Brooklyn

Supporting Artists and Exploring Museums in NYC

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Many of us know why exchanges matter! Exchange programs give visitors from around the world the chance to experience America’s diverse culture, to learn more about the arts in America, and to develop the skills they need to thrive in their professional careers.

We recently caught up with Heliis, a #J1Alum from Estonia who learn more about her internship at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, NY. ISCP is an incredible organization that supports the creative development of artists and curators, and promotes exchange through residencies and public programs. The organization is New York’s most comprehensive international visual arts residency program, with over 1350 artists and curators from over 80 countries having undertaken residencies at ISCP.

During her internship with ISCP, Heliis had the opportunity to learn many new skills, particularly in communications and fundraising, by participating in many different projects throughout her exchange program. Keep reading to learn more about her fascinating experience in New York!

What impact has your exchange experience had on your life and your career?

Thanks to this exchange experience I feel much more confident in myself and my skills. Working in a foreign office was a very enlightening experience, especially in giving me the entry-level skills I needed to get my career started. Since most of the jobs in the job market require at least some sort of professional experience, I think a full year-long internship was a good choice to obtain knowledge and also build my network. During the internship, I connected with so many different aspects of working in a nonprofit organization. I was trusted with important responsibilities which gave me more confidence in myself. This exchange year has definitely made me open up more about my career choices and what I would like to focus on in the future.

What is your favorite memory from your exchange program?

I have a lot of fond memories of my program. I enjoyed assisting the most with ISCP's social art offsite project Pablo Helguera: La Austral S.A. de C.V. This entire program consisted of telling stories of life and memories, and it was an amazing experience to see all the participants building their stories and the public express their experiences in a small community.

What was your favorite cultural activity to do in New York?

New York is such a huge city, that you can get lost in the activities that you can take part in there. However, I would say that I definitely enjoyed the rich museum scene, especially the art museums. Since I very much enjoy interactive experiences, I developed a few favorite museums such as the Whitney Museum, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York, which I visited numerous times during my exchange.

What advice can you offer to future exchange visitors coming to the United States?

I would definitely say be very open-minded, be open to conversations, and be willing to share your experience. Americans are very open themselves and like to get to know you, what your interests are, and what your dreams are. At first, it might feel overwhelming because the culture is so diverse, but soon you will encounter so many different ideas, thoughts, experiences, and really meet people from all areas of life, which makes you feel part of it with your own experience.

What does cultural exchange mean to you?

I feel like the cultural exchange is very important in giving us as humans an opportunity to discover new things in life as well as within ourselves. Connecting with others and their cultures have enriched my life tremendously, and I am more than thankful for those experiences.

Host Spotlight: UnionDocs

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Based in Brooklyn, NY, UnionDocs (UNDO) is a non-profit Center for Documentary Art that presents, produces, publishes, and educates. It brings together a diverse community of activist artists, experimental media-makers, dedicated journalists, big thinkers, and local partners to search for urgent expressions of the human experience, practical perspectives on the world today, and compelling visions for the future.

Each year, International Arts & Artists partners with UNDO to provide J-1 visa sponsorship for international fellows participating in the Collaborative Studio (CoLAB) program. This ten-month fellowship brings together individual talents, voices, and stories to create multi-dimensional documentaries. CoLAB offers a platform for these artists to explore contemporary approaches to the documentary arts and a process for developing an innovative collaborative project. The program consists of weekly production meetings, seminars, screenings and other public programs, along with regular masterclasses and critiques with visiting artists.

We recently caught up with Ansh Vohra, one of the 2017-18 CoLAB fellows, and Sarah Lerner, UNDO’s Director of Operations, to learn more about the CoLAB program and UNDO’s experience as a J-1 host organization.

Sarah, what are some of your favorite things about hosting exchange visitors?

