December 13, 2013

Art project re-imagines existing modes of communication

Garrick Imatani, Assistant Professor of Art and Studio Head of Foundations, and three collaborators have been awarded a $5,000 Precipice Fund grant for their project, “Not Too Distant Futures”.

Garrick Imatani, Assistant Professor of Art and Studio Head of Foundations, and three collaborators have been awarded a $5,000 Precipice Fund grant for their project, “Not Too Distant Futures.”

As part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program, this fund is administered by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). This year was the inaugural year of this grant program, which awarded grants between $2,800 and $5,000 per project. Garrick’s collaborators include Anna Gray, Ryan Wilson Paulsen (both currently adjunct faculty in the art department), and Ariana Jacob. Over the course of a year, this team will create a series of artistic interventions that re-imagine existing modes of communication, distribution, and circulation.

Specifically, Garrick shares that “We are particularly interested in how art can address the Political and function in a responsive relationship to pertinent cultural and political happenings taking place in the city of Portland and around the world. Not Too Distant Futures hopes to break an impasse, making critical and imaginative gestures that increase the frequency of intersections between distinct strands of artistic and political activity within the city. Our role will be to design and model 4 experimental forms for distribution that artists, activists, and writers will be invited to inhabit, creating authored or anonymous work that will be made public through 4 different means: cellphone technology, public signage, print publication, and the world wide web.” 

More information about this award and the grant program is available here, and more about Garrick’s work is available here.