About

Panorama of the City of New York, _
Queens Museum, 2013. _
Photo: Scott Rudd, Courtesy Queens Museum _

THE VENUE:  OpenEngagement, Queens Museum, May 16-18, 2014

Open Engagement 2014 “examines how economic and social conditions connect to life values and philosophies, and situate the everyday in relation to larger political and social issues including labor, economics, food production, ways of being, and education.”

“The Panorama was built by Robert Moses, perhaps one of the most controversial and influential urban planners in the history of New York City, as an attraction for the NYC Pavilion during the 1964 World’s Fair. Now this 9,335 square-foot architectural model is part of the permanent collection of the Queens Museum. It includes every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs. In addition to acting as an introduction to urban planning for thousands of NYC school children each year, in recent times, the Museum has been offering the model as a place of artistic intervention and programming that directly addresses current and historical planning and development issues.”

THE ARTISTS:

/rive, an artist collective, focuses on site-specific and mobile media projects that draw on documentary, narrative and social practices to create interactive experiences exploring common space and alternative histories. Members Samara Smith, A.E. Souzis and Karen Oh have shown work at the Hammer Museum, Conflux Festival, Art in Odd Places, and beyond. Longer artist bios are available below.

Samara Smith, a documentary media practitioner and educator, creates site-specific projects in and about public space. Chain Reaction, her locative game exploring urban environments, was recently exhibited at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Anyplace, Brooklyn, her soundwalk about urban space and development, was featured at the Conflux Festival in 2007. She is currently working on a soundwalk documenting Occupy Wall Street’s transformation of NYC’s Zuccotti Park. Samara has over a decade of documentary film experience with credits on many award-winning films and holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College. An Assistant Professor of video and new media at SUNY College at Old Westbury, she is also the creative producer of Experiments: Old Westbury Oral History Project, which documents the College’s experimental roots on an interactive video documentary website, and the director of the Collaborative Media Lab Pilot which is supported by a 2013 SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant.

A.E. Souzis is a writer and interdisciplinary artist living in New York City. Through her writings, multimedia installations and site-specific tours, she creates narratives that use storytelling and technology to uncover or reimagine public space, alternative or underground histories and real-life networks of power. Her interactive walking tours Architextour and Curb Exchange have been featured in the Art in Odd Places and Conflux festivals. She has also exhibited projects at the New School, Flux Factory and Hunter College’s Black Box Gallery, and published writing in various publications including the book anthology Traveler’s Tales: Prague and the journal Cultural Geographies. She has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Oberlin College and an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.

Karen Oh is the creative director of HOUSEOFCAKES, focusing on design for non-profits, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Her work includes community-centered design, marketing strategy, branding, web development and exhibition design. Her clients include Make the Road New York, Cypress Hills LDC, Urban Green Council, Center for Popular Democracy, Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Cornell University, LISC, and others. In her free time, she works to bring good value, high quality food to her neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens. She is a founder of PLG CSA and the founder of the Lefferts Community Food Co-op. Karen is a graduate of Colby College in Biology and received her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.