Is to be really dead and/or dead in the media the same? The question keeps coming back to me, if you are not 'here', I don't see you, I don't hear you, you don't exist. Examples in History are many were absence is an equivalent of death. Absence in physical presence of a person, - in ancient Greece and Rome was given the choice of death sentence or exile, Socrates chose dead. Colonialism, revolutions, religious turnarounds, resort to elimination of the history and culture media records of a People is to destroy the People itself, for it to became a group of persons ready to appropriate. - In Ancient Egypt, Akhenaten / Amenhotep IV implemented monotheism, and after is death, it was attempted to erase is existence and legacy, by destroying written and images records of him. - Catholic priests destroyed all written documents of Pre-Colombian cultures. - Soviet politic purges would implied fascinating photographic erasing of people, Trotsky disappeared from all group photos. In our over-saturated media times would that be possible, is the power in the people, would the people with it's weakness for mob behavior be inclined for media termination. I have questions, not answers, and would like to somewhat develop this idea with the artists meeting group. It seems to me that maybe it could be integrated with other projects, that it can be taken by different approaches, also, I'm not visualizing a physical from for this question-of-an-idea, maybe a more immaterial, conceptual approach, or maybe not. I'm not sure how to go on, on the absence, power, communication thing to an art form, and I like it like that.

Ghosts of Gansvoort Street By G.H. Hovagimyan Abstract In 1975 Gordon Matta-Clark cut apart the Gansvoort Street Pier to create a large project called Days End. I propose for the 555 West Street site, the future home of the Whitney Highline building, to wrap the building in construction scaffold and hang scrim from the surrounding armature this creates. I propose to project images of the opening party of the work onto the scrim. The images are of a group of artists walking around in the huge structure. Proposal I was one of the artists who worked with Matta-Clark cutting apart the Gansvoort street pier. It was a special time in my life. The pier has been torn down and the actual events recede in time and history. All thats left are memories of that day and some photographs taken of the event by a photographer. With West Chelsea becoming a focal point for development and Gansvoort street being the home of a future Whitney Museum Site, I think it is fitting to pay a tribute to Matta-Clark and also the time I spent with him on Gansvoort Street.

Whitney Hide/Reveal By G.H. Hovagimyan Abstract For the future site of the Whitney Highline Building I propose to wrap the location in construction scaffolding and attached scrim panels of alternating blue and white stripes. The scrim panels will alternately obscure and reveal the buildings behind. The overall stripe design will make the site look like a giant gift that is wrapped and ready to be unwrapped.

Global GPS/Workers Treasure Hunt and Time Capsule non-site Homage to G. M-C. G.H. Hovagimyan The Buildings of 820 Washington Street and 555 West Street are the future site of the Whitney Museum Highline. The buildings are now old warehouses. The buildings will go through a transformation/renovation in two years. I propose to bury or hide or implant objects/ art works that will be discovered by construction workers when they begin their demolition of the interior walls in two years. I will use a GPS device to locate where the works are hidden. I will take notes and photographs of the locations where I put the objects/ art works and of the objects themselves. I will compile a notebook or CD of the photographs and GPS locations. I may also take videotape as documentary evidence of the process. Part of the work is about exploring the physical location. When one looks for a hiding place ones perceptions become focused and sharp. Its about paying attention to the site. There is a question about what one sees when one is looking at a place that has been abandoned or is in a state of disuse. What one notices or doesnt notice is based upon the mystery of the last activity that occurred in the space. It is implied that there will be a treasure map of sorts created by the documentation process but the workers will not have the map nor should they be alerted to look for buried artworks in the wall. It is important that they simply come across the objects during the course of their daily labor. They may then look at a discovered work and wonder what it is and why its there. This is the recovery of the original art experience. The artwork or art experience is one of discovery and wonder. It is not an experience of greed but rather of sharing. One does not have to be educated in art to have this experience. The trouble often arises when something is called art. This creates a false dynamic and a class conflict. I.E. those who are well to do and educated understand and appreciate art, those who are manual laborers dont care about art they are busy earning a living. This conflict is actually a root problem for America because of the emphasis on mass entertainment on the one hand and the commodity/art market matrix on the other. Workers need entertainment and the wealthy need status objects to purchase. Although aesthetics and art play a role they are not the main emphasis for these art-like endeavors. My intention for this artwork is to focus on the art process both for the artists and the viewer. This is a process of realization and discovery. The French verbs se cacher (to hide) and se retrouver (find again) are very apt and poetic descriptions for the art process. Artists are always saving the aesthetic experience of art in art. The viewers then find it again. The notion of a non-site is a rather interesting one that was first posed by Robert Smithson. Simply stated, a gallery gives aesthetic credentials to something that is exhibited there although the site of art is not necessarily in a gallery, it can be anyplace. In the case of the Whitney Highline, the real art supposedly doesnt begin until the buildings have undergone a transformation from warehouse to museum. This creates a non-site in the pre-demolition buildings. One may describe the aesthetic state of the buildings as a state of nunc-stanz or non-existence. Nunc-stanz is often described as the moment between day and night. The use of the buildings for art activities that are not in the main program of the museum nor part of the curatorial schedule presents some intriguing possibilities. The current Utopian moment in the art world talks about open systems and networks that are loose and rhizomatic. One may recall a utopian essay by Hakim Bye called TAZ (temporary autonomous zone). The essay describes a sort of pirate utopia in the Caribbean Islands during the colonial period; the actual word Utopia translates to no-place. Going back to the issue of site/non-site part of the idea of a shift is that by shifting perception or use one can create art. In this case a displacement of objects or a cache can create an aesthetic experience. There are two different physical markers for this work. One is the hidden object discovered by the worker. The other is the documentation of the process. The worker doesnt experience the whole process just one result. The other resulting object / documentation are useful for the art market mechanism but in a fitting gesture, the market is denied the sensation of discovery and wonder. In this case it is an example of rendering unto Caesar what is his.

Stock & Trade G.H. Hovagimyan Playing on the idea of stock certificates I propose that each artist from (Artists Meeting) provides 3 images to be enlarged to 20X 30 or larger as chromogenic prints mounted on Plexiglas.The images would have a number on the front as well as a logo or stamp that says Artists Meeting. These would be hung in a grid pattern as one continuous piece on the wall of the storefront. The numbers given to each artist to determine their placement on the grid would be picked at random out of a hat. The actual size of each certificate would be determined by the size of the display wall and the amount of money in the fund (Artists Meeting Fund) available for printouts. Exploded Cinema G.H. Hovagimyan Exploded Cinema is an extension of the notion of Expanded Cinema, first proposed by Gene Youngblood in 1970 in his book of the same name. This proposal is to create a media arts festival that investigates the ideas and structures of cinema, and goes beyond the form into the area of media arts. Such questions as; what is cinema? What is video? What is interactive TV? What is the broadcast model? What are the limits of the screen? What have digital editing tools done to the experience of cinema? What is a narrative? What is a projection? What is live video? What does multi-media mean? These are all questions posed and potential areas for Exploded Cinema. The exhibitions intention is to expand the discussion and focus on separate elements of the cinematic production process. For example; the conceptual development of a film or film script or a narrative might be the focus of some of the artists pieces. Another aspect might be the editing of material into a form by cutting and splicing. Still another might be the characterization and media image of the actor. The act of projection is also an aspect of cinema. So too is the sound track both the dialog and the music. Jean Baudrillard the French Philosopher, recently stated that with the advent of digital tools all media, photography, sound, film, video etc can be performed. Therefore performance and the idea of performance can be expanded beyond the simple idea of acting and also acting out. The exhibition/installation revolves around the idea of performing media or using media in a performative manner. In some sense this means that media becomes an active participant or perhaps the performer presents media as the subject of a performance.

