PES Videos

PES:NYC 2011, Artist-in-Residence Alex Callender’s work in progress at our site at 181 Stanton, NYC. Callender’s current work focuses around dislocation, and the duality of absence and presence in ecosystems, as our present environmental crisis becomes more persistent and our ability to sustain the need of populations more fragile. Deer populations exist on the periphery of our expansion in this country and their habitation and population are often tethered to the ebb and flow of our development, expansion and industrialization dictating where and how they live and what they adapt to. This same precarity haunts many of the world’s inhabitants. Callender uses deer as agents that offer a narrative about change. Once, they were the occupants of this area, now us, and at point some in the future other entities will presume the main narrative in this given space.

Here’s a video of PES:Bogota 2011, Opening Night. In keeping with our commitment to forging relationships with communities across the globe through art in vacant spaces Project For Empty Space collaborated with LA48 to launch PES:Bogota, 2011. This collaboration provides an opportunity for a cross – cultural dialog between the simultaneous projects taking place in New York and Bogota this year. LA 48 is one of the newest independent spaces dedicated to art in Bogotá, Colombia. Located in a historical district of midtown Bogotá, it was originally the home of a local artist who gathered, for more than forty years, a large collection of the most unlikely objects, between urban drifts and artists’ meetings. These objects now serve as materials for the residencies that aim to connect local community with art practices and with the space itself.Carol Sabbadini, Ivonne Villamil and Julian Santana were selected as the artists-in-residence for PES:Bogota, 2011. The projects opened officially for public interaction on September 29th, 2011. The residencies will also include a series of workshops, presentations and conferences.