The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center and Artists Alliance, Inc. are pleased to present a Multi-Day Virtual Open Studios January 28 through January 31, 2021!

For the past 24 years, The Clemente’s resident artists and organizations have opened their studios in the landmark-quality building that serves hundreds of working artists and organizations to showcase new work in a wide range of media. Open Studios is a free and open platform for local arts that builds, sustains, and supports the thriving creative community of the Lower East Side.

Due to the COVID19 pandemic, Open Studios will be hosted virtually, with an opportunity to view new works flanking The Clemente’s facade on Suffolk and Rivington Streets. Open Studios will be held on January 28 through January 21, 2021.All programming is released on The Clemente's YouTube page, unless otherwise indicated.

SCHEDULE OF PROGRAMMING

All programming can be accessed here, unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, January 28 @ 12p- PS160: An Historical Tour

Explore the former PS160, the exceptional Charles B.J. Snyder public school that is now home to The Clemente, its beautiful architectural detail, emphasis on natural light, fresh air ventilation, and ingenious pre-code fire safety measures. Archival photos, references by Jacob Riis, and newspaper articles bring to life the excitement felt by an overcrowded and impoverished Lower East Side immigrant neighborhood on the building of their new school, which inspired generations of children who remember it as a castle.

Special thanks to the following individuals and institutions for the use of their documentation and voice in the making of this project: NYC Municipal Archives, Mark La Rosa Photography, The New York Public Library Library of Congress, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, The Museum of the City of New York, Superstructures, Nelligan White.

https://youtu.be/BXzexiABQ8c

Artist Talk with Elisabeth Condon, Kylie Heidenheimer, and Nicole Parcher

Kylie Heidenheimer, Nicole Parcher, and Elisabeth Condon, painters and residents in the Clemente's long term studio program, discuss the roles of abstraction, ephemera, and layering in their work. Visit The Clemente's Instagram and YouTube for live recordings. Click the links below for written interviews between the artists.

8p: The Soul of Freedom- Livestream presented by Arts for Art

Luke Stewart - bass, voice, percussion | Jaimie Branch - trumpet, voice, percussion | Devin Brahja Waldman - alto sax, voice, percussion

Presenting renditions of sweet soul music in the style of New York R&B. The 50-minute performance will be followed by a conversation with the performers. Dedicated to the spirit of Cecil Taylor.

6p-midnight: Deep State, 2021- Kristin McIver

Deep State is a two channel video installation, projected in the corner windows of the 4th floor of The Clemente, on the Lower East Side. Visible from the street, the video presents abstract footage of crashing, swirling water, appearing to fill the entire corner studio in a violent, fluid, watery cube. In a turbulent year where many have found themselves overwhelmed; drowning under the uncertainty of a pandemic, financial instability, political unrest, and conspiracy theories, Deep State presents an illusion of being underwater. The entire room behind the windows appears immersed by the crashing, swirling waves, a moment of beautiful chaos in an otherwise eerily quiet New York City streetscape.

Best viewed from the corner of Suffolk and Rivington streets, the installation will be on view nightly from 6pm - midnight, January 28 through Sunday, January 31.

Friday, January 29 @ 12p- Studio Tour with Jen Mazza

Jen Mazza's virtual studio visit tries to bring a little of the material of actuality into play. It offers a view into some of the daily aspects of her studio practice including works in process.

Particle Matter- Itziar Barrio in collaboration with Seth Cluett

Particle Matter is an audiovisual work by visual artist Itziar Barrio, created in collaboration with composer and sound designer Seth Cluett. A materialist investigation into matter and multitudinous manifestations of the micro, Particle Matter approaches its subject in a rhizomatic fashion, utilizing the language of the montage -the dialectical technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of moving images and sounds- to explore the forces catalyzing and created by the movements of the fragmented and microscopic; the pieces left over.

Particulate matter is the sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in air. This complex mixture includes both organic and inorganic particles, such as dust, pollen, soot, smoke, and liquid droplets. Many of them are by-products. A by-product is a secondary product derived from a production process, manufacturing process or chemical reaction; it is not the primary product or service being produced. In chemistry, “by-product" is used to refer to a product that is not desired but inevitably results from molecular fragments of the original materials and/or reagents that are not incorporated into the desired product, as a consequence of conservation of mass.

Many of the sound recordings included in Particle Matter were carried out at the historic anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs (NJ), which absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz, and is considered one of the quietest places on Earth. Particle Matter is a work approached from the horizontality of all the agents involved: images of geological phenomena, steam, gas and particles; audio recordings of protests, dusts of different origins converge creating this video.