Re-Staging/ Re-enactments/ Re-do G.H. Hovagimyan Since the early nineties an ever increasing number of artworks have been created on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products. From Postproduction by Nicolas Bourriaud, One of my first net art projects in 1994 was a web site called Faux Conceptual Art < http://artnetweb.com/projects/fauxcon/home.html>. The site was a proposal and a theoretical discussion. It also involved the re-staging of conceptual art works. Part of the overall project was a boxed set of proposal boards that were sketches for various stylistic fake conceptual art pieces. The boxed set was another manifestation of the project. There are also a number of pieces I built while others that remain unmade. Recently, I have returned to this project/archive and begun to make new pieces. I have also engaged in theoretical musings about the work on my blog<http://post.thing.net/blog/gh> There is a fluidity to media art that calls for the reexamination of works made in the form of information and media. This might be called a re-versioning or an upgrade. My proposal is to use the Whitney site as a home site for the re-examination and production of new Faux Conceptual Art works. I propose to construct a number of full-scale Faux pieces that were simply proposals in my original work. Along with that I would invite/ curate a group of artists who are engaged in the practice of re-doing or remaking art works from the recent past. The idea would be to create a situation that deals with the mediated image of an artwork. The forms would be multiple and include performance, film, video, installation art etc.. The notion is to extend the process of de-construction and appropriation beyond current the current intellectual property debate to a new area of media remix. I had began to articulate this in a piece I wrote for post.thing.net < http://post.thing.net/node/1474>

Unmade - proposals for artworks G.H. Hovagimyan The group Artist Meeting, having such an incredible pool of first-rate talented artists has decided to present a series of lecture/demos by each artist in the group, of work that is either in progress, or in proposal format. This is to reveal to the general public the process behind the creative process that is the process of proposal to a committee or curatorial board or grant panel to create something. There are a number of reasons for doing this. One is to highlight and recognize that the preparation of a proposal, the organization of information into a coherent theme and the packaging of the proposal is an art form in and of itself. By viewing this series of proposals the public will see art works that may never be built or may be presented a year or two from the time of their presentation as a proposal. By viewing these proposals the public has a first look, a preview of the future of art. Another reason to do this series is to investigate a part of the corporate art system that is the support structure for art by looking at how artists engage that system. Does the system influence the type of art that is presented? Does the system choose art based on some specific criteria? After all, a proposal to do an artwork is essentially a marketing campaign. The artist is trying to gain a commission. A very clever artist who knows their way around the proposal system can make a very comfortable living. Oftentimes artists and artworks that win commissions or grants or artist-in-residence are vetted by art professionals, a jury of peers if you will. The public if they are aware of or engaged in the process at all are alerted after the works have been executed. This is usually in the form of a negative article or piece in the media by a right wing news source that is outraged at the misuse of public money. Which brings us to a larger question; should the general public judge who wins in an open proposal competition? The technique of an open call for designs for the re-building of the World Trade Center in New York and the open voting and discussions by the community seems to have produced the best design being picked for the site. Logically, it follows that the general public and art audience would be better informed if they were to view proposals for artworks. This can take the form of a lecture/demo. The set-up is simple - A data-projector, a computer, an audio mixer, a microphone and 2 powered loudspeakers. I already have all the equipment.

The Locuststream Project By Locus Sonus (Jerome Joy)

In the fall of 2005 the lab started work on a group project aiming involve the various different members of the group in a way, enough to not stifle individual creativity, while still providing a basis for communal experimentation and exploration. Locus Sonus is inherently nomadic in nature, shared between institutions separated by several hundred kms (cole Nationale Suprieure dArt de Nice Villa Arson and cole Suprieure dArt dAixen-Provence), we travel regularly to meet and work together from different locations. It was decided to set up some live audio streams, basically open microphones which upload a given soundscape or sound environment continuously to a server and from there available from anywhere the WWW. Our intention was to provide a permanent (and somewhat emblematic) resource to tap into as raw material for our artistic experimentation. After setting a first permanent stream (outside Cap15 an artists studio complex in Marseille) we started by using the stream performance/improvisation type mode using the, now standard, laptop and MIDI controller with homemade patches to reinterpret stream in real time. This proved to be somewhat problematic often nothing in particular would be happening on the stream given time when we were intending to work with it. This led us various leads: The first was to develop a stream which using a denoiser and sampler continuously renewed a database of the best of current sound events or objects. Although this made the stream much listenable to (and usable as musical material ) it did pose some conceptual problems in that the sound was, pre-composed at source and with the development of the project it has now disappeared to be replaced with the unadulterated open mike again. using a mixture of sounds gleaned from the stream and those local environment, simultaneously an idealized projection of remote site and a reflection on the schizophonic* aspects of whole project.

Our main efforts have gone into the development of a spatial proposing a suitable interpretation of the streams in the local environment. The first attempts involved using resonating wires piano wires strung from wall to wall were set into vibration using transducers at one end the resulting modified sound being captured at the other end using guitar pickups. This set up allowed a (Lydwine Van der hulst) to play the streams by touching the wires and thus modifying their resonant qualities. Using a I/O we increased the effect by detecting when a specific wire was and increasing the amplitude of the audio signal in that wire. time we had three streams up and running (Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Chicago) in this first version we used the wires out the virtual network, pointing the wire in the direction corresponding to its provenance with an angle that represented relative distance. A discussion that followed this presentation led us to believe was necessary to define the protocol (sound capture/network/ form) that we were employing more precisely. One of our problems was the choice of the stream emplacement - should this be made relation to geographical location or sound quality or some kind political or social situation... The decision was made to leave to other people, a partly practical and partly ideological choice. point we tidied up our PureData streaming patch so that other could implement it without too much difficulty, boosted the number streams which could be accepted simultaneously by our server, started stripping down our ideas for installations, confident that worldwide audio art community (with a little help from our friends) would respond to our call, which they did. website now offers an animated map which shows the location of all the streams and indicates those which are currently active with a blinking light. By clicking on a chosen location one can listen directly using an OGG Vorbis plugin in any browser. Whats next Several interesting things have happened through the act of opening up the streaming project to other people. Apart from the fact that we have found ourselves with audio environments which we wouldnt

have considered (a kitchen in Iceland, a noisy transformer in California), certain streamers have started to use the material themselves as part of their own artistic production. Inviting Jason Geistweidt from SARC in Belfast to perform we were surprised and delighted to find that some of the samples that hes using have been gleaned from the streams. We are urging to meet the community of streamers who have go involved in this project which leads us to consider organizing some kind of event or festival to accommodate different versions or interpretations of the project. As the project grows and more people join in we are rapidly running out of bandwidth however a charitable soul has recently offered to accommodate an unlimited number of streams, so that is no longer an issue. We are currently working on a wireless streaming box which could be placed anywhere within the range of a wifi router and stream continuously, increasing the range of sound capture and enabling streamers to get rid of their computers.

Nsumi
Nsumis proposals for the Whitney Highline are collaborative and intended for multiple groups and collectives to undertake together. Some proposals involve forming new groups or networks. In others, one or more groups become nested within other groups. Some involve mutating one kind of group into another kind of group, or the overlapping of networks. Still others involve groups disappearing. These art works can be understood as regenerative life forms with offshoots, imaging systems, or invisible earthworks. They output art, self-correct, and learn as a part of an autopoietic program.

The appearance of secondary images a false image on a television screen; the formation of such images to haunt to move silently to sail quietly in light winds an artifact manifested as a weak, ghost-like secondary image, offset (in the direction of the scan) with respect to the position of the primary image the illusion of a demon or spirit a returning or haunting memory or image a slight or faint trace: a ghost of a smile A faint, false image, as: a secondary image on a television or radar screen caused by reflected waves. a displaced image in a photograph caused by the optical system of the camera moving noiselessly

Proposal abstracts

Project Name

Media

Mass Smiling Experiments (new group / performance series / installation) Nsumi will organize a series of mood warping public performances with dozens of synchronized smilers. Smiling is coded through the use of flexible scripts, which modulate the speed, repeat-rate, duration and quality of smiles; a corresponding installation at the Whitney Highline will showcase smile castings, smiling wallpaper, documentary artwork, and objects. Project / Duration: smile performances / 6 months; installation / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: ongoing beaming actions and new tribes / duration unknown Trace objects: wallpaper, documentary footage of performances, smiling scripts, objects, beaming process booklet Lets Paint TV Self Replicating Caf/Juice Bar (TV show-installation / business plan) Nsumi will collaborate with Lets Paint TV, an experimental Los Angeles public access TV program that involves simultaneous exercising, painting instruction, live music, live guests, and phone-in callers; we will transpose the show and its host John Kilduff into the Whitney Highline for live tapings; we will create a spin-off self-replicating caf prototype based on the show, and activate a nationwide network of independent caf baristas for related experiments. Project / Duration: installation / 2 months; prototyping / 4 months; barista organizing / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: replicating caf / 30 years Trace objects: fragments of TV show set, paintings, office paperwork Maze Makers (new group / architectural intervention) Nsumi will spawn a collective that transforms loft buildings into giant walk-through catacomb mazes; the group will optimize a 3500 sq/ft chunk of the Whitney Highline building into a 3-dimentional maze, within which the public is invited to make mini-maze models, drawings, and doodles. Project / Duration: installation / 12 months Offshoots / Duration: maze-makers continue to function after the show; evolving and spreading / duration unknown Trace objects: maze models and drawings Monster Bicycle (performance-object) Nsumi will collaborate with biking enthusiasts, mechanical engineers and event organizers to make an enormous performance-bicycle; the bicycle will take up the full span of a city street, ignite raves and electronica festivals, launch hot air balloons, and filter automobile traffic through its belly via a mechanical draw-bridge; we will display the bike on a rotating platform. Project / Duration: display of object / 3 months; riding and actions / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: after the show Monster Bicycle will be given to a new collective / duration unknown Trace objects: bicycle grease prints, loose parts, sketches, video documentation Doodle Marathons (installation) Nsumi will host a series of endurance doodling marathons; we will digitize hundreds of the resulting doodles to project within a nested installation at the Whitney Highline; some of the projections will be calibrated to strobe intensely enough to induce brain spasms in those who stare at them. Project / Duration: sequence of marathons / 6 months; installation / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: doodle marathons continue after the show / 4 years Trace objects: video, images, doodle drawings Partylab (new group / installation)

