Summer 2013!

Social Practice Art with Students in Taraz, Kazakhstan is a series of workshops for artists and art teachers in Taraz, Kazakhstan with an eye towards the final exhibit reflecting on various communities in the city.

Моя Америка (My America)

Моя Америка (My America) is an art project based on ethnographic field research with Russian-speaking residents of New York City in the spring of 2012. Our objective was to learn about their stories of arrival and making home in the United States as well as to explore how they contribute to and transform the city itself.

The Brighton Beach Memory Exchange

The Brighton Beach Memory Exchange was a pop-up gallery that involved community interaction which took place on May 6th, 2012. Situated at the Brighton Beach Boardwalk in Brooklyn, New York, this public art project fostered conversations between artists and Brighton Beach residents by creating and displaying artwork about material life in the Soviet Union. The day-long interaction was filmed and exhibited as part of “Моя Америка (My America)” art project at the Museum of the Moving Image (under the umbrella of CEC ArtsLink’s “One Big City” initiative).

The Borrowed Kazan

"The Borrowed Kazan" project engaged with the residents of Osh, Kyrgyzstan through the medium of food in September 2009. By cooking and serving food in a temporary street cafe in the bazaar, we interacted with bazaar laborers and shoppers from all walks of life. Our project had three objectives: opening a street cafe in the middle of Osh bazaar; creating the cafe as an art installation; interacting with local communities and generating conversation.

Diagnostics

"Diagnostics" is a collaborative art project between Oakland resident artists and car mechanics at Enthusiast Automotive. The auto shop is independently-owned by Keith “Speed” Pinckney, and it specializes in the maintenance of classic cars. This presentation reflects on the results of our two-year artistic and ethnographic engagement with the social and material environment around the restoration of cars. The images draw on the art exhibit installed and displayed inside the auto shop on July 23, 2011. The installation consisted of photographs, drawings, sculptures, paintings, video and music.

Diplomats

In September 2008, we collaborated with Tengri Umai, the first independent gallery in Almaty, Kazakhstan. We participated in and documented a graffiti arts festival. The project involved over twenty graffiti and hip hop artists. Another part of the project was to interact with the children in an orphanage in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, by using graffiti art.

The Transformations of Space

The Transformations of Space in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a project undertaken in the summer 2007. Initially imagined as an investigation of Almaty's urban history through artists' studios, this project ultimately became a documentation of the construction that took place before the worldwide financial crisis of the early 21st century.

DrawBridge Murals

In April 2009, Daniel Gallegos and Monica Linzner organized a graffiti mural project at the Henry Robinson Multi-Services Center for Displaced Families in Oakland, California. The objective was to personalize the environment for children who have been recently displaced and in transition through art. The children along with the teachers from DrawBridge collaborated to make a mural that would promote shared belonging and identification with their current home at the Center.