We are able to host up to six international fellows and six local fellows each year as part of our CoLAB program. The opportunity is as valuable for us as it is for them, as we greatly appreciate being able to expand our documentary arts community on a global scale. We have extensive international partnerships on our public facing events and workshops by bringing together artists, journalists, critics and curators from around the world, so we feel it is important to continue the tradition within the film production side of the organization as well. One of our primary goals as part of our fellowship program is to create multi-dimensional pieces in a collaborative format, and cross-cultural exchange is one of the most effective ways to do that.

Ansh, what impact has your J-1 experience with UnionDocs had on your life and your career?

UnionDocs came into my life at a time when I was just beginning to comfortably settle into my work as a filmmaker. However, I wasn’t sure that being comfortable was the right thing to do at the age of 25. I began making film four years ago and I couldn’t help but wonder whether I’d pushed myself to have new experiences. My time here at UnionDocs has been a big step forward in overcoming that obstacle. I’ve had the opportunity to challenge my notions of what makes for a good film, and I feel as though I will come out of this opportunity a filmmaker who isn’t afraid to take risks. Additionally, living in the United States, and in New York especially, has given me the opportunity to interact with cultures that I wouldn’t otherwise be privy to back home in Delhi. I’m working on projects that focus on people of Indian, Syrian and Azeri origins, something that probably wouldn’t have been possible in any other city in the world.

Sarah, what are some of activities that CoLAB fellows get to take part in?

​​Our fellows spend ten months at UnionDocs, meeting twice a week for production meetings, master classes and seminars with notable members of the documentary field. We have had the opportunity to work with notable filmmakers (such as Deborah Stratman), radio producers (such as Jad Abumrad) and curators (such as ​ Sally Berger​). We are sponsored by AbelCine, one of the industry’s most comprehensive sources for state-of-the-art camera equipment and accessories. Our fellows receive training support from AbelCine staff. ​We are also sponsored by Canon, who lease cameras for Collaborative Studio productions.

Ansh, what are some of the projects that you’ve been working on during your time at UnionDocs?

I’m currently working on three documentary projects at UnionDocs, two of which I’m directing. The first one is a film that follows three immigrant narratives that originate within a 100 miles of each other in Punjab (India) and culminate in a taxi school in Queens, NY. The second one, which I’m co-directing with Daniel Sitts, is an animated film that chronicles the family history of some of the first few Syrians to arrive in the United States back in the 1890s. The third one follows an Azerbaijani family and tells the story of a generational divide between a traditionally Azeri grandmother and her American granddaughter.

Sarah, tell us about some of the cultural activities that UnionDocs fellows participate in during their program!

Our fellows are able to attend all of the 100+ events held at UnionDocs free of charge, and are encouraged to do so. We take an annual trip to the Camden International Film Festival in Maine each fall. Group field trips have also included Documentary Fortnight at MoMA, Art of the Real at Film Society Lincoln Center and HotDocs in Toronto. In addition, we share word of local events at other micro-cinemas and festival opportunities that might be of interest.

Ansh, what does cultural exchange mean to you?

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures. We’re a group of people you would usually have never found inside one room had it not been for a program like UnionDocs and International Arts & Artists. To work with all of them as equals, exchange ideas, collaborate on projects and become friends has been an incredible experience. I will hopefully be in touch with everyone for a long time.

Learn more about the CoLAB program here and follow Ansh Vohra on Instagram!

Artist Spotlight: Mia Daniels

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At International Arts & Artists, we love keeping up with our exchange visitors through the lens of their host organizations! This month’s artist spotlight features Mia Daniels, a J-1 scholar from Canada completing a residency program with the Textile Arts Center (TAC) in Brooklyn, NY. Mia was recently featured on TAC’s blog, where she discussed her creative background, influences, and time at TAC. Keep reading for more on Mia’s J-1 experience and follow her on Instagram for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of her incredible work!

A version of this interview was originally published on the TAC blog by Sam Crow.

Mia Daniels, one of our AIR cycle 8 residents, uses everyday objects to situate her work within a context where myth and the unknown reside. She aims to cultivate a sensitivity in her work as a way to consider uncertainty and the fragile divide between beauty and decay. During her time at TAC, she has discovered that engaging in textile craft in today’s world can embody both an experience of labour and luxury. Mia shared some words with me about her creative background, what influences her work, and her time at TAC.