Nsumi will launch a collective whose mission is to reinvent the contemporary party; the collective will create a large participatory party-test platform environment within the Whitney Highline including a stage, suspension bridge, spherical design shed, workstations, hand-made carpeting, and large multi-person pillows. Project / Duration: installation / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: partylab yearly gathering / 5-10 years; new party types deploy and take root / semi-permanent Trace objects: drawings, images, video, pillows, carpet swaths

Nsumi Games (installation) Nsumi will create an interventionist board game series that prompts new collectives and networks to form as the games are played; we will construct an indoor topological waveform within the Whitney Highline where the games can be tested and enjoyed; the games will hatch new languages, spawn families, modulate social networks, and tease secret societies into being. Project / Duration: installation / 3 months; prototyping phase / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: numbered game editions / semi-permanent; ongoing intense interactive gaming / semi-permanent Trace objects: drawings, sculpted game pieces Bench Factory (factory) Nsumi will build a bench factory within the Whitney Highline. The factory will manufacture 1000 benches to distribute around the city where benches are needed most; we will create a road show and materials to teach others how to launch their own bench factories, thereby spreading the work in unknown directions. Project / Duration: factory in operation / 6 months; shopkeeper-community negotiations / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: 1000 benches added to city fabric / semi-permanent Trace objects: road show elements, wood-chip sculpturettes Curricula Machine* (phantom institution) Nsumi will create a phantom art school that includes (a) an indoor art installation in the Whitney Highline with the worlds largest whiteboard system and open classrooms; (b) a network of participant educators who haunt target schools, melt into their social fabric and teach unsanctioned classes; (c) research pods that facilitate domestic research and neighborhood experiments; (d) floating dorm galleries that harvest and transform ambient sexual desire into curatorial action; (e) an artist-run home school system; and (f) a book of artists syllabi. Project / Duration: project operational / 18 months; student-educator negotiations / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: whiteboards given to upstart collectives / semi-permanent; transmitted knowledge and wisdom via learning experiences / permanent- pending further transmission; educator network continues to function after show / semi-permanent; research pods are distributed to select communities / semipermanent; floating dorm galleries continue and spread / semi-permanent; home school system becomes non-profit organization / duration unknown; book is published via publisher with possible future editions / semi-permanent Trace objects: images, lesson plans, drawings, objects * The six elements of Curricula Machine can be broken-up, rearranged and combined as needed. The Beast Turns in on Itself (performance / installation) Nsumi will collaborate with experimental religious groups to make an unusual sort of performance art in which the groups blend, combine, interact, and change their thought-reform processes; for the Whitney Highline we will create a 40 seat lime green sectional couch system in the shape of an infinity sign for socials, banquets, design-jams, and celebrations. Project / Duration: installation / 3 months; intra-group negotiations / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: object archive / semi-permanent; couch sections are given to participant groups / semi-permanent; religious sub-groups form / duration unknown Trace objects: drawings, images, schematics, digital audio files Afterlife (installation / maquette) Nsumi will design and launch an artist-run funerary system and community archive that prompts posthumous performances, art, actions, interventions and happenings; for the Whitney Highline we will organize three funerals and build a large black maquette of the system and its physical structures; we will organize a conference featuring nonprofit funeral parlors and memorial associations. Project / Duration: installation + maquette / 3 months; funeral planning / 3 months; conference planning / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: object archive, including records and inventory sheets / semi-permanent; institution prototype / semipermanent; offsite conference / 2 days Trace objects: drawings, images, funeral planning documents

Weathersect (new cluster-group / architectural installation / events) Nsumi will collaborate with dozens of outer borough art collectives and groups to build an indoor city with multiple intersecting spaces and creative zones, a full-scale river, rabbit colonies, pods, flora, animals, and workstations; we will start a tracking scroll that will continually map the social relationships formed as a result of the city; the scroll will be developed for 50 years and returned to the Whitney Museum in 2058. Project / Duration: city operational / 6-12 months Offshoots / Duration: scroll / permanent; new groups / semi-permanent Trace objects: archive of thousands of objects, drawings and images; documentations of the ongoing scroll Air Rights (new group / installation / organization prototype) Nsumi will form a non-profit real estate development collective that designs visionary art studios to float above existing buildings; for the Whitney Highline we will install our office, made up of mud-bail/slab and straw; the office will project th design concepts through the mud and onto an opaque glass curtain wall adjacent to 10 avenue. Project / Duration: office installation / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: temporary group mutates into formal organization / duration unknown Trace objects: drawings, designs, mud slabs Lightning Chasers (new group / installation) Nsumi will help launch a small group of lightning survivors who convene during storms to make small abstract lightning models; the models will be displayed at the Whitney Highline in a shiny minimalist jewel case next to a realtime lightning wall; lightning walls omit electronic flashes as lightning bolts discharge around the world. Project / Duration: wall installation / 3 months; storm gatherings / 2 consecutive summers Offshoots / Duration: the chasers continue to spread as a group / duration unknown; lightning models, case / semipermanent Trace objects: images, drawings Puff (object-installation / events) Nsumi will exhibit an enormous bed for groups to use; the bed will have hidden pockets, slips, and folds, encouraging intimate whispering and collective dreaming. Project / Duration: display of bed including multi-collective sleep-overs / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: custom quilts, pillow-slips / semi-permanent; bed given to new collective space / duration unknown Trace objects: design sketches Group Scarves (objects / installation) Nsumi will exhibit a series of ninety foot scarves suitable for collectives; the scarves will double as beds, chairs, security blankets and sculptures. Project / Duration: display of scarves / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: scarves given away to groups / semi-permanent; groups document how scarves are used / 9 years Trace objects: images, video, design drawings Reuse Kiosks (objects) Nsumi will design, deploy and exhibit a series of small re-use kiosks for individual buildings and towns; reuse kiosks are micro-reuse centers with sculptural content and interactive social functionality. Project / Duration: display of kiosks / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: kiosks given away to 20 buildings in NYC, where they will remain active / semi-permanent Trace objects: drawings, designs, images, archive of reused objects 3x3 (performance / installation) Nsumi will arrange for three sets of triplets to stand on the corners of a large painted triangle in the Whitney Highline; the triplets will stare silently and persistently at visitors as they enter and exit the space. Project / Duration: performance / 4 consecutive weekends Offshoots / Duration: NA Trace objects: painted triangular amulets Data Tents (performance-objects) Nsumi will invent, test, and patent a type of sound-muffling canvas tent that creates quiet spaces within frenetic underground parties; we will exhibit three tent models in the Whitney Highline along with documentary footage of the tents in action. Project / Duration: display of tents / 3 months; party actions / 4 months Offshoots / Duration: tents given away to research-based collectives / duration unknown Trace objects: drawings, sketches, images, recorded interviews with people inside the tents

Taxi Service (installation-service) Nsumi will organize an alternative transportation network that operates via word of mouth for those who know the combination of secret signals; the service will shuttle people and objects around the city in exchange for art, money, or referrals; for the Whitney Highline we will build a full service garage, dispatch system, and online tracking bot. Project / Duration: taxies and garage operational / 6 months Offshoots / Duration: fleet is made permanent pending successful test-runs / semi-permanent Trace objects: images, video, devices Bus to Nowhere (video installation) Bus to nowhere is a potential new MTA bus line that glides around the city with no starting or ending points, no schedule, no planned stops and no route; the drivers drive wherever their whims lead them; for the Whitney Highline we will project a video that simulates a full shift of a B2N bus going through its route; we will issue public pronouncements and lobby city officials to support and launch the new bus line during the show. Project / Duration: video installation / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: new bus route added to the NYC transportation system / permanent Trace objects: interviews with bus drivers, images, persuasive visual documents and tools Kettle Hoppers (installation with projections / actions) Kettle hoppers is an ad-hoc group of people who wait by dangerous intersections and offer help to little old ladies and grandpas who need assistance crossing the street; this act is done in a reserved, straightforward and courtly manner; for the Whitney Highline we will project silent black & white films of the Kettle Hoppers in action, within a felt cocoon. Project / Duration: intersection actions / 6 months; installation / 3 months Offshoots / Duration: Kettle Hoppers spread and grow Trace objects: sketches

Mood is defined as a conscious state of mind or predominant emotion (as feeling), a prevailing attitude (as disposition), a receptive state of mind predisposing to action, or a distinctive atmosphere or context; mood is usually considered a byproduct of something else_a secondary element. By smiling (and revealing teeth), pursing the lips, grimacing, or keeping the lips clenched, a person can set the mood for a social situation. Identifiable in briefly exposed faces at three hundred feet, smiles project an intense emotional beam that can attract, repulse, excite, and horrify an observer. Synchronized Smiling Involves sculpting moods in public sites where smilers have been coordinated and deployed. Smilers in this context are people with amazingly refreshing, natural and delightful smiles, who roam throughout the city in small packs, and who have learned to synchronize their infectious smiles like laser beams. Smilers cluster in tight, corporate spaces, such as retail shops, sidewalks and restaurants, where they warp out the moods found in these spaces.

