The Jerome Foundation and Northern Lights, a new Twin Cities-based arts agency, with fiscal sponsor Forecast Public Art, announce Art(ists) on the Verge (AOV), a new two-track fellowship and mentoring program for Minnesota-based, emerging artists working experimentally at the intersection and technology, with a focus on practices that are social, collaborative and/or participatory.
The Jerome Foundation supports several world-leading organizations such as Rhizome and Turbulence, who foster new media art practice and are important champions of such work. In addition, technological considerations increasingly expand all artistic practices, including literary, visual, and performing arts, the moving image, architecture and design. While there are many students and practitioners of so-called new media art in the Twin Cities and Minnesota, there is a paucity of opportunities and support to critically develop and present such work. The ultimate goal of the AOV Fellowship and Mentorship programs is to create sustainable habitat for the local ecology of experimental art practice with the following key elements: critical support and evaluation, monetary and technical resources, audience development, and institutional recognition.
A total of six commissions will be awarded. Three of the six commissions are outright fellowships for the production of new work and a joint exhibition in the spring/summer of 2009 at a site to be determined. The other three commissions are part of a 9-month, experimental Art(ists) On the Verge for the development, production and exhibition of new work. The Mentorship program begins in September 2008 followed by an intensive 3-day “Boot-Up†Camp, October 10-12, co-presented with MCAD. Over the ensuing 9 months, artists will have bi-weekly individual and group mentoring sessions and critical workshops by visiting curators and artists on multiple occasions followed by a joint exhibition in the spring/summer of 2009 at a venue to be determined.
Christopher Baker, Murmur Study
Andrea Steudel, Mobile Shadow Projection Theater
Avye Alexandres, Once
Kevin Obsatz, Gate to the Enclosure
Krista Kelley Walsh, Public Eye Action
Aniccha Arts, The Weather Vein Project