NETWORKS OF COLLECTIVE CARE

Join us on March 11th, 2023 for Networks of Collective Care, a showcase of the work of More Art’s 2022 Engaging Artists Fellows, featuring work and conversations by María Bonomi y Lucía Cozzi, ayo Ohs, and Buena Onda Collective (Camila A. Morales & Dominika Ksel) with contributions from Tanika Williams, Yeseul Song, and Maya Simone Z.

Networks of Collective Care serves as an introduction to the evolving practices, research findings, and specific projects of More Art’s 2022 Fellows while also emphasizing the impact and importance of connection, storytelling, and contact among all living beings in order to begin to create a more just ecosystem and world. This public presentation of ongoing work exemplifies the 2022 cohort’s exploration of and attention to themes of community, empathy, and mutual support. 

Networks of Collective Care will be presented at Recess in Brooklyn, NY on March 11th, 2023 from 12-4pm. Click here to register and to learn more about this event! Follow along on social media and subscribe to our newsletter for updates and Fellow spotlights. 

This presentation features artwork from half of the 2022 Fellows—stay tuned for more information on the public presentations of the rest of the cohort (Maya Simone Z., Tanika Williams, and Yeseul Song), which will be featured in May 2023 as activations of Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds.

LOCATION & ACCESSIBILITY

Networks of Collective Care will be presented at Recess, located at 46 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205. Click here for Google Map directions. 

By subway*: Take the G to Clinton-Washington Avs; F to York St; A/C to Jay St-MetroTech; B/D or Q/R to Dekalb Av; 2/3 or 4/5 to Nevins St. *All subway stops require a walk of at least 15 minutes or transfer to a bus line below.  

By bus: Take the B57 to Flushing Av/Waverly Av; B62 to Park Ave/Washington Av; B54 or B69 to Clinton Av/Park Ave; B67 to Market St/9th Ave.

By ferry: Take the Astoria (AST) route to Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Parking: On-street and metered parking are available on Flushing Avenue, Washington Ave, and on many of the adjacent streets. Non-metered parking is available underneath the BQE along Park Avenue. The nearest parking garage is located at 275 Park Ave. Click here for more parking options.      

——————

The presentation space is ADA accessible, though there is a small slope from the sidewalk level to the front door opening but no step. The main doors do not have automatic options, but can be locked in open position and are wide enough to accommodate walkers and wheelchairs. There is an ADA-accessible, gender-neutral restroom on the ground floor. 

A digital, screen reader-friendly program will be circulated prior to the event and will be available on the day of the event via QR code or shareable link. Visual descriptions of each artist’s presentation will also be included in this program.    

Artist’s presentations and conversations will be available to experience virtually on Zoom at this link, which will be active at the presentation times specified in the program. Closed captioning will be available on Zoom.       

Please send any additional accessibility needs and requests to info@moreart.org at least one week prior to the event. 

Allergen-friendly lunch and refreshments will be available.

Masks are recommended while not eating or drinking, though not required. Masks and hand sanitizer will be available at the entrance and throughout the space.

Featuring work by:

BUENA ONDA COLLECTIVE

We are excited to invite you to Temporalities of Atmospheric Attunement—a performance and installation that reveals the invisible circuitry, shared evolution, and future paths for interspecies unity through an interactive multi-species symphony. Unravel the mechanisms of fear by communing with our fungal counterparts during an evocative afternoon where we hope to satiate both your psyches and belly’s. Here, we will transfer bodies, energies and ideas around how humans, fungi, AI and other intelligences communicate, cooperate and find mutual structures of support and care in an ever-growing state of ecological crisis and dominator culture.

Buena Onda Collective is an eco-centered, paradigm shifting,transmedia collective that uses sculpture, installation and interactivity to playfully explore ideas around restoration, remediation and interspecies communication during the Anthropocene.

We work with media and design techniques including: 3D Modeling, Architecture, Digital and Physical Fabrication, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Sound Composition, Video, Animation and more. Our influences span interstices of science, art, architecture and consciousness. We enjoy subverting and transforming ideas around ‘sustainability’ into more intimate, transhuman experiences where the consciousness of non-human species is more deeply considered. We do this by mapping out the invisible landscapes of our interdependent, rhizomatic relationships via various community-based artworks and workshops.

We are Rockaway based educators and artists with over 10+ years in the art and architecture realm. Our eco-centered community oriented practice values process and collaboration to help facilitate more equitable and dynamic ways of integrating and communing with sentient and non-sentient life.

—

MARÍA BONOMI & LUCÍA COZZI

surfaces of contact: art towards a collective affect

In 2020, encuentros came into our lives as an artistic practice to explore contact and affect collectively. Coming together, we deepen beyond the virtual connection that we achieve daily, and we contact each other through shared sensorial languages. Encuentros, as a method for collective expansion, gives us breadth to imagine new ways of bonding and acting through support and mutual care.

Inhabiting public spaces, we gather to create collectively and we establish networks that enable us to play and reflect together in the creation of small visual worlds full of new possibilities, dreams and affect. From the inside out, we come together with others by coincidence or by mutual agreement, and we stop being one, to be collectively. Encuentros remind us that we are not alone, that united we are stronger and that there is no affective hope without collective commitment.

