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ALINA AND JEFF BLIUMIS :::: WORKS :: BIO :: CV :: PUBLICATIONS :: PRESS :: CONTACT | |
 identity Boardwalk, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY July 7, 2007 Digital c print
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CASUAL CONVERSATIONS IN BROOKLYN 2007-2009 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? 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. 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. To date we have conducted following public "interactions":
Identity
(Casual Conversations is supported by the Six Points Fellowship with an additional support of the Puffin Foundation.) |
 American Dream / Be Happy! Installation view: Black and White Project Space, NY  Let's drink. Let's talk. Free. perfomance at Black and White Project Space, Brooklyn, NY  Traveling Library Series installation view Black and White Project Space Cast foam, acrylic and ink, dimensions variable |
CASUAL CONVERSATIONS IN BROOKLYN exhibition 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.
American Dream / Be Happy!
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