Particle Matter is best experienced with the use of headphones. This work was produced by AECID and supported in part by Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology program

Subway Story- Production of the Fantastic Experimental Latino Theater Inc- Premiere at the SEA Micro Theater Festival

The unexpected encounter of a stranded German tourist in a subway platform and a New York City human rights lawyer reveals that they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Virtual Salon Performance Series for Social Change- Presented by Mark DeGarmo Dance

MDD's Virtual Salon Performance Series for Social Change: January 7th installment. Mark DeGarmo Dance broadcasted its transcultural transdisciplinary Virtual Salon Performance Series for Social Change to an international audience on Zoom on January 7th, 2021. Performances featured international and emerging performing artists Selim Cizdan (Turkey), Adriane Erdos (NYC), Aigars Larionovs (Latvia), and Makayla Peterson (NYC).

Tickets (by donation) are available for the next installment of MDD's Virtual Salon Performance Series on February 4th, 7PM ET on Zoom at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/136617058299. MDD's February VSPS features artists Jenise Anthony (Trinidad and Tobago, USA), David Lopiki (DR Congo), TruthNanda (Uganda), and Waeli Wang (USA).

6p-midnight: Deep State, 2021- Kristin McIver

Deep State is a two channel video installation, projected in the corner windows of the 4th floor of The Clemente, on the Lower East Side. Visible from the street, the video presents abstract footage of crashing, swirling water, appearing to fill the entire corner studio in a violent, fluid, watery cube. In a turbulent year where many have found themselves overwhelmed; drowning under the uncertainty of a pandemic, financial instability, political unrest, and conspiracy theories, Deep State presents an illusion of being underwater. The entire room behind the windows appears immersed by the crashing, swirling waves, a moment of beautiful chaos in an otherwise eerily quiet New York City streetscape.

Best viewed from the corner of Suffolk and Rivington streets, the installation will be on view nightly from 6pm - midnight, January 28 through Sunday, January 31.

Saturday, January 30- 11a: Tour of PSOS21

Join Clemente residents Melanie Vote and Laura Nova for a live tour of PSOS21, an installation of banners featuring residents’ work wrapping the fence that surrounds the Clemente building. A former public school designed by Charles B. J. Snyder, The Clemente is now home to more than 60 artists and 10 arts organizations. With this public work, resident artists and organizations are pleased to bring their studios outside to our community.

LES CITIZENS PARADE

In 2018, Clemente resident Laura Nova collaborated with choreographer Naomi Goldberg Haas to produce The LES Citizens Parade. It is an activist processional and series of performances connecting community members of NYC's Lower East Side. Performed by neighborhood senior citizens and legendary senior dancers, the work created a celebratory, visual journey along East Broadway. The public art project honored the experience of long-term residents as part of the River to River Festival on June 22 and 24, 2018. The parade plays with the “migration” trope transforming residents and dancers alike into a “moving company” - one which carries boxes bearing double-edged slogans like “fragile” and “priority.” The procession culminated in a stage performance in Seward Park, the oldest municipal park in the United States and the living room of the Lower East Side.

Studio Tour with Linda Griggs

Tour resident artist Linda Griggs' studio at The Clemente and explore the original 1897 classroom fittings followed by an overview of her series, Bad Toys and Ass Whippings, 'family portraits' of objects Americans have used from the colonial era to the present to spank their children.

Studio Tour with Steve Ellis

"In my new work, Bluebeard (LES Time Traveler), I have created a multiple image timeline of the landscape historic to the Lower East Side, from Houston St. to the Bowery to the East River. Like pages torn from the history books, this story is told through images of the building facades, landmarks, signage of famous establishments and people from this rich area of immigration. The cropped signage challenges the most savvy local to guess the establishment it pertains to, while it's new cryptic wording creates a love poem to the neighborhood. The sun and moon arc across the sky and pigeons fly a figure eight to all corners of the canvas. As it depicts the ever evolving area from an apple tree to a futuristic hover taxi and much in between, we are reminded of our past, present and a forward look to the future.” -Steve Ellis

Steve Ellis (b. 1970) has worked closely in his Lower East Side art community for over two decades. Ellis is an adjunct professor at School of Visual Arts and teaches drawing to inmates at Rikers Island. He has exhibited extensively in the US, internationally and beyond the gallery walls with commissions for film titles, album covers, skateboards and most recently the Coney Island Cyclone front car panel.

www.stevellis.com / @stevellisart

2-3p: Explore the Music of South America

Get your ears ready, your hips moving, and join artist and educator Mark Araujo for a two-part deep dive into the vast musical richness of South America. We will be exploring Brazilian Samba, Ecuadorian San Juanito, Colombian Cumbia, and Argentinian Tango, just to name a few! We will leave knowing about the cultural histories of these musical genres, their influences, and evolution throughout the last 100 years.

SCHEDULE OF PROGRAMMING

VISIT US