NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (WWLP) – ARC (activate, research, create), a curated summer program from Northampton non-profit, Available Potential Enterprises, Ltd. (A.P.E.) returns for its seventh season, which will feature an array of workshops, performances, showings, talks, and interactive installations.
From May 26 to July 1, A.P.E. will host six different artist residencies, that according to the organization, will consist of a queer femme interactive installation, video game as memory palace/junkyard, a community live-painting project, stick collecting & collections, collaborative performance & choreography, and an immersive greenspace meets oral history preservation experience.
Each residency will be open to the public and will feature performances, showings, talks, interactive installations, and more. The ARC Series is continuing the investigation of a contemporary art gallery as an active space within the community, according to A.P.E.
The ARC 2023 projects to be featured are:
- tender fortress by Jae Southerland
- Your Ghost Body by Karinne Keithley Syers
- Blank Canvas Exhibition by Kahli Hernandez
- Stick Show by Kole Kovacs in collaboration with Michael Osgood
- Skin in the Game by Lailye Weidman with collaborators Catalina Hernández-Cabal, Alta Millar, Madison Palffy, and Ashley Shey
- Story/Sound Arbor by Michael Medeiros
The following was shared with 22News in a news release from A.P.E. Ltd. ;
May 28, 29 & 31, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
tender fortress
Jae Southerland
Tuesday, May 30, 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.: “tender fortress after dark”
see the installation in its ethereal “dark mode” at this special lights out event!
Jae Southerland works with tulle as an expression of femme identity and queer desire. In tender fortress, a large-scale interactive installation invites the viewer to explore dreams and memories. Emulating a painterly style with tulle creates a dream-like world that elicits a simultaneous feeling of safety and childlike wonder (a soft and tender fortress for our inner child), much like the blanket forts we make with our friends and family in childhood.
June 2, noon to 5 p.m. & June 3, noon to 8 p.m.
Your Ghost Body
Karinne Keithley Syers
WORKSHOP, June 3, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Memory Landscapes in Twine
(ideally bring your own laptop but you can also work on paper) RSVP HERE for Twine download.
ARTIST’S TALK, June 3, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.: A Story is Made of Movement through a Landscape
Your Ghost Body (or California in the 20th Century) is a memory palace in the form of a playable junkyard, both as videogame and live game show. Played through three avatars for the author, looking from middle age back at childhood and the cusp of adulthood, Your Ghost Body wonders how memory functions as a medium to rejoin absent people and places that our lost to us and yet somehow also a part of who we are.
For the ARC residency, game-maker and playwright Karinne Keithley Syers and set designer Sara Walsh lay out each level of the game in progress for play-testing to further explore what engages a player here at the cusp between performance text, interactive fiction and maze-puzzle game.
In addition, Syers will give a public artist talk and workshop on writing memory games in Twine.
June 4 thru June 10
The Blank Canvas Exhibition
Kahli Hernandez
June 5 – 7 & 9; noon to 9 p.m.: Creative Community Hours (Art’s Night Out; Friday, June 9; 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.)
Saturday, June 10; 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.: Community Reception
The Blank Canvas Exhibition is an interactive experience that aims to inspire creativity and spark conversations. Large blank canvases will be on display throughout the week, allowing individuals to witness the space’s “blank” beginning state and its transformation into a full gallery experience. During Creative Community Hours, patrons can add anything they want to the canvases, creating an open forum for conversation. The only caveat is that new artists are expected to express their thoughts using symbols, shapes, colors, or other means. The visual conversation will change and transform daily, so visitors are encouraged to drop by and see the new works each day. The exhibition is open for friends and families to thoroughly enjoy.
The Blank Canvas Exhibition will culminate in a celebration of all the completed works as a collective artistic accomplishment. It is expected to create lasting memories and draw the next generation of artists and creatives to a brighter future for all.
June 11-17
Stick Show
Kole Kovacs in collaboration with Michael Osgood
June 11: Opening reception, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
June 12-16: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
June 17: noon to 4 p.m.
Stick Show is a multi-faceted celebration of sticks and the beauty of nature and her found objects.
Featuring: a special collection of sticks found by ‘artists’ and ‘non-artists’ alike; drawings, images, paintings, sculptures, and videos with sticks as both subject and object matter; an open invitation to community members to contribute sticks to a group sculpture.
June 18-24
Skin in the Game: Investigating risk & togetherness
Lailye Weidman, with Catalina Hernández-Cabal, Alta Millar, Madison Palffy, Ashley Shey, and Meredith Bove (dramaturg)
Tuesday, June 20: 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (open rehearsal)
Thursday, June 22: 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. (open rehearsal)
Saturday, June 24: 2 p.m., informal showing and conversation
Skin in the Game: Investigating risk & togetherness is a week-long process-based residency investigating the following questions: With the continued threat of a powerful illness in our midst, how do we move together in meaningful ways? What is needed to care for each other? How has the risk of contagion registered in our bodies, shaped our movement, brought us together and pushed us apart? Choreographer Lailye Weidman will work with four performer-collaborators—Catalina Hernández-Cabal, Alta Millar, Madison Palffy, and Ashley Shey—in daily rehearsals utilizing practices and scores that center bodily negotiation of proximity, connection, touch, and vulnerability during this uncertain time of the lingering-pandemic. The artists will also explore the porousness of the gallery, its exposure to the street through glass windows and the potential for passersby and patrons to engage with the choreographic process and its content. In addition to exploring togetherness amongst the performers, the choreography will also consider the ways that the public moves and gathers in relationship to the performers. Skin in the Game refuses to forget or ignore the pandemic. Rather, the artists seek to learn from its reverberations in their bodies and to chart a path forward that honors the risk of shared breath.
June 25-July 1
Story/Sound Arbor
Michael Medeiros
Mindfulness Writing Sessions: June 25, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., June 26, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., June 27, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Open Hours:
June 28 and 29, noon to 5 p.m.
June 30, noon to 8:30 p.m. (with live music and reading starting at 7 p.m.)
July 1, noon to 5 p.m.
Story/Sound Arbor is an immersive greenspace and oral history preservation experience. Participants will be encouraged to deeply visualize and share their experiences in gardens and nature in three mindfulness and writing sessions facilitated by Michael Medeiros. Those personal garden/nature experiences, if the participants choose, will be recorded to be played in an oral history soundscape within the Story/Sound Arbor on display Friday + Saturday of the residency week.
For updated information, links, and artist bios, please see the ARC page on the A.P.E. website: http://www.apearts.org/arc-2023.html
