Studio in the Park – Residency #3: Chance Ecologies

06.08.16

The Queens Museum, in partnership with ArtBuilt and NYC Parks, is proud to announce the launch of Studio in the Park – Residency #3. This six-week residency opportunity provides artists the chance to work in a 150 square foot purpose-built mobile studio situated adjacent to the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and near a gateway park entrance with maximum public accessibility.

Chance Ecologies, led by curators Catherine Grau and Nathan Kensinger, have been selected for the residency through an open call process and a 7-person selection jury consisting of artists, curators, and arts administrators affiliated with the sponsoring organizations.

The proposed project, Chance Ecologies: Flushing River, will create an in-depth exploration of the entirety of the Flushing River, using the mobile studio as a research hub and community engagement space. This project will explore the long industrial history of the river, which has left much of its northern shoreline in a state of inaccessibility, while also investigating the man-made ecosystems in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and will seek to connect the wild, abandoned waterfront areas to the better-known park’s landscape along the southern stretch of the river.

Through the six-week residency the curators of Chance Ecologies will invite a group of artists to engage in a series of week-long mini residencies at the studio space. The artists and curators will work on weekly public events based out of the studio, which will include performative walks, ecological field trips, canoe paddles, and historic and scientific investigations connecting the source of the river to its mouth in the Flushing Bay. The activities will accumulate into an evolving archive of artistic research that will be visually represented both inside and outside the mobile studio, and will be accessible to visitors during regular daytime hours. The culmination of Chance Ecologies: Flushing River will be a final daylong series of public events centered around the studio space, a publication of the research realized during the residency, and the exhibition of resulting new works at the Queens Museum in October.

Please check queensmuseum.org/events in the coming weeks for updated information on studio open hours and the project’s public programs.

About the Artists
Chance Ecologies, led by curators Catherine Grau and Nathan Kensinger, is a curatorial framework for artistic gestures and research projects exploring wilderness found in abandoned spaces, post ­industrial sites, and landfills in New York City. The main trajectories of this project are to create research and discourse around the value of wild, unmanaged spaces in the urban environment and to creatively articulate visions for the future of native and non-native species. In 2015, Chance Ecologies engaged a group of 20 artists to create a series of public projects within the wild landscape of Hunter’s Point South, Queens, before it was leveled for a major housing development. These projects included artist-led walks, workshops, a seed library, an archaeological dig, and a pirate radio station.

About ArtBuilt
ArtBuilt Mobile Studios are small mobile workspaces that allow artists, social-service providers and micro-businesses work in new ways and in new places. ArtBuilt is a non-profit organization which works to support the creative sector by helping individual creative workers. Formed in 2015 through the merger of established arts-support nonprofits ArtHome and Artopolis Development, ArtBuilt focuses on financial literacy and business training, home-ownership and other forms of asset-building, access to credit, economic self-sufficiency and micro-enterprise support. ArtBuilt provides innovative solutions by leveraging existing solutions and expertise from other sectors to benefit their arts constituency.

Image: Studio in the Park 2015