CALL IS NOW CLOSED
Imagine Our Parks “The Perfect Moment”: A Call to Action
Invitation
Imagine yourself in a camp with creatures that don’t exist, tents that act like cameras, a field desk where you can pull up a stool and cook dinner, write a poem, or think. You bring into camp a painting, a sculpture, a gesture, a talisman, a sound, a movement, a poem...or something else….and spend the day installing it or performing in the camp or a nearby site in the “park.”
Imagine Our Parks (IOP) is a moving artist installation and experimental site that investigates contested boundaries, shifting borders, territories, and crossings along the 42nd parallel. Artists are invited to install works or create a performance within one of the camps itself or nearby. Apply to join us for one of the four sites listed below:
Site 1: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (June 13-15)
Site 2: City of Rocks National Reserve, Idaho (June 17-19)
Site 3: Oregon Desert Trail (Southeast OR) (June 22-24) -- Please note: this site will have the least services and more extreme temperatures.
Site 4: Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, California (June 26-28)
IOP is a response to “Imagine Your Parks”, an initiative by the NEA/NPS. We seek projects that engage the complexities of organizations, cultures and places to imagine a future beyond parks. The IOP camp will be an installation space, made of objects, performances and reading, soundscapes, and ephemera.
Background
Imagine Our Parks (IOP) is a moving artist installation and experimental nomadic space that investigates contested boundaries, shifting borders, territories, and crossings along the 42nd parallel. In summer 2016, we are inviting artists to join us at different sites along an artist-led expedition beginning in (present-day) Yellowstone National Park. The campsite installation will then move to the City of Rocks National Reserve, ID; Oregon Desert Trail, OR; and Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, CA. The IOP camp will be an installation space, made of objects, performances, readings, soundscapes, and ephemera.
To mark the 27th year since the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC canceled Robert Mapplethorpe’s show, “The Perfect Moment” (June 13, 1989), Imagine Our Parks (IOP) is a call to action that addresses the contestation/complexity of “public funding for the arts” and “public lands."
Imagine Our Parks is a response to Imagine Your Parks, a call for projects created by the USAmerican National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Park Service (NPS). The call from the NEA and NPS invites “a new generation of Americans to find their park” as a way of marking 100 years of parks (2016) and 50 years of public arts funding (2015). The NPS strategic “Call to Action” supports a mandate to preserve [certain] lands and historic features designated for their “cultural and historic significance, scenic and environmental worth, and educational and recreational opportunities.” The NEA emphasizes funding for [certain] groups; specifically nonprofit, tax-exempt arts, educational, and governmental organizations and agencies. Together, the NEA/NPS grant will fund projects that prepare “for a second century of stewardship and engagement” through the support of eligible organizations. However, this form of support is often at the expense of actual artists, who become marginalized by an impenetrable bureaucracy. This became clear to us, as artists, upon the launch of the official NEA/NPS Imagine Your Parks call.
Counter to this language and to the limitations of bureaucracy, we are invested in the language of art and in providing spaces for individual artists and different community formations. We are inspired by the important work of organizations like Franklin Furnace that seek to re-centre that which becomes marginalized and advocate for "forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content." Our call for proposals, “The Perfect Moment”: A Call to Action seeks projects that are produced and proposed by artists that encourage alternative models of participation, engagement and stewardship. Playing with ideas about parks, we are interested in examining the discourse of “artistic expression of thrilling landscapes and moving [US]American stories,” promoted by the NEA and NPS through a moving campsite installation.
IOP is not simply a reaction. We are inspired by the potential of moving beyond the limitations of the NEA/NPS call and the obvious critique that can be lodged against it. We want to face parks as real, everyday realities rather than (only) romantic, symbolic tourist/adventure spaces. We are looking for projects that think beyond the habit of binaries (good and bad, inside and outside, art and science) to promote modes of praxis in more-than-human worlds, whereby we can work out ideas differently together, as Corey Snelgrove writes in “Kwetlal Against Colonialism: A Summary.” IOP engages the complexities of organizations, cultures and places to imagine a future beyond parks that cannot be contained.
Apply to join us at one of the four sites.
The project will start on June 13, 2016 the anniversary of “The Perfect Moment.”
IOP Application and Guidelines
DEADLINE: October 31, 2015
NOTIFICATION: January 1, 2016
PROJECT INSTALLATION START DATE: June 13, 2016
GRANT: The IOP Grants Program is committed to providing in-kind support for up to nine artists to join us in a camp. The grant covers two nights camping and simple meals during each artist's stay.
GUIDELINES: IOP is looking for artists to join us at different places along an artist-led expedition beginning in (present-day) Yellowstone National Park, (the first USAmerican national park) and traveling along the 42nd parallel. The IOP camp will be an installation space, made of objects, performances and reading, soundscapes, and ephemera. When you leave camp, we ask that you loan a relic of your participation moving through the “thrilling landscapes” and thinking about the “second century of stewardship and engagement.”
If selected, there is a $25 fee to participate. This $25 confirmation/registration fee helps to cover food and camping for 2 nights. Invited participants are expected to cover personal travel expenses to/from the site and park entrance fees.
ELIGIBILITY:
- Any individual artist or collaborative team may apply (visual arts, media arts, performing arts, writing, music, etc.)
- Those that qualify for funding from the NPS/NEA “Imagine Your Parks” (nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3), U.S. organizations; units of state or local government) may not apply.
- Artists over 35 years of age are highly encouraged to apply
- Must be open to the uncanny and unexpected
- Experience with basic camping (you will be required to provide your own gear including tent, warm sleeping bag, sleeping pad and travel mug)
- No proof of citizenship required
APPLICATION:
To apply, please prepare the following items and submit via e-mail (imagineourparks@gmail.com) Unless specified, materials may be submitted in either MS doc or PDF format:
- Application information (see below)
- Resume/CV
- Work Samples (1-3 written samples, 6-8 images (JPEG, 72 dpi, and not to exceed 1500 x 1500 pixels) or 5 minutes of video or sound (mov, mp4, mp3, aac, wav) -- interdisciplinary artists should combine as you see fit.
- A correlating list of work, including title, media, dimension, and year
- Project Proposal (300-500 words)
INFORMATION (please cut and paste below and include with project proposal)
Name:
Street Address:
City:
Country:
Phone:
E-mail:
Website:
Please briefly describe your camping experience (100 word max)
Apply to join us for one of the four sites listed below (please indicate order of preference)
- Site 1: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (June 13-15)
- Site 2: City of Rocks National Reserve, Idaho (June 17-19)
- Site 3: Oregon Desert Trail (Southeast OR) (June 22-24) -- Please note: this site will have the least services and more extreme temperatures.
- Site 4: Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, California (June 26-28)