EMERGENYC is a space for artists who are either beginning their careers or feeling a sense of urgency to move into new territory. The programs provide an opportunity to spend an intensive period of training, exchange, mentorship, and challenging conversations with a specific focus on racial justice and cultural transformation. Rather than training in one specific craft, participants immerse themselves in a challenging, supportive environment, engaging with multiple lineages and approaches to art-making. They delve into issues of personal significance as they engage in the work, and with one another, as their whole selves. Our participants leave the programs having deeply researched questions that become the heart of their artistic and activist work.

FLAGSHIP PROGRAM (in person at Abrons Arts Center)

led by george emilio sánchez 

This is the flagship program that has been the heart and soul of Emerge since 2008. Designed and led by george emilio sánchez, this program is open to artists in the New York City area, and is comprised of weekly workshops facilitated by george, as well as workshops by guest artists who are leaders in the field of performance and politics. With a decolonial lens, we explore the intersection of art and activism through creative writing, autobiographical narratives, group work, and other multi-disciplinary adventures—all while creating and re-creating a space in which all participants build community with one another, actively listen with their bodies, and build intentional trust to lay a foundation where compassion and risk-taking guide our work together. We ask applicants to define issues that are important to them and explore how creative practices can harness their political voice. Through the years, participants have explored themes of racism and racial violence; police brutality and mass incarceration; radical joy as resistance; disability rights; undocumented immigrant activism; war and human rights; environmental justice; and myriad topics that affect their lives. These engagements have resulted in the creation of performance art pieces, multimedia installations, theatrical explorations, street performances, video art, and more.

In 2023, the flagship program takes place at Abrons Arts Center every Sunday (10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Eastern Time) from Sunday, March 26 to Sunday, June 18th. During this time frame, there is an Intensive Week of daily workshops from Monday, April 24–Saturday, April 29. The workshops will include various guest leaders that will be announced later in the semester. Final works-in-progress will be presented live at Abrons on Thursday, June 22 and participants must be available the afternoon/evening of June 21st for tech. Abrons Arts Center is wheelchair accessible. *Please note: You need to be fully vaccinated for COVID in order to participate in person.

This in-person program, which includes a final production at Abrons, has a fee of USD $1000.
Financial  aid will be available to cover part of the tuition on a need basis. If  your enrollment depends on financial aid, please let us know in your application. We will work it out.

To apply click HERE

VIRTUAL PROGRAM, ANALOG BODIES AND VIRTUAL ACTIVATIONS

led by Nicolás Dumit Estévez & Marlène Ramírez-Cancio

Through a series of weekly sessions at the very core of performance art, activisms, and care and love for one another, participants in EMERGENYC’s Analog Bodies and Virtual Activations are encouraged to investigate genders, sexualities, class, race, politics, and spiritualities from the interstitial space between the analog and the digital that this pandemic moment has intensified. How do we as artists, instigators, dissenters, mediators, or meditators, wrestle with the back and forth between our flesh-and-bone bodies and the virtual spaces that allow us to bilocate, multiply, clone, and project our presences around the globe at any time and at all times at once? This program will pay equal attention to how these two seemingly opposing forms of engagement can mix and mingle, remain aloof or dissolve into each other. Some of the formats we will use include performance, writing, dance/movement, deep listening, visualization, somatic practices, and conversations, plus visits by and presentations of the work of mainly BIPOC and gender non-conforming practitioners from the Americas and the Caribbean. With all of this in mind/heart, participants are invited to reflect upon themselves, their audiences, and the shifts that their analog movements in virtual realms have the power to ignite—way out there in the cosmos, and right here in our changing, aging, living, dying, breathing, pulsing bodies.

This virtual iteration of Emerge, which takes place via Zoom, will begin on Saturday March 25 (11:00 AM–3:00 PM Eastern Time), and then meet every Sunday from April 2nd to June 18th (11:00 AM–3:00 PM Eastern Time.) To find how Eastern Time maps to your time zone, please use this Time Zone Converter. Final works-in-progress will be presented online at the end of the program on Saturday, June 24th (time TBC).

