Drive-By-Art
(Public Art in Our Moment of Social Distancing)
MAY 9th and 10th, 2020
South Fork
The Corona virus pandemic has disrupted the networks of
diverse cultural organizations bringing many gallery and museum programs to a
halt in spite of valiant efforts to create on-line programs. Artists and
cultural producers are sequestered in homes and their studios dealing with the
psychopathologies of isolation and the fear that precarious futures produce.
Drive By is an
attempt to bring back, in these dark times, a sense of solidarity to the
artistic and cultural community living full time and now ensconced, seeking
refuge in the South Fork. It is a novel presentation and viewing approach,
focused upon the intimacy and safety of the automobile, instigated and responding
to the social distancing requirements of our new world order. It is a call to
action in a moment of economic, social, political and spiritual catatonia.
Artists of diverse practices living and working on the South
Fork from South Hampton to Montauk with its central hub in East Hampton will be
asked to create art works in response to their seclusion. Painters, sculptures,
photographers, performance artists, film and video makers, poets, and musicians
will all be enlisted. Special focus will be works that can be installed outside
or inside that can be viewed from streets and highways adjacent to their homes
and studios. Rooftops, fences, driveways,
mailboxes, trees and shrubs all become sites for interventions. For instance,
sculptures made inside maybe installed in driveways or as lawn objects, tree
trunks can be sites of interventions as paintings, rooftops as sites for light
sculptures seen from the road but also the sky.
Sides of houses might become surfaces for video projections and picture
windows as stages for shadow puppet performances while musicians and sound
poets might give live performances at the edge of properties.
About 30 artists of varying age, cultural background and
gender will take part. A blog is in the process of being designed and will
include artists names, bios, websites, email addresses, phone or mobile number,
gallery representation, addresses as well as Googlemap url of locations. In
that way in case someone wants to purchase a work from an artist they will have
all the details they need to put them in contact with one another with out a
third party.
An advertisement will be placed in the East Hampton Star
with the entire artist list as well as being available on a blog created especially
for the event. Using social media, email blasts and posts on appropriate
cultural websites the public will be
informed and invited to participate. On May 9 and 10 the public will be
inspired to drive in their cars to various addresses of the artists involved. A
video will be made and posted on Youtube later about the project and an exhibition in
the future to celebrate the event is planned.
The Parrish Art Museum and Guild Hall have been kind enough
to offer their help and will support the project with on-line assistance.
Warren Neidich is a conceptual artist,
theorist and organiser. He is the
founding director of Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art and the American editor
of Archive Books, Berlin and Milan. Selected
Awards and Fellowships include: The Fulbright Specialist Program, Fine Arts
Category, University of Cairo, 2013; The Vilem Flusser Theory Award,
Transmediale, Berlin, 2010; and AHRB/ACE Arts and Science Research Fellowship.
Bristol, UK 2004. Recently published books include Glossary of Cognitive Capitalism, Archive Books, 2019; Neuromacht, Merve Verlag, Berlin, 2017;
and The Colour of Politics, Kunstverein
Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, 2017-2018. He has been guest tutor at Goldsmiths
College, London 2004-2007 and the Weissensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin 2016-2018
as well as lecturing at such institutions as Harvard University, Columbia
Univerrsity, Princeton Univeversity, Brown University, University of Oxford,
University of Cambridge, Jan Van Eyke Academy, Cal Arts, UC Sandiego, UC Santa
Cruz, UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara, Art Center College of Design, Los
Angeles, Pitzer College, Claremont, California. His work is represented by
Priska Pasquer Gallery, Koln and Barbara Seiler Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland.