Participants included: A-Jump Books, Stockport Flats, Alexander Derwick, Louise Felker, Comet Skateboards, Preacher’s Biscuits, sunnyoutside, Lauren Valchuis, Essay Press, Ben Altman, Werner Sun, Kaleb Hunkle, and Essays & Fictions.

Below: Ben Altman presents visitors with his printed scarves as they walk in; David Pollock, Louise Felker, Stockport Flats, Alexander Derwick, Preacher’s Biscuits, Comet Skateboards and Werner Sun ‘vend’ their books, book arts, small press titles, editions, and multiples; Catherine Taylor of Essay Press decorates dolls at the Essays & Fictions display; visitors admire and interact with installations from Alexander Derwick and Lauren Valchuis.

Photo Credit: Ed Dittenhoefer

Photo Credit: Ed Dittenhoefer

Photo Credit: Ed Dittenhoefer

Photo Credit: Ed Dittenhoefer

Photo Credit: Ed Dittenhoefer

Photo Credit: Ed Dittenhoefer

Thank you to all the artists, vendors, performers, and visitors who came out to Arcades Project and helped make it a success.  We hope to see you at the next event. 

Two talented and experimental poets, Kate Schapira and Katie Yates, will be celebrated tomorrow at Arcades Project as Stockport Flats brings their latest titles to this installment. Stockport Flats, run by poet and publisher Lori Anderson Moseman, will be participating in a special experience in which curious viewers will have to work exclusively with Moseman to exchange the titles as not to disturb the nature of the display.

Both Schapira and Yates will be offering additional pieces to those who purchase their books. Those who are interested in Schapira’s How We Saved the City will be offered reduced pricing on her knitted scarves with proceeds going to the Red Cross. Katie Yates’ poem for the house will be available for purchase alongside amulets and the author’s quilted limited edition chapbooks.

In addition to DAES, Derwick is well known for his for printmaking, drawings and larger public displays of artwork. He serves as the leader in a group of artists called Hug Me Violently as they generate shirts and posters containing many pieces of the thought-provoking artwork. The group also creates zines with collections of drawings that are motivated with a centralized theme Derwick came up with himself. Zines, shirts and  posters will be for sale at Arcades Project.

Ben Altman will be joining Arcades Project on December 2nd to display his exquisite collection of photographs taken in various marketplaces in Europe. Altman, a native of England, dabbled in many fields before discovering photography. Now his photographs are best known for their overlapping panoramic scenes that present an abundance of culture and chaos in one sweeping view. His eagerness to challenge the constraints of a single frame with a toy camera has turned his art into something that represents politics, community and above all, an interactive experiences for the viewers. Altman’s ability to capture vivid cultural images that juxtapose each other as the eye moves along the photograph has inspired him to turn his work into something more sculptural that demands an audience’s attention and participation.

*video from artist’s website

*photo (above) from artist’s website

December 2, 2011

location: Standard Art Supply & Souvenir, 308 E. Seneca St., Ithaca

5pm – 9pm

Arcades Project is an experimental marketplace of literature, art, and design, where local and regional independent presses, makers of art books and editions, conceptual artists, and indie craft vendors will convene to offer visitors an alternative and thought-provoking shopping experience.

Participants include: A-Jump Books, Stockport Flats, Alexander Derwick, Louise Felker, Comet Skateboards, Preacher’s Biscuits, sunnyoutside, Ithaca City of Asylum, Lauren Valchuis, Essay Press, Ben Altman, Werner Sun, Kaleb Hunkle, and Essays & Fictions

CALL FOR SMALL PRESS & INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
CALL FOR MAKERS OF GAMES AND GAME-RELATED ARTWORKS
CALL FOR VIDEO, PERFORMANCE AND MULTI-MEDIA ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Deadline for applications: First round due October 3, then rolling as space allows

What: Arcades Project is a curated event featuring artists, designers, and independent presses. Our Spring event, which is part of the annual regional literary festival Spring (W)rites, was founded by visual and literary artists in Ithaca, and was primarily concerned with reconsidering the idea of text, writing, the book, and where these all intersect with shopping and the marketplace. The December event will incorporate these elements but will shift its aesthetic focus to the poem of display in an effort to create a gift economy that highlights elements of chance and play. As such we are featuring gamers, games, and video art as well as book arts, and strongly encouraging applicants to include a well-thought out artistic design that describes how to display their wares.

Arcades Project 2011 was held on the Commons on the first Friday in May to coincide with Gallery Night. This event featured up to 20 vendors and artists and drew up to 1000 viewers and shoppers. Publishers and art book vendors reported making hundreds of dollars in profits from art work and book sales, and many sold out the stock they brought.