María Bonomi and Lucía Cozzi are a Brooklyn-based artist duo from Argentina. They came into contact in 2019 as collective members of Mil Mundos Books and began to establish a loving and collaborative bond. They see that first meeting as the starting point of a spiral that extends with each new encounter, emphasizing the spiral as a symbol of movement, transformation and growth. Their practice explores collective public art as a channel for reflection, action and affect. In their collaborative pieces, encuentros, they co-create spaces of research and dialogue using the shared surface as the conversation space. They value process over output, as it is the catalyst for collective contact, expression and generative bonds.

—

AYO OHS

The Silent Unseen Audio Tour: An Embodied History of Asian America is an Audio Tour and Soundwalk tracing the history of Asian immigration through facts, stories, and somatic experience. The tour, set at the location of the Queens Museum and available later this year, will invite participants to follow narration, travel to various places throughout the museum, and relate somatically to the space and architecture—correlating place with important feelings, sensations, and historical events in Asian immigration history. On March 11th, ayo will present excerpts of the work, and invite participants to leave their own stories or recordings for future iterations of the project. To access the excerpts, please bring a smartphone and your personal headphones. 

ayo ohs is a socially engaged artist and director, working in performance, sound, movement, and healing arts. ayo is currently working on The Silent Unseen, an interdisciplinary project addressing the history and silencing of Asian women. 

ayo has presented choreography and spatialized audio compositions in venues throughout NY and San Francisco, where their work was described as “feisty, clever and poignant” by the SF Bay Guardian. 

As a close collaborator with Andrew Schneider, ayo developed the lead role in AFTER (The Public Theatre) and co-directed NERVOUS/SYSTEM (BAM Next Wave). From 2013-2018, they were an original cast member in Faye Driscoll’s Thank You for Coming series.

As an anti-racist facilitator and somatic healer, ayo is a founding member of Movement Research’s Artist of Color Council, a co-facilitator of Radical Love and Equity, and the founder of Anti-Oppression Yoga, a network of free online videos and classes.

With contributions from:

YESEUL SONG

On March 11th, Yeseul will present a sketch of her signature work that was created or presented during her time at More Art.

•  Invisible Sculptures (2018-2021): A series of non-visual sculptures that are made of sound, warmth, air, smell, and thought.
• Invisible Sculpture On Wheels (2020-2021): During the pandemic, Yeseul brought an invisible sculpture to outdoor spaces on a cart to activate public spaces.
• Two Subtle Bodies (2022): An interactive experience where two strangers wearing sensor-embedded capes get to know each other through auditory & tactile interaction.

Yeseul Song is a South Korean-born, NYC-based immigrant, artist, and educator 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 for 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 to and accessibility of art.

Her participatory work has created surprising and delightful moments of reflection for people from all over the world. She’s worked with a wide range of arts organizations including Clayarch Museum (South Korea), Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (D.C.), PASEO (NM), Wave Farm (NY), Brooklyn Arts Council, and Art in Odd Places (NY). Her on-going work has been shortlisted for the Creative Capital Awards.

Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program & Interactive Media Arts (NYU ITP/IMA).

—

TANIKA WILLIAMS 

“Traces of Yarrow” meanders through remnants of Downtown Brooklyn’s Underground Road, leaving gifts of yarrow as a tribute to the memory and activism of New York abolitionists. The 4-minute piece calls attention to the enduring work of everyday people advocating for freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

Tanika I. Williams (b. St. Andrew, Jamaica; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. She investigates women’s use of movement, mothering, and medicine to produce and pass on ancestral wisdom of ecology, spirituality, and liberation.

Williams holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School, and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. Her films have been screened in national and international festivals and broadcast on American television.

Williams has been awarded fellowships and residencies at NYU Tisch School, New York Foundation for the Arts, Hi-ARTS, Cow House Studios, MORE Art, and BRIC. Her additional awards and appearances include En Foco Media Arts Fund, 99.5 WBAI, Art in Odd Places, Creative Time, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC, Let Us Eat Local, Just Food, and Performa.

—

MAYA SIMONE Z.

On March 11th, Maya Simone will present a rotating series of images documenting their past projects and collaborations, including “Give It A Go” (2022, dir. Lisa Fagan), “Waters of Oblivion” (2021 & 2022, dir. Cinthia Chen), and other recent works – such as “state of water: brooklyn waterfronts” (current, created by Maya Simone Z.).

Maya Simone Z. is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, choreographer and educator from the South. Having come up dancing in church, their movement-based practice centers queer, Black diasporic emotional and spiritual connections between the brain, body and spirit. Their work interweaves movement, 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.

Maya Simone has completed residencies with MODArts Dance Collective (NYC), Hambidge Center (GA), Mudhouse Art (Crete, Greece), and GALLIM (NYC). They are currently an Engaging Artists (EA) Fellow with More Art and 2022 artist-in-residence with the FloodNet Deluge program at NYU Tandon. With support from More Art and the FloodNet Deluge program, they are currently developing an oral history collection and archiving project titled state of water: brooklyn waterfronts, centering experiences of NYC residents in relationship to water, city infrastructure, and flooding.

ABOUT ENGAGING ARTISTS

More Art’s year-long Engaging Artists Fellowship is designed to help emerging NYC artists and community organizers develop and sustain a socially engaged and public art practice. The Fellowship program curriculum includes mentorship, peer networking, access to programming opportunities in New York City, and workshops and artist talks tailored to the interests/needs of the cohort. The infrastructure and laboratory provided by More Art allow selected emerging and underrepresented artists to gain a deeper understanding of the history and vitality of public and socially engaged art and encourage artists to expand and develop social practice.