Mass Smiling Experiments

Beaming
In beaming, smiling is coded through the use of flexible scripts. Scripts help to modulate the speed, repeat-rate, duration and quality of smiles. By constraining the natural flow of smiles inserted into a space, coding encourages a subtle, yet distinctive, sculpting of mood. Beaming is about teasing and playing with mood; about suspending the viewers perception of reality by re-working a space and the objects and actions that take place (or that are expected to take place) within a space, resulting in psychologically rich atmospheres. Spaces are augmented and elasticized; patterns of behavior are dissolved and reconstituted; objects are changed (enhanced) or introduced, sounds are modified (subtly, invisibly); motion is accelerated and delayed. Beaming flips foreground and background, focusing on communicational pathways, social atmosphere, and the fundamentally emotional nature of human spaces. Such a strategy is participatory (the producer/viewer divide is fluid) and based in part on the circle, or feedback loop. For the Whitney Highline we will conduct smiling castings, seminars, and training sessions in a purposebuilt installation. The installation will feature silent film projections, schematic drawings, and smiling

wallpaper. The installation will be designed by the smilers and will embody the ethos and aesthetic of mass smiling. We will help form temporary beaming tribes to fan out into lower Manhattan for synchronized smiling experiments.

Lets Paint TV Self Replicating Caf/Juice Bar (Prototype)

Lets Paint TV is a hybrid Los Angeles public access TV show and Internet phenomenon. The show features host John Kilduff teaching viewers how to paint through live demonstrations, exercising on a treadmill, hosting special guests (who play music or pose for his painting), mixing blended drinks, and taking live calls from audience members. The bizarre sight of an artist simultaneously jogging, painting, blending drinks and chatting to guests and painting live models has led some to speculate that the whole show is an ironic piece of performance art. Kilduff denies this and states that he is completely sincere in trying to encourage people to do something creative. (Wikipedia) Nsumi will collaborate with John to creative-direct several Lets Paint episodes. Nsumi will act as an agent recruiting collectives or negotiating their formation via the show and will provide talent (guests) and ideas for types of guests such as triplets, cross-eyed models, animal trainers, and sad poets. Nsumi will locate especially quirky & gifted art students to be interviewed on the show, tying in with our art school research work. The art students will create artwork for or during the show and/or guest cocreative-direct some episodes. Nsumi may also create video material and other sorts of artwork including designs, graphics, & sounds, to enfold into the program as product placements. We may also cast smilers on the show for synchronized smiling experiments. For the Whitney Highline we will project videos of Lets Paint TV within a replica of the shows studio-set including actual props and costumes. Next to this we will install an unusual tri-level juice bar/caf, which will be accessible from an entrance along 10th Avenue. The aesthetics and programming of the caf will mirror the messages and methods of the Lets Paint TV program. After the show, the caf will transfer into the city as a permanent, apparently conventional business. Its business plan however will call for it to mutate, grow, and operate in unusual ways. Staff meetings will

include performances and perceptual experiments. Events taking place in the caf, its hours, staffing, and interior design will change and flow in mysterious ways. A support network of caf baristas from 500 cafes will extend from coast to coast like an enormous spiders web.

Maze Makers
Maze Makers are an experimental collective who transform industrial artist lofts into complex maze spaces and catacombs. Puncturing through walls, floors and rooftops, the maze-makers spin buildings into livable sculptures with deep coves and hiding places, secret rooms, trap doors, platforms, revolving walls and gang-planks. Individual living units of the affected buildings are dissolved. A loft building that once contained 8 units of 3000 sq/ft each transforms into a much larger labyrinth with dozens of nooks, turns, shoots, tunnels, doors, skylights, and collaborative spaces. For the Whitney Highline Nsumi will initiate a maze-maker collective. The Maze-Makers will rework a section of the Whitney Highline space into a massive catacomb structure, within which people can crawl around, explore, hang out, or make things. Model-making supplies will be provided so those inspired to do so can make mini-maze models within the larger maze. A nearby tool-shed will enable construction workers to alter the structure in collaboration with the maze-makers and interested guests. A video will be made of the process, the after-process, the resulting mazes, as well as process drawings, spin-off objects and scale models.

Monster Bicycle

Nsumi will collaborate with biking enthusiasts, engineers, acrobats, welders, Freecycle organizers, and designers from Transportation Alternatives to build a 26 person monster bicycle. At 35 feet high, 80 feet long, 45 feet wide, and with 18 wheels, Monster Bicycle can only be used on roads at least 4 lanes wide, such as freeways, boulevards, main drags, runways, and open plains. Monster Bicycle will be composed of bicycles and bike parts, flashing lights, flags, noisemakers, hardware, and mechanical devices. Hand-cut metallic tape will encircle the bikes frame causing lightshows at night. Monster Bicycle will include a drawbridge-like gate to allow cars to pass through its belly at the discretion of its riders. Additional telescoping devices will shoot up into the air and sideways to make the bike appear larger than it really is. With modifications Monster Bicycle will double as a hot air balloon launcher and as a structural frame for elaborate electronic equipment set-ups for flash festivals, raves, and large-scale rituals.

For the Whitney Highline Nsumi will display Monster Bicycle on a special slow-motion rotating platform with theatrical lighting system, scented gels, and exit ramp. We will organize rides around the city in relation to current events and happenings.

Doodle Marathons
Nsumi will organize several public doodle marathons bringing together the citys oddballs, artists, characters, loners, do-gooders, and doodle-geeks. Modeled after the classic American depression-era dance marathons of the 1920s and 30s, doodle-marathons will be hyped and promoted widely, raising awareness about drawing, and the social value of collaborative doodling. For the Whitney Highline we will organize a series doodle marathons, which will be documented. We will collect doodles from these events for exhibition in a special reflective tank in the museum space. The tank will include several powerful projectors, drawing stations, and a doodle intake box. We will make fast moving animations based on the collected doodles to be projected from the reflective tank onto the surrounding gallery walls. The Images will flash at the precise intervals as the pakka-pakka flashing lights that induced seizure in thousands in Japanese citizens on December, 1997, at 6:30pm, during a broadcast of the Dennou Senshi Porigon (Computer Warrior Polygon) Pokmon episode. In this episode, Pikachu and its human friends Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi, have an adventure that leads inside a computer. About twenty minutes into the program, the gang encounters a fighter named Polygon. A battle ensues, during which Pikachu uses his electricity powers to stop a "virus bomb." The animators depict Pikachu's electric attack with a series of intense flashes...

At about 6:51, the flashing lights filled the screens. By 7:30, according to the Fire-Defense agency, 618 children had been taken to hospitals complaining of various symptoms. News of the attacks shot through Japan, and it was the subject of media reports later that evening. During the coverage, several stations replayed the flashing sequence, whereupon even more children fell ill and sought medical attention. The number affected by this "second wave" is unknown.

Doctors said that children "went into a trance-like state, similar to hypnosis, complaining of shortness of breath, nausea, and bad vision . . ." (Snyder 1997). According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, "Victim's families reported that children passed out during the broadcast, went into convulsions, and vomited" (Yomiuri Shimbun 1997b).
Although experts disagree on the total number of victims involved in the incident, news accounts stated that around 12,000 children were sickened and more than 700 had seizures and/or were hospitalized. Today we understand this event as an important case of mass hysteria, fueled by mainstream media news reports. Within the installation, the computer-calibrated flashing lights will be too dangerous to approach unprotected, and so Nsumi will provide safety goggles for visitors to wear. The goggles will hang on pegs just outside the gallery and be made up of the melted plastic from dozens of discarded TV sets, collected from area reuse stations. Small Pokmon shaped peepholes will be laser-cut in the walls of the room containing the installation, so visitors can experience the beauty of the flashing lights in safety. Those who choose to venture inside the gallery will need to make special arrangements with Nsumi. http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/news/pokemon.htm http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-05/pokemon.html

Partylab
Partylab is a think tank and testing space for new types & forms of social revelry and ecstatic dance, commonly known as parties. Most contemporary parties are formatted around antiquated modes of social organization. People overlay contemporary themes and decorations onto these outdated forms as a way to mask their underlying structure, yet the basic procedures remain as they always have: Predictable. Partylab explores new options.

What if parties could evolve and develop over months or even years, occurring at numerous locations at once with synchronized elements, involving thousands of people?
For the Whitney Highline, Nsumi will bring together inventive, experimental and visionary party designers, planners, artists and craft-workers to form a temporary

collective that reinvents the common house, apartment, and loft party. We will consider the aesthetics and history of various party types including subway parties, after parties, birthday parties, office parties, spontaneous parties, surprise parties, roof parties, pagan revelry, garden parties, dinner parties, potlucks, raves, and so on. We will research common party forms from around the world at different historical periods and brainstorm how parties might be, and ought to be, now and into the future. Within the Whitney Highline we will build a large walk-in spherical shed within which Partylab will display its schematic drawings, objects, video sketches, and other R&D materials. Next to the shed we will test full party prototypes and party elements in a full scale stage-set with build shop, and suspension bridge. The party prototyper will include theatrical lighting, smoke and disco machines, couches, fabrics,

movable wall sections, reflectors, domestic tools, mold-making station, costumes, circus props, art supplies, decorations, paints, industrial scale kitchen, beds and bedding, hardware, noisemakers, stereo systems, music equipment, and sound absorption panels. Surrounding the shed and prototyping space will be a round 4000 sq/ft shag carpet topped with massive multi-person pillows.

