Image: Moment from the Beyond Memorial Site Walk with Immanuel Oni; image by Destiny Mata.
Join us on October 25th for a virtual At the Table conversation on Guns in the City with guest artist Immanuel Oni
Join us for our next At the Table: Dialogue + Art on Wednesday, October 25th from 6pm to 7:30pm EST on Zoom. The theme of this intimate, salon-style conversation will be Guns in the City with guest artist Immanuel Oni.
At the Table conversations are open to anyone interested in the subject, and no expertise is required! Interested in joining? Email dylan@moreart.org to RSVP.
Click here to learn more about Beyond Memorial and Oni’s practice.
Moving away from the easily stereotyped stigma of “gun violence” as imagined to exist in certain neighborhoods – often wielded as a tool to control segments of the population – we’d like to expand the discussion to more broadly treat the problem of the prevalence of guns – from ghost guns to the militarization of our police – in New York City, as we start to imagine what a cultural and social healing practice might look like. How do we cope with or deal with the psychological toll of gun violence, against the backdrop of a powerful gun lobby and the failure to enact sensible gun control legislation at a national and regional level? And what are the costs (physical, psycho-social, economic) of living alongside a militarized police force?
This conversation builds on the workshops and visioning of Immanuel Oni’s Beyond Memorial, More Art’s 2023 Engaging Artist Commission, which seeks to transform sites of trauma into sacred spaces and sites of healing. We are grateful to Oni for spearheading this work with a recent in person At the Table gathering in which we discussed how more culturally competent and visionary planning, architecture, and infrastructure might lead toward more tangible forms of spatial justice for the city.
More Art has been hosting At the Table: Dialogue + Art—intimate, salon-style conversations—with our community since 2019. Intended to be a platform for thought-provoking and lively conversations in shared space, whether virtual or in-person, At the Table: Dialogue + Art also provides an opportunity to solidify and build new relationships with artists and community members. The goal is to have participants find themselves stimulated and inspired by the conversation, and valued as an integral part of the More Art family.
If you’d like to support more programs like Beyond Memorial, please feel free to make a donation here.
Image: Youth group conducting site tour and reclaiming space via water ritual at Rockaway Ave. 3 Train stop on Rockaway Ave. and Livonia Ave, Brownsville, BK.
Join us on October 11th for a guided walking tour of Beyond Memorial led by Immanuel Oni
Join us on Wednesday, October 11th for a guided walking tour of Beyond Memorial street light prototypes installed in Brownsville, Brooklyn, led by 2023 Engaging Artists Commission Artist Immanuel Oni and youth participants from participatory workshops at the Brownsville Community Justice Center (BCJC).
The walking tour will be followed by an outdoor film screening hosted by BCJC which reanimates a former movie theater, The Pitkin, that was once a community hub. The outdoor screening takes place where the Pitkin roughly stood, and is meant to prefigure a movie theater experience for the Brownsville community which otherwise has none.
We will meet for the walking tour at 6pm at the Rockaway Avenue 3 Station. At 7:30pm, we will join the outdoor screening of “Evolution of Hip Hop: New York State of Mind” (run time: 47 minutes) hosted by the BCJC with an introduction to the project by Oni, at the intersection of Pitkin Avenue and Junius Street. The screening will have seating and complimentary popcorn.
Click here to learn more about Beyond Memorial and Oni’s practice.
If you’d like to support more programs like Beyond Memorial, please feel free to make a donation here or add a donation at checkout through the RSVP links above.
I cannot not grieve: CRY SCREAM SHOUT SING, a newly commissioned performance by multidisciplinary artist Freya Powell, draws upon the Sophoclean character of Elektra and a Greek chorus to recognize the experience of ambiguous loss as a means to counter the statistic-based records of the COVID-19 pandemic. The performance addresses the permanent state of grieving we have been living in since the start of the pandemic. Exploring the voice as the medium this piece tests pitch, tone, pacing, and silence from operatic singing to theatrical utterances. Through varied public expressions of grief (crying, screaming, shouting, and singing) this performance will shroud the listener in an exploration of these outward bodily utterances.