The Emerge virtual program started in 2022 with a cohort of 16 artists as part of Emerge’s expansion in availability to national and international participants.

This virtual program has a fee of USD $600.
Financial aid will be available to cover part of the tuition on a need basis. If your enrollment depends on financial aid, please apply and let us know your needs in your application. We will work it out. Please note, if you are able to pay full tuition or more, you will make it possible for those who cannot afford full tuition to attend, which will strengthen your cohort. 

To apply click HERE

—WHO IS ELIGIBLE?—

— The in-person flagship EMERGENYC program is open to emerging artists/activists who live in the NYC area.
— The virtual program is open to emerging artists/activists outside the NYC area and who cannot attend in person.
— All applicants must have prior experience in various performance genres and/or activist practices. Age is not a determining factor (past participants have ranged from 18 to about 45, all bringing their best selves to the experience); what we define as ’emerging’ is fluid, and has more to do with how you self-define than anything else. We very much encourage BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists to apply.

—HOW TO APPLY—

Submit your application via Submittable by Wednesday, February 1st, 2023.

You will be asked to submit:

—A biographical statement (maximum 500 words) This is your chance to let us know who you are, where you’re from, your performance background, and your current obsessions/projects. Please do not submit this in the third person or copy and paste your bio—we want to hear your story in your voice, in the first person. Talk to us.

—A statement of purpose (maximum 750 words) This
statement describes the reasons you want to participate in EMERGENYC. Please outline the specific issues you would want to address through the program and any preliminary ideas about the communities or practices that would ground this work.

—Your resume or CV

—Two (2) work samples (See Application Form for details)

—Contact information for the two (2) people writing you letters of recommendation. (Please select two recommenders as soon as possible, giving them ample time to write and submit your letters before February 1st.

—OPTIONAL: A paragraph explaining your request for financial aid to cover the tuition. Be as detailed as possible to help us understand the circumstances of your needs. Please note, if you are able to pay full tuition or more, you will make it possible for those who cannot afford full tuition to attend, which will strengthen your cohort.

Finalists will be interviewed via Zoom in February; the first registration payment will be due the second week of March. For any questions about the application form or how to apply, please send us an inquiry via the form below.

APPLY NOW BY CLICKING HERE

Nicolás: It is clear to me how Covid has revealed systemic oppression and exploitation. This applies to the institution in general and to the work that needs to be done from within. I admire the legacies of people like Angela Davis, Marcella-Althaus Reid, Robin D. G. Kelly, and bell hooks because they have made sure to talk to about class. I find that missing within the arts, including museums and galleries where conversations on race, gender and sexuality do not address issues of class. Did any of this surface in your conversations with people during Talk to the Future? 

María José Contreras: Coming from a Latin American country as Chile where class, more than any other factor, determines the opportunities you will have, the education you will get, and the health care you will access, I can’t avoid but thinking in terms of the oppressive system of classes. When I first came to the U.S. I was surprised that this didn’t seem an issue that received much attention. Of course, oppressive systems are always intersectional, but I agree with you that issues of class are usually missing in the arts here in the North. 

To read the full Q&I click HERE

Nicolás: I think of so many Caribbean comrades and of a Caribbean solidarity movement, at least within the creative field. Jean Ulrick Desért has generated a Creative Caribbean Community and Diaspora passport. The Salon has a copy of it in its archive. So complex. I mean the Caribbean, with all of its colonial connections and the severing(s) to be made. Where are you in this conversation about Caribeñidad? 

Quintín Rivera Toro: I have a basic argument regarding the fundamental processes for the unification of the Caribbean thought and efforts. First, there is language. All of the Caribbean speaks in different languages due to the cruel reality of having been colonized by the French, English, Danish, Spanish and, more recently, north american exploiters. Therefore, in a general, basic sense, we can’t communicate. Forget Babel, look at the Caribbean. Second, as romantic as it all may sound to develop a solidarity movement, for this, people need to meet, congregate, exchange and commerce together. Our airways and waterways are completely restricted by the military powers that be. We cannot visit our own fellow islanders freely, we cannot commerce freely, we are neoliberal slaves to north american capitalist interests. A sad and harsh truth. The place where the conversation ends and we drink up to forget.

