LMCC News
Around Town Opportunities
The Work Office (TWO) Employment Opportunity Deadline: January 24, 2012
As part of the “Shifting Communities” exhibition series at the Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) gallery, TWO is hiring artists and others to create and present assignments with a focus on the Bronx, NY.
Deadline: 11:59 PM, January 24, 2012
The Work Office (TWO) is a multidisciplinary art project disguised as an employment agency. Informed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the Great Depression in the 1930s, TWO is a gesture to “make work” for visual and performing artists, writers, and others by giving them simple, idea-based assignments that explore, document, and improve daily life in New York City. From a temporary, publicly accessible office installed at BRAC, TWO's administrators will hire employees, exhibit work, and distribute Depression-era wages of $23.50 at a Payday Party on February 10.
TWO is accepting applications for assignments that can be presented at BRAC’s gallery. The proposals should explore the relationship between art and civic life and respond to the unique history and/or nature of the Bronx through one of the following TWO assignments:
*build a bridge
*reinterpret a newspaper photo
*record an oral history with someone who lives or works in the Bronx
*make a mixed CD related to places, people or experiences in the Bronx
*design a poster to promote something
*catalog WPA structures in NY
*give a concert for a plant in the Bronx
*start an American tradition
*document a need for repairs
*make a regional travel guide for a place, neighborhood or phenomenon in the Bronx
*assign yourself
Applications and instructions are available on TWO’s website (www.theworkoffice.com) and at BRAC’s gallery during the exhibition opening on January 20 and open gallery hours. A TWO administrator will contact and interview those with applications of interest by January 26. Interviews will take place on January 27 and 28. Applications are evaluated based on the strength and clarity of the proposed response to one of our assignments, its relationship to the Bronx, and the practicality of realizing it within a week.
Hired employees must be able to complete their assignments during the workweek of February 2–8, drop off work at the BRAC gallery on February 9, and attend a public Payday Party on the evening of Friday, February 10. At the Payday Party, artist/employees will collect their workweek wage of $23.50 for their completed assignment, the same weekly wage that artists received in the Federal One Project (the arts division of the WPA). The public will be invited to view the week’s works and learn about the project. Completed assignments will be publicly exhibited at BRAC’s gallery throughout the week of February 11–18 and on TWO’s website.
For more information about the application guidelines, http://www.theworkoffice.com/html/apply.html.
