Augusto de Campos, Poetamenos, 1953

Friday, November 11, 6-8pm 

EFA Project Space, 323 West 39 St, 2nd Floor

In conjunction with Telefone Sem Fio: Word-Things of Augusto de Campos Revisited, Charles A. Perrone (University of Florida) will elaborate on the sixty years of incomparable inter-arts poetics in the multifarious work of Augusto de Campos. As a complement to the exhibition, Perrone will share further examples of portable visual poetry, material lyric, mail art, early digital interpretations, and sound tracks. 

Perrone will be joined by the exhibition curators, and several artist/poets who have contributed new meditations on de Campos’s work.

Charles Perrone  is the author of Brazil, Lyric, and the Americas (2010), Seven Faces: Brazilian Poetry Since Modernism (1996), and Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song:  MPB 1965-1985 (1989).  Augusto de Campos figures prominently in all three.

Wednesday, August 10th 6-9pm                                                                                        @EFA Project Space, 323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor

They took over EFA Project Space’s 3,000 square foot gallery for two weeks last August 2010 to focus on their individual studio practice. In that time, they planned, they drafted, they researched, they constructed, they painted, they edited, they dug, they recorded, and they photographed. Our residents drew inspiration from their previous experience(s) with EFA Project Space, the gallery or their immediate environment, their careers as arts workers, and each artist’s ongoing curiosity in topics of exploration relating to their individual lifestyle and practice. Since the 2010 Residency inception, the residents have continued to meet throughout the year to support each other and share their progress in artistic practice, experimentation, change of direction and their related duties in the arts. 

Now, one year later, EFA Project Space’s inaugural residents would like to share their studio residency experience with you. We know the night’s events will instill a sense of urgency and inspiration in others through these discussions of artistic practice and balancing a life in the arts as arts workers and artists. Please join us on the evening of Wednesday, August 10th for a series of presentations that reflect on what the residents have accomplished, and where they are going. 

For more information about the Studio Residency for New York City Arts Workers, please click here and refer to the 2010 Residency blog.

Matt Kenyon & Doug Easterly, Notepad, 2009

Welcoming curator Joseph DeLappe and discussion panelists Yaelle Amir, Wafaa Bilal, Matt Kenyon, Sayoko Yoshida, and Raul Zamudio

Thursday, October 20, 2011                                                                                   6:30pm                                                                                                                                 

EFA Project Space, 323 W. 39th St., 2nd floor

The panel discussion will be moderated by project director and exhibition curator Joseph DeLappe and include jurors Yaelle Amir and Raúl Zamudio, and artists Wafaa Bilal, Matt Kenyon and Sayoko Yoshida.  A wide-ranging discussion will ensue regarding the efficacy of the conceptualization and realization of contemporary memorials, monuments and counter-monuments to the victims of war.  How do we critically assess the effect of a project such as iraqimemorial.org? What are the pitfalls and possibilities of developing DIY memorial projects? For more information about the exhibition please click here.

Joseph DeLappe is a Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad. He has lectured throughout the world regarding his work, including most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Yaelle Amir is an independent curator and writer based in Brooklyn, NY holding a Research Scholar position at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. Her writing and curatorial projects focus primarily on emerging and mid-career artists whose works meld the creative process with immediate social concerns, with an emphasis on photography, video, and new media. She has curated exhibitions at Artists Space, ISE Cultural Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Nurture Art, and Wallach Art Gallery, among others, and her writing has appeared in numerous art publications including Art in America, ArtLies, ArtSlant, and Sculpture Magazine.

Wafaa Bilal is an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He is known internationally for his on-line performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics. Bilal's work is constantly informed by the experience of fleeing his homeland and existing simultaneously in two worlds – his home in the "comfort zone" of the U.S. and his consciousness of the "conflict zone" in Iraq. He came to the U.S. where he graduated from the University of New Mexico and then obtained an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Matt Kenyon is an Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan where he teaches physical computing, video and 3D animation.  He received his M.F.A in painting from Virginia Commonwealth University, and find interest in the convergence of art, emerging technologies and popular culture. Many of his recent works feature wearable computing technologies and robotics as a means for making cultural critique, including his collaborative projects for S.W.A.M.P.

Sayoko Yoshida is a New York based multidisciplinary designer with a solid graphic design background. She earned her MFA from Parsons The New School for Design in 2009 while working as a Senior Information Designer at Parsons Institute for Information Mapping (PIIM). Sayoko is constantly seeking possibilities to explore new interactive technologies and visualization techniques.