When: Friday 4pm-9pm Friday, Dec. 2 coinciding with Gallery Night (hosting over 2,000 visitors)

Where: Ithaca, New York (The Commons)

Who: Arcades Project is looking for proposals from visual and literary artists to sell their wares, create installations, screen videos, or conduct interactive games/performances. If you have any questions, please email emailarcadesproject at gmail dot com

Participants may apply to sell art objects, books, journals, zines, dvds, or games. It is recommended that items be priced under $50. During the event, visitors can purchase items and meet the authors/designers/artists behind the work.

Artists are invited to propose installations, performances, or video screenings. Proposals that connect to related themes (like the gift economy, games, or books) are welcome, but are not required. Some financial support for materials or travel expenses may be provided.

Organizers and Co-Founders: Karen Brummund (artist), David Pollock (writer/publisher), Wylie Schwartz (art critic/curator), Danielle Winterton (writer/publisher)

Download the application as .doc or .pdf

Application FAQs

In his great unfinished work, The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin redefines the flâneur as a disengaged witness who strolled the passages of the 19^th century Paris arcades, urban marketplaces covered in iron and glass. From Benjamin’s perspective, this fgure did not participate in commercial transactions with buyers and sellers, but rather acted as a tourist of the marketplace.

Most of us today occupy hybrid roles as consumers and flâneurs. We enter the marketplace primarily as consumers. At the same time, however, we browse, we take in, we act as aesthetes. A relationship between the exhibits we observe (the displays of consumer goods) and the items we choose to purchase certainly exists, though the nature of that relationship is highly variable and often unclear.

Art galleries are places of commerce just as much as department stores are places where aesthetic works are displayed. Our Arcades Project is meant to create a temporary experiential space where visitors can explore this relationship between art space and marketplace. Arcades Project features books, editions, prints, multiples, and handmade objects that consumers can purchase, as well as visual installations that are not for sale but are meant to invite reflection on the intersections of text and visual arts, as well as art and shopping.

As part of Spring Writes, the Finger Lakes Literary Festival, the inaugural Arcades Project gives special attention to the literary marketplace and aims to increase visibility for high quality independent presses and book artists. As more literary works are delivered by electronic means, the bound book becomes something of an antique, a curiosity, or a precious artifact. Small press limited edition titles that are carefully crafted by passionate book artists may be viewed as art objects in their own right. For book artists and small press publishers who revel in and cherish this medium, Arcades Project seeks to provide means to connect readers and buyers with writers, presses, and book stock in hope that these intersections will strengthen and enhance the regional independent literary community.

This is a space where Thomas Gokey’s pirate printing press enables shoppers to create their own hand-bound books using PDFs from AAAAArg.org. Jamie O’Neil, who appears as Kurt Weibers, explores the “gap space of the real and imaginary” as he incorporates new media with narrative performance to “sell” his Skippisox product. Painter Paul Chambers explores the manner in which decontextualized language can function like an object or a color, and Werner Sun turns books into whimsical mobiles that allow visitors to read their content from “below.” These uses of disembodied text are entirely appropriate visual expressions to reflect the climate of chaos and uncertainty in the realm of contemporary literary publishing. Arcades Project visitors may act as both interactive consumers and tourists in a liminal space where the gallery and the marketplace intersect.

Download the catalogue with participant bios here.

Below: Jen Donato greets visitors at the entrance; Catherine Taylor, Maggie Prendergast, Kaleb Hunkele, Danielle Winterton, David Pollock, Josh Sperling, A-Jump Books, and Scott McCarney ‘vend’ their art books, book arts, small press titles, editions, and multiples; Karen Brummund moves through the crowded room while talking to a guest; Brett Bossard and Wylie Schwartz share a laugh.

Below: A visitor enjoys Chambers’ paintings; Chambers stands in front of his work; visitors watch Steve Poleskie’s “The Bird Film;” Jamie O’Neill performs as Skippisox; Thomas Gokey operates his pirate printing press; a visitor reads a copy of Slop Art; Werner Sun’s mobile dangles and enchants; Poleskie entertains Arcades Project visitors.

Thank you to all the artists, vendors, performers, and visitors who came out to the inaugural Arcades Project and helped make it a success. We hope to see you all the next event, which will be held on Friday, December 2, 2011, at a location yet to be announced. 

The Ithaca Post published David Pollock’s review of Stephen Poleskie’s film The Bird, which will be screening at Arcades Project on Friday, May 6th. You can read his review And Your Bird Can Sing at the Ithaca Post.

The Post Editors also published a short Q&A with Arcades Project, a follow-up from Luke Fenchel’s article. The Book As Art Object is published on the Ithaca Post.