Urban Nature Walk organized by SHIFT resident Gisela Insuaste (2012) with naturalist, educator,and urban ecologist Gabriel Willow. As you walk the city streets, sometimes you come across nature at it's best- plants or weeds growing between sidewalk crevasses, birds chirping loudly on a broken fence or flying overhead, somewhat oblivious of the bustling activity that defines our urban space. Come out and explore the neighborhood in search for nature and expect the unexpected. Please dress for the weather.Space is limited, please RSVP by Friday, December 20th to lauren@efanyc.org.

Gisela Insuaste's (2012) sculptural installation, "el jardín" refers to the idea of a garden as a collection of physical and emotional spaces constructed from memories of people, places and things in our landscape, both real and imagined. Insuaste, Manager of Art, Nature, and Wellness at Wave Hill, invited a naturalist who works in various parks and cultural spaces in NY, to share his knowledge and practice to a new audience.

Gabriel Willow leads tours and teaches classes for NYC Audubon and Wave Hill. He has led tours to all five Boroughs throughout NY, and abroad. He is also an artist, illustrator, and DJ.www.facebook.com/urbannaturalist

This event is organized in conjunction with the exhibition A Necessary SHIFT on view November 15 through December 21, 2013.

Artist Bio:

SHIFT resident Todd Shalom (2013-2014) works with text, sound and image to re-contextualize the body in space using vocabulary of the everyday. He is the founder and director of Elastic City. In this role, Todd leads his own walks, collaborates with artists to lead joint walks, and works with artists in a variety of disciplines to adapt their expertise to the participatory walk format. He often collaborates with performance artist/director Niegel Smith. Together, they conceive and stage interactive performances in public and private environments.

Todd's work has been presented by organizations such as Abrons Arts Center, Creative Time, ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, The New Museum, P.S. 122 and Printed Matter. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts and also holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston University. Todd is a member of the core faculty in Pratt Institute's MFA in Writing program.

A seasonal cocktail party celebrating the first four years of SHIFT Residency, formerly known as the Residency for Arts-Workers as Artists. This is a private event honoring SHIFT residents and their employer institutions. Invitees please RSVP by Friday, Dec. 6.

Meditation/Hatha Yoga session organized by SHIFT resident Gisela Insuaste (2011-2012) with Yoga for Bliss director and founder Neem Dewji. Take a break from your busy day with a little rejuvenation yoga and meditation. Please bring a yoga mat and wear comfortable clothing. Class held indoors. Please RSVP to lauren@efanyc.org if you wish to participate in this event.

Gisela Insuaste's (2011-2012) sculptural installation, "el jardín" refers to the idea of a garden as a collection of physical and emotional spaces constructed from memories of people, places and things in our landscape, both real and imagined. Insuaste, Manager of Art, Nature, and Wellness at Wave Hill, invited a yoga/meditation instructor, who works in various parks and cultural spaces in NY, to share her knowledge and practice to a new audience.

Neem Dewji teaches Hatha Yoga at Wave Hill, Society for Ethical Culture and other locations in Riverdale and Yonkers. She has been teaching Hatha Yoga for 14 years and is certified with The Yoga for Health Foundation in England and The Integral Yoga Institute in New York City. She teaches Level 1, mixed ability, gentle, chair yoga, and meditation. www.yogaforbliss.net

This event is organized in connjunction with the exhibition A Necessary SHIFT on view November 15 through December 21, 2013.

In LANDSHIP, SHIFT resident Chad Stayrook (2011-2012) casts himself as an alien visitor who has traveled to rural Connecticut from afar in a pyramid-shaped space vessel. Wearing a protective space suit and carrying a few key items, he uses sound as a way of exploring the landscape. He comes upon built environments (constructed by the artist)--including sails billowing from tall trees, a row of fire beacons in a field, and a colorful but mysterious device attached to a fence post--and activates each one with tonal and rhythmic sounds. The sounds accumulate to create an ambient song which eventually teleports the traveler back to his ship. As a whole, the LANDSHIP can be seen as an instrument the explorer must "tune" before moving on to other worlds.