Raúl Zamudio is a New York-based independent curator and writer, and one of the jurors of 2009 Iraqi Memorial.  He has curated over 80 solo and group exhibitions in the Americas, Asia, and Europe including co-curator, "City Without Walls" 2010 Liverpool Biennial; co-curator, Constellations: 2009 Beijing 798 Biennial; artistic director, Garden of Delights: 2008 Yeosu International Contemporary Art Festival; co-curator, Turn and Widen: 2008 Seoul International Media Art Biennial; and co-curator of an official collateral exhibition titled Poles, Apart, Poles Together for the 2005 Venice Biennial.  He is author, co-author, or contributor to more than 50 books and catalogs, and has also published extensively in many periodicals including Trans> Arts Culture Media,  Contemporary, Tema Celeste, zingmagazine, Flash Art, Public Art, La Tempestad, Art in Culture, Journal of the West, [Art Notes], Art Nexus , and Framework: The Finnish Art Review.

Meet the 2011 Studio Residency for NYC Arts Workers Residents

Friday, August 26th

6-9pm                                                                                                                                                                   EFA Project Space, 323 W. 39 St., 2nd Floor

On Friday, August 26th, EFA Project Space will be open for the public to meet our new 2011 residents participating in the 2nd annual Studio Residency for New York City Arts Workers. The residents - Gisela Insuaste, Theresa Marchetta, Douglas Paulson, Roddy Schrock, Chad Stayrook, and David Terry - will be available at their work spaces to discuss their residency experience so far, all ideas for their work, and their artwork on display. Please come by for this special reception to support the program and these influential artists!

The gallery will be reserved for our new residents August 13-28, 2011. Please click on the links for more information on the residency program or here for the 2011 residency blog

Thursday, July 21          

6:30 - 8:30pm                                                                                       

@EFA Project Space, 323 West 39 Street, 2nd Floor

EFA Project Space is excited to host a rare screening of Kon-Tiki in conjunction with Sea Worthy: An Exhibition.  Kon-Tiki, released in 1950, recounts Norwegian biologist-explorer Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 trans-Pacific expedition on Kon-Tiki, a hand built, forty-foot balsa and bamboo raft. The raft was named after Inca sun god Viracocha known in ancient times as Kon Tiki. This expedition aided Heyerdahl's theory that people from South America were able to settle Polynesia in pre-Columbian times by using simple-construction rafts, like Kon-Tiki, to navigate the Pacific Ocean via the Humboldt Current and easterly trades.

The Floating Neutrinos, "Son of Town Hall"

Thursday, June 16

6:30- 8:30 pm

@EFA Project Space, 323 West 39 Street, 2nd Floor

In conjunction with the Sea Worthy exhibition, EFA presents Take to the Water! an evening of presentations and conversation focusing on three significant creative movements that involve the rejection of land-based conventions in order to establish platforms for new possibilities on the ubiquitous waterways.  Join us as Constance Hockaday shares stories of her work with the Floating Neutrinos, Swoon talks about her activities with Miss Rockaday Armada and the sea-borne Swimming Cities collective, and Mary Mattingly describes the vision and realization of the Waterpod project. Following the presentations, Sea Worthy curatorial team member Dylan Gauthier will lead a discussion and talk-back with the artists.

May 17 - May 28, 2011
Reception: Thursday, May 26, 6pm - 8pm
Public Viewing: Friday, May 27 - Saturday, May 28, 2011, 12pm - 6pm

Led by: Huong Ngo and Hong-An Truong 

Acting the Words is Enacting the World is a two week-long experiment in radical modes of education. Working with a group of young people aged 16-20, Truong and Ngo will conduct a series of intensive workshops that explore the economy from a perspective of philosophy, history, and art. This project approaches collaborative art-making and radical education through Augusto Boal’s theater techniques, using performance as a mode of knowledge transfer through an activation of spectators as actors.

With Acting the Words is Enacting the World, EFA Project Space begins a series of projects built around the concept of the Artist / Organizer. This series will highlight the activities of individuals who, through the act of organizing, pioneer the evolution of our creative landscape. Artist / Organizers are artists by nature who feel compelled to organize - to readdress / refresh / change the framework through which we experience artistic expression.

Click here to view the press release for this workshop. For more information please contact projectspace@efanyc.org

Friday, April 29, 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Organized in conjunction with the Prolonged Engagement exhibition, and inspired by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’ Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium*, Elizabeth Thacker Jones addresses the link between performance and food as it relates to the growing interest in local and regional food systems, and specific artistic practices that revolve around ideas of prolonged engagement and sustainability.  To ground the conversation, Jones and curator Erin Sickler will provide a dinner made from locally sourced ingredients.  The event is $13 per person and BYOBeverage; seating is limited.

