Press Release
LuLu LoLo, Blessings From Mother Cabrini, Saint of the Immigrants (photo by Paul Takeuchi)

Art in Odd Places 2017: SENSE
October 12-15
14th Street from Ave C to the Hudson River

Curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful with Rocío Aranda-Alvarado (El Museo del Barrio) and Jodi Waynberg (Artists Alliance Inc)
60+ ARTISTS TAKE ON 14th STREET TO FOCUS ON ‘SENSE’
NEW YORK, NY (September 13, 2017) – For the 13th consecutive year, Art in Odd Places (AiOP) will stage provocative works of interactive art in unexpected public spaces along 14th Street in Manhattan. The festival is curated by independent curator Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful with Rocío Aranda-Alvarado from El Museo del Barrio and Jodi Waynberg from Artists Alliance Inc. This year’s focus is SENSE which will welcome gestures that aim to awaken dormant perceptions. Events will begin on Thursday, October 12 and conclude on Sunday October 15, with a festival reception to take place on October 13 on 14th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.The ethos of AiOP has always been one of sharing, openness, and accessibility. A boundary of many NYC neighborhoods, 14th Street is chosen as a location to host the annual festival as it transverses many diverse communities.
Ayana Evans, Operation Catsuit (photo courtesy of the artist)
Committed to staging a transformative experience by multi-generational artists for a multi-generational audience, AiOP will feature the work of 61 artists, including:
  • LuLu LoLo: In her public performance homage to Mother Cabrini, Saint of the Immigrants will offer blessings and compassion to passersby on her pilgrimage along the path of 14th Street. Mother Cabrini sailed from Italy to New York City in 1899 to ease the suffering of the Italian immigrants. This performance will honor the many immigrants in the world who leave (flee) one land for another.
  • Linda Mary Montano with Laura Byrne and Christine Finley:  In this performance, Montano will fast for three days and then be fed by a “caregiver” under a sign, WE ARE ALL HUNGRY.  Montano says, “Food is so expensive. We eat to fill our bodies, minds, fears, desires and not our soul hunger. The poor suffer from no access to good and fresh food. We all suffer from fear that drives us to overeat. This will also access my current theme of aging and the possibility of ending up in a nursing home and having to be  fed one day.”
  • Billy X. Curmano: In his performance, Curmano gives a nod to mariners everywhere.  An Exploratory Expeditionary Art Adventure Team will search for the New Amsterdam Passage connecting the East and Hudson Rivers. A signed and numbered vial with waters collected on day one of his Mississippi Swim will be mixed in an ocean harp with waters from the East and Hudson Rivers followed by a ceremonial serenade to the waterways.
  • Lady K Fever will create a nighttime site-specific pop up happening that will travel across East 14th Street, illuminating seven sites as the seven chakras of 14th Street with reflective objects, color, scents, music and dancing exploring our dreams and fears of the dark.  Starting at First Avenue (the root) and ending at Broadway (the crown), each chakra site will explore the mystical and magic of the streets at night.  Participants are invited to join Lady K Fever with flashlights and reflective objects as she proceeds along 14th Street.
  • Clarivel Ruiz: In her performance, “Asé,” Orisha Oya comes to 14th Street to bless and uplift the residents of New York City passersby with rose water and asé.
  • Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacías / 3RD CLASS CITIZEN presents RELAY: The Movable Garden – a motion that serves as a demonstration as well as a public protest. The project combines performance, choreography and an outdoor movable installation. This street gathering includes a movable garden carried up and down 14th street (from Avenue C all the way over to Eighth Avenue) by twenty performers wearing mirrored costumes and various sources of light. On each plant, there is a sign explaining its country of origin.

Conscious of the vast interpretations and many meanings behind the word SENSE in the public context of 14th Street in Manhattan, Art in Odd Places 2017 will present installations, performative actions, audios, choreographies, workshops, oracles, classes, salons, time-based/online-digital/and multimedia projects, as well as proposals in any uncategorized formats, all of which are to focus on intuiting the unseen at an intimate or collective level. Emphasis will be given to honest processes pointing to any of the hidden currents that flow through, below, or above the New York City thoroughfare in question; currents of which most busy passersby may remain unaware. Similarly, SENSE will welcome gestures that aim to awaken dormant perceptions within individual pedestrians, and arouse one-on-one or group synergies that promote sighting, feeling and self-healing.

Key words: perceive, sight, intuit, reveal, foretell, restore, balance, regenerate, astral, align, etheric, harmonize, open, transpersonal, vision, vibrate, recharge, light, unconscious, numen, portal, energy, therapy, psychogeography, meridian, synchronicity, liminal, parity, vantage, and stasis.

