New Museum R&D Season: Archives
Fall 2013
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
Spearheaded by the Department of Education and Public Engagement, New Museum R&D (Research and Development) Seasons connect various projects in the galleries, Theater, and Resource Center around a new organizing theme each fall and spring. Programming takes the form of exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist residencies, online publications, an after-school program for teens, and family day activities. Artists engage across many of these initiatives to realize projects in multiple forms. The inaugural fall 2013 R&D Season theme is “Archives.”
“XFR STN” (Transfer Station),the first project of the Archives R&D Season, turned the Fifth Floor Education Gallery into a full-fledged digitization lab (in summer 2013). There, visitors learned about legacies of video art, but also became familiar with evolving techniques for moving image and digital preservation. It was a project with historical relevance that also posed urgent questions for the immediate future of art.
Also in conjunction with the Archives R&D Season, the Education Department has recently unveiled its newly reconfigured Resource Center, which provides a new platform for making visible histories, research, and broader contexts for artistic and curatorial production. Kicking off the Resource Center’s renovation this fall, “Pushing the Limits” is a presentation of materials from the New Museum’s rich archival collection exposing a variety of strategies by which artists, critics, scholars, and curators have tested the conditions and parameters of the institution. “Pushing the Limits” is on view through November 4. The next presentation in the Resource Center, “Performance Archiving Performance,” opens November 6.
“Performance Archiving Performance”
“Performance Archiving Performance” takes up archiving and its relationship to live art as its focus for the second part of the Archives R&D Season. This special presentation includes an exhibition of performance projects that engage archive as medium (on view in the Fifth Floor Resource Center from November 6, 2013 to January 12, 2014), an accompanying series of residencies, and a lineup of performances and talks with artists, curators, and scholars. Projects include “The People to Come” by a canary torsi, “Live Dancing Archive” by Jennifer Monson, “The Sky Remains the Same” by Julie Tolentino, and “reDANCE,” a platform for public engagement founded by Sara Wookey. A discussion on November 16 considers how these different artists’ approaches to the concerns of archiving performance might be taken up and addressed within the Museum’s own archival practices.
October 24 – Sky Room concert with Jeff Kolar and Jennifer Monson
November 10 – CANDIDATE in concert: A Gesture Absolutely Vile
November 16 – “Performance Archiving Performance” artists talk
November 16 – “Disappearing Acts & Resurfacing Subjects: Concerns of (a) Dance Artist(s)”
November 23 – “The Sky Remains the Same”: How Do You Map the Sky?
November 23 – “The Sky Remains the Same”: The Archive of Lovett/Codagnone’s WEIGHTED (2010)
December 7 – Movement Scores for Families with Kate Cahill
December 15 – “The People to Come”: Closing the Archive concert
Experimental Study Program
This fall, the New Museum launches a nine-week, application-based Experimental Study Program (ESP) for young people aged fifteen to twenty. The program offers twelve participants the chance to work closely with artists, engage in critical discussions around contemporary art and culture, and contribute directly to the New Museum Education Department’s ongoing commitment to social analysis and change.
Collaborating with artists from “Performance Archiving Performance,” ESP draws teens into larger conversations that are taking place across New Museum programming. Pursuing an interest in systems as a form of portraiture (initially developed through the archiving performances of “The People to Come”), Yanira Castro of a canary torsi will engage teens in research toward the group’s next project in 2015/2016. ESP participants will additionally partner with Sara Wookey to test exercises for teaching certain methodologies of dance-making as part of the artist’s ongoing reDANCE platform.
First Look: New Art Online
In conjunction with the Education Department’s engagement with archives this season, the New Museum’s First Look: New Art Online presents a series of monthly innovative online projects that considers the innovative ways artists are approaching the digital archive. The upcoming First Look works—many of which are original commissions—take a constructive approach to the topic: they build new social systems; capture ephemeral elements, such as time or attention; and promote activist efforts or amplify pop culture phenomena. Collectively, they show how the web creates fresh possibilities for archival forms and methodologies, and reinvigorate a conversation about the classification of history and culture that has been present in contemporary art for decades. First Look artists this season include Damon Zucconi (August), Martine Syms (September), Brian Droitcour (October), Xavier Cha (October), Cory Arcangel (November), and Rheim Alkadhi (December).
Archives R&D Season Team
The New Museum’s Department of Education and Public Engagement is spearheaded by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement. “Pushing the Limits” is organized by Burton with Tara Hart, Digital Archivist. “Performance Archiving Performance” is organized by Travis Chamberlain, Associate Curator of Performance and Manager of Public Programs. The Experimental Study Program is organized by Jen Song, Associate Director of Education, and Audrey Hope, Educator, G:Class and High School Programs. First Look is organized by Lauren Cornell, Curator of the 2015 New Museum Triennial, Digital Projects, and Museum as Hub and former Director of Rhizome. Jessica Wallen is the New Museum’s Fall 2013 Season Fellow.
Support
Generous endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.
This program is made possible, in part, through the support of the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Education and public programs are made possible by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of David B. Heller & Hermine Riegerl Heller.
