A residency at Residency Unlimited was a highly unique experience for my artistic practice to date and certainly an important step forward in my creative career.
I arrived in a new city, in New York City, with no contacts, little resources and just a suitcase full of twelve-disembodied Creatures and the plan to create an unusual interactive multimedia rock’n’roll show collaborating with people form the Bronx. I was not sure what to expect.
Residency Unlimited, however, quickly understood the nature of the project I wanted to undertake and went about finding ways to “make it happen” – whether connecting me with key industry people in New York relevant to my media arts practice, helping me find crucial resources or even personally running the sound and technical aspects for the showcases . I really felt that Nathalie, Sebastien and Boshko were like my creative family in New York, offering professional support and invaluable advice. One of the unique things about RU is that they really adjust and personally focus what they do to suit each artist – every project and every artist is different.
My artistic placement at the Casita Maria Arts and Education Center in the Bronx was also extremely beneficial to my project. Not only did it allow me to collaborate with a unique community in the Bronx –something integral to my work – but it also gave me a huge studio space (the school’s gymnasium) where I could create amplified sound, test projections and develop the project. The staff at Casita were also very supportive and excited for an international multimedia artist to be working in their midst. Creating a complex, cutting-edge multimedia work in a gymnasium in the Bronx was a somewhat surreal experience but moved the work forward tremendously.
The studio visits that RU organized were also very beneficial, cultivating an exchange of ideas, dialogues between artist and curator, networks, experiences.
I feel that, having completed the RU residency, my creative work has progressed considerably and my profile and creative connections in New York City have grown immeasurably. It feels like the beginning of a new and exciting stage in my career.
