July 18, 2013 The Story Behind The Hive (EFA Project Space Director Michelle Levy Explains)
Piero Passacantando Reflection
The Hive initiative evolved out of an event series at EFA called the Artist/Organizer series. The basic aim was to support activities by artists who re-shape the framework for engaging with artistic practices by orchestrating experiences that invite participation through interaction and services and extend to different audiences. Originally, specific artist-organizers were invited by EFA to conceive of a project that would be realized on our premises- a slow process that could take up to two years at times just in planning. We eventually decided to expand possibilities through an open call: the open call would raise the visibility of such practices, encourage artists who may already have something in process, and introduce us to those from other communities we may not be exposed to. This was when we started speaking to A Blade of Grass (ABOG). ABOG is an essential new New York City based organization- a funder and champion of socially engaged art practices, and we found a synergy here between our two organizations’ goals. We partnered with ABOG on this next stage of the initiative. The two orgs put our heads together to come up with a clear concept, named it The Hive, and announced a request for proposals in late 2012.
We were thrilled to receive dozens of ambitious proposal submissions for participation and collaboration based durational projects intended for EFA Project Space. By February 2013, we narrowed the selection down to three projects that were especially moving in their honest and creative approaches to humanizing the institutionalized condition, and that spoke to each other in a very clear way. Additionally, the three ideas worked brilliantly in the context of an office building in the heart of mid-town Manhattan, just blocks from Port Authority, Times Square, Herald Square, etc.
From a personal standpoint, I was interested in the varied relationships to the different artists. Cassie Thornton, of the Feminist Economics Department (the FED) - the entity responsible for the Poets’ Security Force project, is an artist EFA has worked with before, and we loved the idea of having an opportunity to continue to build a relationship with her. Piero Passacantando, creator of the MyNerva: Transmigration of the Cubicle think-tank project, had attended many EFA Project Space events and had been expressing interest in doing socially engaged projects. Piero had begun to develop his concepts for this, but had never realized something on the scale of his proposed project, and it was great to be able to provide the opportunity for him to do so. Finally Robby Herbst, of the I and We: Collective Movement for Beginners project, is an artist from Los Angeles who does very important work that is social, collective, performative, playful yet politically driven, with a strong and open west-coast sensibility that would bring a refreshing new element into our space and the New York City context.
Michelle Levy
EFA Project Space Director