the contact project

"In my final year of school, knee-deep in my own studies of poetry and art, I decided to write Siken:..."

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 05:53:27 -0400

“In my final year of school, knee-deep in my own studies of poetry and art, I decided to write Siken: “It’s cliché as fuck to write a note like this…” I began. His reply: “It is cliché as fuck.””

- Legacy Russell (via clicheasfuck)

Fabulous to see the interview CONTACT’s Legacy Russell did with Richard Siken for BOMBLOG inspire a new Tumblr! Check out ClicheAsFuck, which makes use of quotes from the conversation.

Photo

Wed, 30 May 2012 19:28:17 -0400

'The Sweepstakes' by Legacy Russell | berfrois

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:54:21 -0400

'The Sweepstakes' by Legacy Russell | berfrois:

A new short story by CONTACT’s Legacy Russell.

sistahfriendsproject: The 10 Most Inspiring Young Artists in...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:13:54 -0400

sistahfriendsproject:

The 10 Most Inspiring Young Artists in NYC Right Now

So proud and inspired by our sistah Legacy Russell for making this list on Refinery29.

For more on the wonderful Legacy, check out the following:

www.legacyrussell.com/

http://contactproject.net/

@LegacyRussell

♥Sistah Friends Project

CONTACT's Legacy Russell Makes Top 10 List

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:14:19 -0400

Can she kick it? We think she can!

CONTACT co-founder LEGACY gets a shout out on Refinery 29 for being one of “The 10 Most Inspiring Young Artists In NYC Right Now”.

Amidst other incredible artists and producers, she shines. Check it out by clicking here.

Let’s go team!

CONTACT MEETS VOLTA/ARMORY

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:18:00 -0500

CONTACT’s Legacy Russell is headed to VOLTA/ARMORY!

She’ll be presenting on a panel on March 10th—”Peripatetic Models for Utopistic Cultural Exchange”. Quite a mouthful, no? Come check it out!

For more details about this panel as well as the full schedule of events, click here.

CONTACT MEETS HAFNY

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 10:22:00 -0400

CONTACT’s Legacy Russell and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich in conversation — click HERE to tune in.

CONTACT MEETS BOMB

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 10:21:07 -0400

CONTACT’s Legacy Russell has been appointed the new Art Editor for BOMB Magazine’s BOMBlog. Check out her recent post by clicking HERE.

Independent Curators International Publishes Proposal of CONTACT's Legacy Russell

Sun, 22 May 2011 16:32:26 -0400

Independent Curators International Publishes Proposal of CONTACT's Legacy Russell:

Open Ceremony / American Idolatry, coming soon.

Legacy Russell, Guest Curator, Fall 2011, Recession Art

Sun, 22 May 2011 16:27:51 -0400

Legacy Russell, Guest Curator, Fall 2011, Recession Art:

CONTACTProject.net co-founder and producer, Legacy Russell, is announced as the guest curator for the Fall 2011 Recession Art roster. The exhibition, American Idolatry, will take place at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn.

Open Call — American Idolatry

Sun, 22 May 2011 15:30:00 -0400

Artists Wanted for American Idolatry: A Recession Art Show
Recession Art
(New York NY)

From October 29-November 6, American Idolatry will transform the Invisible Dog Art Center in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn into a house of worship. Throughout the week, the public will be invited to view artworks and performances, and partake in evening educational programming, as curated by Legacy Russell and a diverse team of up-and-coming artists, academics, and cultural producers — the future of creative America.

American Idolatry will make use of physical action, installation, and experimentation in all media to assert spaces of shrine-like religious artifice that, though constructed, will strive to function as “real” sites of idolatry, worship, and remembrance of America as influenced by pop culture aesthetic and contemporary politic. Whether displayed independently or as part of a greater assemblage, shrines take a multitude of forms, and material objects are socio-cultural unifiers and signifiers—they hold memories, they have the capacity to provoke emotion, and they imbue one with a sense of belonging, a sense of history. Thus, a shrine and the actions that accompany its presence are not only a portrait of their maker, but also a reflection of the complex global culture surrounding us.

Submissions are open to artists working in all media. Selections will be conducted by the Recession Art Jury led by Guest Curator Legacy Russell and Art Director Ani Katz.

The deadline for entries is Monday June 27, 2011. The submission fee is $20. Artists will be notified of acceptance by early August.

Website: http://recessionartshows.com/submit

UPCOMING FUNDRAISER FOR HAITI

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:50:00 -0500

UPCOMING FUNDRAISER FOR HAITI

CHECK OUT CONTACT PROJECT’S NEW EVENT...

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:24:05 -0500

CHECK OUT CONTACT PROJECT’S NEW EVENT PAGE:

http://contactproject.net/events.html

Featuring our recent artist-collaboration THE SALON

The Poetics of the Random: Snapshots of Little Haiti and the Questions of the Earthquake

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:13:00 -0500

(copyright Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich)

Through this, the only lens I have, and by meditatively mapping socio-political relationships, anecdotal histories and the ever prophetic fact of a snapshot I want to talk to you about Little Haiti and I want to talk to you about human life.