To read the full Q&I click HERE

La transgresión como forma de combatir al sistema, el cuerpo como arma política, la sexualidad como forma de revolución, son algunos de los argumentos de ‘Indecencia’, muestra que recopila la obra de artistas latinxs en el Leslie-Lohman Museum que reivindican desde «la rabia, la fiesta, la protesta y la alegría de vivir». Una crónica de Andrés Senra.

De tod+s es bien sabido, aunque por much+s no reconocido, los estragos que el imperio español causó en lo que desde el reino de España se llamó “El Descubrimiento”, que consistió más bien en una invasión a fuego, hierro y crucifijo con el consiguiente genocidio de las Naciones Originarias del continente americano.

Para leer el ensayo completo hacer click AQUÍ

INDECENCIA / Artistas Participantes: Luis A., Arantxa Araujo, Arthur Avilés, Nao Bustamante, Susana Cook, Anna Costa e Silva y Nina Terra, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Marga Gomez, Félix González Torres, Nadia Granados (La Fulminante), Noelia Quintero y Rita Indiana, Carlos Martiel, Carlos Leppe, Elizabeth “MACHA” Marrero, Iván Monforte, Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, Charles Rice-González, Jesusa Rodríguez y Liliana Felipe, Carmelita Tropicana & Uzi Parnes & Ela Troyano, y Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis.

Curada por Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles

To learn more about Andrés Senra click HERE

The exhibition Indecencia, curated by artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, provides an aesthetic context inspired by Indecent Theology, a theoretical framework coined by Argentinean Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952–2009). In the words of the author:

“Indecent Theology is a theology which problematizes and undresses the mythical layers of multiple oppression in Latin America, a theology which, finding its point of departure at the crossroads of Liberation Theology and Queer Thinking, will reflect on economic and theological oppression with passion and imprudence.”

The curatorial proposal questions ideas around "latinidad" and its relationship to religion, enfleshment, and sexuality. This selection of Latinx artists prove that representation and reflection on the margins of gender identity and sexuality need not be condemned to secularism. Through a wide diversity of media in which ephemeral acts are the protagonists, the exhibition addresses themes regarding the performativity of desire and self-determination, the seemingly contradictory religious cultures in Latin America, and the possible atonement for the abundance of guilt and resentment we have inherited from different processes of colonization. 

To read the full essay in English click HERE

Para leer el ensayo completo en castellano hacer click AQUÍ

INDECENCIA Participating Artists: Luis A., Arantxa Araujo, Arthur Avilés, Nao Bustamante, Susana Cook, Anna Costa e Silva y Nina Terra, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Marga Gomez, Félix González Torres, Nadia Granados (La Fulminante), Noelia Quintero y Rita Indiana, Carlos Martiel, Carlos Leppe, Elizabeth “MACHA” Marrero, Iván Monforte, Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, Charles Rice-González, Jesusa Rodríguez y Liliana Felipe, Carmelita Tropicana & Uzi Parnes & Ela Troyano, y Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis.

Curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles

About Laura Rivera-Ayala:

Laura Rivera-Ayala obtuvo su bachillerato en Historia del arte en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras y una maestría en Administración de Artes en New York University. Ha trabajado en The Hispanic Society Museum & Library, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, The Mellon Foundation y proyectos curatoriales independientes. Laura is también fellow del National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Leadership Institute 2021. Ha publicado en Caribbean Studies Association Journal, Visión Doble (UPR) y The Puerto Rico Review.

To learn more about The Latinx Project click HERE

CEC ArtsLink is pleased to announce the Art Prospect Residency Fellows 2022. 18 artists and curators from USA, Ukraine, and Belarus will conduct research, create new work, and collaborate with arts communities at Art Prospect Network partner arts organizations in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus/Germany, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan.

The Art Prospect Residencies focus on transnational collaborations in socially engaged and public art. The 2022 Art Prospect Fellows creatively work with host organizations and communities to address a spectrum of critical current issues, including forced migration, the transformation of the social environment, contested public monuments, energy infrastructure and climate change. 

