The Berwick Research Institute
Public Art Incubator Program
A co-curated residency program with Susan Sakash (2005 – 2007)
Creating public art can be a long and complicated process, often requiring extensive field research, community dialogue, and significant personal and creative reflection. Thus Sakash and I, along with the Berwick, created this residency to provide support and critical feedback to artists exploring ideas and experiments in public art that are still in the research and development stage.
Artists and artist groups submitted proposals for the research and development of works intended for the public sphere. Applications were encouraged from those who required time, space, and a critical feedback as they experimented and investigated the form and content necessary to realize their projects. During this 3-month residency, we provided one or two artists/artist groups space to workshop ideas, access to our networking resources for materials, publicity, and critique, as well as regular critical feedback from peers and curators working in the field of public art.
From 2005 to 2007, Sakash and I worked with two artist groups and one solo artist to develop their public art projects. We were personally involved with each one, providing critical feedback and institutional connections, facilitating charettes and public dialogues, and advising next steps in project development and production. Our support for these projects went beyond the 3-month residency periods and into each project’s realization.
Each of the projects conceived through the Public Art Incubator went on to achieve national acclaim through grants, awards, media attention, and gallery and museum exhibitions.
Public Art Incubator Projects: 2005-2007
Matthew Mazzotta and Heather Clark
The Busycle is a 15-person pedal-powered bus that travels in neighborhoods throughout the United States. Built by Mazzotta, Clark, and a community of Boston-based participants, it runs solely on the energy of its passengers. Anyone willing to pull their weight and pedal can be a Busycle passenger. For the PAI residency, Mazzotta and Clark designed and built the Busycle and unveiled it in the Boston Hub on Wheels festival where even Boston’s mayor Thomas Menino sat at the wheel.
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things performs corporate commands where they occur in the urban landscape. They try to perform each command as literally as possible. In Corporate Commands: Dudley, the Institute worked with teens in the youth arts program, Arts in Progress, in Dudley Square, Roxbury, in a 2-week workshop on performance and media criticism, and ended in public performances in the students’ neighborhood.
John Ewing
In Virtual Street Corners, Ewing installed video screens and microphones in a storefront in Dudley Square, Roxbury, and a storefront in Brookline, MA. The chosen neighborhoods are transportation and cultural hubs with rich and intertwined histories. They are only 2.4 miles apart and a city bus runs directly between them, yet very few people from either neighborhood visits the other. Using technology developed to bridge geographical distances, the project instead traversed the social boundaries that separate two important neighborhood centers with significant historical connections. Ewing built prototypes during the Berwick residency and, in 2010, installed the final exhibition.