If you’d like to support more programs like I cannot not grieve: CRY SCREAM SHOUT SING, please feel free to make a donation here or add a donation at checkout through the RSVP links above.
Join More Art’s CONNECT, BUILD, AMPLIFY campaign and expand the possibility for art to activate change! Our goal is to raise $10,000 in 10 days (August 10th – 21st) through small donations of $10 and up.
We believe that creativity and artists catalyze social change. More Art is the only art organization in the New York City metropolitan area that promotes public art from the ground-up; we actively promote and support underrepresented and marginalized artists whose work strives to exist beyond the white cube.
However, enacting change is a collective effort, and it is our community of supporters–like you–that make our work possible. By connecting with more people, building our community, and amplifying socially engaged public art, we expand the possibility for art to activate change.
This campaign is about growing our community of supporters without whom we would not exist. More Art strives to empower all people to utilize art as a tool for connection, awareness, and action on critical social topics (see below) that affect our lives and communities. Our supporters, therefore, enable us to create the free public events that are vital to ensuring art is accessible to all. We invite you to engage with us by attending our public programs, participating in salon dinners, or stopping by to experience work created by our more than 70-strong network (and growing!) of artists and engaging fellows. Your presence and your financial support is crucial to the work we do.
As a non-profit structured on a collective network of artists, participants, organizers, disruptors, and others from the public, bringing public art to more people is a cornerstone of our work. To fundraise in alignment with our values of creating community around art and social change, we ask for YOUR support to extend our reach.
How to get involved:
Make a donation of $10 or more.
Become a Team Leader by asking 10 people from your community to donate $10 each. We will provide you with a fundraising webpage and all the info you need.
Spread the word to your network via email or on social media.
What our donors receive:
Free access to socially engaged public art programs, gatherings and talks.
Invitations to special events, including unique opportunities to meet with artists, community members and cultural enthusiasts.
About More Art: More Artcollaborates with artists across their careers to catalyze social change by producing meaningful participatory public art for a broad audience.
More Art. More Agency. More Action
Art: More Art is known for its artistic integrity, for visually compelling work and work that is socially engaged.
Agency: More Art supports self-determination within art. Our process is open, grounded, and flexible.
Action: More Art provides a platform for different people to experience art, this leads to action that paves the way towards transformation and change.
Join the campaign today and help amplify our work!
With gratitude,
The More Art Team
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Check out some of our recent and upcoming public programs:
EXPLORE:The Red String, a recent public art project by Lily & Honglei, one of More Art’s Engaging Artist Residents. This project was an augmented reality (AR) art installation designed for multiple public parks in Asian American neighborhoods. Incorporating both physical and digital components reflecting on immigrant experiences, East Asian cultural heritage, and Asian American identity the artwork included a series of large banners with distinct designs inspired by patterns of Asian red strings, also called Asian knots, a type of folk art symbolizing unity & love.
PREVIEW: Get to know the work of Freya Powell, an artist whose work we will be presenting in the Fall at Green-Wood Cemetery Chapel, Brooklyn.
Learn more about what we do at moreart.org. Contact us with any questions by emailing alexandra@moreart.org.
Who is looking in? Who is looking out? Who is free? Who is trapped? Who has the power to decide who has the freedom to be inside and outside? A performance by Jonathan González with Katrina Reid
*DATE CHANGED to THURSDAY, JUNE 29TH*
Date and time: Thursday, June 29th 2023, 6-8pm* Location: Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn (see below for full location details)
Find the event schedule below: 6 PM: The performance by Jonathan Gonzalez and Katrina Reid begins, alongside the deinstallation of the work by AJ Iron Works. 6:30 to 7:30 PM: Light snacks and beverages by Drive Change. 8 PM: The performance will end followed by closing remarks by Micaela Martegani and Fred Wilson.