Arts Prospect Residency Fellows 2022

Adrian Aguilera, conceptual multiform artist, TX, USA
Host: Silk Museum, Georgia

Annie Albagli, multimedia social and environmental artist, CA, USA
Host: Oberliht, Moldova

Bazinato (Bazil Stachievich), artist, researcher, social and environmental activist, Belarus
Host: Art and Creative Solutions Public Foundation, Kazakhstan

Natasha Chychasova, curator and researcher, Ukraine
Host: Suburb Platform, Armenia

Kevin Doyle, writer and director, NY, USA
Host: Art and Creative Solutions Public Foundation, Kazakhstan

Meredith Drum, interdisciplinary artist, VA, USA (residency completed)
Host: Structura Gallery, Bulgaria

Nicolás Estévez, multimedia artist and performer, NY, USA
Host: ArtEast, Kyrgyzstan

Lance Johnson, visual artist, OH, USA
Host: The Ilkhom Center for Contemporary Arts, Uzbekistan

Nastia Khlestova, curator, Ukraine
Host: Oberliht, Moldova

Tatiana Kochubinska, independent curator, writer and lecturer, Ukraine
Host: Structura Gallery, Bulgaria

Aliona Makhnach, multimedia artist, Belarus
Host: Oberliht, Moldova

Jill Miller, visual artist, CA, USA
Host: Suburb Platform, Armenia

Daria Pugachova, artist, performer and art activist, Ukraine
Host: Salaam Cinema, Azerbaijan

Sasha Razor, curator, researcher and author, CA, USA (residency completed)
Host: Ambasada Kultury, Belarus/Germany

Nadya Sayapina, interdisciplinary artist, Belarus (residency completed)
Host: Ambasada Kultury, Belarus/Germany

Jessica Segall, multidisciplinary artist, NY, USA (residency completed)
Host: Salaam Cinema, Azerbaijan

Kateryna Taylor, Ukraine
Host: ArtEast, Kyrgyzstan

Bogdana Voitenko, artist and educator, Ukraine
Host: Silk Museum, Georgia

Image: Film stillfrom"Human Energy", by USartist Jessica Segall. During her recentArtProspectResidencywith Salaam Cinema in Azerbaijan, Jessica focused on our addictiveandintimate relationship with oil. Azerbaijan, one ofthemost prolific oil producing countries, has a unique culture of using crude oil as a medicinal bathandsalve. In her performance forthevideoartwork, Jessica Segall considered oil's toxic legacy as well as its materiality as a medical salve.

The Art Prospect Network Residencies are supported by the Kettering Family Philanthropies, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

The Elders Council of Thrive Network & Thrive East Bay is offering two monthly Elders Circles – one for BIPOC folks and another for White folks - starting in Oct 2022. These circles are open to anyone over the age of 50 who is interested in exploring and claiming the identity of Elder, and to elder-identifying participants in Thrive’s. To join the Elders Circles, click HERE

These monthly Elder Circles will explore themes of conscious aging, Elder developmental qualities, the place of Elders in community, the dynamics of oppression/privilege in the lives of Elders, and other themes chosen, on a regular basis, by the members of the circles. The Elder Circles will be open on a drop-in basis and with an encouragement to attend regularly for the purpose of building community and deepening our journey into Elderhood.

The BIPOC Elders Circle will be facilitated by Ann-Ellice Parker & Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles, and the White Elders Circle will be facilitated by Drew Sproul & Kurt Kuhwald. Our intention is for the members of these two groups to ground themselves in their respective identities and to establish group agreements, creative processes and close relationships that will sustain their work. Given Thrive is a mixed race, multi-generational, collaborative network working to build Beloved Community for these times—we envision bringing these two Circles together over time in multiple ways that meet the authentic needs and developing vision of the members.

If you are someone who may be interested in joining us, click HERE. If you know anyone who may also be interested in these Elder Circles, you are welcome to share this opportunity with them.

To email the Elders Circles click HERE

We look forward to connecting further with you.

In partnership,

Thrive Elders Council   

To learn more about About Thrive Network click HERE