Artists Meeting - Meeting Minutes 5/20/08

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Meeting Minutes 5/20/08

Written by G.H. Hovagimyan

Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Artists Meeting minutes 05/20/08

In attendance - James Andrews, Daniel Blochwitz, G.H. Hovagimyan, Alan Moore

We continued the discussion of what to propose for the conflux festival. James said that he looked at the online form for conflux and that it asked for 250 word proposal and a website for the actual proposed work. (I just checked this and it's true)

We took up the proposal by Daniel to do something with the public/ private spaces downtown. Daniel said he had spoken with some city officials who were interested in a map of all the public spaces in New York.

The group looked at the map and listings of all the public/private space in lower manhattan--

Here's a link to the map and spaces.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/mndist1.shtml

G.H. noted that the conflux festival - (http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2008/ ) was focused on lower manhattan.
Discussion continued on the idea of public/ private ownership and maintenance of parks and public spaces and the what that means for public spaces in the city in general. The discussion shifted to the homeless who use the public spaces. Obviously there are efforts by private managers of public spaces to ban the homeless from using public spaces. Alan said that there is an organization called Picture the Homeless that tries to clean-up the homeless, give them clean clothing etc.. He also said that this organization works with artists to change the perception of homeless people. James talked about the traffic barriers in the meatpacking district to create pedestrian space and the proposal to put a restaurant on union square park parade ground.

The discussion continued with the idea of Psychogeography. The call from Conflux for proposals specifically asked for works to reflect the idea of psychogeography -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

There was a wide reaching discussion on types of art works that focus on real estate and critiqued usage and psychogeography. G.H. talked about Hans Haacke slumlords piece. Daniel & James talked about Ester Partegas. She did a series of performances about trying to eat on the street such as sitting on a fireplug with a plate of spaghetti in her lap.

It was agreed that the park tape up was not the direction for the group to pursue for the conflux festival. G.H. said that based on the number of public/ private spaces and the number of days for the conflux festival, it should be possible to do a number of different projects engaging each of the spaces on the map.

James talked about working downtown during his LMCC residency. G.H. Talked about living on Fulton Street. After the workday the area shuts down. It's actually a depressed neighborhood. Alan said that Lower Manhattan is a world Heritage Site.

The group decided to create a proposal for multiple perfomance/ intervention in the public/ private spaces of lower manhattan. G.H. said that this needs to be done in the next two days because he is traveling for the next two weeks and the deadline is May 31st.

Here's the suggestions for interventions at the public/ private spaces.

1. Tape up benches with tape that says "closed to the public"
2. Go to each space wit ha group & a video camera and start critiquing the architecture or simply start laughing at the space and encourage passersby to join in the laughter.
3. make additional benches to put downtown for people to sit.
4. do special actions for the office temps who may also be artists such as;
a. office temp yoga
b. capitalism de-programming session
c. office temp lunch time hook-up
d. temp T.A.Z.
e. interview temps and podcast the videos
5. Make pillow cushions for public benches that have reproductions of the commemorative plaques for each of the public/ private spaces. These would be used to make people (especially homeless) feel more comfortable.

James suggested wording of the proposal would include - "each project will engage specific micro-communities from downtown such as office temps, homeless, immigrants, DMV clients, 9/11 tourists, Stone Street restaurant patrons etc..

Because to time constraints it is important to create the proposal and website within the next few days before the deadline.