*This event has been postponed to Thursday, June 29th due to rain!*
Join us in celebration on Thursday, June 29*, from 6-8 pm at Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn for a movement-based performance by Jonathan González and Katrina Reid to mark the closing of Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. The performance will be followed by a community celebration with refreshments from Drive Change, a food truck and hospitality-centered fellowship program that supports formerly incarcerated young people and creates quality employment pathways to ensure their economic and emotional wellbeing.
More Art has commissioned a captivating and thought-provoking performance by Jonathan González, exploring the complex questions of visibility, confinement, and authority in our society.
Through a dynamic collaboration between the performers—Jonathan González and Katrina Reid—and the AJ Iron Works fabrication team, who was responsible for originally constructing the welded steel gates that form the very structure of Wilson’s artwork, the audience will witness a mesmerizing display of improvised movements.
The performance will take place in the midst of the de-installation process, symbolically representing the desired collapse of gates and barriers that hinder our freedom. As the de-installation crew actively dismantles the artwork, González and Reid will seamlessly interface with their actions. This interactive element will allow the audience to witness the transformative power of dismantling obstacles, both metaphorically and literally.
Jonathan González’s performance invites reflection on societal boundaries, power dynamics, and the liberation that comes from breaking down barriers. Through the seamless integration of movement, sculpture, and de-installation, the audience will be immersed in a visually striking and intellectually stimulating exploration of freedom and visibility in our world.
Presented in partnership with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, this event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is produced in part through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a grant that funds projects that serve to enhance public space, increase access to cultural programming, and connect the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo. The grant is part of the New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative.
Jonathan González
Image: Jonathan González, image by Shawn Poynter.
Jonathan González is an artist based in Philadelphia and Queens, NY. Their practice emerges through the prisms of black study, the site, the plot and the choreographic. Unfolding at the intersections of performance, these works occur as live art, video, text, sound and platforms for collaborative study activated within theatrical spaces, galleries and museums, virtual locations, site-specificity and printed matter. Their writings have been published by EAR | WAVE | EVENT, Contemporaryand, Cultured Magazine, deem journal, Angela’s Pulse, among others.
Their creative and pedagogical works, collectively, seek to engender nuanced conceptions of Black imaging, Black movement, and Black narrativizing in relation to the built environment, libidinal economies of the flesh and the longue durée of coloniality. González has received generous support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Art Matters Foundation, Jerome Hill Foundation as well as residencies with Loghaven Artist Residency, Center for Afro-futurist Studies, MANCC, The Kitchen/American Academy of Arts and Letters and Trinidad Performance Institute.
Katrina Reid
Image: Katrina Reid, image by Kiya Marie Schnorr.
Katrina Reid is a dancer, choreographer, and storyteller. She collaborates with a range of artists who explore performance across dance, theater, ritual, music, and film. Select presentations include: Queens Museum, ISSUE Project Room, the Knockdown Center, Current Sessions, AUNTS is Dance, the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) as 2016-2017 Dancing While Black Fellow with Angela’s Pulse. Learn more at katrina-reid.com
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This event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is produced in part through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a grant that funds projects that serve to enhance public space, increase access to cultural programming, and connect the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo. The grant is part of the New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative.
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is made possible by a grant from the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a partnership with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Dumbo Improvement District as part of New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This project is supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, Pace, The David Rockefeller Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and commissioning sponsor VIA Art Fund. Additional support for educational programming has been provided by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Thank you to our partners, NYC Parks and the Center for Court Innovation.
Image: Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, image by Kris Graves.
location.
The sculpture site is located in the plaza inside of Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn, which is situated close to the Borough Hall subway station and near the Kings County Supreme Court. You can enter the plaza from the North at Johnson Street and Cadman Plaza, or from the south at Court St and Montague Street. It is close to where the Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket is held.
