RCI USA

Feb 15, 20215 min read

UN/MUTE-10002 | Online Artist Residency | Featuring ALEX MIRUTZIU and SIDNEY SHAVERS as Team/Branch

Updated: Oct 27, 2021

February 12 - May 9, 2021

ALEX MIRUTZIU

Alex Mirutziu, the enfant terrible of Romanian art scene, is part of a 20-strong group of international artists to take up a collaborative online residency at UN/MUTE-10002, an innovative virtual program set up by Undercurrent New York in collaboration with EUNIC NY, the association of European Union’s culture institutes based in New York.

Alex Mirutziu (b. 1981) is an eclectic artist who explores two parallel trajectories with ease: performance, a discipline he has practiced for over fifteen years, and another more related to drawings, sculpture and poetry as well as critical and curatorial projects. The “body” plays an important part in Mirutziu’s work, the artist considering it as an emotional archive of his feelings and a site where ideological conflicts play out. Although his work does not always explicitly incorporate his body, he uses it as an index and generating mechanism for his art. This approach has led many critics over the past years to define Mirutziu as the enfant terrible of Romanian art.

As part of his theoretical practice the artist has lectured at (Royal College of Arts, London, Von Kraal Theatre, Estonia, Konstfack, Stockholm, Bezalel University of Art and Design, Tel Aviv) and has collaborated with artists/writers/musicians/designers/philosophers among which, Grit Hachmeister (DE), Elias Merino (ES), Graham Foust (US), Graham Harman (US). His work has been shown at Power Plant, Toronto, Glass Factory Lab, Boda, Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Center for Contemporary Art and National Museum, Warsaw, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Kunsthalle Bega, Centre for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Venice Biennale.

UN/MUTE-10002 is an online residency that provides artists an opportunity for a critical exchange and collaboration while simultaneously connecting resources from the global cultural epicenter of New York City. This project is co-organized by Undercurrent and the European Union National Institutes for Culture’s New York Cluster.

UN/MUTE-10002

Creating a fair and equitable space after COVID shuttered artists from residencies, travel, studio visits, exhibitions, and physical networking, UN/MUTE is an online residency that provides artists an opportunity for a critical exchange and collaboration while simultaneously connecting resources from the global cultural epicenter of New York City. This project is co-organized by Undercurrent and the European Union National Institutes for Culture’s New York Cluster. It will go live on unmute.nyc on February 12, 2021, in concurrence with the Lunar New Year, and will continue through May 9th, celebrating Europe Day.

The online world that has emerged in response to the pandemic reshapes our denition of social contact, obscures our private and public environments, and circumscribes the evolution of communication. UN/MUTE-10002 follows the narratives of ten European artists who have never visited New York City and ten NYC-based artists, paired into teams of two, one European with one New Yorker. Additionally, one artist is a digital immigrant, born before 1986, and the other is a digital native, born into the world of web browsers and email, after 1986. Over a series of Zoom sessions, each team’s collective creative process will unfold in a series of video recordings.

Language serves as the first cultural indicator of change. At constant risk of complete extermination, the Amazon is now more recognized as an online shopping platform than one of our planet’s richest natural resources. We stream video content into our living rooms while drinking bottled water branded with pictures of mountain springs, and our most priceless memories are hidden away in a cloud. We sit a virtual world apart from each other – far more than the recommended six feet – obscuring the socioeconomic divisions of race, color, national origin, gender identification, sexual orientation, religion, and age. The present state of being often sounds more like mythology or folklore than reality.

As the internet conditions our lifestyle, we aim to nd new normalcy amidst a shortage of vaccines, new virus strains, unsettling unemployment rates, and a Western world trying to mitigate racism and xenophobia during a delicate socio political epoch. Regardless of our facility with digital technologies, how do we progress without compromising the past? How can we learn from each other’s individual histories and experiences? Embodying inclusion, multilingualism, and digitalization, UN/MUTE provides an opportunity for two transatlantic strangers to collaborate on a singular project for a sustainable future.

UN/MUTE-10002 is a project by EUNIC NY and Undercurrent, realized with financial support from EUNIC — European Union National Institutes for Culture — Europe’s network of national cultural institutes and organizations, with 36 mem bers from all EU member states. This project was initiated by the Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Consulate General of Estonia in New York and is co-organized by Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Wallonia-Brussels International in New York, Czech Center New York, Delegation of Flanders to the USA, Goethe-Institut New York, Arts Council Malta in New York, Polish Cultural Institute New York, Romanian Cultural Institute New York, the Hope Recycling Station, the Jindřich Chalupecký Society, and supported by the European Union Delegation to the United Nations.

Participating artists:

Eren Aksu /Germany

Aaron Bezzina /@aaron.bezzina /Malta

Will Calhoun /@willcalhoundrum /NYC

Sanne De Wilde /@sanne_de_wilde /Flanders, Belgium

FOQL / @f_____o__q_____l___/Poland

Gabrielė Gervickaitė / @gabecosmo / Lithuania

Kris Grey /@krisgreystudio /NYC

Sophie Guisset /@guissetsophie /Wallonia-Brussels, Belgium

Kyle Hittmeier /@kyle.hittmeier /NYC

Mo Kong /@mosmosk /NYC

Yi Hsuan Lai /@flaneur_shan /NYC

H. Lan Thao Lam /NYC

Marie Lukáčová /@marie__luka /Czech Republic

Olesja Katšanovskaja–Münd /Estonia

Sheila Maldonado /@shelamal /NYC

Barbara Maria Neu /@barbaramarianeu /Austria

Emmanuel Massillon /@massi____ /NYC

Alex Mirutziu /@alexmirutziu /Romania

Emily Shanahan /@_emilyshanahan_ /NYC

Sydney Shavers /@sydney_shavers /NYC

LOTTERY

TEAM /BRANCH

More info here.

TEAM /BRANCH

Week 1/ ALPHABET SOUP Alex shares a five-minute selfie of his life outside of his immediate art practice. See here.

Sydney shares a five-minute selfie of her life outside of her immediate art practice. See here.

Week 2/ ICEBREAKERS

Sydney and Alex consider the influence of poetry, philosophy, and exhaustion in their performance. See here.

Week 3/ COMMON GROUND

Alex and Sydney consider the ways in which language could influence their project. See here.

Week 4/ DOT TO DOT

/Sydney and Alex begin dissecting language as inspiration for their project. See here.

Week 5/ TAGGING

/Sydney and Alex discuss definitions, identity, and currency in the context of their project. See here.

Week 6/ INVESTIGATIONS

/Sydney and Alex investigate the connotations of acquittal, from art historical to digital worlds. See here.

Week 7/ SNEAK PEEK

/Team Ram, Stream, Branch, Cloud and Key share their focus of systemic oppression, polarities, prosthetics, domestic spaces, and invisibility. See here.

Week 8/ HOPSCOTCH

/Sydney and Alex consider different forms for their final work, including the digital platforms through which their collaboration has been mediated. See here.

Week 9/ FEEDBACK

/Sydney and Alex consult with Tom McGlynn on their project. See here.

Week 10/ PREPS FOR FINAL PROJECT

/Alex and Sydney determine a final form for their project and reflect on last week’s consultation. See here.

Week 11/ THE UNVEILING

/This is the concluding event, the Unveiling, of UN/MUTE /10002, a 3-month collaborative project that enabled ten European artists who had never been to NYC to engage in an online residency and collaborate with ten New York City artists. In a series of weekly recorded Zoom sessions, participants from a wide range of disciplines worked in teams of two to create new works that can be followed at unmute.nyc. See here the whole event.

/Alex and Sydney share with the public their final project.