Trad.

Courtesy the Artists

Due to the process-based nature of the Session program, this project will undergo constant modifications; the features of this page provide accruing information on the project’s developments.

Date:
October 22–December 21, 2013

Visitor info
To make an appointment, please sign up no later than 10 am the same day at recessartscheduling.as.me

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On Oct 22, 2013 Courtesy the Artists will begin work on Trad. as part of Recess’s signature program, Session. Session invites artists to use Recess’s public space as studio, exhibition venue and grounds for experimentation.

“Trad.” is an abbreviation of “traditional,” which is listed instead of an author on folk recordings when the work’s origin is unknown. Courtesy the Artists will select folk texts – ballads, work songs, protest songs, spirituals – as starting points for artworks, performances and collaborations with artists and visitors to Recess’s Soho space.

Developing an interest in the boundaries and affinities that align artists, artworks and audiences, and reflecting a commitment to collaboration, Trad. uses folk music as a publicly-accessible site to propose an authorless yet culturally-situated model of production. The “folk” is a symbolic scheme that produces a past filled with emotional and political content.

While “folk” has been a dangerously segregating term, and its forms have been widely appropriated by avant-garde aesthetics, it’s a classification that may offer insight into the place for art production within the common.

Session invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist’s project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change.

About the artist

Courtesy the Artists

Artists

Courtesy the Artists is a collaboration between Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, based in New York. Courtesy the Artists invites artists and others to interpret, react to, and enjoy historical texts that inform present creative conditions. Courtesy the Artists produced its first project in the fall of 2012 as a program called “The Meeting,” in which artists, musicians and dancers responded to the agitprop songs of Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown. “Trad.” Is Courtesy the Artists’s second project.