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Send to friendNew Tactics is very pleased to introduce you to the Art spaces hosting activism & strengthening community engagement featured Art Spaces and resource practitioners! If you would like to contact one of these practitioners directly, you may click on the names that provide a hyperlink to their New Tactics personal biography account. Please click on the 'contact' tab to send a message to their email.
Based on the belief that creative expression fuels social justice movements, freeDimensional (fD) works with the global arts community to identify and redistribute resources, and support meaningful relationships between art spaces and activists. fD is an international network that advances social justice by hosting activists in distress in art spaces and using cultural resources to strengthen their work. The network is made up of over 100 community art spaces around the world with regional hubs in São Paulo, Cairo, New York City, Berlin, and Pondicherry. freeDimensional provides resources and safe haven for oppressed activists and culture workers; facilitates knowledge-sharing among art spaces who actively participate in local community organizing; and engages the art world and mainstream media to heighten public awareness and influence policy change on critical issues.
Todd Lester is a founding member and currently serves as the Executive Director of freeDimensional (fD). Todd recently completed a fellowship in Forced Migration & Refugee Studies at the American University of Cairo (AUC) and a term as Young Scholar with the Organization of American States (OAS). He is currently a fellow at the Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement in Cairo. Previously, Todd has worked with Reporters Without Borders to establish its New York City communications desk and as Katrina Relief Project Manager for FilmAid International, for which he designed and implemented the organization’s first domestic and natural disaster response intervention. Before that, Todd was Information & Advocacy Manager for the International Rescue Committee in Sudan. He holds a Masters of Public Administration from Rutgers University and is candidate for Doctorate of Public & Urban Policy at the New School for Social Research from which he received a Film Production Diploma and where he is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Media Studies. Todd is a graduate of the Refugee Studies Centre's Summer School in Forced Migration at Oxford University. He is a Project Leader at the World Policy Institute and serves in the Experts Network of the Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center's Community Dialogue Project. Todd is a member the 21st Century Trust and Think Tank 30 of the Club of Rome. In 2006, Todd received the Peace Corps Fund Award for his work starting freeDimensional and was named 'Architect of the Future' by the Waldzell Institute in 2008.
Karen PhilIips joined freeDimensional in 2008 to help launch the Emerging Art Space Support Initiative and now serves as Director of Programs. Before that, Karen worked in the Journalist Assistance program at the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom to Write program at PEN American Center. In 2007, Karen co-founded Proyecto Victoria Ocampo, a community art space and residency program in Argentina. Karen holds a B.A. with honors from Smith College and is completing an M.P.A. in International Management and Policy at New York University’s Wagner School for Public Service. She speaks Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
Artkhana is a space that aims at enhancing the production of short documentary, fiction and animated films in Egypt, by presenting several models, made by independent artists, through a well established workspace that motivates the ideas of young artists, utilizes their talents and creativities and professionally Introduces their products as a well planned production.Artkhana was established in May 2005 in Alexandria to address the low standard of independent animation production in Egypt, as well as to broaden and enrich the base of cultural life in Egypt by establishing an art house and production company for animation films, documentaries and short films. Artkhana concentrates on:
- Enriching media programming for both children and adults with films, cartoons and serial programs which are generated by local Egyptian realities and issues.
- Reflecting the changes and challenges of globalization and raise children’s awareness on issues like child labor, smoking, drugs... etc.
Artkhana has successfully run workshops on filmmaking, storyboarding and animation. Workshops and screenings were hosted by Goethe Institute and the ITI (Information Technology Institute), Bibliotheca Alexandrina and lately organized a storyboarding workshop that took place at Artkhana in cooperation with freeDimensional and the Swiss Embassy in Cairo. Artkhana is currently set up as a nonprofit, member-based resource organization for independent animation and filmmaking.
Eslam Medhat was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He is the Co-founder and executive director of Artkhana, an art space for film and animation in Alexandria. He holds a bachelor of engineering, from the Arab Academy for Science and Technology (AAST). He attended courses in time management, team building and meetings skills at the AAST during 2005. He also completed the Project Management Fundamentals & Professional (PMP) courses, in 2007, member at the SNPO, Society for Non-Profit Organizations. He designed a series of learning videos during Military Service (safety guide, first aid, fire safety … etc) that became part of the learning tutorial for newcomers. Prepared and mentored several workshops on filmmaking and animation at several cultural centers and lately at Artkhana. Workshops were titled; “Introduction to Cartoon Thinking”, “Filmmaking”, “Timing in Animation” and “Storyboarding”. Eslam’s filmmaking experience was gained through participating in several independent short films like, working as an art director for; “Arabic in action” project (2d animation), “Dhahran airport” (3d animation), “Endymion” (short fiction film) and several TV ads as a storyboard artist. He also works as a character designer and 3d studio private trainer.
