OPEN CALL: Peter Stuyvesant's Ghost

CALL for PROPOSALS - - - - - PETER STUYVESANT’S GHOST

IMPORTANT DATES:

July 21, 2006: 100 WORD TEXT ONLY description of your idea and contact info emailed to: twowhitecats24@hotmail.com
July 30, 2006: Notification of acceptance of idea
August 15, 2006: Bios and descriptive text for program (guide map) due
Sept. 15, 2006: Soundfile due
Nov. 15-19, 2006: Performance dates

Coordinators: Lise Brenner, Ryan Holsopple, Michelle Nagai

Contact for Questions: Lise Brenner - twowhitecats24@hotmail.com

Final Nature of Artistic Contribution: Digital sound files of up to 1 minute to be accessed during performance dates via pay or cell phone. They may also be available on a CD. We are looking for both ‘realistic’ and interpretive reactions to historical information. The terrain this project will cover (pictured above) is the footprint of Peter Stuyvesant’s original farm (Bouwerie), which included the area from 4th Ave. to the original East River shore, and from 4th Street to 22nd Street. Files will be archived and accessible on the internet after the performance dates.

Date of Event: November 15-19, 2006
Specific Event Description: A self-guided walk through the area of Peter Stuyvesant’s farm, using a printed map and utilizing cell or payphones to access a central open-source telephony server (Asterix). The printed material will indicate a route around the farm, with specific points indicated where participants are asked to stop and call into the server. A payphone will be available at all chosen points. After making the phone call, the participant will dial the message code indicated for that particular site, thereby accessing a short (no more than 1 minute) sound file made in response to historical/topographical information provided to the artist about the site, which could include information about Dutch cows and pigs, church bells, hymns, language; memories of shops, streets, sounds of Holland; local sounds of nature (wind, birds, water); local work sounds (blacksmiths, milking, carpentry, printing); or other information suggested by artists.

Overall Project Description: PSG is a civic art project, inspired by the rapid cultural and physical changes engendered in this area by the Dutch colonial period. PSG encourages a multi-leveled understanding of the place that the East Village is now. Using sound as the primary performance medium, tapping into the visceral, non-cognitive response that hearing, like smell, tends to generate, PSG explores the contemporary topography while making palpable the pre-urban terrain of Peter Stuyvesant’s 17th century farm. Through guided walks and discussion forums PSG will facilitate activities that connect past with current truths, and, perhaps, visions for the future, as alternative realities flicker briefly into life, and historical and environmental perceptions are deepened. The overall goal is a rich, many-layered experience of this terrain, literally moving audiences through it, primed for careful listening to what is currently here to be heard, while opening up imagination, and awareness of the past.

Specifically, PSG aims to: facilitate active participation on the part of a widely varied audience; consciously link art and performance making with history; invite contributions from artists that maintain this dual focus on historical relevance and an actively participating audience; bring together NYC- and Netherlands-based contributors; and explore the role of history in bringing the present into sharper focus.