On her creative background:

I grew up in a house filled with beautiful handmade textiles from different parts of the world: Guatemala, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, Lao, Nepal, India . . . the art of my home, they embodied my experiences: an intimate recollection of travel, family, adventure, and the ability to immerse yourself in the joyous unknown. I remember my first encounter with natural dye: on the coast of Oaxaca exploring the intertidal rocks with my sister and friends, collecting catechol/snails and rubbing their special slime onto our heads, permanently dyeing Mexican hair a beautiful deep purple, while my sister and my fair hair turned a bright punk pink to mirror our sun-scorched skin.

Gohar Dashti, “Today’s Life and War”, 2008. Image courtesy of the artist.
On what influences her work:

An informative part of my practice comes from residing within the board cultures of snow and surf: a sort of modern nomadism in which living in cars, vans, tents, and on sailboats is intrinsically a part of the lifestyle. Through these experiences I have come to learn that limitations can be liberating. Such challenges can provide a framework for highlighting assumptions and questioning behaviors, beliefs, and values. It was within the ocean’s crashing waves in which I first encountered the simultaneity of chaos and fluidity, an abstract duality which challenges the black/white polarizations in which we are so accustom to in the grappling of sense-making in our unstable world – although at the time I might have described it more attune to experiencing the powers of freedom, beauty, and destruction all together tumbled within the crashing ions.

Gohar Dashti, “Today’s Life and War”, 2008. Image courtesy of the artist.

On her material choices:

I think that the use of everyday materials situates the work in a very real – not contrived – context, while a sort of ‘ad-hocism’ creates space for myth and the unknown. ‘At once elegant and in shambles’ is a sensitivity I aim to cultivate as a way to consider uncertainty: exposing the fragile divide between beauty and decay, if even there is one. Evidencing a lived culture, the materials allude toward the process or experience being the work itself. It is through this use of ambiguity in which the potential for a personal experience of discovery may lie: the viewer or participant has the opportunity to decide for themselves. I believe these balances are important, not as an either/or and not as propaganda, but as a platform to negotiate the problematic binaries which seem to make it difficult to embrace complexity and uncertainty.

On her experience at TAC:

I came in with the intention to learn skills of making and have been amazed at how some relatively simple and lo-fi methods, to spin fibers or to build up the chaotic structure of a felt fabric, for example, can be equally humbling and empowering. Through this material intimacy I am intrigued at how engaging in textile craft in today’s world can embody both an experience of labour and luxury. There seems to lie much potential for the slow, methodical processes of working with your hands – ‘remembering in our bodies’ the learned cultural wisdoms – to inform or (re)discover more intimate cultural expressions.

A selection of work from Urban Mapping. Clockwise from top left: Arash Fayez, “Ramblings of a Flâneur”, 2008. Ghazaleh Hedayat, “Snake and Ladder”, 2012. Rana Javadi, “Enghelab Street, Tehran”, 1978. Saba Alizadeh, “Light and Soil”, 2011. Behnam Sadighi, “Ekbatan, west of Tehran”, 2004-2008. Mehran Mohajer, “Between & Non-Between”, 2017. All images courtesy of the artist.

On what artists/art movements she looks to:

Most recently I have been looking to the Assemblages, Arte Povera, and Fluxes: Happenings and Collective Actions, and more directly to the ‘embodied actions’ and the ‘everydays’ of Andrea Zittel, Francis Alys, Franz Erhard Walther, Otto von Busch, Richard Wentworth, Yvonne Rainer. I often consider Rainer’s ability to reveal the poetic acts of the peculiarities of the ordinary performing body. In essence, it is about a shift in perspective through the reveal of a mundane-sort-of-magic – that which often goes unseen.

Check out the video below to see Mia in action and learn more about the Textile Arts Center Artist-in-Residence program here!