Partylab
Partylab is a think tank and testing space for new types & forms of social revelry and ecstatic dance, commonly known as parties. Most contemporary parties are formatted around antiquated modes of social organization. People overlay contemporary themes and decorations onto these outdated forms as a way to mask their underlying structure, yet the basic procedures remain as they always have: Predictable. Partylab explores new options.

What if parties could evolve and develop over months or even years, occurring at numerous locations at once with synchronized elements, involving thousands of people?
For the Whitney Highline, Nsumi will bring together inventive, experimental and visionary party designers, planners, artists and craft-workers to form a temporary

collective that reinvents the common house, apartment, and loft party. We will consider the aesthetics and history of various party types including subway parties, after parties, birthday parties, office parties, spontaneous parties, surprise parties, roof parties, pagan revelry, garden parties, dinner parties, potlucks, raves, and so on. We will research common party forms from around the world at different historical periods and brainstorm how parties might be, and ought to be, now and into the future. Within the Whitney Highline we will build a large walk-in spherical shed within which Partylab will display its schematic drawings, objects, video sketches, and other R&D materials. Next to the shed we will test full party prototypes and party elements in a full scale stage-set with build shop, and suspension bridge. The party prototyper will include theatrical lighting, smoke and disco machines, couches, fabrics,

movable wall sections, reflectors, domestic tools, mold-making station, costumes, circus props, art supplies, decorations, paints, industrial scale kitchen, beds and bedding, hardware, noisemakers, stereo systems, music equipment, and sound absorption panels. Surrounding the shed and prototyping space will be a round 4000 sq/ft shag carpet topped with massive multi-person pillows.

Nsumi Games
For the Whitney Highline Nsumi will invent a suite of interventionist board games, distinguished by the serious life-altering consequences in store for those who play them. By Interventionist we refer to the exhibition The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere, which took place at the MASS MOCA museum in 2004/05. According to the MASS MOCA website- interventionist art trespasses into the everyday world (it) interrupts, and co-opts act(ing) subtlety or with riotous fanfare Nsumi Games extend interventionist art into the domain of cooperative gaming.

The Games
Code system is a game in which art collectives develop minimalist languages and codes to use while organizing projects. These codes can be spoken, symbolic, written, or a combination of the three. Homespun codes add texture to creative discussions. Each game of Code System lasts for approximately twoyears and results in the birth of a proprietary new language. Flyerboard is a public art game involving bulletin boards and flyers of the sort commonly found in art districts, college campuses, and small towns. Players manipulate and augment the information flowing across the posting boards, which they will adopt. New boards will be added. Existing boards will be refurbished or expanded. Players will organize secret associations of Flyerboard board minders. Flyerboard focuses attention on the increasing suppression of bulletin boards and other free forms of immediate, low-impact and community media. Free love board game is a multi-player board game in which small intimate networks form, develop, mutate, and drift into other networks. At advanced levels of game play, complex multi-party relationships develop with varying degrees of intensity and longevity. Free Love Board Game melts away inhibitions and shyness. Key Swappers is a hybrid game and mass cooperation system. As the game is played, artists link their lofts together to form distributed productive networks, some open, and some secret. Materials, resources and even living spaces will be shared, swapped, rotated, and combined.

For the Whitney Highline these games will be exhibited and played within a carpeted waveform space that curls and bobs across the gallery. Game stations will be scattered around the waveform creating places for gamers to explore the games while making new friends. Area art collectives who want to play the games will be given game sets to take back to their collective spaces.

Bench Factory
Great cities are filled with places to sit and watch the world float bysuch as benches. Benches create social opportunities. They allow for a more careful observation of street life, provide respite for the elderly and infirm, and facilitate poetic thinking. With these thoughts in mind, Nsumi will design and launch a bench factory to produce benches to scatter around neighborhoods where benches are needed most. We will negotiate with shopkeepers and building owners to place benches in front of their properties. Other benches will simply be scattered around. We will design and execute a road show to teach others how to organize and operate temporary bench factories, extending the work in unknown directions. For the Whitney Highline, we will construct a fully operational bench factory a living installation. People can drop by to help make benches, adopt a bench for their block, or hang out with the bench builders in the factorys elaborate, multi-level club house.

Curricula Machine
Nsumi will collaborate with collectives, educators and students to create a phantom art school that operates without a budget and sustains itself for 20 years. This school will be made up of five complex interventions focused on the fine arts education industry. A corresponding installation at the Whitney Highline will create a public interface for the work a social hub where educators, students and artists can come together for classes and groupwork. The motivation to create such a school stems from Nsumis ongoing research into art schools, their methods, programming, history, and pedagogical wanderings.

Interventions
An invisible network of educators: Nsumi will quietly embed educators within target art schools to realize shadow majors and shadow curricula, mentoring loops, phantom-courses, and pedagogical happenings. These programs will overlay onto existing schools creating a third pattern level of communication beyond descriptions, analysis and pedagogy. The teachers will have no prior affiliation with the host schools, but will be selected and placed to compliment the existing mix of faculty at each institution. The teachers will not have administrative approval for this work from their host school administrators, yet they will become, socially,

The Hampshire College Media Yurt

intellectually, and aesthetically intertwined with the participating studentsproducing real objects, teaching real courses in art studios and cafes, and publishing journal articles based on the resulting research.

Research pods: Research pods are guerrilla social-research stations for the homedomestic data facilitators and collectors that attach to walls and enable people to conduct sophisticated research from their livings rooms.

Research pods facilitate independent information gathering that is more accurate, honest, and useful for everyday people than commercial mass media news and information sources. Research pods are not alternative media, they are instruments for directly gathering raw data, which can be distilled into findings, data-sets, reports, and projections. Home school system: Nsumi will launch an experimental artist-driven home school program for families who choose to keep their children away from the mainstream education system. Nsumi will commission artists with appropriate experience to develop modules for traditional middle and secondary school subjects math, history, politics, and so on. For example Mathew Barney & Bjork could design the physical education and music modules. Floating dorm galleries: Galleries can be imagined that exist within interstitial space. Floating Dorm galleries are living social sculptures that art students engage while living in dorms and off-campus houses. Such galleries will be nebulous, shifting and unsanctioned. At first, students curate shows in and around their friends dorm rooms. Later, as they transition out of the dorms, they spread the galleries off campus. Floating dorm galleries harvest, port, and transform the ambient sexual desires of art students into curatorial action. Many American art schools have art houses surrounding the neighborhoods containing the schools main campuses. Art houses are multi-unit off campus houses where art students cluster, creative cliques form, and festivities unfold. Floating galleries will overlay onto art school dorms and off campus art houses creating social combines that activate and amplify the art school experience. Syllabi book: Syllabi are massings of knowledge. Nsumi will research and compile a book of the most experimental and unique syllabi coming out of art schools. The process of traveling from school to school, meeting and speaking with professors and collecting their syllabi will seed the larger work before it begins. Public installation: A 150 foot whiteboard (the worlds largest) will sprawl throughout the Whitney Highline space, covering thousands of square feet, curling and swooping in odd directions and forming

dozens of ad-hoc open classrooms. The whiteboard will contain calculations, schematic drawings and graphics detailing aspects of the project, as well as information on the various classes offered. The classrooms will be made available to any art teacher or student in the New York City metropolitan area.

The Beast Turns in on Itself

The Beast Turns in on Itself is a performance-campaign of perpetual influence and persuasion involving several charismatic groups. Nsumi will make sweeping and systematic changes to the member recruitment patterns and programming of these groups, some of which are thought to be cultic in nature. We will do so through careful recalibration of the rituals and indoctrination sequencing that occurs as a part of the thought reform process. Any changes made would be subtle, exacted with delicacy and care, and orchestrated in accordance and awareness of the groups leadership, members, and supporters. Nsumi will take into account the fragility of the situation. We will seek to liberate the thinking and freedom of mind of everyone involved, while respecting the perspective of the religious leaders whose roll is to nurture and clarify the hive mind of each group.

Possible sequences - Nsumi may reorient the perceptions of the recruiters from an especially colorful group, for example Adi-da, towards a corresponding group, prompting a small scale, non-violent religious war between the two. A pair of quazi-cults could swap sympathizers in a kind of cultural exchange. Corporate cults and pyramid schemes could join forces with a psychoanalytic meeting to form a collaborative fashion design lab. The recruiters from dozens of high growth religious groups could be focused in on the American university Greek system, prompting dramatic changes within fraternities and sororities nationwide. Nsumi will bring members of several NYC area mind-reform groups together for lively discussions and collaborations. We will meet on a giant lime green couch in the shape of the infinity

Images: From left to right/top to bottom: Rael, leader of the Raelians and the Cloneaid human cloning corporation; Da Free John, leader

sign in the Whitney Highline space. We will organize an archive of fashion, design, found objects and ready-mades collected from area compounds and places of experimental worship.

