Today was the actual walking part of Storywalk. Organizers and student participants met up at Cooper Union, finding each other from our different corners of the Foundation Building at 4:30. This is exciting! There were three high school students and about 16 Hunter College students ready to walk through a small area of the Lower East Side (LES) and learn some great stuff from the wonderful Emily Gallagher, our guide. The Opera House, 4 St Marks Place, a building from the music videos (was it called Purple Pleasure? hmmm…), and Tompkins Square Park-all targets of the walk and our imaginations. The contrast of sterile commercial throughways and crowded, not-so-tidy residential streets was not lost on the group as the history of downtown New York City came alive in the architecture and stories of the ever-shifting socioeconomic and ethnic makeup of the community. What did we see, hear, smell and feel as we walked through? We’re working on that…

Guest: John V. Maciuika

John V. Maciuika teaches courses in the history of art, architecture, urbanism, the decorative arts, and design at the City University of New York’s Baruch College and at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of the 2005 Cambridge Univ. Press book, _Before the
Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State, 1890-1920_, and his research interests include the application of new media and interdisciplinary perspectives to the discipline of architectural history.

With this instant outdoor art exhibition. Working off of guerilla-style techniques for reclamation, this workshop will allow you to review and repurpose your neighborhood by identifying different elements and/or artworks in your everyday live you would like to highlight by incorporating them into an ad hoc outdoor exhibition. You’ll be experiencing public intervention, curatorial practice, documentation and locative media.

Instructor: Christina Kral

Requirements: digital photo camera, standard office supplies, a printer and a copy machine

Dates

Session 1: (Monday, Nov. 3: 4-6pm @ site to be determined by the participants before the workshop begins) Meet at the site/identify works and take pix,

Session 2: (Monday, Nov. 5: 4-6pm @ Eyebeam) Develop curatorial statement and labels and walking guide handout and online map

Session 3: (Monday, Nov. 7: 4-6pm @ site determined by the group before the workshop begins) Distribution/documentation of labels and the written walking tour.

Instant Suspense

Make a busy street corner near you the stage of your own suspense clip. Combine video footage taken from that corner with observations you collect looking around and listening. Juggle up those elements in audio and visual tracks to create a fictional piece that is entirely montaged out of snippets from reality.

Instructor: Christina Kral

Requirements: video cameras, video lab, some editing skills, busy street corner.

Links for inspirational browsing // Part 1

Simon Pope

An artist who has based most of his works around walking.

http://www.ambulantscience.org/

Jack Toolin

Exchanging Neighborhood Knowledge

http://manhattancache.net/about_artist.html

http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2008/manhattan-cache/

Marina Zurkow

http://www.o-matic.com/

Betsey Biggs

Is an audio visual artist who includes walks and sound stories into her work

http://silvertone.princeton.edu/~bb/11dreamsinredhook/index.html

http://silvertone.princeton.edu/~bb/index.html

Roadsworth

An artist who tells stories using the streets.

http://www.roadsworth.com/main/index.php?x=browse&category=2