By Subway: Take the 4/5 or the 2/3 to Borough Hall, or the A/C/F to Jay St, MetroTech.
By Bus: Take the B38, B41, B25, B52, B26 to Cadman Plaza West/Montague St.
accessibility.
The closest accessible subway station is the 4/5 2/3 Borough Hall Subway Station (Manhattan and Bronx-bound only).
The Jay St-MetroTech Subway Station is also an accessible station, however, it is a 7-minute walk away.
The sculpture site and plaza is paved and single-level with bench seating nearby.
Accessible public restrooms are available until 6pm on Wednesday evenings at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, located one block away at 286 Cadman Plaza W, Brooklyn, NY 11201. For hours, visit the BPL website.
Please contact info@moreart.org with any accessibility needs or inquiries.
Date and time: May 19th 2023, 4-8pm Location: Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn (see below for full location details)
Join us as Yeseul Song and Maya Simone Z. with collaborator Cinthia Chen kickstart the Spring 2023 season of our Gates, Borders, Barriers public program series! Developed in response to Fred Wilson’s sculpture, Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, artists from More Art’s Engaging Artists 2022 Fellowship program present work that highlights invisible barriers, community, and monuments.
This performance incorporates movement and visual imagery to consider and amplify certain themes of Fred Wilson’s installation – particularly incarceration and perceptions of self in a racialized society. Together, we consider the power and implications of asserting/subverting agency, the act of surveillance, and who is looking in (or who is looking out).
Two Subtle Bodies (2022) is an interactive auditory experience where two strangers (YOU!) walking inside a space experience each other’s peripersonal space. As the two bodies move together, they generate and listen to sounds through bone conduction that correspond dynamically and in real time to their movements. The subtle body is a concept that appears in Taoism and Dharmic religions to indicate bodies that are neither solely physical nor solely spiritual, in contrast to the mind-body dualism that has dominated western thought. In neurology, the space surrounding a body is called Peripersonal Space and enabled by visuo-tactile senses. By recognizing and perceiving this soft and fluid space between us, we can lock new ways of connecting with each other by extending the sense of self and others.
Project by Yeseul Song with sound design collaboration from Jesse Simpson & Greg Halleran and garment design collaboration and production by Daniel Ryan Johnston. Originally commissioned and supported by the Korean Cultural Center in Washington, DC, Embassy of the Republic of Korea.
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This event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is produced in part through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a grant that funds projects that serve to enhance public space, increase access to cultural programming, and connect the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo. The grant is part of the New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative.
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is made possible by a grant from the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a partnership with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Dumbo Improvement District as part of New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This project is supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, Pace, The David Rockefeller Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and commissioning sponsor VIA Art Fund. Additional support for educational programming has been provided by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Thank you to our partners, NYC Parks and the Center for Court Innovation.
Maya Simone Z.
New York City-based interdisciplinary artist Maya Simone Z. (they/them) creates performance-based work that centers emotional and spiritual connections between ancestral memory, the body, and the Black diaspora’s collective capacity to dream. They examine how brain-body-spirit connections manifest in private and civic life for Black and queer folks in both national and transnational contexts. They are particularly interested in how these tensions affect Black kinship, relationships and communities as we collectively navigate the specter of Capitalist white supremacy.
Maya Simone draws on Black movement and dance traditions, multimedia experimentation, Afro-futurism, poetry, devised theatre, and deep listening to develop work. Through a Black queer, non-binary lens and drawing on Anthropological research methods, they consider the many ways that Black folks connect to spiritual and embodied ways of knowing. Mediums they employ include movement and choreography, writing, sound, installation, video, and performance.