Afterlife
Nsumi will develop and launch a prototype non-profit artist-run funerary system that serves creative communities. A funerary system of this sort negates the need for traditional funeral parlor services, while encouraging discussion on the nature and mortality, death, and creative life-cycles. The system, called Afterlife, will consist of a large customizable rubberized box plus programming and archives. The archives collect and store the important artifacts and documents of the participating artists. While still living, artists can design their own funerals and surrogate happenings, including rituals, music, speeches and actions, to be delivered by the artists friends or community volunteers. A memorial fund will raise money for some of the more complex afterlife requests. The black box corresponds to the white box of the gallery as well as the emergency black box flight recorders used on airplanes. For the Whitney, a large scale model of the box will become the centerpiece of an installation that includes abstract music, sample funerary scripts, and artifacts from several recently deceased artists, including the American futurist James Daugherty*. We will organize 3 funerals for artists who die during the course of the show.
James Daugherty mural detail, University of Connecticut at Stamford Library, Stamford Connecticut

* Daugherty is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum.

Weathersect (Network Incubator)

Nsumi proposes a sprawling 20,000 sq/ft. temporary indoor city in the Whitney Highline space populated by collectives, ad-hoc networks, temporary projects and curators from outer-borough art spaces. Each invited person or group will spawn their own sub-networks within the space as a part of the show. The city will have its own river powered by a solar current-propulsion system, a solarium, multiple intersecting lounges, enhanced nature experiments on the roof, a rabbit colony, plants & flowers, spaces for singing, reuse kiosks, green-walls, air scrubbers, digital workstations, letter writing desks, a shepherd for the livestock, and a small art house cinema. Throughout the city visionary tree-houses and sprawling hand-made carpets will create a patchwork of zones and clusters. A multicolored tube system will connect the zones. Hiding places for quiet conversations and discussion pods, bathed in mood lighting, will be scattered around the gallery, forming spaces nested within other spaces. The lounges will host creative think tanks and design-jams. Seeds will be scattered throughout the 20 blocks surrounding the museum in the form of a giant galaxy swirl. Subway box drummers will give synchronized performances once a week throughout the space. A private entrance will shoot out of the side of the building through an unmarked door. Over time, the city will offshoot numerous collectives, networks and micro-communities as the groups and people who meet through the show continue to hatch collective ideas, situations and collaborative projects. These social connections will be mapped along an enormous scroll for the next 50 years and returned to the Whitney Museum in 2058.

Air Rights
Nsumi will launch an experimental real estate collective that develops cooperative artists housing blocks that float above existing buildings within the unused pockets of air between the rooftops and the clouds. Beginning with cookie-cutter, corporate, brutalist and international style structures, housing projects and other urban slab forms, the collective will spin cobweb-like organiforms, crystalline sheaths, chill-out pods and mud towers, creating a vigorous new architecture that sprouts. The resulting forms will combine living vegetation with digital technology. Honeycomb walls, straw-bails, turbines, green-roofs, cybernetic workshops, medieval design, performance incubators, and illuminated glass will overlap and play off each other. For the Whitney Highline we will develop and launch the collective, working out of a custom designed straw-bail/mud office behind a curtain wall of fluorescent glass. The office will be adjacent to and visible from the 10th Avenue sidewalk. Digital projections of our designs in progress will project onto the illuminated glass from behind the mud, clearly visible from the sidewalk. Open bi-weekly potlucks for the public will blend idea-jamming, socializing, home cooking, and discussions about the state of artist housing in New York City.

Lightning Chasers
Nsumi will help launch a small group of lightning survivors who convene during storms to make small abstract models. The models depict patterns observed by the Chasers within the storms. They will be displayed in a shiny minimalist jewel case in front of a real-time lightning wall that omits electronic flashes as lightning bolts are discharged around the world. We will organize social events and educational forums focused on the metaphorical dimensions of lightning strike survival.

Puff
Puff is a community-scale bed can accommodate up to 60 people comfortably. The bed is round, 150 feet across at its widest point, and made with extremely soft materials. It has an extra sleeping area below the main level forming a cushy tunnel system, which is padded on all sides. Puff is not meant to encourage promiscuity, however emotional intimacy and experimentation are welcomed. A system of adjustable quilted pockets creates mini spaces and coves throughout the bed.

Group Scarves
Nsumi will knit a series of beautiful 90 foot long fuzzy wool, silk and mohair scarves. Each scarf will be suitable to use by an entire art collective or micro-community at the same time. We will display the scarves in loose plumes around the Whitney space. The scarves will double as beds, chairs, security blankets and temporary sculptures.

Reuse Kiosks

Reuse kiosks are small customizable units for collecting and redistributing unwanted stuff consumer reusables. They are like tiny reuse centers, scaled for use in individual buildings and small towns. Social events and happenings will occur around the kiosks, which will be outfitted with pull down seats, minitables and other amenities. For the Whitney Highline we will display several kiosk models in conjunction with Freecycle NYC.

3x3
Nsumi will paint a huge triangle on the floor of the Whitney Highline with soft ovals at the points. On the ovals will stand three sets of triplets, each group identically dressed. The nine triplets will stare in silence at the museum visitors as they enter (and then quickly leave) the triangle.

Data Tents
Data tents are portable fabric sheds you can bring to underground loft parties to use for discussions and interviews in the midst of the chaos. The sheds will be soundproofed. They will create ruptures in the experience of the party for those who use them. For the Whitney Highline we will design and display three Data Tents. We will also display photographs taken in and around the tents in action at several parties.4

Taxi-Service
Taxi Service is an alternative transportation network that shuttles people and large objects to destinations in exchange for art, a small fee, or referral information (it runs through word of mouth). It can also function as an underground bus route, stopping for those who learn the secret wave or wear the correct pin for collective transportation on a path determined by anything from unusual sites to art destinations. This Taxi Service acts in parallel with a web platform, mobilizing nomadic, temporary occupants

alongside a growing network of online documentation and community tracing. The fleet of unusual taxis is housed at the Whitney Highline with a computer for uploading information on the growing word of mouth/referral network.

B2N: Bus to Nowhere

Bus to Nowhere is an installation that imagines a new MTA bus line that drives around the city without a route, schedule, or any planned stops. Every ride is unique and different. The drivers drive wherever their whims lead them and passengers enter and depart the buses wherever they choose. Bus to Nowhere is envisioned as a permanent Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus line, with one bus assigned to each borough, although busses may drift from borough to borough. Bus to Nowhere would operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Anyone with a valid Metrocard would be able to access the line. Bus to Nowhere busses would look the same as other MTA buses except for their unique B2N route number. For the Whitney Highline we will project a digital video that depicts a full shift of a Bus to Nowhere bus in real time, on the side of a customized (junked) MTA bus. The videos point of view will oscillate from the drivers perspective to rooftop views of the bus rounding corners, pulling into and out of stops, and zooming here and there throughout the city. Nsumi will negotiate with MTA executives and city officials for the run of the show, seeking to launch a 2week beta test of the line so as to gage public interest.

Kettle Hoppers
Kettle hoppers wait by dangerous intersections and offer help to little old ladies and grandpas who need assistance in crossing the street. This action is undertaken in a reserved, straightforward and courtly manner. For the Whitney Highline we will project silent B&W films of the Kettle Hoppers in action within a purple felt cocoon. We will bring elderly neighborhood folk into the space to talk about traffic intersection safety and related concepts.

 Lee Wells / IFAC November 20, 2007 Whitney Highline Proposal #1 The United Nations of Brooklyn Abstract Curate a multi-media exhibition that would include 192 artists representing each of the Member States of the United Nations. Each artist must be a resident of Brooklyn for at least one year and have a direct ancestry to the representing country. By organizing such an exhibition it would positively raise attention to the diverse international creative identity of Brooklyn and help define and enrich the important 21st century artistic heritage of this community. Whitney Highline Proposal #2 Dealers are Artists Too Abstract Curate a multi-media exhibition and historical survey of artworks created by New York City art dealers, curators, critics, advisors and museum professionals. This exhibition will create insight into the community of arts professionals that define what we see publicly through the massive infrastructure of institutional and commercial establishments that represent the driving forces behind the international art world in the United States. Whitney Highline Proposal #3 Open Collaborative Art Exchange Abstract Curate a collaborative exhibition where Artists will be invited to submit finished artworks (based on a predetermined size), which then would be assigned, through a random process, to other artists exhibiting to be reworked multiple times across the period of the exhibition. The process would be documented professionally through photography and would become part of the work. This exhibition would call into question authorship and ego. After a predetermined time the finished artworks will be exhibited and auctioned off with all monies being donated to a qualified arts related charity.

