Opportunities > Open Calls
VIDEO MELEE
OPEN CALL FOR MOVING IMAGERY IN ANY FORMAT
Artists are invited to bring moving imagery, either pre-recorded or created
live, for Video Melee in Gallery Aferro’s main gallery. Video Melee
will go on from 5/1 till 5/28. The main gallery is 19 feet wide by 170 feet
long. Email to express your intent as soon as possible submit@aferro.org, bring equipment and imagery to 73 Market St Newark NJ.
Video Melee works as follows:
1) From 4/28-4/30, from 11-7, bring the means to display your imagery, i.e. DVD player/screen combos, TV’s, projectors, etc.
2) Plug your equipment in and set up your equipment to loop.
3) This will go on until all space and available electrical power is exhausted.
4) Enjoy the opening reception on 5/1.
5) After 5/28, remove your equipment.
Video Melee is a democratic experiment, less about claims to “firsts” than about the enactment of small rituals and gestures in downtowns everywhere.
Some possible themes for use as points of departure:
Liquid Crystal, meaning the ubiquity of devices with screens, more
specifically the modern usage of screen-equipped devices in a wide variety of
nondomestic, nontheatrical contexts, including public conveyance such as metro
subways and long-distance charter buses. This nondomestic usage creates views
of the silent or near-silent gestures of actors and dancers displayed on small
portable screen/player devices held by the device owner, who wears headphones.
Plenitude and Comparative Deprivation, such as in imagery, in attention spans, in inexpensive consumer grade equipment, in screen size and concurrent aspirational spending, and in the sometimes-vacuous language of open calls for artistic participation.
ELEVATOR MUSIC (for The Intuitionists)
OPEN CALL
Deadline July 10, 2010.
Musicians and artists working with sound are invited to
submit MP3's under 10 minutes in length to be played on permanent loop in the
freight elevator of Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ, USA and archived as part of
Aferro Publications. Artist Adam Trowbridge will jury selections. Submit via email submit@aferro.org
Some possible thematic points of departure (or arrival)
Passenger and Freight, The Elevator Paradox, Monotony, Functionality, Accidents.
Ascension and Descent. Rising or falling, and of course, Gravity.
The idea of the prelude, an interval, a non-moment not worthy of record or remembrance. The elevator may provide a brief space to prepare privately for a more public moment.
Silence, except for noise related to weather. Temperature fluctuations in the shaft, a space connected to the outdoors and the interior of the building.
Adam Trowbridge is an artist focused on research that fractures the intersection of sensation and cognition, or any collective basis for meaning, purpose and communication. His work explores the aesthetic possibilities that arise as communication breaks down. Using new media and popular culture in a practice at the intersection of linguistics and sensational aesthetics, he invents incidents that occur slightly above the noise level, between words that organize our communities and the chaos that lies beyond them. Materially, his recent work has been in the form of theater, performance, responsive art and video. He is also working with Philadelphia’s Basekamp to expand the education outreach of Plausible Artworlds, a collaborative initiative that aims to provide a platform for examining and accompanying the emergence of plural artistic environments.
Newark is Watching is a succession, and usurpation project of Brooklyn is Watching, consisting of "mixed -reality" critiques in a
virtual exhibition space with Second Life. The primary spaces are a square parcel of land (sim) in Second Life where artists are invited to leave their work for one week (when it is automatically returned) and a physical gallery installation consisting of a couch, a coffee table, a computer, and a fifty-two inch monitor that continuously presents the avatar's view to gallery visitors. The avatar's motion and communication can be controlled by visitors. In addition, there are two online forums for discussion, a blog which chronicles and comments on the work recently installed, and weekly podcasts where artists, art historians, gallerists and critics discuss the art and the issues it raises.
Brooklyn is Watching, conceived of by Jay Van Buren, executed as a collaboration with Boris Kizelshteyn and the Popcha! development team in February 2008, was a breakthrough relational art project that invited interaction between the two thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn accentuating the power relations between and among them. Over the course of the year, more than one hundred artists have left approximately four hundred works of art on the sim. This dynamic, uncurated exhibition space creates constantly changing relations between works of art that sometimes inter-relate or even intentionally intersect.
Anyone interested in participating can email niw@aferro.org.
Two of the first tasks during the transition period are the design and creation of a new watchtower, the dominant feature of the virtual
space, and the organization of a virtual crowd to pull down the old tower.
Gallery Aferro is currently looking to fill part-time internship positions for 2010
Eligibility: Undergraduate, Graduate students or recent grads.
To Apply: Email résumé and cover letter to submit@aferro.org
Aferro interns have the unique opportunity to work closely with staff and the larger arts community in learning all aspects of a not-for-profit organization, including the details of the day-to-day organization. Due to the intensity of the business, and our strong connection to the community, the internship position can build excellent professional skills/contacts and a breadth of knowledge that goes well beyond the work involved.
Internships at Aferro are particularly beneficial to motivated and enthusiastic individuals who are interested in cultivating exhibition, operations and arts administration experience in order to gain work experience and fulfill career goals in the art world.
Responsibilities and training could include: design, reception and communications during public hours as well as private tours, curator visits, and artist's studio visits, assisting staff with all aspects related to each of our exhibitions, database development, special event production, assisting with grant preparations, and various arts administration responsibilities. We will be preparing for several off-site film screenings, and for next year's Newark Open Studio Tour.
Preferred qualifications:
Professed enthusiasm for contemporary art.
Professionalism-- each applicant must be responsible and reliable.