LANDSHIP was filmed during a one month residency at I-Park in East Haddam CT in the spring of 2013. Upon arriving Chad was immediately struck by the beauty of the property's landscape, it was almost otherworldly. Chad created LANDSHIP as something that would connect and activate all of his built environments within the landscape.

Opening Reception: Friday, November 15, 6-8pm

A Necessary SHIFT is an exhibition and series of events that celebrates and highlights EFA's Residency for Arts-Workers as Artists, now entering its fourth year. With the launch of this exhibition, we launch the official name for the residency: SHIFT residency, and highlight the activities and progress of the artists who have been selected to participate since 2010.

SHIFT residency begins to recognize and nourish the particular art-world subset of artists who work for arts organizations, offering New York City based artist/arts workers a catalytic opportunity for artistic development and experimentation through space, time, counseling, and community, while thinking about how their dual roles support each other. From an intensive studio session in August, to a year of follow up meetings, residents are encouraged to reflect on their art practice and arts professionals career as a symbiotic, balanced system. Each individual brings administrative resources, artistic skills, personal struggles and victories to the experience. With each different group, underlying themes reoccur and evolve through the framework of shared knowledge and passion for the art community as seen from both the front and backend.

Past and present residents were invited to propose projects for A Necessary SHIFT that were produced during their residency year or inspired by their experience. A number of collaborations have emerged from this process. The exhibition covers the spectrum of painting, sculpture, video work, and performance. Exhibition-related events take the form of screenings, performances, bike- tours, and discussions that further demonstrate the complex challenges faced, unique rewards, and essential roles these artist/arts workers play in the arts community.

Participating Artists: Sean Carroll, Paul Clay, Jonathan Durham, Francis Estrada, Chantel Foretich, Howard Halle, Elizabeth Hamby, Amber Hawk Swanson, Felicity Hogan, Gisela Insuaste, Jamie Kim, Theresa Marchetta, Naomi Miller, Karen Ostrom, Douglas Paulson, Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria, Ellen Uzane Schneiderman, Roddy Schrock, Todd Shalom, Carolyn Sickles, Chad Stayrook, Rachel Vera Steinberg, David Terry, Sarah Walko, and Beatrice Wolert

Affiliated organizations include: Abrons Art Center, Artists Alliance Inc., Bronx River Arts Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Children’s Museum of Manhattan, CUE Art Foundation, Elastic City, Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, Flux Factory, FreeDimensional, Henry Street Settlement, International Center for Photography, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Metropolitan Opera, Museum of Arts & Design, Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York Foundation for the Arts, NURTUREart, Residency Unlimited, Time Out New York, Triangle Art Association, Vera List Center for Art + Politics at The New School, and Wave Hill

RELATED-EVENTS:

November 15, 2013, 6:00pm Opening Reception for A Necessary SHIFT

November 21, 2013, 7:00pm  LANDSHIP: A Special One-Night Screening by Chad Stayrook

November 23, 2013, 12:30pm  Meditation / Hatha Yoga Session with Neem Dewji organized by Gisela Insuaste

December 12, 2013, 6:30pm  AFTER HOURS (private event)

December 14, 2013, 12:00pm  Tour de Labor: Elizabeth Hamby, Douglas Paulson, and Hatuey Ramos-Fermín

December 20, 2013, 8:00pm  Sad Sack Karaoke hosted by Todd Shalom

December 21, 2013, 11:30am  Urban Nature Walk with Gabriel Willow organized by Gisela Insuaste

Curator and writer Jens Hoffmann will talk about the influence of 1950s and 60s French Cinema and the work of directors such as Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Agnes Varda, and Eric Rohmer on the practice of exhibition making. He will investigate in particular how the theory of the director as author, as developed by François Truffaut in his seminal essay “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema,” published in Cahiers du Cinema in 1954 and a manifesto of the Nouvelle Vague, translates to the idea of the exhibition author and creative curator.