Little Haiti is a neighborhood in the city of Miami. It has been a first stop and a new home for many Haitian immigrants who have come to America seeking relief from a series of civil wars and natural disasters. Within it’s borders a unique compromise between American resources and technology and Haitian culture and ritual has flourished. While the neighborhood was once rife with gangs and drug trade there has been a relative calm in the last few years, a calm that has been, not incidentally, mirrored in the country of Haiti.

Earlier this winter I spent two months in Little Haiti, Miami taking photographs. It has been a terrible and unfathomable happenstance that only two weeks after I returned to New York City, the country Haiti has been devastated by an earthquake, the outcome of which has yet to be fully comprehended.

So what does this mean for Haiti? For the neighborhood of Little Haiti? For the Caribbean and for America?

Part of the despair at this Disaster is the fact that Haiti, as the poorest Caribbean country, has for many years suffered political instability and an unrelenting succession of natural disasters. This Earthquake seems to many a final and fatal blow in a string of unfortunate events. There is an impulse to ask “Why Haiti?”

I would like to think this event, rather than a curse, is part of the random and inexplicable patterns of our world and the ways that forces lacking reason and driven by chance are responsible for the building and the undoing of nations, culture and lives.

Little Haiti is to me the embodiment of the beneficent nature of the random. Its existence is testament to the construction of new and unique culture: part shrine to Haiti, part Miami utopia, part ghetto. Stray dogs, kittens, roosters and chickens roam the narrow streets of the neighborhood with a sense of purpose. Priestesses tend to Botanica (Voodoo) shops. Mothers drag their kids to school on the bus. There is a Footlocker. There is a Wendys with bulletproof glass. There is a van selling sugarcane. Young men speed heisted sports cars with no plates. Old men play their dominoes for hours. Young girls walk dutifully home, homework in hand. From 4pm on, the neighborhood comes alive as the many generations of Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Americans living or working or visiting in the neighborhood come outside.

(copyright Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich)

While at first glance there might seemingly be more Haiti to Little Haiti then America, it is most certainly a unique reflection upon Haiti and America both, rather than a twin of its namesake. In stores, on dashboards, on mantles in people’s homes, objects and images side by side told the story of the intersections of culture inherent in the story of America and in the story of immigration. Little Haiti existed as a loose sketch of Haiti, but unquestionably an American revision.

(copyright Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich)

The degrees of intentionality of the aesthetic juxtapositions the neighborhood overflows with begs a larger question of Nation, of the currents of Diaspora and of America: if our homes and our worlds are composed of collections of the things we are able to keep, to bring with us vs. the things we have left behind, discarded, to what extent is the construction of culture serendipitous?

(copyright Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich)

Now, post-earthquake, Little Haiti exists in many ways in memorial; monument to the structures that inspired it that have been leveled to the ground. While it still stands to be seen how much of Haiti is in-tact, Little Haiti exists as a love letter to a Port Au Prince that no longer stands.

There is human consequence in discussions of the random occurrence and the random object also. Beyond the poetics of Diaspora there is tragedy and loss.

I think of a woman who invited me into her home and showed me photos of her son. There were many photos of him around her house, on the coffee table on top of the counter. In each of the images the son was but 12 although she told me he was in fact my contemporary: forced to flee for her life to the U.S. due to her political involvement in Haiti she had not seen her son for 9 years.

I pray that he and many others are safe.

(copyright Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich)

When the international relief effort in Haiti has done it’s job, when the bodies have all been accounted for, when those who must grieve have begun to grieve, when sleeves have been rolled up and wallets opened and debris cleared and towed away, when boats upon boats of haitians have left for a new life in America, in the Bahamas, in Dominican Republic, when Haitians have stayed in Haiti with a faith and a hope to rebuild their country the question will be asked what to rebuild, what to restore - what to keep and what to leave behind?

Is there any comfort in the fact that this question is the very definition of Diaspora? Does it make any difference that this process of selection and of re-valuing is one that defines human history and cultural identity?

Maybe in time this can be accepted as part of the luckless forces within this life. Who knows. For now, with thousands of people buried underneath a fallen city, there is simply too much work to do.

- Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich

Only A Woman, Legacy Russell, 2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:03:40 -0500

Only A Woman, Legacy Russell, 2010

Maelstrom, Legacy Russell, 2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:00:00 -0500

Maelstrom, Legacy Russell, 2010

Room 719, Legacy Russell, 2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:59:34 -0500

Room 719, Legacy Russell, 2010

Prop 8, Legacy Russell, 2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:57:28 -0500

Prop 8, Legacy Russell, 2010

Blow A Hole In Your Head, Legacy Russell, 2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:54:45 -0500

Blow A Hole In Your Head, Legacy Russell, 2010

Arrows from Eros, Legacy Russell, 2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:53:19 -0500

Arrows from Eros, Legacy Russell, 2010