CASUAL CONVERSATIONS IN BROOKLYN
March 7- June 14, 2009

"Let's drink. Let's talk. Free."
performance schedule:
March 14th / April 10th / May 8th/ 7-9pm

BLACK AND WHITE PROJECT SPACE
483 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11211

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Casual Conversations in Brooklyn is an anthropological inquiry into Brooklyn's immigrant communities. Confronted by a radically different reality these new Americans are bound together by pursuing their American dreams and searching for new identities reflective of their new lives. How does one retain cultural roots while creating a new identity? Casual Conversations in Brooklyn approaches this and other challenging questions in a two-part site-specific installation occupying both the indoor and outdoor gallery spaces.

Be Happy - a new project conceived for Black & White Project Space's unique outdoor space harnesses the gigantic cutout of a young woman with a Be Happy talk balloon against the artificial grass surface as a metaphor for "greener pastures," the search for which entices people to migrate.

The last installment of the ongoing Casual Conversations in Brooklyn project for the indoor space consists of a series of artistic interventions, discussions, and actions that have taken place since 2007. It is comprised of sculptural objects, photographs, video and sound work inspired by public dialogues conducted by the artists in the Brighton Beach community of Brooklyn, and new work specially developed during this exhibition. The newly created and existing work will gradually fill up and claim the space over the course of the exhibition inviting the spectator to share the journey, its beginnings, its evolution, and the stories these wandering objects trigger. This unconventional installation attempts to evoke the transformation of immigrant experience from an "empty nest" to the space defined by new social interactions.

Let's drink. Let's talk. Free. performance schedule: March 14th / April 10th / May 8th/ 7-9pm.

PROJECT HISTORY:

Casual Conversations in Brooklyn
2007-2009

The project is based on a series of public dialogues, interactions, and conversations staged in the Brighton Beach community in Brooklyn. By bringing contemporary art out of the gallery and into the community, we create a kind of art/research laboratory in the public realm. Casual Conversations looks at the conflicting desires of this still nascent community: How does one retain cultural roots while simultaneously creating a new identity?

Every staged conversation aims to provoke its participants to react and to reflect. Every event targets some issue - whether personal or communal - and attempts to elicit a reaction that will eventually become a brushstroke in this community portrait.

As Grant H. Kester noted in his book Conversation Pieces "the concept of a dialogical art practice is derived from the Russian literary theorist Michael Bakhtin, who argued that the work of art can be viewed as a kind of conversation - a locus of differing meanings, interpretations, and points of view." Casual Conversations exemplifies this definition of art by documenting the spontaneity of daily conversations and public interactions. By creating these social portraits, the project records a quickly shifting experience as it moves from moment to moment, from present to past.

To date we have conducted following public "interactions":

Identity
Boardwalk, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY
July 7, 2007
In the early morning on a sunny July weekend, we asked beachgoers to define their identity.
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American Dream
St. Petersburg bookstore, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY
July 27, 2007 / December 28, 2007
We asked shoppers in this popular Russian-language bookstore to share their American Dream with us by writing or drawing it with a magic marker on a "thought bubble".
Full description and images >>>

Let's Drink. Let's Talk. Free.
Discount Liquors & Wines, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY
August 18, 2007
We invited shoppers and passersby to drink with us, talk, share a story, or make a toast.
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Casual Conversations is supported by the Six Points Fellowship with an additional support of the Puffin Foundation.