*In Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium, folklore and performance scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett draws several parallels between food and performance.  First, that they are both executed, using various tools, actions, and materials; second, that they both behave, as governed by laws, customs, and habits; and finally, that they are displayed, requiring participants to understand these products as aesthetic objects.  In relation to artists’ interest in food as a medium, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett asks: Since cooking techniques, culinary codes, eating protocols, and gastronomic discourses are already so highly elaborated, what is there left for professional artists who chose to work with food as subject or medium to do?  By inserting the undeniably sensual experience of eating into the rare, abstracted discourse of art, artists are able to reframe both the nature of food and the nature of art by highlighting their respective roles as historical, social, and phenomenological elements.

To RSVP please contact michelle@efanyc.org

Elizabeth Thacker Jones works to understand our relationships to food systems. Her focus is on programming for emerging educators and designers to address access to healthy and sustainable food. She is currently a Nutrition Educator in New York City Public Schools in collaboration with Studio in A School, NYC Greenmarket and Columbia Teachers College. She is known for her pies and vast knowledge of sustainable caviar. She received her BA in Visual Art and French from Oberlin College (2002) and is pursuing a Food Studies MA from New York University. Elizabeth lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

 Where the sound is outside the ear, the ear can hear the sound. Where the spoken word is outside the speech, one can speak about something.

Friday, April 15, 6:30pm - 8pm

Prolonged Engagement artist Jesal Kapadia will discuss her most recent work titled 'a history of doing,' and elaborate on the process of working with images that document radical women's movements in India from the turn of the last century until now. Continually inspired by the writings of Gayatri Spivak, as well as her experience as Art Editor for Rethinking Marxism journal, Kapadia asks the questions: what does it mean to be 'an engaged feminist individual,' and how might one re-arrange desires, rather than locate needs?

For more information please contact projectspace@efanyc.org

Jesal Kapadia is an artist from Bombay, India, now living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work frequently blurs boundaries between pedagogy, art and life through subjects of the avant-garde and revolution, people's movements and feminist struggle. Her role as Art Editor for the journal Rethinking Marxism, and her collective work with members of 16beavergroup, an artist community in downtown Manhattan, have shaped and influenced her overall art practice. Kapadia's work was shown locally and internationally, at the Guangzhou Triennial in China, Experimenta Film Festival in India, Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, and the MIT media lab in Cambridge, MA. She recently completed a residency in the Humanities Institute at Northwestern University and currently teaches at the Eugene Lang College at the New School University and International Center for Photography NY. She previously taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Cooper Union School of Art and CUNY College of Staten Island, NY.

Clockwise from upper left: "The Estheticist," "Dr. Lisa Levy's Ego Challenge for Artists," "Buck Naked from How's My Dealing," Man Bartlett's #24hLike"

Thursday, February 17th 6:30 pm                                                                                                         

Representatives from the How’s My Dealing? blog will give the inside scoop on New York galleries.  Who doesn’t pay their artists?  Who sleeps with their interns?  Who “loses” artwork?   

Man Bartlett embarks on an entire day of liking the art world (and, more specifically, liking I Like The Art World And The Art World Likes Me) in #24hLike.  Bartlett will live at EFA Project Space for 24 hours, broadcasting his “likes” via Twitter and a live video stream.  

Lisa Levy will analyze members of the audience in Dr. Lisa’s Ego Challenge for Artists.  Participants will have their egos judged on a scale of 1 through 10 and receive a prescription for personal and career success from Dr. Lisa.  

Pablo Helguera, author of The Estheticist, provides, “a free ongoing service of art consultation around practical, philosophical and ethical issues around the visual arts profession.”  He will be answering viewers’ questions about how to navigate the art world.

Artist Bios:

Man Bartlett has made work in many media, but most recently has focused on performance art, drawings, and installation art. Currently he is an artist-in-residence at Flux Factory in Queens, NY, and has a studio in Brooklyn. Bartlett He has exhibited professionally nationally and is included in private collections in many American cities, as well as in the flatfiles of Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, ebersmoore in Chicago, and OneWay Gallery in Narragansett.

Lisa Levy is a conceptual artist, self-proclaimed psychotherapist, performer, comedian and advertising art director. Lisa has exhibited widely at venues such as White Columns, Artists Space, Printed Matter, The New Museum and the Scope Art Fair. Her other performances include "Psychotherapy LIVE!" where she plays shrink to the audience and "Red Carpet LIVE!" where she is a red carpet host.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, and performance. Helguera’s work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction. Helguera’s work is in the collections of MoCA Chicago, El Museo del Bario, and the Weatherspoon Museum.