Jens Hoffmann is currently Deputy Director of The Jewish Museum, New York, where he oversees exhibitions, public programs and collections. He has curated over 50 exhibitions internationally and written over 200 texts on art and exhibition making. He is the founding editor of The Exhibitionist: Journal for Exhibition Making. His most recent book 10 Fundamental Questions of Curating was published by Mousse Publications in 2013. His exhibition More American Photographs is on view at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside till January 11th and The Past is Present will run till January 5th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

The Marienbad Sessions is an integrated public program that seeks to transform the exhibition site of Last Year at Marienbad redux into a learning site where real-time engagement with the public intersects visually and conceptually among works of art on exhibit.

Conceived and produced in response to the exhibition Last Year at Marienbad redux, the performance reading Blast from the Past theatricalizes found texts about the work of Gordon Matta-Clark and Robert Smithson, combining their words with contemporaneous interviews and articles to propose the genesis of two artworks Blast from the Past (1972–73) and Reality Properties: Fakes Estates (1974) by Matta-Clark featured in the exhibition.

In this one evening performance Fiore hauls the past to a present moment, time travelling through art and writing, to explore broader notions of place, memory and time, topics important for both Matta-Clark and Smithson, giving their words embodied voice, action and immediate presence.

Drinks and refreshments provided.

Made possible with the participation of Frank Castanien, Angela Conant, Dylan Gauthier, Maedhbh McCullagh, Kendra Sullivan and James Voorhies.

The Marienbad Sessions is an integrated public program that seeks to transform the exhibition site of Last Year at Marienbad redux into a learning site where real-time engagement with the public intersects visually and conceptually among works of art on exhibit.

A listening session taking the form of an open-ended essay composed of sound hosted by writer and musician Dan Fox.

The listening session was developed by Dan Fox in collaboration with Junior Aspirin Records and Dexter Sinister / The Serving Library in 2011. Designed to encourage thinking away from the printed word, each hour-long session, conducted in a darkened room, is comprised of commentary woven into a playlist of songs. For “Last Year at Marienbad Redux” the commentary creates two parallel narratives, sometimes intertwining, and sometimes contradicting.

Fox is a writer, musician, and co-editor of frieze, who lives in New York City. His writing has appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and publications. He has co-run the music label Junior Aspirin Records, with Nathaniel Mellors and Andy Cooke, since 2002. Fox has recorded and performed with a range of bands and Junior Aspirin Records has been included in exhibitions at the ICA, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Artists Space, and Performa ‘11, New York. Fox has two new albums in production, with the bands God in Hackney and Big Legs, both due for release in winter 2013.

The Marienbad Sessions is an integrated public program that seeks to transform the exhibition site of Last Year at Marienbad redux into a learning site where real-time engagement with the public intersects visually and conceptually among works of art on exhibit.

This evening will feature a screening of short films by Berlin-based artist Maya Schweizer and conversation with curator James Voorhies about her interest in the role of memorials and monuments as embodiments of historical events and biography. Schweizer’s recent film A Memorial, a Synagogue, a Bridge and a Church (2012), which is included in the exhibition Last Year at Marienbad redux, will be discussed within the context of films by figures such as Alexander Kluge and Harun Farocki.

The Marienbad Sessions is an integrated public program that seeks to transform the exhibition site of Last Year at Marienbad redux into a learning site where real-time engagement with the public intersects visually and conceptually among works of art on exhibit.

Artist travel generously supported by Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

Curated by James Voorhies and produced by Bureau for Open Culture with Jennifer Allen, Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Jessamyn Fiore, Dan Fox, Jens Hoffmann, Iman Issa, David Maljković, Ján Mančuška, Gordon Matta-Clark, Josh Tonsfeldt, Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, and Maya Schweizer

Made possible with support from the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.
Publication made possible with a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation

Last Year at Marienbad redux is an exhibition, public program and publication that explores the way fact and fiction merge to form accepted knowledge about people, places, events and politics. Drawing on the use of elliptical conversations in the 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad by Alain Resnais as a point of departure, the exhibition features works of art that utilize various cinematic conventions, such as editing, character development, narrative, mise-en-scène and montage, to reveal how our understanding of reality is often mediated by those very cinematic techniques.