They have worked with Sydnie L. Mosley, Jasmine Hearn, Lisa Fagan and Cinthia Chen. Maya has developed and performed in works presented at Green Space, Corkscrew Theater Festival, Theater Mitu and more, including Waters of Oblivion (2020, 2021), the way back (2020), and Give It A Go (2022). Maya Simone has completed residencies with MODArts Dance Collective (NYC), Hambidge Center (GA), Mudhouse Art (Crete, Greece), GALLIM (NYC), and Marble House (VT). They are a recent Engaging Artists (EA) Fellow with More Art and 2022 artist-in-residence with the FloodNet Deluge program at NYU Tandon.
Cinthia Chen
Cinthia Chen is an interdisciplinary artist and director based in Brooklyn and Taiwan. She is interested in art-making and performance as ritual, that both engages with the self and with community, to explore memory, hybrid identities, and future spiritualism. She uses audiovisual technologies in her work to amplify these ideas and emotions and delights in blending mythos with documentary. She has created and developed original work through Mabou Mines, Theater Mitu, Fault Line Theater, Corkscrew Theater Festival, Asian American Arts Alliance, and Creators Collective.
For her work as a video and projections designer, she was recognized at La MaMa’s Design Fest 2020. Recent design works include: “Where Are You? (New York)” (Mabou Mines), “Take Shape” (ART/New York), “Specially Processed American Me” (Dixon Place), “O – Life’s a Drag” (Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre), and “american (tele)visions” (New York Theater Workshop, assistant designer). Cinthia also works as a film editor and helps run Theater Mitu’s Hybrid Arts Lab program, which supports trans, non-binary, and women artists working at the intersection of performance and technology.
Yeseul Song
Yeseul Song is a South Korean-born, NYC-based artist who uses technology, interaction, and participation as art media. She uncovers creative possibilities of non-visual senses and creates new sensory languages using technology to advocate imaginative and equitable views of the world. With the belief that art needs to be accessible to everyone, she explores and occupies non-traditional public spaces to challenge commonly held ideas about access and accessibility of art. She’s best known for Invisible Sculptures (2018-2021), a series of non-visual experiential sculptures made of sound, warmth, air, smell, and thought. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Invisible and Existent, was shown at the Clayarch Museum in South Korea in 2021.
Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program & Interactive Media Arts (NYU ITP/IMA). Her teaching areas span interactive art and physical computing.
Her work was shown at Clayarch Art Museum (South Korea), Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (D.C.), New York Live Arts (NY), PASEO (NM), and Art in Odd Places (NY), among others. She has held residencies/fellowships from Museum of Arts and Design, Mana Contemporary, More Art, Future Imagination Fund, and Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, and is an alum of New Museum’s NEW INC. Her work has been supported/funded by Wave Farm, NYSCA, Embassy of the Republic of Korea’s Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C., Brooklyn Arts Council, DUMBO, GimHae Cultural Foundation, and more. Yeseul’s work won the iF Design Concept Awards and Communication Arts Interactive Awards, and her recent project has been shortlisted for Creative Capital 2023.
Image: Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, image by Kris Graves.
location.
The sculpture site is located in the plaza inside of Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn, which is situated close to the Borough Hall subway station and near the Kings County Supreme Court. You can enter the plaza from the North at Johnson Street and Cadman Plaza, or from the south at Court St and Montague Street. It is close to where the Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket is held.
By Subway: Take the 4/5 or the 2/3 to Borough Hall, or the A/C/F to Jay St, MetroTech.
By Bus: Take the B38, B41, B25, B52, B26 to Cadman Plaza West/Montague St.
accessibility.
The closest accessible subway station is the 4/5 2/3 Borough Hall Subway Station (Manhattan and Bronx-bound only).
The Jay St-MetroTech Subway Station is also an accessible station, however, it is a 7-minute walk away.
The sculpture site and plaza is paved and single-level with bench seating nearby.
Accessible public restrooms are available until 6pm on Wednesday evenings at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, located one block away at 286 Cadman Plaza W, Brooklyn, NY 11201. For hours, visit the BPL website.
Please contact info@moreart.org with any accessibility needs or inquiries.
