Call for Participants
"First Contact" 5 Boroughs of NYC with Nezaket Ekici
Online Video Performance & Multi-Channel Installation 2021
A longer version of this video will be screened in our shop window,
at 30 Irving Place, 24 February - 10 March 2021.
OPEN CALL Deadline: 31 March 2021
Looking for:
Families who are not directly involved in the art world from the 5 boroughs of New York City (Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island). Interested families should be open to actively participating in a performance piece in their private environment. Participating children must be a minimum of 6 years old.
Please note:
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, these collaborations will be conducted virtually over Zoom. Participating families will need a laptop, internet, a webcam, a microphone, and a Zoom account.
“First Contact” is a work-in-progress performance project started in 2011 by Berlin-based artist Nezaket Ekici.
Performance art is not an accessible medium when compared to painting, sculpture, or photography. Nezaket Ekici, a performance artist with more than 20 years of international performing experience, is confronting this problem head-on through her project "First Contact," which has been ongoing since 2011. In this project, Ekici engages directly with families to offer them a different “world” to explore besides the working world. She meets people in their everyday lives and develops performances together with them in their private living spaces. In this way, people gain access to art as it is being created, as well as a new understanding of contemporary art practices.
In the aftermath of her residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), the artist will work on “First Contact” for the first time outside of Germany. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 edition of this project will be conducted virtually over Zoom. Participating families will need a laptop, internet, a webcam, a microphone, and a Zoom account.
The artist is searching for families from the 5 boroughs of New York City who are willing to get involved in an artistic research project. The catch? They should have little or nothing to do with art in their daily lives. Each participating family will be invited to jointly develop performance ideas and implement them in their homes with the support of the artist. Together, they will look at each room (the kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom, children's room, and so on) and find a favorite object for a family member to use in a performance. The whole family is also welcome to perform as a group. Each room offers something different. In the kitchen, performers might deal with food. In the living room, the bathroom, and bedroom the performers might work with furniture, cosmetics, and clothing - all common objects can become art objects. In this intimate setting, Ekici gets to know the family, and the family members learn a new framework for interacting with their world, one that centers art in their lives.
There will be a total of three 1-2 hour Zoom Meetings with the artist. The performances will be filmed and in interviews, the artist and the families will talk about their experiences to find out if their experience changed their perspective on art. The final performance video will be shown as part of a multi-channel video installation in 2021.
The internationally renowned performance artist Nezaket Ekici (*1970 in Kirsehir/Turkey) creates performances, installations, and videos that are often inspired by her dual German-Turkish heritage. Her confrontations with the ordinary allow Ekici to explore the social and cultural atmospheres in which she operates. These confrontations are then translated and expressed as performances and installation art. She uses her body as a means of expression and investigation, and always keeps her works in context with the audience. She aims to create a situation in which all elements are connected to form a whole work of art, a concept known as Gesamtkunstwerk. She studied Art Education at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and Performance Art under Marina Abramović at the Braunschweig University of Art. She has exhibited at MARTa Herford, Germany, MoMA PS1, New York, and Art Basel, Hong Kong, among others. Nezaket Ekici has received the Rome Prize of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo and the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Prize for her aesthetics and clear formal language in her works. In 2020 she was an artist in residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York, sponsored by the International Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Nezaket Ekici:
Email: contact@ekici-art.de
Instagram & Facebook: @firstcontactnewyork