Announcement 1
 

Dear RU Community and Friends,

How are you?

We feel incredibly fortunate to be working with so many amazing artists and curators! A HUGE shout-out to the Food Futures and NYC Residency Artists who are sticking it out with us online, and co-inventing the wheel as we go along.

Last week we launched the 2020 NYC Artist Residency Program. In lieu of our monthly Welcome Breakfast around a communal table, we gathered “in the grid” and shared objects old and new that bear particular meaning or use value at this time. Starting this week with, we’ll be introducing the NYC artist residents through their own voices.

Please read on to meet Elizabeth Moran, for instructional art work, new programming online, COVID-19 resources, ways to help, and RU’s weekly staff recommendation for practical and uplifting news.

Be safe and take care,
The RU Team

RU April2020 Welcome Zoom Meeting

RU Welcome Breakfast April 15. Top to bottom, left to right: Ziyang Wu, Lulu Meng, Alyssa Alexander, Rachel Gugelberger, Camille Flahaut, Carlos Rosales-Silva, Esra Durukan, Siri Lee, Elizabeth Moran, Allie Wist, Nathalie Anglès, Andrew Vigil-Emerson, Christopher Udemezue, Romane Guéchot, Rosa Nussbaum and Faten Gaddes.

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Artwork of the Week

RU alum David Helbich (2015, Belgium) shares a project adapted for our current moment: “Since the beginning of the lockdown in Belgium, I’ve posted a series of scores for looking out the window, instructions that are directly inspired by (and even taken from) the work No View - Eye Pieces - Scores for Skyline Contemplations that I created for RU in 2015.” Follow Helbich’s instructions on Instagram @davidhelbich and on his website here.

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Online Programming

2020 NYC Artist Elizabeth Moran presents Against the Best Possible Sources, a recent site-specific installation at Southern Methodist University that contextualizes her practice and directly feeds into the work that she is doing while in residence at RU. And today, she takes over RU’s Instagram! Check out her presentation here.

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Elizabeth Moran, Against the Best Possible Sources (Screen shot), 2020. Courtesy the artist.

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Image courtesy of Erik Sikora.

Curator Lilia Kudelia speaks with RU resident artist Erik Sikora. Back in Košice, Slovakia after his abridged residency, Sikora shares stories about biking through empty Manhattan in the wake of the COVID-19 quarantine, reevaluates his video-essayistic practice on YouTube, and explains his Dadaistic strategies aimed at escaping from the pristine context of the gallery. Listen here. Stay tuned until the end of the podcast to catch Erik Sikora’s newest soundtrack as a bonus!

COVID-19 Resources

Reminder: New York City is assisting New Yorkers by delivering meals to those who cannot access food themselves. For a map of free food resources across the city, including food pantries and Grab & Go meals at NYC Schools, food delivery assistance and more, click here.

New York State is launching an awareness campaign to help ensure that New Yorkers who need it most claim their Economic Impact Payments under the CARES Act, which provides $1,200 payments to individuals making below $75,000 and $2,400 payments to married couples making below $150,000. Learn more on the Tax Department's Economic Impact Payment webpage here.

Please support Color of Change and call on Congress today for business emergency relief plans that protect Black-owned businesses by: Providing funding for small business grants that allow for Black-owned businesses to retain and rehire their workforce and reopen after the health crisis; Mandating a full, public accounting by race, gender and geography of where stimulus money has gone; and Creating targeted support funds for Black businesses. Take action here.

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How You Can Help

For ways to donate food, cash, or supplies to those in need in New York City, click here.

RU partner Artistic Freedom Initiative has partnered with the Center for Art Law to develop a survey for artists to assess how they have been impacted by COVID-19 and how AFI can help. The survey seeks to identify pressing professional and personal challenges facing artists, and specific legal questions that have arisen. Because AFI aims to develop resources as rapidly as possible, the deadline for survey submissions is April 30, 2020. Artists, please take the survey! Readers, please assist AFI in disseminating the survey to artists and creatives in your networks. The survey can be found here.

In the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic, 28 long-time members of the Gowanus artistic community are being forced to vacate their studios by May 25, 2020. Spaceworks, the non-profit that operated these creative workspaces across NYC announced on March 31 that it was closing its doors, effectively ending the management contract they had for artists’ studios. Arts Gowanus is actively seeking real estate partners willing to step up and offer subsidized rental spaces to relocate the artists. Contact ARTS GOWANUS at info@artsgowanus.org or (848) 225-7217. Read the full press release here.

RU Staff Recommendation

Please join RU in thanking one of many #HealthCareHeroes! Brian Ferrel, a Creative Arts Therapist at RU-partner facility NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County has provided several iPods with therapeutic music for Kings County Hospital patients to listen to.

"The idea for this project was to select songs that promote breathing, steady heart rates, comfort, and optimism. Each song is around the range of 60 to 100 beats per minute which aligns with the average healthy resting heart rate for adults. Also, pauses in the music along with occasional changes in tempo inspire deeper breathing. The playlist spans many genres and instrumentations to support patients with staying in the moment and focusing on their recovery."

Listen to the playlist on Spotify here and please share it with workers on the frontlines who are jeopardizing their health and safety so that we can #stayhome.

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Photo via NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County Facebook page.

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Follow RU on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates, opportunities, RU Community news, and resources @residencyunlimited.

 
 
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