The Marienbad Sessions is a public program that occurs in the exhibition site at the EFA Project Space and an essential component of Last Year at Marienbad redux. Over the course of the exhibition, The Marienbad Sessions presents a series of weekly public events and performances with Jens Hoffmann, Dan Fox, Jessamyn Fiore, James Voorhies and others. This public forum seeks to transform the exhibition space into a learning site that simultaneously intersects visually and conceptually with the works of art—text, sculpture, photography, installation and video.

The Marienbad Papers is a publication produced as part of Last Year at Marienbad redux. It will be a hybrid publication uniting characteristics of an art journal, catalogue essay, film script and art criticism into a singular printed form. It will include a series of commissioned texts and be available at close of exhibition on October 27.

Bureau for Open Culture is an itinerant, non-profit curatorial initiative that receives support from institutions and foundations to make projects in dialogue with artists and writers. It combines curating, education, design, communication and publishing to position the art institution as an overall form of critical practice, uniting art and education into a singular cohesive mode of exhibition making.

The Residency for Arts Workers as Artists is the only residency of ts kind providing artists who work untiringly for arts institutions with the space and support to focus on their art practices. The Residency begins with a 3-week studio intensive for experimentation and new reflection, where the 7 participants take over EFA Project Space, and transform it into an open, collective studio.

Join the 2013 residents--Sidd Joag, Karen Ostrom, Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, Ellen Uzane Schneiderman, Todd Shalom, Carolyn Sickles and Rachel Vera Steinberg--at the conclusion of their intensive for a reception and private viewing of the artists' work in progress.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.

Prescreened Poets/Guards will meet at noon for a paid 4 hour workday.  The workday will begin with an introduction to the Poets' Security Force.  After this brief introduction, Guards/Poets will be sent into the field where they will protect something unprotected.  The end of the shift will take place in the PSF office, where the group will evaluate this experience of securitization.  

With Jonathan Durham, Francis Estrada, Howard Halle, Elizabeth Hamby,
Jamie Kim, Naomi Miller, and Sarah Walko

Please join 2012/13 participants in EFA Project Space's Residency for Arts Workers as Artists, as they reach the conclusion of the year-long residency, paving the way for the next group to begin in early August. The participants will give presentations about their artistic process and work over the past year, and then will engage an open discussion with the audience.

The Residency for Arts Workers as Artists is a year-long residency through EFA Project Space providing an unprecedented opportunity: studio space and peer support for practicing artists who also work as arts professionals (administrators, curators, directors, and others). This program honors these individuals' longstanding commitment to supporting fellow artists-- one that necessitates sacrifice of time and flexibility-- with a unique environment to build on their own art practices. Seven residents are selected from nominations based on their outstanding contributions to the art community plus their potential for artistic growth in a shared interactive environment.

For more information about each resident, please visit www.efanyc.org/arts-workers-residency-2012/.

At EFA Project Space, 323 West 39th St, 2nd Floor

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.

At EFA Project Space, 323 West 39th St, 2nd Floor

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

A cubicle un-building session; help un-build 4 sessions of the Transmigration of the Cubicle. Space is limited; to participate in this workshop, please RSVP to projectspace@efanyc.org.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience. 

A deeper debt is created as a social bond in which there is no creditor.  New truths are produced through the interaction of singularities being together.  A real security is forged by those no longer bound in fear.

-Hardt and Negri 2012

On Saturday, July 20th, join the Poets' Security Force for an afternoon of unpaid security work. Our security guard/poets have done the hard work of using poetry as a weapon to create real security-- amongst each other and inside the security industry. This day will function like an orientation, as well as work. Come do the work of redefining the meaning of security for yourself.  

At noon we will begin shift work, which involves a lecture about the history of the security industry, a map of what is protected in NYC, and a chance to define and protect something that has been left vulnerable in a highly securitized city.

Please come prepared with these two items:

- Attire: white shirt, comfortable black pants and shoes

- A description of what "security" is to you

Join EFA Project Space Director Michelle Levy in conversation with artists Piero Passacantando and the Feminist Economics Department (Cassie Thornton and Byron Peters) as they reflect on the outcome of their respective projects, MyNerva: Transmigration of the Cubicle, and Poets' Security Force, as part of their participation in The Hive: Empathy Corporation.

