Call for Applicants, Houston, TX
Alisha B. Wormsley, in collaboration with Goethe Pop Up Houston and Project Row Houses, is seeking proposals from artists, teachers, activists and community members to engage with the text There Are Black People In The Future as a virtual Artwork-in-Residence.
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There Are Black People in the Future is an afro-futurist interdisciplinary body of work that Wormsley began developing in 2012, which includes video, prints, collages, sculptures, and billboards. In 2018 the sentence was removed from a billboard in a newly gentrified neighborhood in Pittsburgh by developers. For Wormsley, it's removal transformed that one sentence into a movement, one in which the public was encouraged to use her words for the betterment of the world around them.
In response to the billboard’s removal,
There Are Black People In The Future Artwork-in-Residence was launched in 2019 in Pittsburgh. One year later, against the backdrop of a wave of new development in the city of Houston - and the Third Ward specifically - we are initiating a virtual iteration.
Individuals and teams who live and/or work in the Houston-area are invited to submit project proposals that explore the relevance of Wormsley’s text in their own communities. Each awardee will receive an honorarium of $1,000 to implement their identified proposal.
The Artwork-in-Residence will include a workshop, collaborative discussions and final presentations. This program will unfold virtually over the course of four months:
Due to technical difficulties, the submission deadline has been extended to August 24, 2020 at 11:59PM CST.
If you have questions about this call for participants, please contact Project Row Houses Curatorial Assistant and Arts Coordinator Sidney Garrett via email at
sgarrett@projectrowhouses.org
About Alisha B. Wormsley:
Alisha B. Wormsley is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work focuses on collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color.
Wormsley’s project,
There are Black People in the Future, is inspired by afro-futurist artists and writers who highlight the need for black people to claim their place. Through the inscription and utterance of the words, “There are Black People in the Future,” the project addresses systematic oppression of black communities through space and time by reassuring the presence of black bodies.
Wormsley’s work has received a number of awards and grants to support programs including:
The People Are The Light (part of the Hillman Photography Initiative),
afronaut(a) film and performance series,
Homewood Artist Residency, the
Children of NAN film series and archive, and
There Are Black People in the Future. These projects and works have exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum, Octavia Butler conference at Spelman University, Carnegie Museum of Art, Artup in Johannesburg SA, Studio XX in Montreal, Project Row House, the Houston Art League, Rush Art Gallery in NYC, the Charles Wright Museum in Detroit, and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. Over the last few years, Wormsley has designed several public artworks including Streaming Space, a 24 foot pyramid with video and sound installed in Pittsburgh's downtown Market Square, and AWxAW, a multimedia interactive installation and film commission at the Andy Warhol Museum.
Wormsley is a 2020 fellow for the project
Shaping the Past, a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb).
About Project Row Houses:
Project Row Houses is a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. Engaging neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities.
Project Row Houses occupies a significant footprint in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. The site encompasses five city blocks and houses 39 structures that serve as home base to a variety of community enriching initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities. PRH programs touch the lives of under resourced neighbors, young single mothers with the ambition of a better life for themselves and their children, small enterprises with the drive to take their businesses to the next level, and artists interested in using their talents to understand and enrich the lives of others. Although PRH’s African-American roots are planted deeply in Third Ward, the work of PRH extends far beyond the borders of a neighborhood in transition. The Project Row Houses model for art and social engagement applies not only to Houston, but also to diverse communities around the world
There Are Black People in the Future: Artwork-In-Residence is presented as part of the project Shaping the Past, a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb), which connects memory workers across Canada, Mexico, the U.S., and Germany who have piloted new approaches to memory in their local contexts.
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