Drive-By-Art (Public Art in Our Moment of Social Distancing)


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.