Documenting one day a year Daniel Blochwitz In 1960, the East German author Christa Wolf followed an open call to authors around the globe by a Soviet newspaper to describe the day September 27th. She did so for over 40 years and recently published A Day a Year: 1960-2000. I would like to propose a show as an archive of peoples documentation of their one day by whatever means they deem appropriate, e.g. video, writing, photography, audio recording, and drawing. The day could be September 27th, in direct reference to Christa Wolf, or any other chosen day. The consequent exhibition of gathered recorded materials would display individual experiences of every-day life. At the same time, the fact that the one day was chosen collectively elevates the personal onto a broader, a social level somewhat an imitation of the workings in any given society. The sum of personal experiences and decisions make up the dynamic of society. Also, the heightened self awareness, the living of the moment through the need to report about it, contains a utopian element, one of empathy, hope and reflection. Ideally, this project should be repeated every year thereafter. A good place to archive this in the long-run would be the web. Contributing to an imagined world Daniel Blochwitz This project would call upon all people willing to contribute to a vision of a decidedly non-capitalist society in which human relations are truly emancipated and the economy socially and ecologically sustainable. Rather than relying on one "author" to propose a theory for a future economy, political system and society, we call on experts and amateurs of all fields of inquiry to contribute their visions, ideas, problem solutions, theories, proposals, research results, etcetera. This should be a truly multidisciplinary project with equal access, preferably in a wiki-site-like online environment. Users can add and edit content freely according to the project objectives. It would be constantly open to peer-review. Contributors understand that there is no personal gain to be made from this project other than the merit of working collectively on an "utopia" - a new vision for a better, sustainable, non-violent and just world. This project could be kicked off with an exhibition by a large group of artists and non-artists providing a first glimpse into what they imagine a better world would look like. This can take any form of visual and written material and should be edited/curated into an effective presentation.

A CRASH PAD IN NEW YORK Concept: Alan Moore Coordinator of painting: Neil Bender Web cast: thing.net Hospitality: American Youth Hostels To commemorate the time of the hippies, when hospitality was freely offered in major cities nationwide to a generation of nomadic young people a working image of this moment is devised. A matrix of single bed mattresses laid beside one another -- at least five by five, 15 by 30 feet. Each mattress is painted (covered) with an image of hospitality. A web camera is mounted above, framing the entire matrix. When people are sleeping on it, a painting is invisible, covered by a body and bedding. When they are not, it may be seen.

Multimedia Performance/Exhibition Space Thomas Hutchison As a continuation of my previous installation, Resource Distribution Center/Economic Research Room (Long Island City 2007), I propose this site-specific environment with several alterations to be composed on a more grandiose scale. To begin, the skeletal wooden structure will be modified from its original form, so it fills an entire building as opposed to a portion of a room. The structure will be contingent with the shape of a softly-sloping earthen mound, able to be traversed on top of as well as entered into and explored via an opening in the exterior top portion of the structure. The canvas exterior utilized in the previous installation will be replaced with a mud-like mixture composed of sand and earth, acting as an organic shell exterior to the wooden infrastructure. As the viewer comes through the exterior building entrance way, the exhibition space will appear to be filled with a soft upwardly-sloping mound of dirt that flattens at the top and extends to the back of the space. As the viewer climbs over the peak of the mound, they will encounter an entrance to a cavernous space below. Housed within the earthen structure are a multitude of rooms and open spaces accessible only through the aforementioned entrance at the top exterior of the mound. Once inside the interior is to possess a cavern-like feel, offering the viewer an exhibition space nesting within another. The cavern is to be broken up into a number of interconnected rooms instead of one singular room-like space depicted in the previous installation. The interior will be used to house a multi-media exhibition involving sculpture, performance, lighting/sound environments, video elements and photography. The video will be projected or displayed on monitors that are inlaid into the walls, while the photographs will be displayed on tables and in display cases made with the same organic materials as the surrounding structure. The performances and lighting/sound environments will be scheduled throughout the span of the exhibition and will be held in an event space in the far rear of the cavern. Sculptural pieces will also be incorporated throughout the exhibition space. The works in the show will be related to foreign policy and colonial/economic aspirations of the United States from Reagan to the second Bush administration.
Figure 1_Back Exterior Figure 2_Front Entrance Figure 3_View From Entrance

Multimedia Performance/Exhibition Space Thomas Hutchison

COPYCAT: An Exploration in Imitation and Appropriation Lara Star Martini Everything is derivative. Art, literature, science, all building upon itself in what Foucault and Marx would go on about as a cultural hegemony. The question arises, amidst this philosophical scrum, where does the fine line between derivation and innovation lay? The distinction is important because it defines what it is original, or to what level we view originality. The test is to see if anything is original, and what that means to us as artists, and for the viewer as the consumer of memes. The proposal is a test. Artists will pair off, in teams of two or more, and copy from another artist in the group. Artists will work with people who they feel connected to- either they work in a similar manner or they work with the same themes and ideas. An artist will have a master work. They will hand it over to another artist and that artist will have to copy it in whichever manner they see fit. If it is a photograph, they need to recreate the photograph in whatever capacity they can. If it is a video, they need to make another video similar to that one. Whatever the final product is, it must be in an attempt to copy the work. Artists have been inspiring artists for centuries. One idea builds form a previous one. Every portrait that is painted has a history and an influence from every single portrait that has come before it, though we may fail to realize it. Art has a way of seeping in, as if through a cultural osmosis. We see things and store them in our memory, and we rely on that memory to work with us while we think and create often unconsciously. My hypothesis is this: The artists hand will show. This may seem counter intuitive, but regardless of what happens to the work - its being copied, its being innovated, etc., the originality of the original will shine through. As such, work will not be labeled as to which is the original and which was ostensibly forged. Leaving it, ultimately, to the viewer to decide which work was the original, and which the departure. The works will be shown in groups on the wall. The original artwork will NOT be labeled- no one will know which the first was and which ones are the copies. There could be as many as 5 or 6 other artists working form the same original. I hope to show how artists can be inspired by one another and how artists work in similar ways. Many artists who work in the same materials or similar ideas can be close but still very much individual. It

reminds us of learning, and that even in a class with everyone painting the same still life; ultimately, though they are all realistically painted they will still each be distinct- even if everyone painted them from the same point of view, with the same composition. There will be no limitation on size or medium. Everything will be welcome, but I will be looking to make as diverse a group of work as possible. The importance of this exercise goes beyond imitation, as trade or flattery. It begins to frame the truth of our world. No sooner is art placed into society than it can be changed: Uploaded, downloaded, scanned, poured over by billions, cut and pasted, Photoshopped, copied, adored, and reviled - whose very processes now take less time to actually enact than they do to ponder. In the rude world we find ourselves in the very nature of property has begun to tear free of its Lockeian caul. Art, in markets hereto-fore ruled by the iron hand of scarcity and economics must consider the unthinkable: Bounty, abundance, plenty. So where in this quiet revolution does ownership dwell? Who is the original artist, or the artist who is in fact original? Those questions, and more, are the beating heart of my proposal.

STARTING AT THE END OF THE LINE/Deconstructing the Labyrinth ELIZA FERBACH MEDIUM: VIDEO/ BIODEGRADEABLE PAINT DURATION: LOOP/SITE-SPECIFIC TECH: Video camera, DVD player, speakers. BIODEGRADEABLE TREE MARKING PAINT DESCRIPTION: Each Artistsmeeting collaborator will be invited Paint part of a continuous line that will navigate the Highline site. Each Artist will draw their line as long as they wish and hand over the paint to the next artist. A video document of the line followed in close-up by the camera will be screened on a monitor. Rushing to Your Death? Following on the theme I have been exploring vis--vis the increasing velocity of human travel as accelerated by the information highway, this piece represents and then restrains the speeding line of energy that maps our navigation of a space. The Artistsmeeting Members lines will map their random wanderings at a fast pace and the video document will re-contextualize their trajectories as slow motion vide images. The Whitney Highline is starting at the end of a line that never ends. The train line,

our life lines, our vital signs. The process of drawing a line physically slows the body down, as does the process of following a line. Watching the lines navigation draws a line around the space the viewer is in.