AiOP  is collaborative, horizontal, and constantly in-motion. Pushing the boundaries and limitations of public space, participating artists are chosen on a basis of artistic excellence, their work’s ability to create interaction with the community, and a successful record of collaborations.
Marcus Zilliox, Pythagorean Arrangement (photo courtesy of the artist)
FACT SHEET
WHO: ARTISTS:Manuel Acevedo | Yasi Alipour | Arantxa Araujo | Soledad Arias | Jan Baracz | Liene Bosque | Matt Bua | Nat Castañeda | Center for Book Arts | Natacha Clitandre | Josué Guarionex Colón-Rosado | Pepe Coronado  | Anna Costa E. Silva | Billy X. Curmano | Irina Danilova with Project 59| Jean-Ulrick Désert | Erika deVries | Maggie Ens | Ayana Evans | Lady K Fever | Enrique Figueredo | Charley Friedman | Wojciech Gilewicz | Beatrice Glow | Monika Goetz | Rory Golden | Alicia Grullón | Donna Henes | Luis Lara Malvacías and Jeremy Nelson | Frida Larios | Naomi Lawrence | Michelle Young Lee | LuLu LoLo | Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga | Linda Mary Montano with Laura Byrne and Christine Finley | Shervone Neckles | Antonia Pérez | Jenny Polak | Mark Power | Praxis (Delia & Brainard Carey) | Quintín Rivera Toro | Clarivel Ruiz | Maximiliano Siñani | Laia Solé and Thelma García | Suran Song | Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle | Eliza Swann with the Golden Dome School | ART&COM (Thiago Szmrecsányi & Natalia de Campos) with Tracy & Toya | Justin Randolph Thompson | Mary Ting | Denise Treizman |  Jason Villegas | Alisha Wessler | Chin Chih Yang | Jennifer Zackin and Adolfo Ibáñez Ayerve | Marcus Zilliox

Keynote Speaker: 
Billy X. Curmano is known for extended performances like a 3-day live burial, 2,367.4-mile Mississippi swim, and 40-day desert fast all with serious environmental and social justice underpinnings tempered by irony and satire. An amused Journalist dubbed him, “The Court Jester of Southeastern Minnesota.”

CURATORS:
Curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful with Rocío Aranda-Alvarado (El Museo del Barrio) and Jodi Waynberg (Artists Alliance Inc)

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful follows an elusive path that manifests itself performatively or through experiences where the quotidian and art overlap. He has exhibited and performed extensively in the U.S. as well as internationally. Residencies attended include P.S. 1/MoMA, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. Estévez Raful has curated exhibitions for El Museo del Barrio; the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary; Cuchifritos; the Center for Book Arts; and Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, New York; and for the Filmoteca de Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain. Born in in  Dominican Republic, in 2011 Estévez Raful was baptized as a Bronxite.

Rocío Aranda-Alvarado was born in Santiago de Chile. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the City University of New York Graduate Center.  She is currently the Curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York City, where she recently organized Presente! The Young Lords in New York, and Antonio Lopez: Future Funk Fashion. Ms. Aranda-Alvarado is on the faculty of the Art Department at The City College of New York, where she is teaching a course on Contemporary U.S. Latinx Art.

Jodi Waynberg is the Executive Director of Artists Alliance Inc, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the careers of emerging and underrepresented artists and curators through residencies, exhibitions, and commissioned projects. Rooted in the Lower East Side community (a long standing epicenter for creative experimentation and cultural diversity) and in New York City at-large, AAI focuses on advancing contemporary art practices and fostering dialogues through the use of alternative and atypical art spaces, ensuring that the LES remains a powerful place for making and viewing art.

Natacha Clinandre, Spectrographies (photo courtesy of the artist)

WHAT:

Art in Odd Places 2017: SENSE is the 13th annual NYC festival featuring performances, interventions, visual installations, video, sound and more in public spaces. ALL EVENTS ARE FREE. For more information about AiOP’s history and artists’ project descriptions and schedules, visit the website:artinoddplaces.org.

WHEN:
The festival will take place from October 12-15, 2017, in various locations along 14th Street in Manhattan from Avenue C to the Hudson River.

FESTIVAL RECEPTION:
Friday, October 13, 6-8pm on 14th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

CRITICAL MASS:
Saturday, October 14, 2-4pm, 14th Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues (southside)

Sunday, October 15, 2-4pm, 14th Street between First and Third Avenues (southside)

WHERE:
14th Street, Avenue C to the Hudson River, Manhattan, New York City

Subways: 4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R, W to Union Square; 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, F, V to 14th Street
L to First Avenue, Third Avenue, Union Square, Sixth Avenue, and Eighth Avenue

WHY:  
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) is an annual festival that presents visual and performance art in public spaces along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October. Active in New York City since 2005, AiOP aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. Using 14th Street as a laboratory, this project continues AiOP’s work to locate cracks in public space policies, and to inspire the popular imagination for new possibilities and engagement with civic space. Visit the website artinoddplaces.org  AiOP is a project of GOH Productions.
Linda Mary Montano, from the video Mitchell’s Death (video editing by David Wagner) 1978

MEDIA CONTACT:
Ed Woodham artinoddplaces@gmail.com (347)-350-4242