During the workshops and events of Piero Passacantando's pop-up think tank MyNerva: Transmigration of the Cubicle, participants considered how to bring human elements into alienating corporate situations. Passacantando and Mica Scalin of The Alternative Speakers Bureau will share their proposed solutions and interactions around readdressing the office environment both physically and mentally. 

Poets' Security Force is a mutual aid society that uses its funding to purchase poetry written by security guards while on the job, invites guards to define what they would like to protect outside of other people's property, and pays them to create security in a way that makes sense to them. For this talk, Cassie Thornton and Byron Peters of the Feminist Economics Department will discuss the project as it relates to the history of the private security industry and the idea of poetry within the rearrangement of security work. 

A partnership presentation between A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space, The Hive is a platform for supporting projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience. The Hive: Empathy Corporation is presented at EFA Project Space from June 22- July 21st.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

A cubicle building session using information collected in Saturday’s “Session 3” workshop. Space is limited; to participate in this workshop, please RSVP to projectspace@efanyc.org.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Intro - by Piero Passacantando

Corporate Body: tales from an anonymous life – Manuela Leal

Corporate Body will present a slide show of images from a working life, 2009-2010, discussing the threshold of bearable commuting, hearing hushed silences in post-modern skyscrapers, the american dream, meeting people's puffy faces in the bathroom while the security guard is waiting to escort them out of the building, wanting to do something that "said something to me about my life"; sort of like what Morrisey once said, wearing a suit at work then changing into vintage to meet the world dressed as "yourself", oh and quitting.

Interactive Movement Workshop - Maija Garcia and Forrest Lewinger

Interactive Workshop with Maija, director of Organic Magnetics – a theater organization that creates live installations using sustainable innovation. The workshop will be accompanied by and respond to a sound piece where Forrest will perform and augment field recordings he has collected at his own day job.

(www.organimagnetics.com)

Collective Brainstorm Session and Microwave/Office Fridge Potluck to follow. Participants are asked to bring a dish to store in the office fridge, and to reheat it in the microwave if necessary. The food will be shared during the brainstorming sessions.

Space is limited for Session 3. For more information or to participate in this workshop, please RSVP to projectspace@efanyc.org.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.

At EFA Project Space, 323 West 39th St, 2nd Floor

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.

Prescreened Poets/Guards will meet at noon for a paid 4 hour workday.  The workday will begin with an introduction to the Poets' Security Force.  After this brief introduction, Guards/Poets will be sent into the field where they will protect something unprotected.  The end of the shift will take place in the PSF office, where the group will evaluate this experience of securitization.  

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience. 

This collective movement workshop is co-led by Artist Robby Herbst and Play and Spacial Justice Activist Benjamin Shepard. Shepard will focus on the relationships between collectivity identity, public space, and social control. He will develop exercises that explore group play within politicized contexts. Concepts explored in this workshop will inform future projects beyond the gallery.

This is a public event; all ages are welcome. For more information or to participate in this workshop, please RSVP to projectspace@efanyc.org.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience. 

Led by artist Robby Herbst, individuals will explore their anxieties and their pleasures in becoming one with a group. Participants will do experimental “floor work” to encourage the sharing of ideas about what we can do together in society once trust between us is established.

Workshops will include the use of “play apparatuses,” slides, ladders, and restrictive toys that teach about how groups move and function. This workshop is for anyone who has been curious about joining social movements but is uncomfortable with disappearing in a crowd. No special background is required, but a willingness to play with ideas and each other is.

This is a public event. For more information or to participate in this workshop, please RSVP to projectspace@efanyc.org.

This event is part of Empathy Corporation, a presentation of A Blade of Grass and EFA Project Space's project The Hive, a platform for socially engaged art practices, featuring projects that expand the boundaries of art by seeking new ways to integrate into real life experience.  

Come learn more about the Poets' Security Force or view a selection from our archive of poems by security guards during Public Office Hours.