BIOS
G.H. Hovagimyan is an experimental artist working in a variety of forms. He was one of the first artists in New York to start working with the Internet and new media in the early nineties. His work ranges from hypertext works to digital performance art, installations and HD video. Recent Exhibitions: 2006 - Art Basel Miami, New York Video Festival, Video Dumbo, 1800 Frames, 2007 CIRCA 07, PR, Coachella Arts Festival, Kuntsverein Stuttgart (Online), Pocket Films-Centre Pompidou, France. Daniel Blochwitz was born 1973 in what was then East Germany, came to the US in 1995, where he received a BFA (1999) and MFA (2003) degree in photography, before attending the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York (2003-04). He has shown widely in the US and internationally, above all with Martha Rosler and the FLEAS Collective at the 2003 Venice Biennial. His latest solo exhibition, "mixed messages", took place at Safe-T-Gallery in Brooklyn, NY in November 2007. For more, please see Daniel Blochwitz and BorderBlog. Jrme Joy is French composer and improviser. Experimentations and research in live systems, concerts and performances: instrumental, electronics, programming and on-line systems. Involved in various collective and networked projects since 1995, he's continuously working on 'extended music': live music, live radiophony, live cinema, performances. http://joy.nujus.net. Nsumi is an art collective based in New York City and San Francisco. As individuals, Nsumi members work in science, architecture, landscape design, diplomacy, education, and art. As a group we make art, produce exhibitions and operate an experimental consulting agency. The larger idea of Nsumi Consulting is the exploration of the creative capacity of social nets, and their power to grow, flourish and reproduce. We seek to find and nurture new models of social net patterns ones in which a small push" from an artist intervening as an "invisible hand" results in a viral or cathartic, self-perpetuating and regenerative influence. Our work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions and events including at the Queens Museum of Art, Deitch Projects, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Raphaele Shirley lives and works in New York City. She specializes in public art and collaborative projects. [PAM] is her most recent collaboration. She's worked with Nam June Paik in the development of his laser sculptures (1997-2002), Alex Haas and Brian Eno in the creation of "Sanctum". She also was a founding member of the New York International Fringe Festival. She has produced and coordinated

projects such as the experimental club "Show World Art Center" set in a former adult entertainment center in Times Square and "Between Dreams" by Shime Attie/Creative Time. http://www.raphaeleshirley.com Lee Wells is an artist, exhibition organizer and consultant currently living and working New York. His artwork primarily questions systems of power and control and has been exhibited internationally for over 10 years, including the 51st La Biennale Di Venezia, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, The Museo d'arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center. He is a co-founder and director of IFAC-arts, www.ifac-arts.org , an alternative exhibition and installation program for artists and curators. He is co-founder of [PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine. www.perpetualartmachine.com. His projects and exhibitions have been written about by various national and international art and news publications to include: The New York Times, Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, Art in America, and Art Net.Wells is currently a curator at large for Scope Art Fairs www.scope-art.com and site editor emertius for www.rhizome.org.

Bill Dolson works primarily as a New Media Land Artist. Using a variety of techniques including digital photography, videography, computer animation, and computational photography, he creates studies or visualizations for ambitious and daring ephemeral Land Art projects. For a residency solo show at Eyebeam last year he produced HD video studies for a large scale public artwork consisting of synthetic meteor shower staged in the skies over New York City. Bill is currently working with scientists at NASA and Los Alamos National Laboratories to develop the technology required to execute these artworks. Other proposed works include making drawings with clouds, land management prescribed burns, and dust storms. He has also done numerous human-scale installations. The Intersections series features geometric forms colliding with natural landscape. The Trajectories series consist of wall drawings made using lasers and mirrors. The proposal for the Highline Site marks his first direct encounter with architecture and emphasizes the conceptual component of much of his work. He lives in New Mexico and divides his time between there and New York City. http://www.billdolson.com Leesa and Nicole Abahuni are artists and twins based in New York who collaborate on the investigations of the senses through multimedia installations and performance. They have exhibited nationally, and internationally, recent exhibitions include the 6th International Arts Biennial of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; ICA, London; Redux Projects, London; Gallery Mouri, Tokyo; HalfMachine Festival, Copenhagen; Eyebeam, NYC; Siggraph, Los Angeles; D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival, Brooklyn; DAC, Brooklyn; and Location One Gallery, NYC to name a few. Alan Moore has spent most of his life in New York City, writing about art, making it (videos), organizing shows, and studying art's histories. As he travels to teach, he explores local cultural communities and their geographies. He has completed a book manuscript, "Collectivities" on New York City artist groups. Thomas Hutchison is a multi-media artist living and working in New York. Since his graduation from the University of Florida's Electronic Intermedia MFA program in 2004 he has participated in a number of shows including: Inter-Society of Electronic Arts (ISEA) 2007, San Jose Museum of Art, Festa di Cane Bastardo Timberspace, Los Angles, and YMI at Dead End Gallery, Brooklyn.

Chris Borkowksi is a media maker from Buffalo, NY that is now living and working in New York City. He has worked professionally as video editor, network administrator, media arts center Technical Director, and University instructor in digital arts. He has shown work internationally at various galleries and media festivals and has also performed a number of real-time audio and video pieces. He like sunsets and long walks in the park, the shape of pixels, social climbers, hackers, misfits and charlatans. His favorite colors are RGB and finds name dropping and writing his own bio the biggest turn off. http://www.chrisborkowski.com Maria Joo Salema, painter. Born in Mozambique, lived and studied in Lisbon, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY since 2002 . Represented by Modulo Gallery, Lisbon and IFAC New York. www.bluebeauty.org Lara Star Martini is a 25 year old hyper personal self-portrait artist who reigns supreme in the laundering-her-dirty-panties-in-public genre, or so she likes to think. Her work stretches from the ultra banal to the oversexed, in performance, video, installation, and painting, but always revolving around the classic question Who am I? She has shown/performed at the James Cohan Gallery, Tribes Gallery, and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Eliza Fernbach lives and works in Hoboken, NJ and Merigomish, Nova Scotia. She specializes in cinema/installation art and collaborative projects. Currently she is in production on "Rumour Becomes Line", a short film inspired by the poem "!" -written by the Canadian poet Anne Simpson. She has worked with Buck Henry, ("The New Yorker") and recently appeared in Zoe Beloff's film "Charming Augustine". In 2006-7 Eliza was the founding artist-in-residence at Bloomfield College, NJ where she completed the installation "Amaze Labyrinth". The work was a culmination of experiments initiated at the Atlantic Centre for the Arts in New Smyrna Florida. She was the first film director to implement the PAWSTM camera array-(the effect seen in "the Matrix" films) in her short film "Time Suspended". Her one woman show "A Quest for Man" toured Fringe festivals internationally and she continues to draw on her Classical theatre training at the Royal National Theatre in London in her collaborative art and cinema work. Eliza is a member of The Actor's Equity Association, The College Art Association and the Merigomish Equestrian team.http://www.hecticred.net

WHAT IS ARTISTSMEETING BY ARTISTSMEETING

Artist Meeting (A.M.) is a research project and experiment in the development of a local art community. New York City, the capitol of the "art world, primarily driven by its capitalist systems and elitist academic historical baggage continually keep most artists separated. Entering from a million directions, the individual market abused artist is, for the most part, alone and conditioned to overly protect their ideas for fear someone else with more connections or more money will come along and take them as their own. Collectives appear and disappear as artists form temporary autonomous zones for various reasons, usually rooted in the possibility of financial opportunity and/or critical exposure. A.M. seeks to question these structures while simultaneously engaging in a creative dialogue and a supportive environment to discuss topics pertinent to each others work. Lee Wells Part of the creative process is a search for meaning. In the context of an art group sometimes the work is simply defining what we are doing and why we are doing it. There are spheres of meaning that start from the entirely personal to the global media mythos created by electronic networks. It is clear that small social networks that depend on personal contact are nodes that hook into the larger information sphere. Interpersonal meaning, creative energy and realization that issue from a group are shared within the group members and extended into the media sphere. When focusing on a task, group members combine and share their skills. They also carry on where others leave off. G.H. Hovagimyan Art Worlds, much like Artists Meeting, represent amalgams of disparate views, perspectives and feelings about art. This panoply of fact, opinion, words and emotions involve not only objects of art, but also how we interact, create, and learn about ourselves as patterns in the process. From raw clay, clean slates, and blank media, our views, thoughts, and even market forces shape what we make as much as what we make shapes us. Lara Start Martini & James Andrews (Nsumi) Artistmeeting is the attempt to break through forms of current art production that are highly individual, precarious and uncritical, and reconnect to collective practices from former periods. In the process, we would like to challenge cushioned academic and institutional taste-makers, as well as hedonistic spenders who dictate form and content to an irrational market. Our objective is to create, once again, an opportunity for community, critical exchange and mutual support. The collaborative process is as

important as the final work. We want to destroy the myth that collective work is a compromise of ideas rather than the effective combination of multiple minds and experiences. We re-instate social, democratic and political processes in small within a society that slowly drifts apart through omnipresent market forces. If we succeed, even if only in part and temporarily, we demonstrate that another world is possible. We would overcome the obstacles in one of the most capitalist segments of our society, the art world. Daniel Blochwitz

Artistsmeeting is an intersection of people who profess and practice art, and are skilled in one or more of the fine arts. Brought together by chance, circumstance, and a common purpose, Artistsmeeting members gather in person and via technology. Free of commercial influence, participants draw on each others expertise to refine concepts, further experimentation and engage each other in collaboration. Eliza Fernbach

The creation of art in an open context where the public or an artists collective is part of or intervenes in the creative process offers countless possibilities in evolution and outcomes. Yet within this infinite certain constants and patterns of social and interactive dynamics surface which are identifiable and quantifiable. In the case of Artist's Meeting (AM) each artist brings to the table their own perspective, limits and ability to collaborate as each artist chooses freely to forgo or not their own individual voice for that of the group's. With this open policy, AM studies not only collaboration but its limits. The resulting AM works are multiple: objects and concepts, proposals and analyses of the process; for which each member's perspective and desire is left open to influence the overall direction of the group's production resulting in a spectrum of voices ranging from the individual to the collective. Raphaele Shirley

CONTACT

G.H. Hovagimyan 11 Harrison Street, #6 New York, NY 10013 212-219-1148