REMA HORT MANN FOUNDATION

Eight New ACE Projects Funded

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Announcing the Rema Hort Mann Foundation 2016 Artist Community Engagement Grant Recipients

Los Angeles, CA- The Rema Hort Mann Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the newest season of our Artist Community Engagement (ACE) Grant in Los Angeles. The ACE Grant Program was established in 2013 as part of the Foundation’s LA Initiative with the goal of encouraging meaningful engagement between Los Angeles-based artists and their surrounding communities. The ACE grant makes a wide range of project formats possible, including: panel discussions, artist talks, public presentations, workshops, web-based activities, lectures, screenings, publications, and other public events or cultural exchanges. These eight ACE grantees reflect the full potential of the projects we support and facilitate.

The Rema Hort Mann Foundation was created in September 1995 by friends and family of Rema Hort Mann to honor her joyful and vivacious life after her untimely death from stomach cancer at age 30. The Rema Hort Mann Foundation has evolved into a dynamic and effective organization, offering unrestricted grants and community-based grants, by nomination only, to promising emerging artists who demonstrate an ability and commitment to making substantial contributions in the arts. Additionally, our Quality of Life Grant assists cancer patients undergoing treatment by providing grants for travel, accommodations, child care and related expenses to help strengthen their familial and community support during their most vulnerable time of need. Through the generosity of individual donors, artists, galleries, and organizations such as the Warhol Foundation and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation continues to increase its impact in New York City and Los Angeles.

Since 1995, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation has awarded over 200 unrestricted cash grants to artists in New York City and Los Angeles.  The goal of the ACE Grants, is make a positive and lasting impact on the artist community, especially in our support of artistic collaboration, special projects, and community engagement.

Through careful deliberation by our selection committee, eight artist proposals were chosen to receive funding ranging from $1250- $1,500 to carry out these projects.

Please help us congratulate the eight 2016 ACE Grantees by reading more about their projects and sharing the information:

Paul Pescador , “Video in Site”

A video installation and multi-site video program which will occur at various arts organization and screening venues throughout the city of Los Angeles during the spring of 2017. The artworks selected consider Los Angeles as either background or subject, constructed to document the cultural and geographic landscape of “LA”.

Soyoung Shin, Collaborators: Audrey Chan and Connie Ho, “Would Be Saboteurs Take Heed.”

A series of celebratory events through 2017 which make visible the voices, histories, solidarities, and futures of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community. This includes publishing volumes of “Would Be Saboteurs Take Heed.”: a journal and platform for past and present arts and activism; the creation of the  “AAPI Experimental College”: a series of events to facilitate a contemporary AAPI dialogue; and other lectures and events which are geared towards the development of a collective identity in Los Angeles and beyond.

 


rojany-rachelle-01Rachelle Rojany
, ” Reverse Pick-Pocketing Piece (RPPP) “

A sound piece surreptitiously distributed into people’s bags and pockets via singing greeting cards across the Los Angeles Area. The receivers, or “victims” of Reverse Pick-Pocketing must overcome their surprise and suspicion at finding the small, white card and dare to open it; upon the reveal, they will find a sweet yet abstract sound gift, imbued with a sense of bounty and wonder.

 

 

rademacher-nicole-02Nicole Rademacher, “Safe Water Workshop”

A hands-on series, teaching the community to make homemade water filtration systems. This workshop incorporates reflection and conversations around water’s critical role in the human experience, and the process of water purification as a metaphor for an adopted person’s identity construction. This workshop is specifically designed for adult adoptees, foster alum, and families with adopted, foster, or surrogated children.                                                                                    

schnapf_marty_09  Martin Schnapf, “Night Fever”An immersive sculptural installation set in the center of downtown Los Angeles and open to the public. Based on the concept of a dance club turned in on itself, this work re-imagines the iconic disco dance floor as a Delphic labyrinth peopled with otherworldly party goers. Since the early days of disco, the dance club has been a refuge for LGBT, African American, Italian American, Latin America, and psychedelic communities. By utilizing the tropes of dance club culture Martin Schnapf builds an installation that draws from, and speaks to, the many generations of club goers who sought and continue to seek sanctuary in spaces removed from their current tumultuous time. 

 

Laura Schawelka, “No scene twice seen”

A site-specific video series and screening taking place in, on, and around cars starting at the artists’ studio in El Sereno, and proceeding East throughout the city of Los Angeles. Cars and their routes through LA neighborhoods will be the protagonists of a narrative that takes objects and place as stand-ins for their human owners.

 

kwak-young_joon-01Young Joon Kwak, Collaborators: Marvin Astorga, Elisa Harkins, Alli Miller, and Project Rage Queen, “Mutant Salon”

Mutant Salon is a roving beauty salon and platform for collaborative multimedia performances, which embraces a continual metamorphosis of itself with each new incarnation to experiment with various forms of engagement. The upcoming iteration of Mutant Salon will be a two-week long performance at the Hammer Museum that engages audience members through the staging of an immersive salon environment, live sound and video orchestration, participatory makeovers, and new collaborations with various artists that will expose a broader public to discourses around queer performance aesthetics and community building

 

siegle-matt-01Matt Siegle, Collaborators: Elizabeth Cline and Mark A. Rodriguez, “If The Head Fits Wear It”

is a publication that brings together a mix of California artists, writers, and organizers to examine the intersection of the Grateful Dead and contemporary art. The book highlights the proximity between these two subcultures, and in doing so forges new pathways for contemporary practices to engage the genre-defining expression inherent within Deadhead culture.

 

 

For inquiries, Director, at director@rhmfoundation.org.

Rema Hort Mann Foundation I 153 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013 I 212-966-8444 I www.rhmfoundation.org