Mohamed Siam, is a filmmaker and art manager, He took numerous professional training and courses in filmmaking, including scriptwriting, cinematography, editing and animation. He is the co-founder and the artistic director of Artkhana, a newly established film and animation space in Alexandria that caters to filmmakers’ technical and training needs. He worked as a project manager in Softoria, a Canadian animation firm, while he gave many storyboarding and animation trainings in Alexandria and Cairo. He just finished an assignment as the assistant director and the local producer for a Portuguese French co-production on the city of the dead in Cairo and finished the editing sessions in Lisbon, Portugal. He has further filmmaking experiences as editor, director of photography, assistant director and director. He made several short films between fiction and documentary in productions funded by the Anna Lindh Foundation, European Union, Jesuit Cultural Center, Pro-Helvetia and the United Nations among others. He had an art management retreat in Toronto, Canada, representing the art house “Artkhana” organized by freeDimensional (fD).
Caravansarai is an artist-run project space and meeting point in Istanbul, Turkey. Just as the historical caravanserais hosted camel caravans along the Silk Road, we invite creative people from around the world for collaboration, experimentation, research, and exchange. Artists from the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East and other neighboring regions need only to travel as far as Istanbul to share ideas.
In order to enable creative explorations of all sorts, and to encourage and inspire the creation of hybrid art, Julie and Anika share what they know about producing creative projects in Istanbul. Conveniently located in Karaköy, Beyoğlu’s hardware district, artists can take advantage of Caravansarai’s proximity to a dynamic historical marketplace, as well as readily available plastic tubing and pliers.
The compact Caravansarai building is home to three distinct artist-in-residence programs, exchange projects, and public events such as workshops and salons. The library/resource center/salon is an informal meeting point for artists and researchers who can drop by, informally exchanging information over tea or coffee. Living quarters, production space, terrace, studios, and offices fill up our little empire.
Visual artists, performers, filmmakers, musicians, circus performers, choreographers, curators, writers, administrators and all manner of creative people are welcome at Caravansarai.
Anne (Anika) Weshinskey is a professional circus and variety performer/investigator/craftsperson/arts educator/librarian who is determined to stop using so many slashes in describing herself. Having learned much in and from the artistic communities that have nurtured her over the years, Anne would like to now direct such a community. Her diverse experience includes running a housekeeping business, circus production assistant, circus act choreographer and director, reference librarian in all departments of a large urban library, furniture mover, rock star, dancer, writer, standardized test scorer, carnival worker, clown teacher for mentally ill adults, circus camp instructor, barbeque slinger, ethnomusicologist, nanny, eating contest champion, group fitness teacher, TEFL teacher, tightwire walker, foot juggler and traveler.
Julie Upmeyer is an artist and initiator based in Istanbul working with everyday materials and space: paper, plastic, food, the Internet, her home, the street. Born in 1980 in Detroit, USA, her work as an artist has been highly influenced by the repurposing of everyday materials, with an emphasis on interaction and process-based practice. Curiosity lead her to work with Res Artis, the international network of artist residencies, and a three-year nomadic life - living and working in India, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and Greece.
Having been first invited to Istanbul, Turkey as an artist-in-resident, she has now returned independently, making it a base for her artistic practice. In 2007 she initiated Caravansarai, a project space and meeting point in Istanbul.
cura bodrum residency is a self-organized residency program started in 2008, at the Aegean coast of Turkey with the aim of hosting cultural producers working on issues that has global as well as local relevance. Once a year, cura bodrum residency invites participants for a month to reflect on each others' practices, while providing support for them to develop their work and research. In 2009, cura bodrum residency selected Judith Raum, Matthew Schum and Serra Ozhan through an open call to work around human mobility and migration. Our space is available for dialogical and discursive processes.
For more information, www.curabodrumresidency.net
Iz Öztat born in 1981, lives and works in Istanbul. She completed her MA at Sabanci University, Istanbul and her BA with high honors at Oberlin Collage, Ohio, USA. She initiated cura bodrum residency in Mugla in 2008. She recently took part in Shatana Workshop, Jordan, Pristina Contemporary Arts Library Services, Kosovo, the 11th General Resartis Meeting, Amsterdam and unitednationsplaza MX, Mexico City, all related to the development of independent artists’ networks, dialogues, and collaborations. She had her first solo show in Istanbul at PiST, titled OKU/ READ (2008).
The Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology is an annual program for artists from different disciplines, scientists, educators and activists. The program was launched in 2006 with the objective to foster socially and ecologically-conscious cultural development in the area where the Guapamacátaro hacienda is located (Maravatío, Michoacán, México). During intensive periods of 2 to 4 weeks a year, a group of professionals from different parts of the world develop one or several interrelated projects with people from the local peasant community. Its conceptual framework includes ecology in a broad sense, not limited to its common association with the preservation of the natural environment. All components of the local ecosystem (human, natural and artificial) and their relationship to each other are subject of inquiry, creativity and growth. Each year the residency focuses on a specific theme or project related to current social and/or ecological concerns. So far we’ve focused on place and community (2007), sustainable living (2008) and public space (2009). Next year we’ll dig into migration, a very rich and complex topic. Participants have included emerging and mid-career artists from a variety of disciplines, nationalities and esthetics, but all have shared a common interest for site-specific, interdisciplinary work that somehow connects art and ecology. These connections have manifested in the use of recycled materials, the activation of landscape as forum, and the incorporation of ecological topics at the conceptual level of the works. Processes and findings have engaged local people of all ages through a variety of workshops and public events in different subjects such as creative expression, natural resource management, recycling, and organic agriculture.
Alicia Marván (Mexico/USA) is an artist and curator dedicated to contemporary and experimental practices. She has been involved in the creation of over 100 projects that include original performance works and interdisciplinary collaborations, many of which have received support from cultural organizations and academic institutions in Mexico and USA. Her interdisciplinary approach to art/life has led her to an ongoing investigation of a variety of media that explores color, space, form, movement, time and thought. Always interested in the dialogue between art and life, as well as the interaction between art/space/viewer, her work often appears in alternative spaces such as urban, industrial and natural settings. Marván trained in Visual Arts, Performance and Sculpture, and has taught at acclaimed universities such as the University of the Americas in México and San Diego State University in the USA. She directs the Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico (www.guapamacataro.org).
The Mamuta Project at the Daniela Passal Art & Media Center is a center for artistic creation, encounters, research, and display of art. The Center is comprised of artists’ workspaces; video, sound, and electronics labs; a wood, metal, and plastics workshop and an artist in residence apartment. The goal of the project is to advance art projects and to create a framework for artists from different media, as well as curators, architects, designers, and researchers, who wish to create in the spirit of cooperation, dialogue, and technological innovation.The center offers guidance and support for the development of its artists’ individual projects, and initiates and produces projects in cooperation with institutions and individuals in Israel and abroad. The project is dedicated to creating conditions for developing an active community of artists, allowing for personal development alongside collaborative work, through an engagement with the place and time.
Mamuta is runned by the Sala-Manca group (Lea and Diego), a group of independent Jerusalem-based artists that creates in different fields: performance, video, installation & new media since 2000. Sala-manca’s works deal with poetics of translation (cultural, mediatic and social), with textual, urban and net contexts and with the tensions between low tech and high tech aesthetics, as well as social and political issues.
Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman - The Jerusalem-based Sala-Manca Group, comprised of Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman, has been active since 2000. The group produced, initiated and curated the Heara Independent Events for Contemporary Art (2001-2007), published the art journal Hearat Shulayim (1-11), and curated and produced various art events.
They teach art, activism and urban space at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, organize the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem node of “Upgrade! On culture, ar and technology” and are the founding directors of the brand new center, Mamuta at The Daniela Passal Art and Media Center in Jerusalem, a joint project by Hearat Shulaym and Jerusalem foundations.
The group has presented its work, performed, and given talks in different frameworks worldwide, among them: PSI Conference – New York University, “Transmediale” Festival – Berlin, Liverpool Biennial, Ulster University - Belfast, “Observatori” Festival - Valencia, Eyebeam - New York, EPAF at the CCA – Warsaw, La Fabrica y CCEBA – Buenos Aires.
Emma Ari Beltran is a poet from Mexico. Since 1994, she has been involved in the struggle of indigenous peoples facilitating poetry and popular theatre workshops for women and children throughout Mexico. Beltran was a founding member of the first community radio station in Mexico’s history during the student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1999. This work caused her to be subject to political charges, kidnapping and torture, by the Mexican National Army (March 2001). Exiled in Canada since May 2002, Beltran was an award-winning artist selected for Artscape’s Gibraltar Point International Artist Residency Program in 2005. Her poetry has been published in various literary journals and anthologies. She is a member of PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile Network and was a Writer in Residence at the University of Windsor during the spring of 2006. That same year Beltran participated at the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre for the Arts, for which she was granted a full-scholarship. Recently she finished her work as a Lead-Writer for the TAXI-Project, a collective play about home and exile written in collaboration with Martha Kumsa, Sheng Xue and Goran Simic, and produce by PEN Canada and ARCfest.
