JAMAICA, N.Y. — The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL) is pleased to present the inaugural seminar of Jamaica Flux 2007, inviting Kathleen Goncharov, Independent Curator, and Tom Finkelpearl, Executive Director of the Queens Museum of Art. The seminar takes place Saturday, May 12, 2007 5 – 8 pm.
Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2007 is a contemporary public art project which includes the commission, creation, and exhibition of approximately 30 multidisciplinary, site-specific artworks. These works will be displayed at a variety of locations along Jamaica Avenue, including banks, stores, restaurants, street corners, phone booths, parks, and other public spaces from September 29 – November 17, 2007. A companion on-site exhibition will be presented in JCAL’s landmark gallery from September 29, 2007 – January 12, 2008. The gallery exhibition, which includes participating artists’ sketches and models as well as historic examples of site-specific artwork, is designed to give context to site-specific art practices and provide visitors with a behind-the-scenes look at artists’ creative processes.
Participants include a diverse array of both established and emerging artists working in a wide range of media. Jamaica Flux 2007 assumes the point of view that an exhibition is not just a show representing an idea or an entity, but a programmatic action with factual effects and consequences. Jamaica Flux 2007 also challenges ideas about where art should be displayed and explores the relationship between art, commerce, urban renewal, and community. Through Jamaica Flux 2007, JCAL, a multi-disciplinary and community-based organization, performs its vital function to serve the NY art world and the community by promoting contemporary art culture and providing seminal aids to improve social, political, and economic conditions of urban renewal.
The upcoming seminar is organized as a part of the project’s public/educational program. In the informal format of an open conversation, the seminar will discuss the theme, “Artists’ Voices in Public Spaces,” focusing on issues involved in controversy and censorship. The core issue concerns both artists and the public (community). For artists, it raises the question how far they can bestow creative vocabularies in the public realm under the doctrine of artistic freedom and aesthetic autonomy. For the public and community members, it questions how far they can contend over emotional discomfort and daily disruptions under the doctrine of religious/democratic freedom and shared autonomy. Touching upon a few exemplary cases of controversy and censorship in the history of public art, the seminar will illuminate how the realm of freedom and autonomy can be shared between ethical standards and aesthetic challenges. It will also provide practical advice and strategies for negotiating public policies and regulations in order to help practicing artists and administrators who are involved in a public art project in one way or the other.
Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning is located at 161-04 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11432. For more information and directions, call 718-657-7400 ext 123 or visit http://www.jcal.org.
Jamaica Flux is supported by many generous contributors, including the Jerome Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts.
The Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning is housed in a landmark building owned by the City of New York and is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin; the New York City Council; Council Speaker Christine Quinn; the Queens Delegation of the Council; Majority Whip, Councilman Leroy Comrie; and Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall.
[tags]Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, JCAL, seminar of Jamaica Flux 2007[/tags]
